Hi Les,

Agree with you that playing acoustically is sheer delight, but unfortunately not always practical. In particular my gigs have consisted of musos playing a range of instruments e.g. a loud accordian vs a softer mandolin, and of course there is also a need to balance voices.

A couple of tricks though if I am forced to move to electronic aids:

(1) Make sure that the complete gear (mikes and speakers in particular) has a good frequency response particularly at the high end. With good recognition of the spoken word and vocal music, you need to pump out much less sound, the audience can hear and enjoy better.

(2) A good foldback speaker system will help us play and enjoy ourselves, even if the audience is stewed to the gills and not apparently even remotely interested in listening.

(3) If possible I often try to invade the patrons' space relocate during part of the performance, so that you are right in the middle of your audience. And then play and speak really softly. It never ceases to amaze me how people will berate their fellow patrons because a performance is soft. This is the time to roll out quiet ballads or interesting ditties. The trick here though is to retain their interest. Variety and entertainment are key, forget this and you're likely to lose them.

I try to remember though that whether there's a PA system or not, these noisy ingrates are (usually) paying for our performance fees/whatever and that our responsibility is to entertain them. The audience may be a wedding party, a group of old work friends or a collection of international wool buyers. Their prime interest may be to have a quiet conversation, pick up a partner for the night or so on. That's their right as far as I'm concerned. I guess we all put a lot of work into the story telling aspects and subtleties of folk music and feel pissed off if people don't listen. Many's the occasion I've heard comments like "The band was fantastic. Can I book you?..." from a rabid audience that seemed otherwise indifferent.

Does this always work? Nah, but why should I let a bunch of paying morons adversely effect the quality or enjoyment of my music.

Cheers John