They do practise in public at my local folk club. I'm sure they practise beforehand as well, but I've seen quite a few go from beginner who loses it in public, to proficiency.

You guys must go to different sorts of folk clubs.

I think maybe that's why I find Mudcat so weird sometimes - most people I know on the folk scene are pretty good eggs and they are tolerant. On here everybody seems to have an axe to grind and discount somebody else's view of folk music as invalid.

I wonder if many people here actually go to folk clubs. maybe they went years ago and they think its all right to keep kicking up shit like those groups in A Mighty Wind - slagging each off for being commercial sell outs.

The climate has changed. Those of us still on the scene are trying to cling onto what scenes left, and we tend to be tolerant.

personally speaking I don't sitting through quite a bit of what seems to me rubbish, as long as the craics in there somewhere.