I thought there were more big festivals - treating country as sort of American folk - in the USA, and surely the USA has more of what they call "renfair", and I thought the USA had little festivals all over too. Although their music may not be mine I find the Americans and Canadians who turn up at little fests and singarounds over here are usually very technically competent, and in some cases well informed on the derivation of their songs and the forms of them - ie better scholars. We only have a very small hard core of real experts here in the UK.