The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166789 Message #4013567
Posted By: Vic Smith
14-Oct-19 - 05:50 AM
Thread Name: The current state of folk music in UK
Subject: RE: The current state of folk music in UK
GUEST,Sol wrote -
Alas, these days folkies are fairly or unfairly labelled as soda water and lime drinkers and not the beer swillers of yesteryear.
Recently, I received my regular circular email from South London's premier folk club. It has been having its problems with venues over the last decade. Once they were in a pub that was prepared to let them have the room but there were no chairs in the room so they had to ask their regulars to bring camping chairs with them. They found a more suitable venue a few stops down the Northern Line and found a suitable room in Tooting where they have thrived for the last three years. Then a new management came in and stated that unless the folk club could guarantee £500 sales of beer each week, they could not have the clubroom under any circumstances. They could not give this guarantee so the club is currently homeless. This is the reality facing current and potential folk club organisers in England, particularly in the capital. My interest (rather than my regular attendance) means that I am on the mailing list of two north London folk clubs, both of whom have suffered repeated venue problems in recent years.
One cannot blame the landlords; the old-fashioned drinks-only pub with an upstairs or back room available for hire seems to be no longer a sustainable business model. Publicans have to be inventive in the use of their premises to make ends meet and they seem to be fighting a losing battle with the price differential between supermarket and pub prices of drinks.
The nature programmes on television are always telling us that it is the loss of habitat that leads to species extinction. Well, the natural habitat of the folk club was the pub clubroom So it is adapt or die - and as has been pointed out on a number of threads of this nature, there is a lot of adaptation going on.