Don,
I appreciate your post, very helpful.
"And do you consider yourself the final authority"
Nope - forty odd years of listening to folksong, singing at and helping run clubs, meeting and recording source singers, giving talks to try and get new people to listen and become singers themselves, issuing albums of traditional singers and writing on the subject have helped me recognise a good singer from a bad one, and what they are singing, have helped a little - but no, not a final authority by any means.
"And do you consider yourself the final authority on quality, as well as style?"
Again, certainly not", though music lessons at school taught me to recognise whether somebody was singing in tune and making a half-decent job of what they are singing - you find that sort of thing never leaves you, don't you think?
Of the three clubs we visited, one closed long ago - the audience must have been every bit as bored as we were and have come to the same conclusion we did.
The second one we gave another try a couple of years ago when we were in London and there was nothing much we wanted to see on the pictures.
Cold, unfriendly atmosphere, jukebox thumping its way up from the bar below, a crap guest who looked as if he didn't want to be there, around twenty people huddled in their seats who wouldn't have been out of place in a Beckett play. We stuck it out until just after the woman who tunelessly stumbled her way through Danny Boy with the aid of an exercise book, at which point we went off to find a warm pub that sold half-decent beer (learned to recognise that too down the years).
The third one might just still be going - we've got the details somewhere if you want to try for a booking, it gave the impression of being the sort of place that would put up with any old crap.
"I get a very strong feeling that for you..."
And I get the very strong feeling that if you had a head-cold you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a fart and a folk song.
Thanks for your assistance - a great reminder of why I stopped going to folk clubs.
Jim Carroll