Well Ian, there may be some truth in what you say, and you're not the first to make accusations of cliquery. But might it not be that organisers are merely either rewarding loyalty - i.e. favouring those who turn up reliably every week, or trying to maintain a chosen club ethos, such as traditional or contemporary, higher skill levels, chorus songs, or 'performance standards' (specially on guest nights) or whatever?

Cliques usually turn out to be no more than groups of friends, and if you're friendly too you soon get along fine. Your songs seem to be right in the middle in terms of trad/cont (much as mine are), and obviously you sing and play nicely too, so there has to be some other reason you're not getting spots - unless you're wanting more limelight than guest club averages can reasonably offer. In which case starting your own gig is the obvious solution, though taking pops at other typse of club might not be.

I get the impression you're out a lot and travel far. If so you'll be a 'stranger' at a lot of clubs, and it may take a good few visits to get accepted. I agree this is not ideal, and it's much nicer to be welcomed and feted at the first visit, but it's kind of human nature, so firing off salvos of 'grape'-shot here is unlikely to improve your situation, plus it's terrible PR for folk music.

Yes, I'm calling for an academic study. Philip Butterworth from the Arts Council is starting a survey, ant this must be good news - but I don't know what his terms of reference are, so how his findings may impact.

tom