The guitarist and singer Martin Simpson provided a performance of suitable solemnity and substance to open Folk Roots New Routes, a “series of folk-flavoured events” at the Southbank Centre curated by the veteran singer and musical archivist Shirley Collins.

Simpson, for so many years a bridesmaid of the English folk scene, has blossomed in recent years to become a key figure in this most fiercely guarded of musical enclaves. At this year’s Radio 2 Folk Awards he won in the Best Album category with his current release Prodigal Son, while his composition Never Any Good was declared Best Original Song. And nowadays you are as likely to find him appearing on Later . . . with Jools Holland as performing in village halls in remote corners of the land.

The shift can be accounted for, in part, by the development of his skills as a singer. Long renowned as a virtuoso guitarist who draws on the techniques of classical guitar playing as much as those of the folk or blues traditions, Simpson, 54, has become a fine interpreter of traditional and other songs, as well as a notable writer of his own. With his hard, burnished tone he slipped between the American drawl of Randy Newman’s Louisiana 1927 (“It rained real hard for a real long time”) and the more clipped, anglicised delivery of Never Any Good, a backhanded tribute to his father which had something of Richard Thompson’s sweet and sour tone about it.

While adjusting his guitar to a succession of open tunings, Simpson regaled us with obsessively detailed explanations of the provenance of this song or that, albeit without ever getting round to announcing their actual titles. His playing was simply phenomenal, but sometimes seemed a little too cluttered as an accompaniment to his singing, particularly on Little Musgrave, where the medieval tale of dishonour and death in the marital bed struggled to emerge from the rapidly chiming patchwork of arpeggios.

Chris Wood, who opened the show, was the oddball English folk singer personified. A mixture of Kentish yeoman and Dave Spart, he sang about peasant uprisings and of spotting his daughter in the back of a limo with Jimi Hendrix, an unlikely and not altogether reassuring scenario.

— Folk Roots New Routes continues at the Southbank Centre until March 30, including concerts by Alasdair Roberts (28); Romany Rai (29); and Linda Thompson & others (30)

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

Editor's choice

• Here comes summer: our cultural must-sees
• Friends reunited: Sex and the City
• New country for old men