" . . . am not advocating no profit just fair profit. The landlord would do very well with greater volume."

Conrad, if a particular establishment that offers folk music as entertainment is already FULL, as most of the places I know of generally are (often with people lined up outside waiting to get in), how are you going to attract greater volume, even by lowering prices? It would just increase the line of people waiting outside, and what good is that?

If you think it through, Conrad, an increased volume is a strong incentive for the landlord to raise his prices! And other than being good enough so that lots of people want to hear them, a singer can't do much about that, no matter how much he or she is being paid by the landlord.

" How can you say you wish to expand folk music when you dont take steps to make that happen.[?]"

WHO doesn't take steps, Conrad? Stringsinger, just above, was one of those who established the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. I have met quite a number of people who learned their first songs and learned to play guitar or banjo from him. I have seen some of the material and the song sheets that were passed out in his classes, and it's good stuff!

I first started teaching guitar (both folk and classical) in the late 1950s, and in 1960, I began teaching folk guitar classes, first at the University YM/YWCA, then the downtown Seattle YWCA (open to both men and women), and was then asked to teach classes at the Creative Arts League in Kirkland, across Lake Washington from Seattle. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, I taught folk guitar classes, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, I usually sang in one coffeehouse or another, and during the day I gave private guitar lessons, either classical or folk. There are literally dozens of people who started learning guitar in my classes or private lessons who went on to sing and play professionally, and hundreds who play and sing just because they enjoy it, and a fair number who went on to teach others themselves!

I would not compare the length of my reach and my influence with Stringsinger's by any means, but there are many (Barry Olivier in Berkeley, Bess Lomax Hawes in Los Angerles, to name only two) who have done what Frank and I have (and from whom he and I have learned).

Beyond bitching and complaining about the price of "bier," Conrad, what have YOU ever done!??

One of the reasons that I feel I was particularly lucky was that the main outlets for folk music here in Seattle, and throughout most of the country, and the main opportunity for people like me to sing in the late Fifties and through the Sixties was the springing up of coffeehouses. The coffeehouse where I did most of my singing was called "The Place Next Door." It was next door to the Guild 45th Theater, where they showed European movies and art films, and both The Place and the theater were owned by the same man. The clientele consisted of folk music aficionados, large numbers of college students from the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Seattle Pacific University. It also attracted audiences from the theater next door who dropped in after a movie, and on week ends, toward the end of the evening, it was not unusual to see a few people in formal gowns and tuxedos who were dropping in after attending an opera, play, or symphony concert.

The audiences were SOBER. And they came in to have some refreshments (specialty coffees and teas of various kinds, some fairly exotic, chocolate drinks, some light snacks, and a selection of very nice pastries) and LISTEN to some ballads and folk songs.

Bob Weymouth, whom I mentioned way above, sang in a posh cocktail lounge in downtown Seattle, and although at Clark's Red Carpet he was being paid five times what I was making at The Place Next Door, he envied me because I was able to sing for audiences who had come to listen and not just get soused! And one of the by-products of singing in an establishment like The Place Next Door was that I often got singing jobs from people who heard me there. Concerts, private parties, other out-of-town coffeehouses, various clubs and organizations, a couple of arts festivals. . . .

Conrad, if you need alcohol to awaken your "muse," then obviously you have a much greater problem than you realize. It sounds like you just what to listen to folk singers while you sit there and get bleary-eyed, falling down, barfing, s**t-faced DRUNK!

Conrad, I DON'T WANT people like YOU in my audiences!

(If that makes me "elitist," I think I can live with that.)

Don Firth