Tom Paxton, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

"I believe in not looking back and staring," Tom Paxton tells us honestly, "but in remembering with affection." Though he was a follower of Woody Guthrie and a contemporary of Dylan on 1961's Greenwich Village folk scene, Paxton was also John Denver's favourite singer-songwriter, and his lyrics sometimes verge on the saccharine. But he retains a tough lyrical core worthy of Guthrie, when it matters.

With his sailor's cap, waistcoat and grey moustache, Paxton resembles a relatively svelte David Crosby. His loyal audience, who once filled the Albert Hall and saw him out-perform Dylan at 1969's Isle of Wight festival, have aged with the 70-year-old. As with all his folk generation, he shows how far Dylan went, and what he left in the dust. He takes us not to Greil Marcus's "Old, Weird America", but the good, liberal one founded on civil rights dreams.

The old-fashioned bond he has with his audience is shown when the Village-era "Bottle of Wine" sparks a sing-along. "Dance in the Kitchen" plays on the crowd's memories of more carefree days. Then he starts a sappier sequence, inspired by his long marriage. "You are the comforting caress, you are the end of emptiness," he sings on "You Are Love". His Nineties children's songs are more questionable, redeemed only by the moving expression of paternal love to his daughters in "Jennifer and Kate". But by "Marry Me Again", my indulgence is severely strained.

Then "The Bravest" yanks us all up short. Paxton's introduction to his tribute to the September 11 firemen brings an uncomfortable silence, in a country where subsequent events have muddied sympathy for that atrocity. But this is a true folk song – implacably direct, deeply imagined and horribly resonant, it is worthy of the event.

When Paxton goes on to recall the detail of his Greenwich Village days – keeping Mob jukebox salesmen at bay so singers and writers could entertain, while drinking "Trotsky on the rocks" with old friends now dead – I listen with renewed respect. He finishes with 1964's Guthrieesque "Ramblin' Boy", and 2007's Martin Luther King tribute, "How Beautiful Upon the Mountain": an affable link to an admirable past.