I HAD an insight into how others view folk music when I watched an early morning TV feature on a forthcoming Hollywood movie called Inside Llewen Davis. It’s about a struggling folk singer in New York’s Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and included clips of guitar-strumming singersongwriters in small club rooms, and bearded friends and long-haired lasses in scruffy bedsits listening to old ballads. The TV presenter talked about this like it was from a bygone age, which of course it is.

She seemed unaware, as no doubt most of her viewers were unaware, that these people never really went away. There are perhaps more of them today than ever, but they remain outside the mainstream and probably always will.

This forthcoming film may change that however. It’s produced by the Coen Brothers (remember, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, and what it did for country music), and is due for release in December.

Meanwhile, music “on the outside” this week includes Tom McConville and Dave Newey at Darlington’s Copper Beech tonight, Irish balladeer Colum Sands at Washington’s Davy Lamp on Saturday, the much-acclaimed Yorkshire songstress Anna Shannon at South Shields Customs House on Sunday, and a brace of local festivals as well.

The Folkworks Hexham Gathering will be centred around the Queen’s Hall all weekend, with the likes of Karine Polwart, The Teacups, Blair Dunlop, Ewan MacLennan, Brendan Power and Tim Edey among the headliners. Over in Botton in North Yorkshire, the Festival on the Moor has Hughie Jones, Gordon Tyrall, Richard Grainger and Chris Parkinson and many more besides. Come and join the fun.