I suspect it's a more patchy phenomenon than a simple north-south split.

When I go into Edinburgh, there's a fair selection of traditional sessions. (The two folk clubs are concert-format, both mostly promoting elaborately-arranged-traditional stuff).

Nearer home in Midlothian, it's quite different. Nearly everybody with an instrument that I come across plays the sort of MOR-folk-pop that bored me senseless 30 years ago (including people who weren't even born when it was written), and if I play a traditional tune I can pretty much guarantee that it will be accompanied by a roomful of guitarists staring at the floor in dumb silence because they don't have a clue what to do and aren't even willing to try. (I am told there is one Midlothian session where there are more traditional players, but it's inaccessible to me by public transport).

The reason for this local cult of 1970s-teenager's-bedroom-music locally is mainly that that's what local guitar teachers teach. There are people in Edinburgh who can show guitarists what to do when someone starts a Scottish traditional tune or song, but ten miles away there's nobody.

The Denver/Dylan crowd are nice enough people but I'm not so desperate for a social life as to sit through an evening of that stuff. If I wanted something locally that wasn't traditional music for its social scene, I'd take up the trombone or tenor horn and join a brass band.