the only thing I would say - and this is in no way a criticism of Sunjay Brayne, whose YouTube clips I've just enjoyed listening to, is that I do think it's a shame that the UK folk club circuit does seem to only pay attention to people who plug into it... it's not very good at actually looking around and keeping its ear to the ground.

meaning that both Sunjay Brayne and Blair Dunlop have received a fair amount of "folk club" press recently.

Whereas I've never seen any mention on Mudcat of other young fingerpickers such as: Michael Rossiter, David Broad, Serious Sam Barrett, Flake Brown, Pepe Belmonte, Jack Day, George Frakes, or Nygel's young Folk Police discoveries Ewan D Rodgers and Jack Blackman. Despite the fact that several of them have been gigging around the UK and recording albums for a good few years now.

Even Jason Steel, who has had a fair few releases now, doesn't seem to ever get mentioned beyond the occasional fRoots review. Don't recall ever having seen a mudcat post concerning him.

There's a whole world of young fingerpickers in the UK right now doing interesting things in a blues/Fahey/Jansch/Basho/Wizz Jones/M John Hurt type of tradition. Sure, they might not play the established traddie folkclub circuit, but they play a lot of gigs nonetheless and, y'know, we do have this thing called the internet... I think too many folkies (in the UK at least) rely too much on that circuit to hear about new musicians, and I think they miss out. That's certainly the impression I get whenever I listen to Mike Harding at least.