I can't help but feel here that the folk club organizers are taking a beating and being subjected to a lot of criticisn - could somebody please give them credit for doing a whole lot of work for no pay and very little reward, except the hope that their efforts will keep folk music alive at a grassroots level??? Reading this thread they must be feeling that they are 'damned if they do and damned if they don't'. I've been in both positions - performer and concert organizer. Of course it is incumbent upon both to drum up as much of an audience as they can. The best scenario is if the club organizer can do as much local promotion as possible, and the artist can e-mail or otherwise inform his/her fans of upcoming gigs. I only do a monthly concert series and between the website, making sure I get notices out to appropriate publications, flyers, bookings, etc. it takes up a LOT of time. We try to keep our ticket prices the same but IF we have a bigger name guest who charges a bit more, we do slightly increase the ticket price, and I make no apologies for that. We try to have a mix of well known and unknown performers, and book based on what we like, what we think our audience will like, and also try to achieve a 'balance' in our acts - i.e. instrumental acts, singers, etc. We only want traditional performers - we make no bones about it and state it clearly on our website. Again, no apologies - that was why we started the series. Yes there are things you can do to ensure a good, steady attendance, but there are times when no matter what - people just don't seem to show up and it's hard to predict. A couple of times when that has happened and the artist had agreed upon a percentage of the door, we dipped into the kitty and paid them a reasonable sum even though they didn't 'draw' an audience. Anyway, I really think we should give these folk club organizers a break and thank them for their efforts. They do a lot of work, make no money from it and I would wager that at times they have reached into their own pockets to subsidize the clubs from time to time. Not only that, they have to deal with venue problems, landlord issues, etc. It's very often a thankless task, and I doubt anybody would choose to do it unless they truly loved folk music.