"To compare it to the entertainment scene... The agent gets you work, in our case nationwide and for quite a lot of money, but, if you're just starting out, locally and for enough to make it worth doing...
Why can't the folk scene work like that?"

In a nutshell, it's all about the size of the numbers - the money the audience are prepared to pay, the numbers that turn out to the gig, the fees paid to the performers, the general level of public interest in folk music vs. pop music.

Because of that, most clubs run on a shoestring and so do performers. Neither can afford to pay agent's fees, and agents aren't interested in the folk scene because all the numbers are too small, with the exception of a few acts that operate in a different market and which most folk clubs can't afford.

How many folk performers get regular bookings in real commercial entertainment? The occasional ceilidh band, maybe. Look at a corporate entertainment agents website. The price categories start at "under £1000" and go to "under £25000" ranging from after dinner speakers and comedians through jazz and cover bands to orchestras and exotic dance groups. It's a totally different world.

Part of the answer is to get a lot more people interested in folk music than are at present, and that means finding places outside the established folk scene to get those people in. On the other hand, if you are running a folk club and want it to work more like Faye's description, I suspect it's a combination of much harder work that you might think on the publicity and bookings policy, and a thick skin when it comes to quality control of your local support performers. Les is getting it right at Faldingworth and I know it hasn't been easy for him.

There are singer's clubs, of course, and there's a need for those, and singarounds and open mic sessions and all that, and there's a real need for those too, but you have to be very careful about mixing the all-encompassing "anyone can have a go" side of folk music with an event that's designed to get Joe Public coming in and paying good money for an evening's entertainment.

Anahata