"Professionals rise to the top because via their agents and recording backers they dominate all the major stages and most of the radio play."

What a load of crap!!

Conrad, I don't have an agent, nor do I have a recording backer. Nor do any singers I know—and know of—who customarily perform at folk festivals and other venues, free or otherwise.

I did have an agent once, in the early Sixties, for about three months. People, who had heard me at one place or another, had been coming to me, offering me money to sing various places, and this guy wanted a 10% cut of what I was being paid. But he wound up LOSING me more work than he found me, so I fired him!

Sure, singers like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Theodore Bikel—people who went around nationally and gave concerts in large concert halls had (have) agents—but they represent a miniscule percentage of the number of PROFESSIONAL singers of folk songs. Most of us are NOT nationally known, and we really don't make a great deal of money at it. Generally, just enough to cover our EXPENSES, which allows us to KEEP singing for audiences—and at FREE events, such as festivals. And school classes and in school assemblies.

Incidentally, how BETTER to spread interest in folk music that to sing for young people? Especially if you make it interesting, informative, and entertaining?

Conrad, you live in some kind of boozy dream world. ANY public location, such as the Seattle Center here, or any of the thousands of public parks scattered in cities around the country—and free and open for the public to use (that's what they're there for!) are maintained by public funds. And these public funds are provided usually by bond issues that the public—those who use the park—vote on and pass, year after year, just like bond issues to support public schools. And the same holds true for "free" public facilities like public libraries. Who do you think pays the library staff? The city. Usually from bond issues that people vote on. Because they consider these things worthwhile.

THERE IS NO WAY THAT THESE FACILITIES CAN BE PROVIDED, MAINTAINED, AND STAFFED UNLESS SOMEONE PAYS FOR IT!!

After all, SOMEone has to clean up the turds you leave behind and pick up your trail of empty beer cans and put them in the recycling bin.

Don Firth

P. S. My apologies to all the normal people here for my liberal use of CAPITALS, but I'm trying to find some way of getting through Conrad's obviously blurred vision in the vain hope that some of it may eventually make it's way to the few remaining functional synapses he may have left.