... and you won't get out alive if you try to perform those songs "in yer local flok [sic] club"...

Exactly my point! But you won't have any rotten tomatoes tossed your way, figuratively or literally, if you sing a song about an 1882 coal miners' strike or a song bemoaning fate of the poor lads conscripted into Queen Anne's War. It's only songs about contemporary oppression and injustice that raise their ire.

Which is why in the USA there has slowly but surely been developing a network of venues friendly to contemporary political folk music, as well as to other kinds of muisc. The oldest among them is the Peoples' Voice Cafe in New York City. Others include the Vox Pop in Brooklyn, one of NYC's outer boroughs; the the Good Coffee House, also in Brooklyn; Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, New York; the Echo Lake Coffee House in Leverett, Massachusetts; the Circle Coffee House in Boston; the Folk Factory in Philadelphia; and I believe also the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, California.

Most of these venues also present non-political music. For example, the Good Coffee House host an old-time and bluegrass festival each September. Nevertheless, they are place where a political folk musician can feel welcome, not just tolerated -- or worse.

--- Steve