'Nice to have to booked artists in the beer tent playing in sessions, Simon Care on Fri and Kevin Doonan on Sunday.'
Yes it was. Now that is an interesting point. The whole point of folk music is that it's accessible. Its sad that you have to even mention what should be taken for granted. The booked artists are people just like you. The current trend to booking 'names' to pull in the punters often means that the said artist arrives for the gig and then leaves in his/her tour bus, without even a nod in the direction of interchange with the punters. Oh yes, and often takes a third of the total festival budget with them.
Meanwhile you have a lot of 'smaller' names working for nothing or merely for tickets because there's no money to pay them even expenses.