Well, for the benefit of the snipers in the long grass, I've been to have a listen at some of Jim Lad's stuff I can trace on the internet. Not a representative sample - I got bored with the downloading!

I tend to excessive bluntness and to being hypercritical, so read the following in that knowledge.

While what Jim does is not my preferred style (it is mostly Irish and some Scottish) it presents the songs very well. Jim has a very pleasant voice in the gentler Irish style (the style could be simply the accidents of the tracks I listened to) and conveys the narrative extremely well. I also sense a real emotional connection to the lyricism of rural Irish song. I think Cap'n Birdseye would approve.

It might however work better in the small venue, the pub back room, rather than the big stage. The big stage tends to demand the flash, the razzle-dazzle, the grand gesture, rather than narration. I didn't see that, and I preferred what I did see for the absence of it.