THIS year’s first major weekend of festivals was blighted by wet weather, with events at Warwick, Sheffield and Trowbridge (where I was) all suffering downpours and muddy fields. The resilient folky audiences seemed to grin and bear it, and a good time was had, but hopefully next weekend’s Cambridge Festival will be sun-drenched. It’s being broadcast sporadically on BBC Radio Two, so we can listen in and find out.

I’m at Nottingham Riverside Festival on Sunday, so my fingers are certainly crossed. The only club dates I know of this week both happen on Sunday too, with Graham Yates at Guisborough Rugby Club and Dearman, Gamon and Harrison at South Shields Customs House.

Last weekend in America, meanwhile, the great Newport Festival was taking place, and celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s historic appearance there. It might seem curious to us Brits that this still causes such ripples across the US folk scene, and beyond, but the status of Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the rest remains undiminished.

Watching archive film of the 1965 Newport Festival, it’s amazing how the whole festival experience has not changed much from how it was back then. Ironically, one of the instigators of Newport, Theodore Bikel, sadly died last week at the age of 93. He was a famous film star as well as a folk singer, but when I met him in the mid-1980s, he was friendly and encouraging to me, and curious about the North-East folk scene. I jokingly offered to get him a spot at Durham Folk Festival, and he enthusiastically agreed, much to my surprise. Unfortunately, it was never to be.