Acid, freak, wyrd folk and related

Richard Dawson immediately comes to mind as a successor of Comus, Spirogyra, Incredible String Band, with his album Peasant incorporating neo-medieval influences to his off-kilter English-traditional-folk-inspired sound:

Kim Myhr is one of my favorite guitarists active. The things he can do with an acoustic guitar boggle my mind. He comes from more of an avant-garde/New Music background, but his music should please many free folk and chamber folk enthusiasts. 

Crescent is most known for their brand of melancholy indie rock and post-rock, but, in 2003, they released By the Roads and the Fields, featuring psychedelic acoustic guitar led songs that fall into a particular twilit crevice in the mind that few pieces of music occupy. Lots of influence from Zen in the lyrics, it seems:

Gjallarhorn is traditional Nordic Folk with a... digeridoo. And sometimes mandolin. Even though it's heavily rooted in Nordic Folk traditions it reaches to other traditions, much like ISB does, and fills a certain pagan folk void that much of the psych stuff doesn't:

Icarium wrote: "I was never really a bone fide member of the folk scene," says Harper, whose 1960s and 1970s albums, including Stormcock, Sophisticated Beggar and Flat Baroque and Berserk are now considered classics -- and precursors to today's alternative folk genre. "I was too much of a modernist, really. Just too modern for what was going on in the folk clubs. I wanted to modernize music, but more than that to completely modernize people's attitudes towards life in general. I was involved in trying to bring meat to the folk music, which is a big mistake anyway." Roy Harper

Hi,

To me, this is the biggest issue with some folk clubs around here. It is ALL about kissing as* to a bunch of traditional songs, and you will be damned if you don't have a Farina, or some other oddball song in there. You CAN NOT, in America, create an original song, because no one will listen to it, and will instead go play "Annie got My Gun" ... totally ignoring the work of someone like Roy Harper, and many others along the way.

These days, trying to keep track of some big names in the old days, like Baez, Dylan, and so many others, it's hard to believe that the only one not doing a traditional song is actually Bob Dylan, and he was deep fried for taking things electric, which is where it went, but in a club or two around here or up and down the coast, it is ELECTRIC, but it is not loud ... it has to be soft, so it stays with the theme/idea of "FOLK". But here, the applause is only for a "known" song ... so you trying to bring something else to the table, you will be lucky to have your groupie applauding your effort and everyone else leaving the room!

It is just a sad thing to see, how commercialized and totally brainwashed by the media so many of these clubs are, and I get scared every time I visit many of these clubs around here. And FOLK music is not the only one with the problem ... rock'n'roll's thing is even worse!

:)