Faye Roche wrote
you could very easily get the impression that the UK folk scene either does not exist, or that the editor hates it with such a passion that he deliberately ignores it.

Why, then has he been seen several times in recent years in the folk club that I run in Lewes, more than fifty miles from where he lives. He even did a gig there last year with Lu Edmonds and Ben Mandelson last year - and one of the best nights of the season it was.

Faye Roche wrote
(Apart from the Magpie's Nest, which isn't really a folk club!)

Why ever not? Please explain! Recent guest list there includes The Copper Family, Belshazzar's Feast, Ben Paley and Tab Hunter, Sara Grey & Keiron Means, Faustus, Jim Moray, Tom Paley, Ken Lansbury, Spiers & Boden. If the Magpie's Nest isn't a folk club, then neither is ours at the Royal Oak at Lewes, because these are the same people that we book. Could it be that the Magpie's Nest isn't really a folk club because - horror of horrors - it is run by young people who want to do it their own way?

Faye Roche wrote
the latest cute young Radio 2 Folk Award winners. Nothing wrong with that either, though some of them are vastly overrated in my humble opinion.

I'm afraid that this is a very unfortunate ageist statement. Surely if we don't get enthusiast and talented young people into folk clubs then the whole movement is going to die. One of our best nights in Lewes this year was presented by a 19-year old in a duo with a 14-year old (see a photo of them in action at http://froots.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4307) . We didn't book them because they were "cute" and "young", we booked them because they were superb musicians and singers and that is what we are after.

Faye Roche wrote
Wouldn't it be nice if the magazine visited the folk roots of its home country as well?

I'm afraid that this statement is a straightforward untruth. There is always a high proportion of articles on British artists - I, myself, have written articles on very many in the last few years for fRoots on people ranging in age from Sam Lee to Reg Hall. In the current issue, the cover article is on two superb English singers, Ian King and Nancy Wallace and a mass of other up and comers and there are articles Eddi Reader, Rachael McShane of Bellowhead and Heidi Talbot. In the main review section there are reviews of 16 albums of British performers who perform British traditional song and dance music. Now, it is true that a proportion of these performers choose to perform outside the folk club scene, but if the attitude displayed by Faye is in any way typical, then is that surprising?
Another area that fRoots covers that no other does - Songlines included - is the traditional music of young people and groups from immigrant communities. Some of these that I have heard are of an extraordinary quality.

Faye Roche wrote
I can't help thinking that if we had a good national folk magazine the club scene would be a lot healthier and less fragmented. If, for example, performances by new artists were sometimes reviewed, so that the said artists could benefit from wider exposure, wouldn't that be a good thing? There are quite a few young performers trying to break into the scene at the moment- how nice it would be if they could be more publicised; it might even draw a new generation of listeners into the scene.

Again very unfair. Recently, I approached the fRoots editor with an idea for an article about someone who has been on the English folk scene for 40 years and I wanted to mark the acheivement. His reply was "Oh, go on then, but can't you write something about some of the exciting young performers that are coming through?" You have much more chance of getting into fRoots as an young folkie than as an old stager.

Fay Roche wrote
But there are some astoundingly good new performers around, and it's a pity that the one national magazine in the UK chooses to ignore them.

There are; it's a very exciting time for young performers coming into the music, and not surprisingly, they don't all want to approach it the folk club way and many of them have have had articles written on them in fRoots but sadly, for Faye, they are cute, young and have won awards.
*****
As for comparisons with another magazine The Living Tradition, it should not need more than a cursory glance through both to see that they are trying to do different tasks. I have written extensively for both magazines over the decades, but these days I do write much more for fRoots because it is plain to me that it is superior in design and in the standard of writing in the contributions.