FOLK music has always been a bastion of protest and political comment, and continues to be so, with the sudden surge in concerts organised under the banner of Folk Against The Cuts, an “anti-austerity-driven” movement, instigated by songwriter Joe Solo. It’s a nationwide set up, but there’ll be local concerts happening as this year progresses, and I’m sure they’ll be entertainment-based, rather than political soap-boxing. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, highlights around the local scene in the week ahead include a rare appearance by one of my favourite Scottish acts, The Emily Smith Trio, at The Witham in Barnard Castle tonight. Festival on the Moor takes place this weekend at Botton near Danby, with a line-up that includes Coope, Boyes and Simpson, Jed Grimes, Rebekah Findlay, Steve Dawes and Helen Pitt, Steve Turner and Richard Grainger and Chris Parkinson.

On Saturday, Northumbrian trio Ribbon Road bring their production of songs and visuals inspired by the 1985 Miners Strike, entitled “No Redemption Songs” to Spennymoor’s Everyman Theatre, and on Sunday, Anna Shannon is at South Shields Customs House. Next Tuesday at Gateshead’s Sage, The Rachel Hamer Band make their Hall Two debut, and looking forward a couple of months, and slightly beyond the folk world, The Sage’s annual Americana Festival in July will include appearances by Emmylou Harris and Roseanne Cash, alongside lots of other great names. I have a soft spot for Ms Cash after my Bad Pennies and I opened for her in Canada many years ago. She was charming and chatty, and expressed a fondness for our local folk music, to which she’d been introduced by her famous father Johnny.

I do recall, however, another famous country star present that night, disagreeing with her view, on the premise that British folk music had “too many chords”. I didn’t argue.