I guess I'd have to plead guilty in this case because I have hired Canadian artists (and will continue to do so). This is based primarily on talent, but also on the amount of a guarantee they would agree to. Small venues exist on volunteers and a very slim margin of performer fees to expenses costs. A couple of bad nights and we are in the red and close to wipeout.. Canadians do have to pay a $100 (US) fee every time they cross the border, so most Canadian performers try to put together some kind of a mini tour to spread that fee. So they will play some "cheap gigs". (Although the last Canadian performers I hired, when asked at the border why they were going to Chicago, replied, "Oh.. er..uh.. Oprah?" "Ok, have a nice visit!" ) The bigger problem is a drying up of larger folk venues due to lack of an audience which has also resulted in "Name" acts having to play smaller clubs just to keep going. This shunts the lesser known acts into the $30 a night places. We seem to be in a trough of popularity and the great days of the (as Art describes it) 60s Folk Scare are long gone. It also seems that median age of those of us in the folk community is rising and many of us still seem to expect to attend a folk concert for less than the price of a movie admission. I'm not sure what the solution is to this problem. We certainly need to see more young people coming into the genre and find some way of generating a larger audience willing to pay a reasonable ticket price. You only have to browse the "Dirty Linen" tour schedule to realize just how many performers, pro, semi-pro and amateur, are out there trying to find places to play. At times, we seem to have more people who want to perform than we have paying listeners. We are a community of musicians and maybe it is the fact that we are all musicians to some degree that allows us to really appreciate the scope of " folk" music.