Pete Willow reflects on
the skills and attitudes behind the effective organisation of folk clubs and
offers a useful survival test for your venue.
Never mind the fountain of youth or the meaning of life. The big quest for Folk21 and its affiliates is the secret of a successful folk club.
Often the topic of regional away-days, festival workshops
and internet forum discussions, suggestions range from clever marketing and a
high quality host act to decent beer and a good car park. But underpinning all
of these is a mental attitude – I would go as far as to say a condition –
possessed by organisers determined to make their clubs work.
I’m talking about
OCD.
Yes - Organisers’
Control and Domination, a phenomenon I have often witnessed during a
lifetime of enjoying folk music at small venues. OCD is characterised by acts
of planning and management to the last zealous detail.
Giveaway indicators of OCD include admission tables laden
with neatly stacked flyers, cleanly printed and laminated notices and attended
by efficiently busy admin-receptionists offering membership cards, loyalty
cards, raffle tickets and copies of the club newsletter. Chairs in the club
room are aligned with utmost precision and instrument cases are stacked neatly
in the anteroom.
Please do not read this article as a criticism of OCD. When
the world outside is seething in chaos and insanity, it’s reassuring to know that
the folk club can be a welcoming sanctuary of orderliness where everything can
be relied on to be in its right place.
Yes it may result in a ritualistic format with the same
floor singers each week singing the same songs and comperes telling the same jokes.
But folk clubs driven by OCD are arguably the ones that survive and even
flourish.
Does your folk club display symptoms of management by OCD?
Does it depend on meticulous organisation to offer a safe
and predictable experience for its visitors and members? Here’s a simple test
to establish – with mathematical exactitude – the position of your club on the scale
of systematic supervision. Tot up your score for each answer to find out.
After all, it’s good to know these things.
1. Which of these is the closest to your club’s approach to managing floor singers?
a) All
your floor singers are booked in advance, sometimes weeks ahead of the actual
night. If approached by a floor singer you think would not entertain the
audience, you lie through your teeth and claim that all the slots are already
full. (3 points)
b) On
arrival, each floor singer has to sign up for a 10-minute performance slot on a
form that is displayed at the door. It’s first-come, first-served and heaven
help any floor singer who isn’t ready at their selected time or whose
performance runs over time. (2 points)
c) You
keep your fingers crossed that enough floor singers show up to pad out the
evening because your resident act only knows three numbers and your guest is
contracted to perform a maximum of two 30-minute sets. (1 point)
2. Which of these is the closest to your club’s approach to time management?
a) The
MC steps on stage at 8pm on the dot, your guest act is given precise start and
finish times, your interval runs for exactly 20 minutes and you are so
determined to keep to the schedule that you have timer switches pre-set to
operate the room lights and interval music, no matter what is happening on the
stage. (3 points)
b) The
MC stands and hovers by the side of the stage to intimidate long-winded floor
acts to finish their song and get off. You consider resorting to a long stick
with a hook to grab acts that over-run (or otherwise cause the audience to lose
its will to live). (2 points)
c) You
adopt a laid-back approach, allowing all floor singers who show up a chance to
perform, even if it results in the guest act’s final set being reduced to a
10-minute performance to a half-empty room because people have to be up early
for work the following morning. (minus 5 points!)
3. Which of these is more typical of your club’s overall operational policy?
a) You have a detailed written constitution, agreed by a committee,
published on the website and summarised in small print on the back of your
flyers and business cards, setting out:
i. your
rules on booking guests, and organising floor singers;
ii. your
club’s mission and vision statements;
iii. your
definition of ‘folk music’ with prohibitions on the use of electric guitars,
5-string banjos (4-string banjos are permitted), keyboards (unless battery
operated), drum kits and mouth-operated bagpipes;
iv. your
sanctions and penalties against anyone contravening such club regulations as
entering the room in the middle of someone’s song, moving the furniture to
create more leg-room, refusing to buy a raffle ticket or farting during the unaccompanied
performance of a Child ballad. (5-15 points depending on the number of clauses
and sub-clauses in the policy document)
b)
Your operational policy is based on rule-of-thumb expediency in which decisions
are made on the hoof to deal with emerging situations, ranging from floor
singers not bothering to tune their instruments until they are called on stage,
to old-school guest acts, who were famous in the 60s, cracking sexist jokes. (2
points)
c) You
have an entirely laissez-faire policy
in which allowable ‘folk’ music performances include Gilbert & Sullivan
songs, Gilbert O’Sullivan songs, Black Sabbath hits, interminably long-winded,
allegorical to the point of incomprehensible, self-penned songs, or past
Eurovision entries now so old that they could be regarded as traditional. (nul
points)
4. Which of these is the closest to your club’s approach to booking guests?
a) Every
now and again, you pick up the phone, ring round your contacts and see if
anyone is available to appear over the next few weeks. (1 point)
b) You
visit folk festivals and other folk clubs and make a list of acts who you think
will go down well. (2 points. Increase to 5 points if you decide to keep the
list on file and carry on rebooking all the guests you had last year)
c) You
keep diaries for the next three years with every date fully booked in advance
apart from the occasional singers night which will probably become another
guest night anyway if someone famous happens to have a free date in their
national tour schedule and is willing to perform for the jug collection, a
chance to crash out on your sofa and a bowl of cornflakes. (3 points. More if
the sofa opens up to bed with clean sheets and a perfectly plumped pillow)
And finally
5. Who is actually in charge of your folk club?
a) You
are and your word is law. If you have to have a committee, you insist on the
right to veto any decision it may make. You may be a benevolent dictator but
you are a dictator nevertheless. (3 points – or more if you are particularly
OCD anyway)
b) A
Committee. This is elected periodically, according to the rules set out in your
constitution. The Committee includes a Treasurer who manages the club’s own
bank account and issues a quarterly report on the size of the club’s overdraft.
Club members form a panel of wannabe Simon Cowells who adopt a points system to
determine who should be booked as guests and agree rules on booking criteria,
e.g. all artists must have proved popular with the audience for at least two
floor spots or have been given a glowing review in Folk Roots. (Also 3 points)
c) The
audience. You are a committed democrat, an ageing hippy, an anarchist or a
closet Thatcherite – whatever, the free market reigns. (0 – 5 points, depending
on how much you secretly admire Margaret Thatcher. 10 points if you actually
ask your audience to participate in secret ballots to determine the price of
raffle tickets).
So how did you score?
15 points or more:
OCD rules and your folk club is your own fiefdom. It stands an excellent chance
of surviving for the next three years or when your last regular audience member
pops his/her clogs, whichever comes sooner.
10-15 points: you try to stay on top of things. You may have great plans but find yourself having to repress your inner Genghis Khan to make space for your outer Jeremy Corbyn.
0-10 points: you may have moments of lucid assertiveness but more often than not you find yourself sitting at the door of your folk club with no idea of who is going to show up or what is going to happen. Either that or you’re just too nice.
Anything less than zero: there is no trace of OCD at your folk club whatsoever. Its guiding principle is in fact SNAFU.
10-15 points: you try to stay on top of things. You may have great plans but find yourself having to repress your inner Genghis Khan to make space for your outer Jeremy Corbyn.
0-10 points: you may have moments of lucid assertiveness but more often than not you find yourself sitting at the door of your folk club with no idea of who is going to show up or what is going to happen. Either that or you’re just too nice.
Anything less than zero: there is no trace of OCD at your folk club whatsoever. Its guiding principle is in fact SNAFU.
