I think that there very definitely is a "folkie audience", meaning that raggle-taggle bunch of individualists who frequent folk clubs, folk festivals, and such things. Given that, I take Susan to speak to a different issue entirely, which is that, intrinsically, folk music (however you want to define it) can be played for, and enjoyed by any audience.

Which is all a lead up to my story:

About ten years ago, I was sitting in a casino in Las Vegas, eating expensive burgers, and listening to one of those bands that plays constantly to everyone and no one. The band was a generic show band--guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, reed player--except that they were playing songs that I had played and sung in coffeehouses, back in the late 60's. "Today", "Get Together", "Where have All the Flowers Gone?", "Changes", "SF Bay Blues", and such things.

I didn't talk to them, they were on a stage high above the slot machines--and the only conclusion that I could come to was that the leader had come to Vegas and seen that they would pay a lot for music (most casinos have four or five stages with bands playing 24/7, seven days a week) and threw together what he could remember from college--

Maybe it wasn't the best audience, but no one was arguing with them about whether it was folk or not--