At classical concerts, they somtimes adopt the "classical sandwich" approach - you start and finish the concert with well-loved pieces and put something new and unfamiliar in the middle. The audience may find they like it more than they expected (in my observation, they may choose this point to have a nap, but perhaps I shouldn't generalise from what I've seen in Worthing on a Sunday afternoon).

I would like to say how this could be applied in folk, but I'm struggling. I suppose individual artists/bands can and do try similar strategies, but in a mixed folk concert, people will just get up and wander off to the bar (or leave for good in a festival with season tickets) if they think they're not going to enjoy it.

For me, one of the nice things about festivals with season tickets is that I can get a taster of new artists and types of music without committing to a whole evening of them. It's more difficult for clubs to make this sort of things possible, although there are possibilities - theme nights, nights where good regular floor singers do extended spots, etc.

Clubs can still make it clear what kind of music they're about, and yet be a bit imaginative in the way they run the evening, not just offering the same floor singers doing the same old songs every week or month.

Marje