"Becoming reliant on professional guest didn't help, but the main thing was moving away from the type of song that brought us together in the first place"

If by that you mean traditional song, by the time I became involved that too had already happened. The clubs I knew then, and now, covered a wide range of music, including but by no means limited to traditional song. Those clubs which insisted on only traditional songs were seen as something of an oddity.

However we've been over all this many times before. You clearly have a firm idea of the current state of UK folk clubs. I cannot say that you are wrong or that your experience of these clubs is untypical, all I can say is that it doesn't match my own experience. Perhaps what this does show is that the club scene is more diverse than either of us realise.