It's easy to understand why Chris Wood has become a talisman for English folk music. His bold arrangements reinvigorate the old ballads while a searing honesty runs through his own compositions, his innate storyteller's instinct complimented by a potent musicality.

Like a Woody Guthrie or Ewan McColl, it’s his ability to distil the heroism in the everyday that sets him apart.

The Irish Times described him as 'the renaissance man of English folk', apt for a man who started his career in the embryonic Oysterband. He has written music for the RSC and the National Theatre, collaborated with Martin Carthy and Andy Irvine, and is currently a member of The Imagined Village project along with luminaries like Billy Bragg.

A champion of folk music as social history, he's also an insightful pedagogue, and is often a faculty guest at the University of Limerick. Chris Wood rejects the myopia of the singer/songwriter vogue, and his riposte is a persuasive argument for honesty, compassion and intelligence.

He returns to Dublin in solo, a perfect guise to fully appreciate this most independent-minded artist, and this atmospheric venue will serve him well.