The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155074 Message #3644873
Posted By: TheSnail
24-Jul-14 - 11:24 AM
Thread Name: Folk Clubs Dying Out
Subject: RE: Folk Clubs Dying Out
In these hard times, foreign travel has been a bit limited lately. Been to Whitby a few times and did get an overseas booking a few years ago on The Isle of Wight.
Booking policy has been a bit reactive of late. I get flooded with requests from a wide range of artists from the wonderful to the bizarre. I'm sure Vic had the same. The job is mainly selecting the best and finding polite ways of saying no to the ones who do look as if they have at least taken the effort to look at our website. Alasdair Roberts is indeed excellent but we haven't been approached. Perhaps he should get a better agent or perhaps the agent thinks we're too down market. If we did book him, of course we would have to drop someone else. I'm not sure if the implication is that, if we booked him, the audience from the Green Door Store would turn out in droves to see him. I doubt it. If they did, would they come along to the Come-All-Ye the next week?
The only alternatives that I have seen so far seem to work on a main act with selected support basis with no clue as to how you get to be selected unless it's videoing yourself in your garden shed and sticking it up on YouTwitFace.
I realise I am slipping into the trap of thinking, along with others, that the purpose of folk clubs or even singarounds is to promote the careers of aspiring professionals. Folk clubs and singarounds and tune sessions exist as an end in themselves. They need no other justification. Oggie says "Most of the singaround clubs I've been to recently certainly won't teach anyone how to perform or put a set together with a format of one tune/song around the room.". No, that's not what they are for. The are for like minded people to get together and enjoy their own and each other's singing. If someone chooses to use it as a way of honing their skills in the hopes of moving to higher things, fine.
Oggie also says (sorry, but you keep coming out with useful quotes) - "The unpalatable (to some) truth appears to be that Folk Clubs (as in booking guests on a regular basis so that said guests can earn a living) are dying out.". No, they book guests on a regular basis to provide entertainment for the people who have laid down good money on the door. Some of those guests maybe be doing it to earn a living but I suspect the majority have day jobs.
Let's not forget that this is Folk Music and, whatever it's dubious origins, folk is a folksie sort of word for people. It's about people making music together.
(That'll learn me. Just had a general circular from Alasdair Roberts agent. I withdraw my crack about getting a better agent, one of the best in the business. Of the four acts being specifically plugged, one we booked quite recently and another turned up at the Lewes Arms quite some years ago, did a floor spot and was offered a booking there and then.)