The thing about performance is that it is a skill.

There are many facets to it.

The people who make their living (or incapable of earning a living, but have their being - the one trick ponies) who do nothing but folk clubs and festivals where the respectful audiences live - they sneer at the musicians who have in their eyes sold out. They exclude them from their radio shows, 'serious' magazines, poncy record labels - and that's how the serious artists can be regularly seen pissing away creative opportunities that more versatile and flexible thinking artists could make work. They've stayed in the shallows of folkworld all their lives - so they never go off the deep end and make much of a splash.

In fairness to them to the 'serious' artists - you aren't going to learn to do one of the 'big' ballads gigging the lounge of the Dog and Duck. Mind you, it has to be that if you stay in the folkclubs theres no guarantee you will either. For every John Kelly and Brian Peters there are two hundred who've never learnt to engage with the audience at all - they just expect the audience (if there is one) to sit there and 'appreciate' them reading from an exercise book tattooed on the inside their eyelids.

We need both inputs and we need a degree more respect from 'the powers that be' for the thoroughly professional outfits like No Fixed Abode who venture out of Hundred Acre Wood.