At the risk of repeating myself, for the vast majority people Folk Music is a minority irrelevance of interest to a bunch of like-minded misfits & weirdos collectively known as Folkies. Folkies are a very special sort of human being - you seldom meet one in the real world, but when they're flocking in their collective feathery midsts it's as if the whole world is Folk.

Actually, I can see where Conrad is coming from here, and might sympathise to a certain extent - I'm a lot happier roaring The Old Songs with a bunch of drunken Hearty Traddies in a rancid back room someplace than sitting paying careful attention to an overly precious recital of Folk Song in a coffee house, but hey - horses for courses after all. It amounts to the same thing at the end of the day - the real folk still stay away in droves because they've got more pressing things to get on with.

People aren't being kept away from folk by anything other than folk's wholesale irrelevance to their lives - nothing to do with beer prices or performance quality. Those who are there are what's important - cherish it; I know I do.