""death of folk clubs"
I suggest you go count the number of folk clubs that have disappeared over the decades.
I lived in a London where you could find a folk club operating within reasonable travelling distance every night of the week (not necessarily to my taste)
My last few visits to Britain have proved somewhat of a folk disaster - the few we found were dominated by poor to indifferent singing, ego-tripping joiners inners on solo performances, crib sheets (and their counterparts - mobile phones) and hardly any identifiable folk songs.
That was the way it was heading nearly twenty years ago when we left.
If you want to get anywhere in a car, you decide which route to take - the same applies to folk music.
Jim Carroll