Yeah, we had 4square at our club a few years ago (hope I didn't freak the drummer out too much with my warnings of anthrax from untreated skins) and very fine they were too. Lots of dazzlingly talented young folkies around these days, but as I said a while back - where are the un-dazzling ones? In the Old Music dazzling technicality was less of an issue than the functional craft of the thing - if I have one complaint about a lot of young folkies it is thsat they seem too good for the music! It's akin to listening to the original Mothers of Invention really playing theit balls off on Uncle Meat and hearing Zappa's later bands playing the stuff like it was nothing. So it's not just a Folk Issue, but a Muso issue in general. Much of what appeals to me in Music (be it early Zappa, Harry Cox, The Fall, Leadbelly, Jim Eldon, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Rene Zosso, Michael Hurley etc.) is the discernable Human Craft of the thing which isn't about dazzling technicality which tends not to reach my soul. I'm not an advocate of GEFF, just find Muso Folk / Jazz / Classical often a little bland for my palette. Hell, I got into folk for the stank and seance of the thing, and in my other life have worked with members of The Portsmouth Sinfonia and once performed a Violin Sonata in which four people demolished a violin to sawdust (don't worry, it was only a Skylark which had been nailed to a tree for most of the previous winter - all part of the concept for which the Arts Council paid us very nicely) so technique was never uppermost in my list of musical requisites!

Again though, each to their own & more power to them all.