If you want to "get" folk music, skip the artists on the stages. Experience a proper amateur sing/session. Just go and sit in the Bedford all week, so I am told.   Try the Middle Bar (now upstairs too (again so I am told). Most of the stars will be there at some stage and you may find that you are sitting next to and harmonising or syncopating with the gods you would have paid to see on stage. That doesn't happen with the great rock stars does it?

Alas I have never been able to arrange dog-and-office sitting to enable me to do it.