How to I determine the tempo of a song (ANSWERED)

I have a bunch of recordings that have no click, and the writer/performer has no idea about the BPM on any track. I tried looking at audio snap to see if it would help, but no luck. It would be easier if I could turn on the metronome and dial in a BPM that fits the track. But the metronome is tied to the track and can't operate independently.
 
How would you solve this?
 

There's several ways. How is audiosnap NOT working for you? It does take a reasonable guess at tempo when it analyzes a clip.
 
If track is NOT groove clipped or has had audiosnap applied to it you can still adjust project tempo with the metronome on and get pretty close by lining up the first beat and adjusting til it gets close.
 
You can also tap tempo along with the track and see what gets spit out, that should be even closer.
 
Of course, these are probably all mentioned in Anderton's article.... so there's that.

Ah, this is what I used before:
 
https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013223/Finding-the-Tempo-of-an-Audio-Clip

I have had some success using audiosnap on the kick drum track. If you bring up show tempo map from the audiosnap palette you may be able to use shift+m at the first beat and the last beat and come pretty close. Once you move things around as needed click set project tempo from clip. Karl AKA Fast Biker Boy has a tempo map video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VR7WkHywTo that has bailed me out in the past.
BTW, where has Karl been?
 
Rocky

You'll have to do more than just determine the BPM for the song, because it probably varies unless it was recorded to a click.
 
AudioSnap can create a tempo map that will adjust to any tempo changes. However, how good a job it does depends on what you can give it to analyze as a reference.As Rocky says, a kick drum works best. But if it's just guitar, or worse, guitar and vocal on the same track, then AudioSnap is going to have a hard time figuring out the tempo. 
 
If that's the case, you might try creating a click track by hand. Record a hi-hat sound using a MIDI keyboard, playing along with the song. Because you're recording MIDI it'll be easy to nudge notes as necessary until the hi-hat's playing along in good synchronization. At that point you can route the MIDI to the TTS-1 and freeze it, then have AudioSnap create a tempo map based on that click track.

I work a lot with singer songwriters, some just don't like using a click track and that is actually fine. The music might be better for it. So it depends on the song and where it's headed. My rule is if there's going to be drums then you have to play to a click track. I tell them it will take way longer to work on the song with out a time base and this will cost them money. 
But Folk music is not normally drum music, so there should be no problem overdubbing other instruments with out a click track. 
I think you stand a chance of trashing the feel if you go down that road with certain songs. 
Now if the original artist had real, real bad timing then that does make it a challenge. Hopefully they played solid and changed chords on the beat. Speeding up and slowing down is not a real issue, but slopping timing is. I'll make them re do the song. Or I'll play along with them.
 
I usually start with laying down a bass part before there is to much clutter.
I know not everyone can work this way but it's just a matter of listening very closely as you play along. If some of the musicians are struggling without a click track ask them to at least try. Might be the snow ball effect,however, bad timing on the bed track, and session players with bad timing too. Good session players will make a difference. 
 
But to answer your question: 
 
I use the above mentioned method of playing along with a hi hat and then fix any off "sounding" hits. I don't even try and match Sonars tempo and measure grid unless later tracks are to be quantisized. Then you spend hours fussing with audio snap.

First I would determine the time signature before the beats per minute.  Folk music most likely will be in 4/4 but you might run into 3/4 or 6/8.