You fellers can sure dish it out, but you seem to have trouble taking it
Jim Carroll

that's cos you lie about us and over simplify. i never saw joe heaney, or several others, i should have. i became a professional singer out of financial necessity. playing anything a jobbing musician had to to make living. i learned to respect songwriters whose work put food on the table. when i wasn't working in pubs - i visited my fair share of folk clubs, but i admit not as many as i perhaps should have.

i did buy joe's double album from a fine singer/songwriter called Pete Coe, who carries round albums by joe and others like him for people who might be interested.

Joe of couse used to sing some songs in Irish. perhaps he did this at a Clancy's concert. they were a very public face of folk music type act. i never saw them. but i remember Ian Campbell saying they had this thing, where every night they used to run on stage and and throw aside a stool that was put there every night for them to throw aside, in a lets get down to business sort of gesture.

At our song club in the Vernon, Derby we had a singer who regularly sang in Gaelic. we all listened respectfully - though admittedly without a great deal of comprehension to hear him do his three songs. Hugh Lamont. we also listened to every other sort of music.

you really are talking bollocks about the English folkscene - we aren't a hard nosed gangs of 1950's concert goers who next week will be listening to MJQ, and expect exactly whats on the ticket.

I on the other hand exaggerate not a jot when i describe the reaction oF your mates at the Grey Cock folk club in Birminghan and their arrogance and unfriendliness - I will never forget it.