My partner & I popped down our live music pub to see a local folk-rock outfit, it shocked me that he enjoyed them so much. Ironically, many die-hard folkies would have hated the Irish songs because they've been "sung to death", yet folkies forget that most people (particularly anyone under forty) haven't been involved in the folk scene for forty years, so what may be a boring old outworn song to those involved the folk scene, can be a brand-new enjoyable song to those who aren't involved the folk scene - and most people, particularly young people, don't even know that the "folk-scene" exists at all.