Another voice from both sides of the fence. I ran a folk concert series in Stamford, Conn. for 27 years, along with many years of string band series and summer folk festivals. I've been performing much moe than that. Maybe it was my years of booking performers, but I never tried to pressure someone else to book me. I fugured that they knew their audience better than I did. There were occasions when I though that it was a real mistake to have booked me... especially on split evenings. I also had plenty of God-awful musicians who sent tapes and called who said "I can entertain anyone, just let me in front of the audience!" People who said that were for the most part only entertaining to themselves. Every once in a while, I'd try to stretch the taste of my maudience by booking someone I really liked, and because people came to trust my taste, they usually went over well. In the long run, it's hard work to keep a series going, and that was always my first priority. I had (and still have) some good friends I didn't book, because I thought that they wouldn't go over well. The series finally died because the audience got older and was not comfortable going out at night. No kidding. As far as I'm concerned, when someone said, that I wouldn't really fit their audience, I thanked them. I sure as Hell didn't want to drive 200 miles to get paid $75 to play for a handful of people.
Jerry