POP MUSIC REVIEW : Andy Stewart Makes You Wish You’d Been There : The Scottish folk singer, joined by guitarist Gerry O’Beirne, gives a performance in Anaheim full of a humor and intimacy alien to the stadium scene.

In this season of high-ticket, superstar concert tours, something as quiet and low-profile as traditional folk music is apt to strike the vast majority of the music-loving public as quaint, dull and beside the point.

Funny thing, though: When Pink Floyd, the first in a succession of 1994 blockbuster touring attractions, brought its computerized, laser-filled stadium spectacular to San Diego on Thursday, the only moment of genuine, spontaneous humanity rose from a return to simple, traditional folk roots.

It came during the haunting, Brit-folk inspired acoustic guitar intro to the Floyd oldie “Wish You Were Here.” With no other accompaniment, leader David Gilmour and sideman Tim Renwick intertwined gleaming, meditative guitar lines for a few minutes.

When the passage was finished, Gilmour paused, turned to Renwick, and issued a broad smile that seemed to be his only unrehearsed response of the whole extravaganza. Never mind the lasers, the fireworks, the high-tech props and the crowd of 50,000. It took the intimacy and simplicity of a folk moment for the man at the center of it all to be openly delighted by what he was doing, and to show himself to be more than a cog in an elaborate entertainment mechanism.

Multiply that moment’s pleasure and humanity a hundred times, reduce the venue capacity by a factor of 500, and you have the impact and scale of the concert of traditional Celtic folk music offered Friday night at Anaheim’s Rose & Crown British Pub & Restaurant by veteran Scottish singer Andy M. Stewart.

He was joined by Irish guitarist Gerry O’Beirne, and the first of their two shows was full of strong emotion and easy-flowing good humor. They played in a dining room that resembles a smaller, more comfortable Coach House, with a horseshoe of long tables surrounding a well-lit stage. The experience offered a direct, in-the-moment liveliness that fans all agog over stadium and arena attractions owe it to themselves to experience. It’s something to see world-class musicians perform in a setting the size of a large living room.

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Folk promoter Kenneth Zwick will offer two more opportunities next month at the Rose & Crown with shows by the amazing bluegrass guitarist Dan Crary on May 1 and by the English folk and blues duo of Martin and Jessica Simpson on May 22.

(You also might check out Incredible String Band alumnus Robin Williamson, another leading exponent of Celtic folk, when he plays April 30 at Shade Tree Stringed Instruments, an even-cozier venue in Laguna Niguel.)

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Stewart and O’Beirne kept their program diverse, moving from achingly gorgeous ballads to romping jigs and trenchant, surging songs based on historic lore. The humor never stopped, whether the jokes were prepared song-intro remarks or off-the-cuff responses to such unpredictable developments as the sudden burst of Top 40 music that intruded through the restaurant’s piped-in sound system before it quickly was shut off.

Stewart may have overplayed a stereotype in repeated jibes about the Scots’ reputed love of a drink (in Scottish tradition, he noted wryly, songs about quaffing qualify as love songs as surely as songs about courting). But he has the sort of amiable, unassuming delivery, expert timing and subtle bat-of-an-eyebrow facial expressions that easily induce laughter no matter what the topic.

He enlivened not only the between-songs chat but also the delivery of such comic songs as “The Errant Apprentice,” a delightful romp about a luckless suitor that drew repeated peals of laughter with its progression of absurd situations and audacious rhymes. Like much of what Stewart sang, the number is a contemporary song, but it was written in a very old style that made it fit seamlessly with traditional material from the 18th and 19th centuries.

As a singer, Stewart was concerned more with getting the tale across than with dazzling displays of range and power, and that’s as it should be. His lower range was earthy and robust, while a great tenderness and reedy ache entered in the higher registers that came into play on the ballads. A wonderful ballad singer, he displayed intensity and control in such wistful or plaintive songs as “The Man in the Moon” (the title song from his excellent new album), “Golden Golden” and “The Lakes of Pontchartrain.”

Accompanist O’Beirne applied skillful, gossamer touches or surging momentum as the situation demanded. On one song, he used a humble ukulele to produce a spare, mysterious yet sinewy Celtic drone. O’Beirne sang two songs of his own, applying his slight voice to wistful material done in a style less traditional and more in a Simon & Garfunkel vein.

The closing song, a rousing Stewart original called “Ramblin’ Rover,” toasted a life lived in spontaneous, free-spirited engagement with the world and its ups and downs. It was a fitting conclusion to a show that embodied the principle.