Well, I dunno. I guess it depends on what you mean by "coffeehouse."

I played in a lot of coffeehouses during the late Fifties and on into the Sixties. All the ones I played in were businesses, set up in owned or leased locations, just like a regular restaurant. They all had an espresso machine, and they all served a variety of specialty coffees and teas, along with some fairly elegant pastries. Some of them also served light lunches (freshly made sandwiches, cheese boards, etc.). Actually, a couple of them actually verged on elegant, almost like non-alcoholic night clubs, and late in the evenings they sometimes drew the after-show crowd. As far as getting people to perform there, that was no problem: they hired singers on a regular basis and paid them. This was in Seattle during the late Fifties and early Sixties.

I spent some time barnstorming in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1959, visiting many of the famous places I'd heard about where folk music was sung. I found most of them to be holes compared to where I'd been singing, and most of the time, the singers (even some well-known ones) sang for tips. Seattle may not have been regarded as a center of folk music at the time, but I decided I was better off here, so I came back (just as an aside, when Joan Baez was singing at the Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass. for ten bucks a night, I was singing three nights a week at The Place Next Door in Seattle for fifteen bucks a night—not bad in 1959).

I have sung at a church basement "coffeehouse" or two, but these were usually pretty short-lived and, if sponsored by the church, generally came under the heading of "youth programs." I imagine it would depend on how big an operation you have in mind. Do you want to open a business that features folk music, or are you just looking for a gathering spot for singers? I think you need to be very clear about what your goals are.

Don Firth