Saturday
Ewan McLennan is the current holder of both the BBC Radio 2 Horizon Award and the Fatea Male Vocalist Award. He has had a phenomenal rise through folk music in the last two years. I've seen him play a number of times, but I'm particularly pleased to see him make his Cambridge Folk Festival debut.
Ewan has that rare thing, stage presence. Off stage, he's an unassuming, almost quietly spoken man. If you didn't know him, you would probably not notice him. That all changes when he sets foot onto a stage, he becomes impossible to ignore.
He carries his guitar high and almost casually wanders around the area around the microphone, it's that contented stroll of a person that's happy with the world and really sure of who they are. It's made him a great songwriter; he knows what he wants to say and has the talent to turn it into words that really mean something.
Ewan commands the stage, you almost feel that he's living inside every song and tune, whether he wrote it himself or took it from folk's great traditions. He may not be the most dynamic performer, but he is one of the most dramatic and judging by the reaction, he reached out to everyone.
I leave the Club Tent and head down to the media team caravan to be escorted down to the Main stage to see the return of a festival favourite, Kate Rusby, making her first appearance here since returning from maternity leave.
There is no doubt from the beaming smile on her face that she is glad to be back. She's wearing red slippers and quips that when she clicked them together and said take me home, she didn't move. She's got a real rapport with the audience, many of which have followed her through her entire career and you can see why a number of the next generation of folk artists are citing her as a major influence.
She has a bubbly personality on stage, you can feel the warmth radiate off her towards the audience with adulation and respect coming back. When she's singing a slower, emotion charged song, you can hear the drop of the proverbial pin, when the songs finished, you couldn't hear a herd of wildebeests going past.
She has so much material, you are never going to hear all of your favourites, you hook yourself up to the waggon and head along for the ride, knowing that wherever it takes you, it's not going to disappoint, welcome back Kate, great set.
I pop across to the Den to see an artist I've been tipped off about, Ethan Ash, a London based singer songwriter that is apparently making a bit of a name for himself in the Smoke. Unfortunately, by the time I arrive he's getting close to the end of his set.
Looking across the tent, it's pretty packed and its standing room only right along the size with the crowd several deep behind that, so he's doing something pretty right. I like what I hear; he gets a real sense of emotion into his voice, to the point that if you didn't speak English you would still be able to feel the song. I need to hear more, but a really promising start.
One person that I always need to hear more of is guitar god, and singer/songwriter, Richard Thompson. If you've never been blessed enough to catch one of his sets, it's one of those things you need to correct.
I mentioned stage presence earlier, Thompson is one of those people that could just stand there, under his trademark beret, holding a guitar and people would still watch. Funnily enough, he doesn't, he leads us into an absolutely fantastic set.
You never know where Thompson is going to go next, not just in terms of song, but in terms of style, folk to pop to rock to wherever and back again. There's a smile a mile wide during most of his set. He brings the audience up and takes them down again, reaches for the heart string, gives them a twang and follows up with a shaft of sunlight.
"Vincent Black Lightning", my all time favourite Richard Thompson song gets an airing so I'm over the moon. At the end of his set, he's joined by a guest, Stephen Mangan, the funny one of the two writers in TV's "Episodes". It's all a bit bizarre, but I think there's a documentary behind it somewhere.
We'd seen Stephen being talked through the sound check by no less a luminary than Martin Simpson who had apparently loaned Stephen his guitar (But we don't know the rate of interest yet) for the performance.
Richard gives Stephen his introduction and provides a short eulogy to the late great Sandy Denny and then the duo give a rendition of Sandy's trademark song, "Who Knows Where The Time Goes". Stephen Mangan is nervous, but he keeps it all together, you can hear a tremble in his voice when it comes to his part of the song.
It's not bad, I've definitely heard worse from floor singers at folk clubs, actually thinking about it, I've heard worse on the Main stage, but let's not try to reflect too hard on Paul Simon's son, what's his name.
Chilli beef and a couple of beers to wash it down add to the calorie count as the stage is reset for a very large gypsy band, Mahala Rai Banda, but past experience has told me they're not really my thing so it's back down so I'm off to see Maia.