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Fairport’s Cropredy Convention – music festival

Interview with Fairport Convention’s Chris Leslie

Book reviews, Interviews, Rock music, , , , , , ,

Ahead of the band’s 2026 Spring Tour, I catch up with Fairport Convention’s Chris Leslie. We discuss how he fell in love with the band’s music as a teenager, getting to know the band members socially, working with them and – thirty years ago this December – becoming one of their members.

Let’s go right back to the early days, long before you joined the band, what were your initial impressions of Fairport Convention?

Well, I have to give a big thanks, as I always do when we chat, to my brother, John, who got me into that kind of area of music. He’s five years older than me and he latched on by buying an album in Smiths in Banbury. And he was into all kinds of music up to that point, but not folk music. And he just saw a Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick album, I think, on the Hallmark label. Anyway, he brought it home and he loved it.

And during the next two or three years, he was bringing albums home in this newfound music. You know, things like Steeleye Span, Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, the Dransfields, Fairport. All those things were coming into the house and I loved it, too. And John was always very generous when I was younger. Being five years younger, it’s quite a gap at that stage. And he just said, “Yeah, come and listen to it.” You know, we’d sit and listen to it on the record player and all that kind of stuff. And I particularly fell in love with the sound of the fiddle. That was what really drew me in even more.

I think Liege & Lief was probably the first Fairport album John came across, which I obviously got to hear. Then he was backtracking to Unhalfbricking and What We Did On Our Holidays. And so that was my first impression of Fairport. And there was something about it that really got me. I really, really loved the band instantly. It was instant! I loved Sandy’s voice. I loved the fiddle. It was just music that touched my heart. It was almost like rediscovering something that had always been there, but I didn’t know about.

And so, yeah, it was through those albums. And then luckily when I was older, I got to my mid to late teens – 17 kind of age – and Fairport, a couple of the members moved in nearby. I couldn’t believe it. You know, Swarb and Peggy moved into Cropredy. And I was at that time in the village where we are, Adderbury. I was part of the Morris that was being revived in the village. You have a tradition in the village of Morris dancing, which has now grown, I have to say, to three sides in the village, which is fabulous. But at the time I was a young, enthusiastic fiddle player playing for the Morris.

And I remember we played once. We danced out at the Brazenose in Cropredy. And who should come along to watch us, but Peggy? He’s always such a generous character. He’s so friendly and he’s such a gregarious character. And we didn’t actually speak that day, but he was giving me winks and nods. And so, Peggy was watching us dance. And then who should come along ten minutes later, but Swarb? Cigarette in mouth. And came and watched. So that was fabulous. And then it wasn’t long after that, that my brother, John, again, met Peggy in a park in Banbury, the People’s Park, where there was a little music festival going on. And John went up and said hi. By that time, we were in a local duo. Banbury John & Fiddler Chris was our name. And anyway, Peggy and John chatted and Peggy invited us over to his cottage, in Cropredy. To go over one night, bring our instruments. And the friendship’s been there ever since, you know. Wonderful.

Photo credit: Simon Putman

And so not only did I get into the band, but in my very formative years, I actually met them. And then through that, I think I met Simon very soon after. Because there used to be a session over in one of the local villages every Sunday. And the Fairports would take their instruments over and have a knock sometimes with whoever was there. And I was always there then with my fiddle. So, the whole thing grew very organically but in a way I could never have dreamt of.

And from that whole period before you joined the band, would you say Liege & Lief was your favourite Fairport album?

In a way it was. I mean, it was amazing, actually, because there was that beautiful gatefold cover of Liege & Lie and when I opened it, they obviously had that idea of mixing their own contemporary writing for that album with some ballads and traditional songs. And what’s amazing throughout that album is that they blend so well. I don’t think there’s ever been an album where it’s done more successfully.

It is so seamless, isn’t it? Because if you didn’t know the history of the songs, you would be hard pushed to know which were traditional and which were written by the band.

You absolutely would. But then, of course, there are great tracks like ‘A Sailor’s Life’ (From Unhalfbricking). I’d never heard anything like that before. I was still at school and I remember taking that to a friend of mine. Every year has a visionary in the school, I think. And our visionary was a guy called Mark Bradley. But we’d play each other music and he’d play me things like John McLaughlin, My Goals Beyond and all those kinds of really, really far out albums. Which I loved,  again because there was a fiddle player, Jerry Goodman. Wonderful, wonderful. And I’d play him things like ‘A Sailor’s Life’, you know, with the wonderful atmosphere of it. And then when the track goes off into a kind of into kind of a jam at the end. Richard’s playing and Swarb’s playing, weaving around each other.

So, I was going around all the albums. I couldn’t get enough of it. I still can’t, actually – of music. You know, just always playing music.

Yeah. It’s just the backdrop to life as far as  I’m concerned.

I mean, obviously, there are other ways to live a life, of course. But I can’t imagine having a life without music. And some people that’s their life. They have other things that fulfil that space but, you know, music’s really important to me.

Photo credit: Simon Putman

So now moving forward a bit, your first full tour as a member of the band, I think, was 30 years ago this this year.

Yeah, it’s been 30. December 96, I joined.

But you’d been in the in the band’s orbit for some years before that, as you’d mentioned. I think you’d already deputised for Ric at Cropredy one year. So, you sort of eased your way into the circle, I suppose?

I’ve been so kind of fortunate in my journey through all this, because there’s no better way to join a band, I think, than if you already know them socially, which was the case with  Fairport. Peggy and I were great friends. And Simon, of course, as well. We’d worked on projects up until then. Steve Ashley did a wonderful album called The Family Album which Peggy produced. And that was with Simon Nicol, Peggy, Bruce Rowland. who was the drummer of Fairport at the time, and myself and various other musicians brought in for the album. So, I’d kind of worked with them before, recorded with them, I’d become friends socially with them.

And so when I got the call, I remember it so well. I was in the Albion Band at the time with Chris While and Julie Matthews and Ashley Hutchings. And I was washing up with my marigolds, looking down the garden and the phone rang. And I answered the phone and it was Peggy and he said, “Maartin Alcock’s decided to leave. He’s off doing other things. And your name came up. How do you fancy joining the band?” There’s an instant voice in my head that said yes. So, my immediate reaction was, “Yes, I’d love to join the band.”

And then there was a pause and I said, “But what am I going to do?” Because up to that point in all the bands I’d been in, everybody I’d worked with, I’d been the fiddle player. That was my ‘seat’ in everything. And Peggy said, “Well, you play some mandolin, don’t you?” And I said, yeah, I did. And at that time, Simon Mayor and Hilary James, had a mandolin quartet and I’d been part of that together with Maartin Alcock. I don’t know how long that that lineup lasted. Just say it was ten months, I don’t remember. But during those ten months, I spent my time rehearsing and gigging, sat between Maartin Alcock on mandolin and Simon Mayer on mandolin. So, my mandolin proficiency curve took a steep rise. I was learning so much and I always played a bit of mando. But that like a boot camp, a mandolin boot camp.

And so, I said, “Yeah, I play some mandolin.” And literally two months before that phone call, I was with the Albion band playing at the Fylde Folk Festival, I think it was. And Fylde Guitars were there. They had a stall and I went to have a look, as I do at instrument stalls. And there was a bouzouki hanging up and it was a reduced offer because the front had a split in the growth and he had to repair it. So, it was cheaper than a model without that.

And so, of course, I picked it up and I played it and it sounded fantastic. It was really great. And I said, “I want this, you know, I’ll get this.” I’d never played bouzouki before. But little knowing that two months down the line, that bouzouki would come in really handy initially because I had something else I could play.

I remember going over to Ric’s and Ric said, “Don’t worry, man, just come and play fiddle on everything. That’ll be fine. We’ll have two fiddles, you know.” And I knew it kind of wouldn’t. I felt it wouldn’t work for the audience as much as anything. So, I said, “Why don’t I just play the mandolin and bouzouki and then on certain numbers I’ll pick the fiddle up and we can have two fiddle things.” Which is what we did and that’s how it worked out.

Photo Credit: Tracey Welch

And, of course, replacing someone like Maartin Alcock is impossible. He was such a fantastic multi-instrumentalist with such great musical ideas. And he was something I’m definitely not. I mean, I grew up through the folk scene. That’s my background. That’s where I’m at. That’s where I’m comfortable. It’s where my influence, my inspiration comes from – my main inspiration. I listen to everything. I’m inspired by everything. But my root is in roots music. Acoustic. Whereas Maartin had that incredible facility of keyboards, he could play Hammond organ, he could play electric guitar, as well as playing great bouzouki and great mandolin. He had a very wide palette.

But I guess what I had, I was definitely a vocalist, a singer. Used to singing, being the main singer of songs. And also, the fiddle, I had the fiddle and I did play some whistles and stuff. And when I initially joined, I remember I got myself built an electric bouzouki. Solid body bouzouki. I got myself two built, one a five-string tele one and one four string double.

And to be honest, I stuck with them for a while. And then when you join something so important and as big a thing as Fairport was for me, it’s how you’re going to build your nest. How are you going to find what your input is to the band? And it can’t be done instantly. Well, I couldn’t do it instantly. So, I was playing these solid instruments and just not feeling seated with them. You know, people who play electric instruments, they understand. It’s a weird thing to say but they understand the acoustic properties of it, although it doesn’t have any essentially acoustic properties, but through pedals and amps and using pickups, they have a quality that you have to bring out. Anyway, I stopped using those quite soon after I joined and I went back to the acoustic bouzouki, mandolin, fiddle. Things that were me, you know.

And in terms of my writing, I was very fortunate that the band have always been very supportive of my writing. I mean, as an occasional songwriter. I know people who are who are songwriters. There are loads of them who that’s what they do. That’s how they see the world. They see the world through writing songs.

Whereas I love songwriting and I have moments where I’m touched by something that writes a song. And it has a credibility so I’ll take those whenever they come. But generally, I’m equally as interested in fiddle tunes, in mandolin music, in other aspects of what I do. And I don’t see the world through songwriting, put it that way.

But I did have that to offer and Fairport were about to record an album, the title of which was Who Knows Where the Time Goes. And Dave Mattacks was still in the in the lineup then. And I had a song called ‘John Goudie’ which had been written in my Whippersnapper days,  the band that I was in with Dave Swarbrick and Martin Jenkins and Kevin Dempsey. And so, I brought that into the recording and that kind of instantly stamped a part of me. That could bring a song into Fairport and it be a good part of what the band does.

So, from that moment, Fairport’s always been very supportive of my songwriting. And like all writers of anything, you have songs you know aren’t suitable for the band. And I do a few solo gigs and they’ll come into that, or some I know will probably really work with the band and some that are just not songs I want to do anyway. So, getting back to your question, joining the band, I was able to bring that aspect of myself into the band and build my nest.

Obviously, ‘John Goudie’ has remained a staple for the band ever since. It’s a wonderful song. And on the next album after that, I think that’s when you really began to make your presence felt in terms of writing, because you had that one contribution on your first album and then on The Wood and the Wire, it’s quite a lot of Chris Leslie credits on there. Did your writing really begin to flourish then after you joined the band? And did you find you were writing a lot more than previously?

The Wood and the Wire is a very interesting album to look back on because I’d got a few songs bubbling over that I was about to finish when we were about to look to the next album. And Peggy came up with a great suggestion. He said, “How do you fancy getting together with another writer and see what songs you could come up with for the next album?”

And he suggested Nigel Stonier. And that was quite a moment because I thought, “Yeah, that would be a great idea.” And then, of course, what bubbles to the surface for me was all my inadequacies that I felt. Imposter syndrome, I think it’s called. “Can I really sit with a guy who writes and produces albums and sit and let things come out?” Anyway, I thought this is a lovely idea, actually. So, we got in touch with Nigel and he said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So, we’re in this very room I’m talking in now. We sat together for… something like ten days over a fortnight period.

And what was lovely was Nigel was so lovely. He’s great to work with. I really enjoyed the process. And up to that point, I was a writer that had only written by myself. So, I only had my own ideas about how to be creative – writing. With instruments it’s different because you sit next to people, if you’re in a session or something and you hear things you like. Or if you’re in a band, you’re always getting feedback or input or inspiration from what’s around you. But songwriting for me up to that point had been very lonely. Not that I thought of it like that. It’s just what it was, you know.

So, Nigel would come over. He’d come over at 10 in the morning. We’d get our instruments out, sit head to head. And just throw out ideas, be they lyrically, be they instrumentally, be they riff-wise, be they chord sequence-wise. And for me, it allowed me to kind of open up in front of somebody.  Because how musicians work is very interesting. How they tick, I’ve found completely fascinating. And more so the older I get, the more it fascinates me. Because everyone’s coming from their own life, really. Everyone’s coming from their own filter, their own experience, their own inadequacies, their own positivity.

For instance, most things I do, I do completely by ear. So, because that’s what I do, I’ve got quite a good ear… I hear quite sophisticated things within what I do but I can hear it. But some musicians can just say, “Well, you want a C7 with something on the bass there.” And that’s just communicated instantly. Some people can just pick up a piece like a chord chart and they’re there. Peggy can do it. Simon can do it. Ric can do it. I’ve never done that. I can hear it and I can do very basic chord charts, you know, G, C, D, F. But when it gets stretched, I’m having to rely on my ear.

And so, sitting down in front of Nigel that first time, I really had to just open up and just be who I was. And he didn’t bat an eyelid, of course. Of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t. It’s all in your own head, isn’t it? But what I’m trying to say is that that those ten days really gave me something that opened me up in many ways.

And Nigel was such an experienced creator. He has just little nuggets of what, for me, were nuggets of gold. You know, like you don’t have to consider a song finished until you actually record it… You can change it. It’s your song. And I suppose the thing he gave me more than anything was a feeling of freedom in writing. Let everything come through. Let any ideas happen.

So, what I’m getting to is The Wood and the Wire, quite a few songs on that are co-writes. The ‘Wood and the Wire’ (title track) is one and I love that song.  I think I came up with the riff. I came up with that and the groove. And then I think Nigel came up with the first line. And then we both contributed to the lyrics and he’d think about another chord and we’re going somewhere. And that’s how we worked. It was the only time we worked together, not for any other reason than that’s just how it was. I really enjoyed working with him and he contributed a lot to that album as well.

And lovely – the front cover is our son, Sam, looking in the music shop window. And literally this last week we had our grandson down, Taylor, who’s five. And he’s looking at a little Sam on that cover.

You’ll have to try and get him a slot on Fairport’s next album cover!

Yes, that would be great, wouldn’t it?

Photo credit: Kevin Smith

What do you want to tell us about the forthcoming spring tour then starting 17th of March?

Well, the first thing I’ll say is we’ve got the absolutely fabulous Jen Butterworth. She’s a wonderful singer, wonderful writer, wonderful guitarist, wonderful musician. And I’ve just been listening to her latest album. And it’s fabulous. And as always happens, she will do an opening set of about 20 minutes and then we’ll come on stage and join her for a song, which is always very exciting. And I’m really looking forward to  being on stage with her for a song.

Jenn Butterworth – Photo Credit: Matthew Arthur Williams

We’ve pulled in some songs from our new album. We’ve got a new live album out for the tour. It’s called Roadworks. And I think it’s the first album we have Dave Mattacks back on the disc for a long time as an album, a complete album. I think I’m right in saying that. Because, of course, we lost dear Jerry Conway a few years ago, which is very sad. But like all these things that come around, DM was the perfect person to come back in. Totally known, totally loved and that’s gone well.

So, we’ve got this new album called Roadworks. We’re very pleased with it. All recorded live from the five-piece tour last year. And we’ll be doing numbers picked from that. We’re going back quite a long way with the repertoire.

About 24 dates, I think. And yeah, we’re all very excited. We’re all very up as a band. We’re all very up for it. And please come along.

Tour dates can be found on Fairport’s website here

Before we wrap up, is anything else you want to you want to tell us?

Well, I’ll also mention our wonderful Cropredy Festival, which is on the 13th, 14th and 15th of August. Great lineup. Again, look at the website for the details. But if I put the just headliners. A few bands, Le Vent du Nord on the Thursday night. They’re headlining, which will be fantastic. Turin Brakes that night as well. And we open up the afternoon. To anyone who hasn’t been to Cropredy, we do an acoustic spot when the festival opens just to welcome everyone onto the site, onto the field and then off it goes.

Friday night, I’m going to say Spooky Man’s Chorale. I’m going to say Braebach. I’m going to Celtic Social Club. Danny Bradley. Richard Thompson finishing off the night, together with Zara Phillips and, one of my favourite bands behind him, consisting of Simon Nicol, Dave Mattacks and Dave Pegg! That’ll be wonderful.

Fairport’s Cropredy Convention – Photo Credit: Simon Putman

And then on the Saturday I’m going to shout out Hayseed Dixie. Amazing mandolin player and incredible versions of modern music in a bluegrass heavy style. Fabulous. I’m going to mention Jerry Colvin Big Band. Will Pound. Jen Butterworth. And we’re going to finish off that night with some friends coming up to play with us. If you haven’t been before, it’s so friendly. It’s such a great site and it’s just the one stage so don’t miss anything. Fabulous stalls. Come along!

Wonderful. Well certainly, I’ll be there again. Hopefully, a weekend in the sun but not too hot.

The sun is booked! Whether it comes along is another thing but it’s booked!

Related posts:

Interview with Ric Sanders 2025

Interview with Dave Pegg 2025

Interview with Simon Nicol 2024

Live review: Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2025

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2025

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2024

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2023

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2022

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Fairport Convention at Bexhill 2020

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2018

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2017

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘Come All Ye: The First Ten Years’

Fairport Convention – 50th anniversary gig at Union Chapel 2017

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2014

Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2014

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2025

Folk music, Live reviews, Rock music, , , , , , , , , , ,

When tickets for Cropredy 2025 went on sale, it was announced that there would be some changes to the festival this year, with far fewer tickets available. Interviewing Fairport’s Dave Pegg back in January, he explained the thinking behind the new approach as follows:

“Gareth Williams our CEO came up with several formulas for trying to make it pay. It’s always been such a gamble, the last couple of years especially. Because when you don’t know how many tickets you are going to sell, you can’t budget. You’re guessing about the number of people who are going to turn up. Gareth’s idea – we’re only going to sell 6,500 tickets and we’re only selling three-day tickets. Because we know we’ve got that lump of income and we can budget accordingly without the risk of going bankrupt.“

As well as fewer tickets, the festival line-up was to look somewhat different, too. The era of big-name headline acts like Chic and Madness and Alice Cooper,  who had previously graced the Cropredy stage in a bid to widen the festival’s appeal and get more bums on (folding) seats, was over. Instead, there would be far more focus on acts that the festival organisers knew and had worked alongside.

The big question, therefore, is did this new formula work? Clearly, there was no problem shifting tickets, with the vast majority being snapped up by February and with the festival selling out well in advance.  Arriving at the campsite on the Thursday afternoon, it didn’t feel much different, although a couple of fields previously used for camping had apparently been taken out of use.

The Cropredy crowd (Photo: Simon Putman)

I was also wondering whether the slimmed-down attendance would leave us all rattling around in the main arena field but it didn’t feel like that at all.  Walkways had been rejigged, the big screens at either side of the stage had been replaced by a single screen at the back of the stage but overall it very much felt like the same old Cropredy I’d been going to for the past fifteen years.

Richard Digance up on the big screen (Photo: Simon Putman)

So, enough of the festival arrangements, what of the music? I must admit that one of the real attractions for me when I first started going to Cropredy in 2010 was the mix of folk, acoustic and classic rock acts. I loved having Status Quo and Rick Wakeman and Little Feat alongside Thea Gilmore and Breabach and Bellowhead. Unlike some of the diehard Cropredy goers, I was perhaps more worried about the potential for the new ‘Friends of Fairport’ formula to squeeze out some of the rockier elements. That didn’t happen at all though. I got my fix of both folk and classic rock, in some respects more than I could possibly have hoped for.

Joe Broughton’s Conservatoire Folk Ensemble join Fairport Acoustic on stage (Photo: Simon Putman)

On the folky side, obvious highlights for me included Joe Broughton’s Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, whose massed ranks begun their set by joining Fairport Acoustic on stage, for an epic rendition of ‘The Lark In The Morning’ instrumental medley from the Liege & Lief album. Scottish folk band Skipinnish were another highlight for me, with a thrillingly energetic set, my second time seeing them this summer as they also performed at the New Forest Folk Festival. A special mention, too, should go to the kids of Cropredy Primary School Folk Class who kicked things off at the festival. We only made it in time to hear their last couple of songs but what a wonderful idea to link the village and the festival this way and how lovely it was seeing the huge cheer for them as they made their way from the backstage area afterwards to a waiting gaggle of proud parents.

The traditional hanky waving during Richard Digance’s set (Photo: Simon Putman)

On the rock side, the festival organisers demonstrated that you didn’t need to be in the megabucks league to attract some decent classic rock acts. My many years of going to music weekends at Butlins showed me that it’s perfectly possible to line up some talented rock names without bankrupting yourself.

Trevor Horn (Photo: Simon Putman)

The Trevor Horn Band, making their third appearance at Cropredy, were hugely entertaining as ever, blasting out a deluge of hits that Horn had had a hand in, from Frankie Goes To Hollywood, to Buggles to Yes – with the added bonus of Lol Creme of 10CC on guitar and some Godley & Crème/10CC hits thrown in, too! They were originally booked under the old formula for the previous year, however, and had to reschedule because of illness so the situation was slightly different.

Martin Barre (Photo: Simon Pitman)

The same cannot be said for Martin Barre (ex-Jethro Tull) and Deborah Bonham (sister of Led Zep drummer, John) whose sets were clear highlights of the weekend, none more so than the latter whose special guest almost certainly provided the highlight of the weekend for many, with none other than Robert Plant stepping on to the stage to perform sizzling versions of ‘Ramble On’ and ‘Thank You’ from Led Zeppelin’s second album. It doesn’t get much better than that at Cropredy.

Robert Plant joins the Deborah Bonham Band on stage (Photo: Darren Johnson)

I didn’t get to see everyone who performed and there were acts (like Bob Fox & Billy Mitchell) I would have liked to have seen but didn’t. However, I’ve never spent the entire day in the field from mid-day to midnight. For me, time spent at the campsite, catching up with friends early in the evening and relaxing ahead of a late night finish, is as much part of the Cropredy experience for me as the music. Plus, in the last few years, our camping group has also chosen to spend a little bit of time at the Cream of the Crop festival in the adjoining field and this time we got there just in time for an explosive set by the excellent Burnt Out Wreck, the band fronted by former Heavy Pettin’ drummer, Gary Moat. No-one can say I didn’t get my fill of hard rock at Cropredy this year!

Burnt Out Wreck at Cream of the Crop next door (Photo: Simon Putman)

Fairport Convention, of course, rounded things off on the Saturday night with their usual mammoth set featuring a mix of familiar old favourites, revisited deep cuts, covers with guest artists (this time Ralph McTell and Danny Bradley) and more recent material penned by the band’s own Chris Leslie. While a couple of our camping group head back to the campsite before the end, missing ‘Matty Groves’ and ‘Meet On The Ledge’ is not something I could ever contemplate so we make our way to the front in time for a rousing ‘Matty’ (with accompanying animated video hilariously interpreting the storyline through the medium of Lego) and an always emotional ‘Meet on the Ledge’.

Ralph McTell is a guest during Fairport’s set (Photo: Simon Putman)

While it was the end of Cropredy for another year, it wasn’t quite the end of our camping trip as we had booked for several days at a lovely campsite ten miles away, just outside Barford St. Michael. The spirit of Cropredy was never far away though. The village of Barford St Michael, itself, was once home to Dave Pegg and the studio he established, Woodworm Studios, where Fairport recorded numerous albums. The studio is still in operation, although no longer owned by Peggy these days.

The Hook Norton Brewery (Photo: Simon Putman)

While camping, we also took a trip to the village of Hook Norton for a tour of the Hook Norton Brewery, who in recent years became the official suppliers for the Cropredy festival bar, taking over from Wadworth. It’s an absolutely fascinating tour of this historic nineteenth century site and our engaging tour-guide was himself a Cropredy regular who had spent many years working at the festival. If you are extending your stay in the Oxfordshire countryside and want to find out how the beer at the Cropredy bar is brewed and learn more about the history of the brewery, it’s well worth a visit!

Related posts:

Interview with Fairport Convention’s Ric Sanders 2025

Interview with Dave Pegg 2025

Interview with Simon Nicol 2024

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2024

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2023

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2022

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Fairport Convention at Bexhill 2020

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2018

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2017

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘Come All Ye: The First Ten Years’

Fairport Convention – 50th anniversary gig at Union Chapel 2017

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2014

Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2014

Interview with Fairport Convention’s Ric Sanders

Folk music, Interviews, Rock music, , , , , , , ,

Ahead of this year’s Cropredy festival, I catch up with Fairport Convention’s Ric Sanders. We talk about first learning to play the violin at primary school, about getting his big break with Soft Machine and the invitation to play on Fairport’s Gladys’ Leap album forty years ago this year – and, of course, this year’s Cropredy line-up.

If we can talk about your very early days first, when did you first pick up a violin?

Well, I took it up when we were in junior school. The whole class had six weeks of being taught to play the violin. I mean, it’s nowhere near enough time. It was just six weeks and we had this teacher called Mr. Tunnicliffe. He’ll be long gone now but we used to call him Ten-ton Tunnicliffe because he was quite portly. But he played the violin and he taught us. He got the whole class playing a pattern on the open strings. And then with great bravura, Ten-ton Tunnicliffe would play this jig over the top of it. Very simple thing and most of the class didn’t get on too well with it. But after that third week, I could play the tune that Ten-ton Tunnicliffe was playing. I could just do it. I don’t know why. But I wasn’t interested because I wanted to be an astronaut or a scientist. So, when the six weeks ended – and I’ve never told this to an interviewer before – I forgot all about it. They weren’t our violins – they were provided by whoever – and then I forgot about it. In actual fact, seriously, I took up playing the violin again when I was 17. Because I was 17 in, I guess, the summer of love and I’d always liked the Beatles and the Stones and stuff.

Before that, my dad was an RAF radio operator. And he was stationed in Limavady in Northern Ireland during the war with the Americans, liaising with their radio people. That was his war gig. And he came back from the war festooned with nylons and chocolates and a whole stack of 78 records. Lots of the great jazz players, like Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa and all sorts, basically. And I started to hear this jazz and I kind of really liked that.

I have an elder brother, Mike, who would buy all the records. So, when there was the Trad Jazz boom, Mike bought all the Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball… Chris Barber Band, which was my favourite, because they really rocked. And then he bought all the Beatles and the Stones’ stuff. So, the first thing I ever had to buy using my own pocket money was in fact Magical Mystery Tour. But it was Sergeant Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour that made me think this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be a musician.

But I hadn’t got a guitar or a bass. I wouldn’t have taken up the drums because there’s too much to carry around. Or a keyboard. I hadn’t got any of those things but there was an old violin that my grandma had in the loft. So, I got it out of the loft, scraped all the varnish off it, polyurethaned it, filled it with cotton wool to stop feedback, and got a contact microphone that I bought from an advert in the back of the Melody Maker magazine. It cost me 19 and 6, and I strapped it to the fiddle with a few rubber bands. And I learned the riff from ‘Willie the Pimp’ by Frank Zappa on his Hot Rats album. And that was the start of it.

My mum and dad, they were hoping I was going to have some sort of academic career or be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or something. Quite understandable. But my mum was a good singer and my dad played. They come from a Salvation Army background so he played in the Salvation Army brass band and stuff. So, both my folks were musical and once I convinced them that I was really earnest about doing this, they were with me all the way.

And at that time, around about ‘68, ‘69, it was when you began to hear great fiddle players in the world of rock. And then, of course, I got into jazz as well and listened to Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. Stephane was a phenomenal violin player, one of the greatest ever. But I was also listening to David LaFlamme from It’s a Beautiful Day. And I was listening to Jerry Goodman from The Flock and then the Mahavishnu Orchestra. And Sugarcane Harris, who was amazing. He played on the Hot Rats album and played the violin like a blues harmonica, it sounded like. He was the bluesiest ever and was probably my main influence. Jean-Luc Ponty, of course, who may be the most high-profile modern jazz violinist, I guess.

And, also, I was listening to some great fiddle players in the UK. Of course, there was Dave Swarbrick. I play nothing like Dave Swarbrick. I can’t. Chris Leslie can. Chris Leslie can do an impression. He can even do the voice!

The first big band that I played in was with Stomu Yamashta, a Japanese avant-garde percussionist. Stomu Yamashta Red Buddha Theatre. I did a six-week European tour with him as a dep because his wife played the electric violin but she had to go back to Japan to visit her elderly parent.

So that was your first professional gig then?

Yeah, that was my first, Stomu Yamashta. I knew it was only a short-term thing and I went and auditioned for it in a room above a London pub. And there was a queue of violinists all around the block and somehow, I got the gig. And then the real big break in my life came joining Soft Machine. Because John Marshall, the drummer, got to hear me playing with Michael Garrick, the great jazz pianist who I’d written to. I’d sent him a cassette of me playing some Chick Corea tunes and said, “Can I come and see you for jazz harmony lessons?” And he said, “Better than that. Come and do a few gigs with us.”

So, I did. And John Marshall was the drummer on one of those gigs. And Soft Machine –  their soprano saxophone player, Alan Wakeman, who’s Rick’s cousin, he’d left because he got a gig being musical director for David Essex. And they couldn’t find a replacement but the violin kind of occupies that same sonic range, not totally, but pretty much. And so, I got the gig in Soft Machine.

And then I’d also sent a tape to Ashley Hutchings. And having done Stomu’s thing, which was only short term, at the end of the 70s I found myself in the exciting position of being in both Soft Machine and the Albion Band, which, of course, included Ashley Hutchings, Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks and Michael Gregory and Graham Taylor.

So that was your foot in the door into the world of folk rock then?

Yeah, and through that I met Andy Cronshaw and June Tabor and Martin Simpson and we used to play a lot together. I don’t consider myself a gifted folk player in the way that Dave Swarbrick was or the way Chris Leslie was. I’m basically a jazz rocker really and I play everything like it’s the blues. That’s my cunning secret. I play everything like it’s the blues.

But that was always part of Fairport’s DNA anyway it was never just a pure folk band.

That’s true. And, you know, Richard Thompson could play anything. And Simon Nicol he’s underrated as a guitarist. He is an incredibly good guitarist. People say that there’s been so many musicians in Fairport Convention. There’s been 29 musicians but that was all in the early days. I joined in 1985, my first album being ‘Gladys’ Leap’, which is what we’ll be celebrating because it’s the 40th anniversary. It’s my 40th anniversary as well. So, Richard guested on that album. I appeared as a guest. I recorded it in April ’85, I think and here I am 40 years later.

So how did it come about then, being invited to play on Gladys’ Leap? I think you did three tracks on that?

I did three tracks, yeah. And what had happened was that Fairport had been pretty inactive, really, except for the festival. There hadn’t been a Fairport band from, you know, 1980 to 85. And the three main members were Simon and Peggy and Dave Mattacks, or DM, as we call him. And they’d got a bunch of new material. And Peggy, was in Jethro Tull at the time which gave him the financial security to be able to build Woodworm Studios at his home in Barford St Michael. It’s no longer Peggy’s but Woodworm Studios is a great place and still is and that was where the album was recorded. And Peggy gave me a call because we go back a quite a long way because our dads knew each other.

So, it all kind of slotted into place and I never expected to be in Fairport because they’d got one of the most phenomenal fiddle players of all time, Dave Swarbrick. But Swarb didn’t want to do the Gladys’ Leap album because he wasn’t into the material. And he’d just formed Whippersnapper with Chris Leslie. I think Chris was in the frame for joining Fairport, but he declined because he’d just formed this band with Swarb and Chris is very loyal. And Fairport had been inactive for years and Whippersnapper had a full diary.

So, I got the next call. And when Peggy called, he said, “I want you to play on some recordings I’m doing. I’ll send you a cassette.” Peggy had this offshoot group – a fun outfit it was – and they were called Dave Pegg’s Cocktail Cowboys, of which Chris was a member as well. At this time, around about ‘85, I was just doing jazz gigs around the Midlands. Just going out, playing with different rhythm sections, like jazz musicians used to. And it wasn’t hugely lucrative, but I got by. Peggy sent me this tape and I thought he was asking me to play on a Cocktail Cowboys record because I had no idea that Swarb had decided that he didn’t want to carry on with Fairport. And so when the tape arrived and I listened to it, I thought, hello? Well, that’s Peggy playing the bass, obviously. That’s Dave Mattacks on drums. And that guitar I could tell straight away. And yeah, it turned out to be Gladys’ Leap. And I went along and my first day was just recording those three tracks that I did on the album. The standout track for me, and the one that stayed in the repertoire, is ‘The Hiring Fair’.

Yeah, and a real fan favourite alongside the older material.

It really is. Well, Ralph (McTell) has contributed hugely to our repertoire. Also, Dave Mattacks, apart from being one of the world’s greatest drummers, is a very accomplished keyboard player with an incredible ear for harmonies and the instrumental section is actually written and arranged by Dave Mattacks. Well, it was right up my street because it’s not overtly folky. And I just played like I would do if it was a jazz rock thing that I was doing. So, I think probably that track more than any other helped me get the gig.

And then Maartin Allcock was recruited and as I say there’s been many people in Fairport but since I joined, which is now 40 years ago, there have only been two changes of line-up really. Which is when Maartin Allcock decided to move on and is sadly no longer with us. And when DM moved to America because he was getting so many sessions, and Gerry Conway joined the band. And of course, Gerry passed away, which is very sad. He was with us for 25 years. But now we’ve got DM. We were kind of stuck, you know. What were we going to do on the winter tour and Cropredy? And so now DM comes over from America for the winter tour and for Cropredy, which is great.

Photo credit: Kevin Smith

So just going back to 1985, you didn’t play Cropredy that year because obviously Dave Swarbrick was still booked to perform at the festival.

Yeah, I went on the Friday night. It was a two-day festival at the time. I couldn’t stay for the Saturday because I had to get up at the crack of dawn and go to Edinburgh because I was playing at the Edinburgh Festival with a dear friend of mine who I’ve just been recording with recently again, a guy called Phil Nicol. We did two weeks at the Edinburgh fringe and what our gig was, was playing half a dozen numbers at the end of a comedy cabaret. Some of Phil’s songs, and we also did ‘May You Never’ by John Martyn and we did ‘Every Breath You Take’ which had been big at that time. By the way, I should tell you that the main star of the comedy cabaret that we did in Edinburgh was Julian Clary, who was incredibly funny. And at that time, called himself the Joan Collins Fan Club featuring Fanny the Wonderdog.

The Joan Collins Fanclub (and Fanny): 1980s publicity shot

I remember because he was on Channel 4 a lot in those early days.

Yeah. He was great. I mean, you know, never heckle Julian. Never. And he would improvise. We would do two shows a day and the shows were different every time. And he’d do this thing where he’d go and find a lady’s handbag and go through it and improvise a routine from the contents. He was absolutely wonderful. Also, there was Jeremy Hardy, the late Jeremy Hardy. He was a great comedian. He was on that. So that was a great show. Yeah, that’s why I couldn’t go to the Saturday Fairport!

But soon after you did become a full-time member. What did it feel like taking over the fiddle player’s role in Fairport Convention from Dave Swarbrick?

Do you know, I wasn’t really that nervous about it. A little bit, I mean, I was nervous a little bit just because Swarb was not just such a great musician but such a such a great personality. His personality was stamped on Fairport. But actually, I get more nervous now than I did was when I was a kid because when you’re that young – I was only in my very early 30s when I joined Fairport – and I’d already played with some incredible musicians. Carl Jenkins, John Ethridge, Alan Holdsworth. I played with these guys. John McLaughlin, you know, I jammed with John McLaughlin. Toured with his group, Shakti. Not as part of his group but with Soft Machine and John McLaughlin doing a doubleheader tour of Europe. So, you know, I had the sort of cockiness of youth. I was young and I wasn’t too scared. I get more nervous now, actually. I’m 72 now. I thought when I got to this sort of an age, I’d be bulletproof but it’s been the reverse.

I remember the first concert that we did was at the Sir George Robey pub in London and from the word go, the Fairport audience were really good to me. And I’ve heard it said since – well Chris Leslie has said, “I wouldn’t have been the right person for the job because I would have sounded like Swarb at the time.” I mean, Chris has got his own style totally now. I was completely different because I couldn’t play like Swarb. I had to come at it from a completely different angle. So, I couldn’t be a replacement for Dave Swarbrick. It was something different.

Photo credit: Kevin Smith

Looking back over the last 40 years, what have been some of your favourite recordings in Fairport? You mentioned ‘Hiring Fair’ obviously.

I guess one of the things that I really love doing because I’m not a songwriter – Chris is a brilliant songwriter and has gone from strength to strength – but I write instrumentals. That’s what I do because that’s what I always did. And I’ve loved writing things like ‘Portmeirion’, which is my most well-known tune, I think, that people kind of like.

And another absolute standard that stands up so well alongside the older material.

Yeah, which is very gratifying. And ‘The Rose Hip’ and tunes like that. I’ve loved writing ‘Summer in December’ and stuff. They’re ballads that have got a folkish-type melody, but kind of jazzy in harmony ways. So that’s been really great to do. And, also, when I first started to write fast instrumentals for Fairport, I would just write imitation medleys. Because that was the pattern that was brilliantly done on Liege & Lief with ‘The Lark in the Morning’. When you take a jig and a reel and a hornpipe or whatever and you put three or four trad tunes as a kind of medley. So, you know, I wrote a number of those, a sort of imitation using the template of those tunes.

But then, around about Festival Bell time, I started to write instrumentals. The old way of writing, I’d write the tunes on the fiddle and then harmonise them. But then when you got to tunes like ‘Danny Jack’s Reward’ and ‘The Gallivant and ‘Steampunkery’, which is the one that’s in the repertoire at the moment, I would write those from the rhythm section up. I’d write the band part first, then find a melody to put over it. And I wasn’t sure if the band would go for that style of stuff, but that proved to be OK. One of my favourite things, which you can see on YouTube, is doing my tune ‘The Gallivant’ with the brilliant Joe Broughton and his Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, who are on the Thursday at Cropredy. Joe arranged the brass section for it. He’s a brilliant musician and I love working with him.

Is there anything else you want to tell us about Cropredy this year before we wrap up?

Well, we’ve got a great line-up. Thursday, Albert Lee, one of the world’s greatest guitarists. I’m sure he finishes his show with ‘Country Boy’. I don’t think they’d let him out of the venue alive if he didn’t finish with ‘Country Boy’. On Thursday, Peatbog Faeries, Joe Broughton with his Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, as I just mentioned. And of course, we kick it off on the Thursday with Fairport Acoustic, just a welcoming set. And then I think we’re going to get Broughton and co. to come on and do a number with us, to cross over. Also, the lovely Rosalie Cunningham is on Thursday. And I might be playing with her as well because I played on her last two albums. It’s kind of prog rock, you know, so it’s great. So that will be an exciting Thursday.

Photo credit: Sam Reynolds

And then we’ve got the Trevor Horn band on Friday. Last year, Trevor had to cancel because of illness so he’s headlining on Friday. And you never know who Trevor Horn’s going to turn up with, what style that he’s produced is going to show up.

Yeah, that’s always a hugely entertaining part.

I’m hoping he brings Holly Johnson some time. I’d love to see ‘Relax’ at Cropredy. It would be great. So, we’ve got Trevor Horn,  Joe Broughton, again, in the Urban Folk Quartet. And some bands that I don’t actually know who they are. El Pony Pisador. Well, I don’t know that group. And City Funk Orchestra. And Skipinnish.

And then, of course, there’s King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys. We’ve got the Church Fitters, Plumhall, who opened up for us, not this year, but the year before, which is great. And the day starts with the Cropredy Primary School folk class so that will be lovely. And then on the Saturday, we’ve got Richard Digance, of course. And the Deborah Bonham band, brilliant. Martin Barre from Jethro Tull. Bob Fox and Billy Mitchell, they’ll be brilliant. Who’s headlining? Oh, we are! Yeah. So, we have no doubt guests who I don’t know who….

So, there will be some surprises for us on the Saturday and some surprises for you by the sound of things!

Yeah, yeah. Chris Leslie and I don’t take much of a role in the organisation part, or DM. The triumvirate that runs the festival is Dave Pegg – of course, there wouldn’t be a festival, there wouldn’t be a Fairport without Peggy – and Simon Nicol and Gareth Williams, the festival director. So, they’re the guys in the driving seat. And I just, you know, turn up and play. Maybe tell a few jokes. But it’s great. I never in my life, for a minute, thought I would be in Fairport. I was always a fan, a massive fan of the group. And I knew pretty much all of the guys before I joined. But you know, Fairport is more than a band to me. It’s like my family as well. And we really have that feeling. We see so many bands fall apart and have arguments and whatever but it’s not like that with Fairport.

And occasionally I’ve been told by Simon and Peggy sometimes in the past I’ve played a little too jazzy and put in some scales that they don’t think were appropriate. They say, “Don’t do that!” And when they say that I think about it, and I think, “You know what they’re right, you know. No, you don’t need seven flat nines in ‘Walk Awhile.’ Just forget it!” So, yeah, it’s just a very happy band, really. And I don’t know how many years it will carry on. Until we drop, really, I think.  

Photo credit: Kevin Smith

Fairport’s Cropredy Convention runs from 7-9 August this year: fairportconvention.com

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Interview with Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg

Folk music, Interviews, Rock music, , , , , ,

Ahead of Fairport Convention’s Winter Tour, I catch up with Dave Pegg. We discuss the making of the Full House album, the crucial role that Jethro Tull played in Fairport’s resurrection, changes afoot at Cropredy this summer so that the festival survives the financial pressures facing the sector and the forthcoming tour, starting 31 January.

We’ll talk about the Winter Tour and about Cropredy later but first I want to start right at the very beginning – well the very beginning for you. I was re-reading the Fairport by Fairport book and it was Swarb who really pushed for you to be auditioned after Ashley left. It seems that the others were a bit sceptical at first?

Well, what happened Swarb used to be in the Ian Campbell Folk Group and he’d left a couple of years before I joined them to go off to play with Martin Carthy. He knew of me through the Campbells because he joined the Campbells for an album that they did. It was just a reunion kind of album and I played on it. He was aware that I wasn’t really a double bass player, which I played with the Campbells. I said, “This isn’t really my instrument, mate. I can get away with it but I’m a bass guitarist. I’m a rock musician really.” He remembered this and when I saw Fairport on my 22nd birthday at Mothers Club, it was the last time the Liege & Lief line-up played together and I was blown away. I thought it was fabulous. I thought I’d love to play with that band and literally the next day I got a call from Swarbrick saying Ashley was leaving and they were looking for a bass player. And that’s how I got the audition. The others were a bit scared because when he said I’d played with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, they thought I’d be like the Aran sweater and the beard, like a proper folkie, but I knew absolutely zilch about folk music at all – and still don’t!

And when you did join did it feel like you’d found your natural home or did it take a while to settle in?

No, I kind of settled in pretty quickly. I mean because the Fairports are great players and they were from the same background as myself. Richard was an astonishing guitarist, even at that age. And the rhythm section, Simon and DM, they were just fantastic to play with. And then there was the added bonus of Swarb who was re-inventing the way that he played the fiddle. Because now he was kind of getting into rock music and was using his Echoplex and he’d got a really crude pickup on his violin made from a telephone (laughs). But it was very early days in terms of electric violin. But the weirder thing about it, we were rehearsing stuff, we’d moved into this place, The Angel at Little Hadham and we were rehearsing songs but without a vocal, without anyone singing. Because, of course, Sandy had left the band as well and it meant the band didn’t have a vocalist so it was a case of drawing straws to see who got the short straw. It was Richard and Swarb who did most of the vocals. Simon, after a while – Simon’s a great singer – but in those days Richard and Swarb hadn’t really sung at all.

Yes, it great how everyone’s confidence as vocalists grew.

Yeah – we made the Full House album. We recorded most of it in London and we went to New York to overdub the vocals. It was made at Sound Techniques in London, engineered by John Wood who was a fantastic engineer and Joe Boyd [producer] allowed us to do whatever we wanted, musically. But Joe kind of trusted the band. What was great about his production for Fairport was the fact that he’d allow us to do whatever we wanted. And he also he knew lots of people in America and we went to New York and we overdubbed most of the vocals in New York, in a studio where Dylan had recently recorded.

Now when I interviewed Simon this time last year, he said this was like being asked to name your favourite child, but I’m going to ask it anyway. What’s your favourite Fairport album?

It’s a very hard one for me because I’ve been involved ever since Full House, which was the first one I played on in 1970. There’s been so many different Fairport line-ups and I find it hard to compare one album against another one. Well, for me, my favourite album before I joined was Unhalfbricking, which I think is a remarkable album. Things like ‘Percy’s Song’ – it’s just incredible that song. I know Dylan really rates that version. Unhalfbricking was my favourite pre-joining Fairport. And the albums that I’ve played on, where there’ve been different line-ups, things like Fairport Nine mean a lot to me because it was a re-establishment with some great players and some great tracks on it. Obviously, Rising for The Moon is another great one for me because it was Sandy coming back. And things like Gladys’s Leap which was again…

Another coming-back album!

Yeah, another coming-back album. And the last one, Shuffle and Go, that we did which I think stands up as good as anything Fairport’s ever recorded. I can’t pick one album. It’s impossible, Darren, for me in that sense!

The second half of the ‘70s looked like it was all going pear-shaped for the folk rock genre. Steeleye Span split up in ’78; Sandy was dead, tragically; Richard and Linda had gone off to a religious commune. Do you think the Cropredy Farewell concert in 1979 played a big part in turning things round again?

Well in terms of turning things around, it was a kind of the end of Fairport as it was because we had split up. Swarb was going to live up in Scotland. There was no longer a working band. I went off and joined Jethro Tull, which was a lucky break for me and I was with them for like fifteen years. And what happened was Cropredy Festival kind of evolved as a get-together, because we’re all mates in Fairport. When we split up there was never really any animosity when people came and then left the band. It was always because they had ideas about what they wanted to do personally. And people like Richard, his talent was too big for Fairport Convention if you like – his ideas about what he wanted to do musically. The group was a bit inhibitive for him. We couldn’t do all the things he wanted. Same with Sandy. We couldn’t do orchestral arrangements. And they were both great songwriters. Well, Richard still is, obviously. But when they left the band the rest of the guys didn’t feel bad about it. We would do everything we could to encourage it. Because we were all mates, it was nice for us to get together.

And, basically, because of Jethro Tull I was in a better situation, financially. My ex-wife, Christine, and myself – we thought it would be nice to keep the band going, even just for a reunion. So, we would plan these things at Cropredy. And we started a little label, Woodworm Records in order to put out our own product and to put out stuff by people who we thought were really good – like we put out an album with Steve Ashley called the Family Album, which is one of my favourite albums. And we made albums with Beryl Marriott and, later on, with Anna Ryder, and Bob Fox. And with Simon Nicol we did two of Simon’s. This was all due, thankfully, to Jethro Tull. Ian [Anderson] and Martin [Barre] kind of adopted me and invited me to join the band and looked after me, financially. So instead of buying a Rolls Royce, I converted a Methodist Chapel – an old chapel next to our cottage in Barford St Michael – into a studio in order that we could make our albums.

In the Fairport book I think you talk about it being a hobby that got out of hand.

Yeah, it did get a bit out of hand (laughs) but it paid off in terms of having a facility where we could all make albums and we could rehearse at. In fact, it’s still a great studio, Woodworm. We’re there in a couple of weeks rehearsing for our tour. And we do record there still. Stuart [Jones] who runs it, the investment that he’s put into it is something that I couldn’t have done. Everything got kind of out of hand in terms of the cost of doing stuff and a lot of studios closed down. Basically, because of the invention of the laptop! And things like Garageband [software app]. My laptop that I’m looking at now seeing your face on it, has more equipment on and is a better studio than my studio in Barford St Michael that was. If only I knew how to operate it!

Primitive though the technology was at that time, it clearly provided, along with the festival, the foundation for the rebirth of the band.

Exactly, yeah. It was brilliant and the album, Gladys’s Leap – we’re looking at a few tracks that we haven’t played for years on this upcoming tour. It’s great for us. And it’s great having Dave Mattacks back on the tour because he comes all the way from America and the Gladys’s Leap album was such an important step in the reformation of Fairport Convention.

And another question on Cropredy before we move on to this tour. To keep the festival viable, you’ve made some changes. It’s funny because there was a group of us sitting in the camping field at Cropredy last August discussing this very thing and we all agreed that to keep the festival financially viable you’d have to downsize so you weren’t tearing your hair out about whether you’d get the numbers each year. And that seems to be what you’ve done, pretty much.

Well, luckily, Gareth Williams our CEO came up with several formulas for trying to make it pay. It’s always been such a gamble, the last couple of years especially. Because when you don’t know how many tickets you are going to sell, you can’t budget. You’re guessing about the number of people who are going to turn up. Gareth’s idea – we’re only going to sell 6,500 tickets and we’re only selling three-day tickets. Because we know we’ve got that lump of income and we can budget accordingly without the risk of going bankrupt. What happens to a lot of festivals is they overspend. Stuff like building the site at Cropredy is the most expensive aspect of our festival because you’re building a town in the middle of nowhere. There’s no electricity, there’s no water, there’s nothing. You’re putting everything on that site and as the years go by, it gets more and more expensive. And we could no longer risk it. We didn’t want to go bankrupt and it happens so easily and it’s happened to so many other festivals. The price of just the actual infrastructure for all these events went up so much. It went up like 30% over the space of a year and that’s why a lot of these festivals went down. And also, the fact that to get kind of headline acts is an absolute fortune nowadays. Little festivals like Cropredy can’t attract huge names.

So, we won’t be seeing the Alice Coopers any more but you’ve still got a fantastic line-up within the budget constraints. Within the world that you operate, you’ve got a fantastic line-up.

It’s a fantastic line-up and it’s a line-up of people that want to play at Cropredy and people that we want to see at Cropredy… But we’ve been very lucky that we’ve had people like Brian Wilson, for example, at the end of a European bash. Alice, for example, said Cropredy was the best audience he’d played to in Europe. But looking at it from a pure economical point of view, we can’t run the risk of doing that. So, what we’ve done now is rationalised things. Only doing the three-day ticket, which some people will complain about  because some people only want to go for one day. It’s a shame but we’ve designed the festival for the people who’ve been with us over all those years, who come for three days, who come for the fact that Cropredy means a lot more to them than having a huge act on that’s probably their only chance to see. And we’ve put acts on that we think are really good.

I think it’s reassuring because we’ve got happy memories of your flirtation with the big league, with acts like Alice Cooper or Chic or whatever. But at the same time, we’ve got that reassurance that we know the festival can go ahead and it’s not going to go bankrupt.

Yeah, that’s it. It’s the only way that we could carry on. It’s a kind of test year this year because if it works, we’ve got a formula that we can kind of stick to. It’s adaptable. We may be proved wrong. There might be such a swell of people wanting to come. Last year we sold something like 9,700 tickets which was 2,000 less than the year before. Cropredy, it’s like a mature kind of crowd you get there with all due respect. A lot of them are ageing. They don’t want to camp any more. They enjoy the glamping and a lot of them have got motor homes or caravans. That’s great. But there are very few hotels about available nowadays and a lot of people think twice before taking a bivouac out and roughing it in the field. Although as we all know, Darren, the weather’s always perfect at Cropredy!

We’ve never had any rain! The sun’s never been too hot!

I think we’re going to have a fantastic year and I’m really pleased about the line-up. There isn’t a bad act on it and I’m so pleased that we’ve got Albert Lee because we’ve been trying to get Albert for years. And Martin Barre coming back – Martin is a great guitarist. And we’ve got Deborah Bonham – I love Deborah’s singing. The Churchfitters are coming back. And Trevor Horn’s coming back. We missed him last year because he was poorly and he had to cancel so it’s great having Trevor back.

I think that within the financial constraints that you’re operating in, it’s still a fantastically diverse line-up which has some of the folky elements and some of the classic rock elements and I’ve always liked that mix. You’ve still managed to maintain that.

Yeah, the diversity musically is one of the attractions of Cropredy, I think, because it’s not all folkie and it never has been because we’ve always had a real mix of music, like reggae, rock. We’ve never really had punk bands but we’ve had some very diverse kinds of music on there – and that will always be. The criterion is whether we think the acts that we book musically fit the bill. If the bands are all really good, the only people that suffer are us because we have to follow them all. It’s not funny. Two years running I’ve sat out in the field and I’ve watched and I’ve thought, “This is fantastic. The sound’s great, the screens, you can see everything, you don’t have to move, the bar’s only like a minute’s walk away and everybody’s so friendly and having a great time.” And then when it comes to Saturday night, I’m like, “Oh hang on, we’re on now. We’ve got to follow that lot!” It’s not easy. There’s a lot of nerves when we get up on that stage, because we play for about three hours.

In fact, this year’s going to be really fun for us because when we open on Thursday, we do our twenty-minute acoustic spot. We do Chris’s song the ‘Festival Bell’ and then we’re going to be joined by Joe Broughton’s Folk Ensemble. So, fifty students from Birmingham Conservatoire who are monster players and we’re going to do the biggest version of the ‘Lark in The Morning’ medley from Liege & Lief. Which should hopefully set the mood for the rest of the weekend.

Let’s move on to the tour then. What do you want to tell us about the Winter tour, starting 31 January?

I think we’ve got 27 dates altogether. We try and cover the whole country. We start off in Nottingham and we finish up in Tewkesbury. We’ve only got one Scottish date, although it’s great to be in Edinburgh. It’s nearly sold out. The tickets are going really well which is great. And we still enjoy touring enormously and treading the boards has always been what Fairport is good at. We’ve had more success playing live than we’ve had making albums.

Thinking back to when you first joined it must fill you with a certain sense of pride, knowing you’ve helped keep the show on the road all these years. In spite of all the problems in the festival industry, in spite of, sadly, former members no longer being with us, you’re still getting out there. It must give you a certain sense of satisfaction when you’re about to head out on tour again.

Absolutely. It’s great to get in the van. Getting in the van is easier than getting out of it. We’re banned from making pain noises now when we get out the van. But, Darren, I can assure you, I’m really ready to get in the van again and get ready to go out on the road. All I’ve got to do is learn two hours of music! Or re-learn. You think, “Oh I know all that stuff. I’ve played it hundreds of times.” And then you go, “Oh-oh”. We might be doing ‘The Lass from Hexhamshire’. We actually play in Hexham – on Valentine’s night – so it will be a great opportunity to get that song in the set – but, of course, we’ve got to learn it. And it’s quite a complicated arrangement from what I can remember. So that’s this afternoon’s work. I’ve lit the fire here because it’s really soggy and cold in Brittany so that’s my afternoon – learning the set.

Well good luck with the preparations and I look forward to seeing you at Union Chapel.

Tour dates:

January
31st Nottingham – Playhouse

February
1st Edinburgh – The Queen’s Hall,
2nd Alnwick – Alnwick Playhouse
4th Milton Keynes
5th Southend – Palace Theatre
6th Bury St Edmunds – The Apex
7th Canterbury – Colyer Fergusson Hall
8th Farnham – Farnham Maltings
9th Worthing – Connaught Theatre
11th Wakefield – Theatre Royal
12th Newcastle under Lyme – New Vic Theatre
13th Manchester – RNCM – Royal Northern College of Music
14th Hexham – Queen’s Hall Arts
15th Colne – The Muni Theatre
16th Lytham St Annes – The Lowther Pavilion
18th Lincoln – The Drill
19th Sunderland – The Fire Station
20th Leamington Spa – Royal Spa Centre
21st Harpenden – The Eric Morecambe Centre
22nd London – Union Chapel
23rd Corby – The Core Theatre
25th Swansea – Taliesin Arts Centre
26th Exeter – Corn Exchange
27th Southampton – Turner Sims
28th Bath – The Forum

March
1st Bridgnorth – Castle Hall
2nd Tewkesbury – Roses Theatre

Tickets via: https://www.fairportconvention.com/

Related posts:

Interview with Fairport Convention’s Ric Sanders

Interview with Simon Nicol 2024

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2024

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2023

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2022

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Fairport Convention at Bexhill 2020

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2018

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2017

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘Come All Ye: The First Ten Years’

Fairport Convention – 50th anniversary gig at Union Chapel 2017

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2014

Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2014

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2024

Folk music, Live reviews, Rock music, , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been responsible for herding a fluid and evolving group of friends, family members and friends of friends to attend Fairport’s Cropredy Convention for some fourteen years now. Looking for somewhere to rendezvous that very first time back in 2010 (in order that we could all drive in together and camp next to one another) we happened across a layby in Banbury. Now, every year without fail in the days leading up to Cropredy I start getting text messages from various people in various parts of the country asking me where the layby is. I can never remember so every year without fail I end up visiting a dogging website to get the name, postcode and exact location so people can programme it into their satnavs.

So it was that this year (after numerous texts and checking out the dogging website once again) three cars, a caravan and a campervan all assembled punctually in said layby ready to enjoy another Cropredy weekend of fun, friendship and fantastic music.

Our Cropredy camping group this year – Photo credit: a friendly Cropredy punter

Day one: Thursday

As is now traditional, Fairport Convention opened proceedings with a short acoustic set. It still seems slightly unreal not seeing Gerry Conway’s beaming face alongside the rest of the band. Even though he’s been succeeded by long-time Fairport legend, Dave Mattacks, my years of following the band live had all been in the Gerry era so his retirement in 2022 and tragic death in March this year came as a real shock. He will be greatly missed.

Feast of Fiddles followed, always a great festival folk band and always a delight. Much as I wanted to see Kathryn Tickell and the Darkening, however, a combination of rain, cider and lack of sleep sent me back to the campsite for a snooze so I could be match-fit ready for Rick Wakeman’s set. What turned out to be an extended snooze meant I missed all of Tony Christe’s set, too, but I’m told he went down really well.

Rick Wakeman, on the other hand, I certainly did not want to miss. Performing the whole of his 1974 concept album, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, based on Jules Verne’s 1864 science fiction novel, it’s a masterclass in showing that while prog can be bombastic, over the top and full of itself, with Rick Wakeman at the helm it need ever, ever, ever be boring. It was brilliantly entertaining and something of a family affair for retro rock, with Wakeman’s own son, Adam, on keyboards, the son of Fairport’s Dave Pegg, Matt Pegg, on bass, and the daughter of Humble Pie’s Steve Marriott, Mollie Marriott, as one of the two female lead vocalists.  Wonderful stuff and one of the real highlights of the weekend for me.

Rick Wakeman and son Adam. Photo Credit: Simon Putman

Day two: Friday

As the sun shone down for the start of a very hot afternoon, things kicked off on the Friday with folk punk outfit Black Water County. Not a band I had seen before but I’m pretty familiar with the genre, having seen the likes of Ferocious Dog and legendary local band here in Hastings, Matilda’s Scoundrels, who they very much reminded me of. Highly entertaining, I’ll definitely be up for seeing them again if they ever play down my way.

Cropredy village – Photo Credit: Simon Putman

The rest of the afternoon’s line-up looked very tempting indeed for a fan of folk rock and classic rock like myself. But I’d already agreed to have a wander around the village with one of our party and then check out Cream of the Crop, the boutique festival in the field next door which these days runs parallel to the main Cropredy event every August. We arrived just in time to catch the last part of the set from my old friends, Parkbridge, including a storming cover of Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’.

Parkbridge at Cream of the Crop. Photo Credit: Simon Putman

It was then back to the main stage in time for Swedish banjo trio, Baskery and bluesy Americana singer-songwriter, Elles Bailey, both of whom went down well. Then it was back to the campsite for pot noodles, some chill time and putting on some warmer clothes ready for a late night with Richard Thompson. We arrived back at the main stage just in time to see Spooky Men’s Chorale, a sprawling choral ensemble I’d heard lots of people speak very favourably of but who I knew next to nothing about. I’m not sure I’d sit at home listening to one of their albums (they are now on to their sixth apparently) but they make for a superb festival act with a mix of deadpan humour, melancholy ballads and anthemic covers.

Elles Bailey up on the big screen. Photo Credit: Simon Putman

Richard Thompson, on the other hand, I knew exactly what to expect and he didn’t disappoint. Launching straight into a plethora of RT classics, just him and his acoustic guitar and some mind-blowingly stupendous finger-work, it was precisely what I’d been looking forward to all day. Around two-thirds of the way through his slot, sundry Fairporters joined him on stage for an electric set and he dazzled us all over again.

I did, however, start to see a lot of people leaving during Richard Thompson’s set. I don’t think this was any reflection on the performance whatsoever. Indeed, I suspect many of those leaving were actually long-term Richard Thompson fans. I believe it’s got far more to do with the timing. Given an aging demographic among long-term Fairport devotees, and given even second and third generation attendees may have young kids or grandkids to put to bed, it may be time for the organisers to think about putting the headliners in the penultimate slot, when they can be guaranteed maximum attendance, and having an inexpensive late-night party band in the final slot for the remaining revellers to party the night away. I’ve seen other festivals do this and it works a treat.

Richard Thompson. Photo Credit: Darren Johnson

Day three: Saturday

Following a fascinating talk by legendary 60s producer and the man who discovered Fairport, Joe Boyd, folk-singer-cum-funnyman and inciter of mass outbreaks of Morris dancing, Richard Digance once again formally opened proceedings on the Saturday. Sometimes I find his songs a little bit twee and sentimental and the nostalgia is certainly laid on with a trowel – but I wouldn’t miss the now-infamous communal hanky-waving routine for the world.

Richard Digance and a mass Morris Dance. Photo credit: Simon Putman

Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage, Zac Schulz Gang and Ranagri all put in sterling performances. Focus was one of the bands I’d been really looking forward to seeing on the Cropredy stage, however. I’d seen them before at classic rock festivals and will admit to approaching them slightly tongue-in-cheek, gleefully dancing around like an idiot to ‘Hocus Pocus’, channeling my inner Neil from the Young Ones persona and not taking them entirely seriously. Here, the atmosphere was markedly different and the audience really seemed to get Focus and really absorb the band’s extended prog masterpieces. As keyboardist, vocalist, flautist and founder member, Thijs van Leer, said at the end, the band felt “truly at home here in this beautiful field.” Perfect.

An appreciative Cropredy crowd for Focus. Photo Credit: Darren Johnson

I can’t do a full twelve-hour shift in the main field without some chill-time back at the tent before returning for the evening headliners. Normally, it’s fairly easy. I find someone I’m not too bothered about (or ideally someone I really can’t stand at all) who’s on the bill around teatime and time my break for then. This year it was an impossible choice. I wanted to see everyone. Unfortunately, Eddie Reader got the short straw. I love her music and have seen her live several times but I really didn’t want to miss Focus and I didn’t want to miss the special guest slot just in case I missed someone really… special.

There had been quite a bit of speculation within our camping group about the identity of the ‘Special Surprise Guest’. It would have to be someone who was mates with the band and was willing to perform for free, it would have to be someone who was reasonably well-known and it would have to be someone who was still alive. That narrowed it down quite a bit and we were left with a potential shortlist of Robert Plant, Jasper Carrott or Ralph McTell.

After our little break back at the campsite we headed back to the main arena. I was hoping for Robert Plant but expecting Jasper Carrot. I wasn’t wrong. I have huge admiration for him performing gratis as a way of helping ensure Cropredy’s financial viability at an increasingly fraught time for the festival sector. But his humour seemed very dated and his routine was not exactly up to the minute: jokes about Covid and the US presidential election which would have hit the spot when Biden was still in the race but made little sense now Kamala Harris is running. I should have trusted my instincts and stayed for Eddie Reader and given Carrott a miss.

Fairport’s Chris Leslie. Photo Credit: Simon Putman

It was wonderful to see Fairport Convention take the stage to round off another successful Cropredy though. My one niggle is that there did seem rather a lot of Chris Leslie-penned songs in the set-list and not nearly enough by Richard Thompson, Dave Swarbrick or Sandy Denny songs. We did get some wonderful Ralph McTell material though, including stunning renditions of ‘The Hiring Fair’ and ‘Red and Gold’, the latter performed by the man himself with some wonderful accompaniment from Anna Ryder, Hannah Sanders, Michelle Plum and Ed Whitcombe. As things drew to a close with the familiar rendition of ‘Matty Groves’ prior to ‘Meet On The Ledge’ Simon Nicol confirmed that he’d been given permission by the ‘powers that be’ to throw in his usual ‘same time next year?’ invite, in spite of the festival’s future looking extremely precarious earlier this year.

Phew! It will be going ahead in 2025 then. I’ll be there…

Fairport Convention at Cropredy. Photo Credit: Simon Putman

Related posts:

Interview with Simon Nicol 2024

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2023

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2022

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Fairport Convention at Bexhill 2020

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2018

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2017

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘Come All Ye: The First Ten Years’

Fairport Convention – 50th anniversary gig at Union Chapel 2017

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2014

Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2014

Interview with Fairport Convention’s Simon Nicol

Folk music, Interviews, Music news, Rock music, , , , , ,

Ahead of Fairport Convention’s 2024 Winter Tour, starting in February, I catch up with Simon Nicol. We discuss Dave Mattacks’ return to the Fairport fold, the forthcoming tour, this Summer’s Cropredy and why he won’t be retiring any time soon.

So you’re obviously looking forward to the Winter Tour then which starts early next month. What can fans expect this time?

Well, for those who didn’t catch DM (Dave Mattacks) with us last year, you’re in for a different kind of musical experience than the last twenty-five years with Gerry. That’s one thing. But the other thing that’s happened with DM, it’s not just the style of playing, it’s the way it’s easily opened up a lot of the repertoire that Peggy and I, and Ric, and DM kind of all know. Because that line-up from ‘85 to ’98, when DM moved over to America, created a lot of its own material. But, of course, Ric was easily able to adapt to much earlier material so it’s really only a case of Ric and Chris now having to learn old stuff if we want to go back to the early days of when Peggy joined. It’s suddenly opened up a huge tranche of the back catalogue which, I’m happy to say, we’re having a look at this year. We’ve been dusting off the old LPs and we’ve found some things that have never really been in the repertoire at all. So it’s going to be an adventure for us and a real voyage of discovery for some of the older – well the more mature members of our audience who perhaps remember us from college days and are now in retirement. They’ll be hearing some stuff that they haven’t heard for decades. And a lot of that will be brand-spanking-new for newbies.

Excellent. So there’s going to be quite a few surprises, then?

Yeah! I hope so! All good ones. You say it’s quite soon but I’ve got a daunting number of things to do before we all actually get together and start practicing under the one roof. Because we all live miles apart. Peggy’s in France when he’s not in this country, he’s over there. DM, obviously, he only comes over a few days before from Boston. I live down in East Kent. So we don’t actually see each other very much considering we’re kind of based in north Oxfordshire.

Has it all slotted in place, in terms of working together. Does it feel very comfortable having Dave Mattacks back?

Yes. We’re used to planning a repertoire in this way. There’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and discussions on the phone and WhatsApp groups, where we chew the fat. And then people go off and listen to the songs in question and we end up with a big rag-bag, a bucket of songs if you will. And Chris is the clever one. He sits down and tries to work it out – “Let’s put this one here. Let’s put that one there.” And then there aren’t too many instrument changes and not too many things in the same key and a bit of a rise and fall to the shape of the two sets.

Yeah, we’re very much looking forward to it and we’re used to working that way so when the time comes and we get together in the studio for the rehearsals – two days of that – everybody’s on the same page and there’s not much to be worked out. Just – “Does this still work in this key?” That’s one of the big questions (laughs) because obviously voices and so forth change.

Voices change over the decades! And talking of Dave Mattacks coming back, you never seem to have suffered the sort of rancour with former members that have often bedevilled other bands. That seems to suggest that Fairport Convention has always been a relatively happy working environment. Is that true?

Well, it’s many things. It’s a band. It’s an environment. It’s a family in many ways. I’m closer to the guys I’ve been working with for fifty years than I am to my own immediate family really – I spend more time with them! Been through more adventures! It’s been said before but no-one gets out of Fairport alive. You may stop coming to the gigs but, you know, underneath it all, if you scratch deeply enough do they not bleed Fairport?

So you’ve never really had any of those Noel and Liam Gallagher moments?

Oh.. well. Obviously there are hearty and firm disagreements occasionally and there have been moments when you haven’t spoken to people but there’s a parallel there going back to the family thing or in any small office. Occasionally there’ll be frictions but basically, if you’re a band and a band-member kind of person, I don’t get it. If you’re at daggers drawn and you don’t cut each other slack all the time then you’re probably in the wrong band. You’re probably working with the wrong collection of people because you’re just making life unpleasant for yourself.

Yes, it seems an incredibly sensible philosophy but it seems to evade quite a few bands.

Well I think there’s the famous difficulties which brothers always have when they form groups. There never seems to be a seamless happy bunch of brothers. I mean the Finn Brothers seem to do ok but what do we know about their.. they just make wonderful records. But the Kinks were at it when they were kids. And the Gallaghers dear oh dear. And even the Everlys used to travel to gigs separately and have their own managers and their own lawyers. They would talk to each other through their lawyers and they’d come on to the stage. One time I saw them they came on from different sides and when they went off they didn’t look at each other and they walked off separately…

So Fairport’s a largely happy family rather than a dysfunctional one then..

I don’t want to be all Pollyanna-ish about it but, you know, I think we’re all cutting each other slack all the time and happy to do so.

And moving on, from Fairport Convention’s vast back-catalogue, what album are you most proud of?

Oh God, I don’t know. It’s that favourite child question again isn’t it? I think it’s more of a repertoire to me. A performance on one album enshrines a particular place and a time and a collection of people at that point in their lives. But, you know, we’ve had ‘Crazy Man Michael’ in the repertoire, along with ‘Matty Groves’, since they first surfaced on Liege & Lief in 1969 and I don’t think there’s a definitive version of either of those songs. Certainly, there isn’t in my head when I go to sing that song. If I see it on the list and it’s coming up, I’m not thinking, “Oh, the definitive version of this was recorded on this particular album. This is what I’m going to try and emulate now and try and make it as close to that as possible.” You now, I’m not a human juke-box and the band doesn’t feel like that. We’ve got this song. We all know where it starts and finishes, what key it’s in, what tempo it is. And on the count of four, we’ll start playing it and what comes out that night will be tonight’s performance. It’ll have the same structure as last night’s performance but it’s not the same song. Because my mind will be somewhere else in this song. The person standing next to me playing will be on their own little passage from note one ‘til the end. And I’m sure it’s the same with actors. They perform the same play every night but every night is a first night for that play and that song because it’s a performance.

Fairport Convention’s second album where ‘Meet On The Ledge’ first appeared

Even ‘Meet On The Ledge’ – probably your most well-known song from the live repertoire – that’s evolved massively over the years from the quite gentle and understated song when it first appeared to the rousing anthem for live performance now.

That’s right. It was just a ‘no-big-deal’ song on the second album. It was tucked away on Side Two, Track 4 which is a bit of a graveyard slot for most songs. It wasn’t what you heard when you dropped the needle but it has grown in the telling. It’s a song that’s grown in the telling and it’s acquired more reasons to perform it every year. And I know it means the world to people at Cropredy when we come to it – and not just because we can all go home soon! But because of what it’s come to mean to all the people who are there.

Yeah, it’s gathered extra meaning along the way for the audience and gathered more and more meaning over the years.

You also recently announced the final line-up for Cropredy this year. What are you most looking forward to? (apart from your own set of course!)

That’s another bit of a favourite child isn’t it! I’m looking forward to seeing the reactions of the audience who, implicitly, trust our judgement in selecting the bill and you always get the positive feedback and you always get… it’s a bit like TripAdvisor. You hear the best reviews and you hear the worst ones, you know? And you have to disregard the complete outliers because those aren’t a good ship to follow. And some acts you just know are nailed-on. They’re going to be an absolute banker in terms of the reaction. People’s response to them is just.. that’s why you book them. They’re a certainty. But the funnest acts or the ones that create the most warm feelings at my time of life are the ones that are largely unknown or perhaps under-exposed to the audience. And they go on and they’ve got this huge stage, this wonderful setting to perform to and an audience which is trusting and agog and waiting to be entertained. And you put somebody that’s not had a go before or maybe only has a hundred-and-fifty friends in the audience and then ten minutes later they’ve got the whole audience. Ten thousand new best friends! And that’s a wonderful feeling. And I can think of the Travelling Band having that experience happening to them and, of course, the Pierce Brothers

The Pierce Brothers, they were incredible.

If you weren’t there, I feel sorry for you!

I’d actually seen them, I think a week or so before at Womad and they were just on a small stage with maybe a hundred or so people and I thought, “There are going to go down pretty well at Cropredy.” But yeah it was just incredible.

They went down so well we booked them the next year which is, you know, an absolutely unique experience. Buy yeah, that’s like if you go back to last year for instance, we knew that Chic would be an absolutely 24-carrat performance. But what surprised me was the act before them. Because Toyah and Robert (Fripp) were a little bit of an unknown quantity. You had no idea what their repertoire would be derived from and then they came on and they just tore the place up. It started with ‘Paranoid’ I think, just the set-list from heaven and the performance was just… everything was turned up to the right level and it just absolutely cooked. So I had that same experience. I knew it was going to be ok. It might be great but it was better than both.

This year though, we’ve got some unexpected people, unknowns. And I can tell that you know the Spooky Men’s Chorale. I think that they are going to surprise a lot of people who wouldn’t have come upon them. And they’re so different. What they do is just absolutely heart-stoppingly beautiful and so funny and so moving and you can get all of that in the space of about ten seconds. He’s a brilliant showman, Steve, and I’m really pleased we managed to get them.  

Photo credit: Simon Putman

Other bands have run their own festivals over the years. The Levellers have been doing Beautiful Days for about 20 years I think, but I can’t think of a single one that’s lasted anywhere near as long as Cropredy. What do you think the secret is?

I don’t know but if I could put it in a bottle I could sell it. No, it’s great and all festivals have to confront the same logistical situations. The same questions have to be answered in many different ways. But there are more questions that set Cropredy apart really than make easy parallels with other festivals. It’s just the way it’s grown out of something that was in the village. It wasn’t started as a commercial thing. It literally was the village hall committee asking us if we’d perform for them after the village fete. So it got it’s roots down deep into the heart of the village at the very beginning rather than being something that was imposed on the village. So it’s always been welcomed and enabled by everybody in that postcode. And the fact it’s just grown little by little, almost just incrementally.

Photo credit: Simon Putman

A big change was going from the one day, the Saturday thing, to incorporate the Friday. And that happened after quite a while and it was just such an obvious thing to do. It didn’t feel that weird because people were camping anyway in advance of it. Similarly, we moved again, changed it into a three-day festival but instead of incorporating a Sunday, we thought we’d go back again and bring people to the village a little early and everyone gets a relaxing free day to go home on the Sunday. Most festivals end on the Sunday night and there’s definitely a different feeling from ending a festival on a Sunday morning. That’s one thing that makes it stand out. And the fact that we’ve always tried to look at it as a punter would. You know, your experience from arriving. You see some festivals where people have to go and park half a mile west from the village and then they have to carry everything to a campsite a mile-and-a-half the other side of the village. Whereas at Cropredy we’ve got enough land to play with and the right size, with the smaller number of people attending. It means people can actually camp next to their car. But it’s just a practical thing like that. And because we wouldn’t want to stumble around on an unlit road, we light the village. We put our own lighting in because it’s safer and it’s practical. And road closures and things like that, we try to make it as good an all-round experience as we can.

Indeed, I’ve been going for years but I went with a friend who had not only never been to Cropredy but had never been to a festival before. I think this was two years ago, the first one after Covid. And he’d done loads and loads of camping so he knew campsites inside out and the drill with that but he’d never been to a festival before and he was like, “Oh, it’s really well-organised. It’s not what I was expecting at all. It’s like proper camping!”

Well, you can always improve things so every time you try and tweak things. The glamping has really taken off. So every year we expand that and it still sells out immediately, however many tents we put up. Because I suppose the demographic is not getting any younger, same as the band. So yeah, we try and make things comfortable but, you know, if you change anything in a way that’s noticeable there’ll be uproar! It’s like tinkering with the broadcast time of The Archers. You can’t do it quietly!

Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg up on the big screen (Photo: Simon Putman)

Wonderful. Is there anything else you want to tell us, ahead of the tour and ahead of Cropredy?

You can just take it from me that I appreciate every tour more as I get older. And I look forward to every Cropredy more and more. But after the two lockdown years, the two missed Cropredies, that period of enforced retirement made me value all the more what this band and this lifestyle and this business, this fellowship of people, has given me. And if I was ever thinking of retiring, making a choice to step away, that thought was sent to the bottom of Davey Jones’ locker big time. Because I would just miss it so much. And I love what I do and I love the people I work with and I’m so grateful for the opportunity when I wake up every morning and I can wriggle my toes and fingers and look forward to the van pulling up then it’s alright with me.

Fairport Convention’s Winter Tour begins on 6th February 2024

Tickets: https://www.fairportconvention.com/

Related posts:

Interview with Dave Pegg

Interview with Ric Sanders

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2023

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2022

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Fairport Convention at Bexhill 2020

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2018

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2017

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘Come All Ye: The First Ten Years’

Fairport Convention – 50th anniversary gig at Union Chapel 2017

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2014

Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2014

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘What We Did On Our Saturday’

2023 in Darren’s music blog – the ten most popular posts of the year

Folk music, Interviews, Live reviews, Music culture & history, Rock music, , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Happy New Year to one and all. My thanks to everyone who has visited Darren’s music blog during 2023. As usual an eclectic mix of musical genres feature in this year’s top ten most viewed posts of the year – from blues to classic rock, to prog, to goth, to punk, to new wave, to folk – and much more in between! Here’s to 2024 which will mark ten years since I first started this blog back in March 2014.

1. So farewell to Butlin’s Rock & Blues weekends, Skegness 13-15 January 2023

For more than a decade an out-of-season trip to Butlins has been a fixture in my diary at least once each year: numerous trips to Minehead for the Giants Of Rock weekends, several trips to Skegness for the Great British Folk Festival and a handful of additional trips to the same resort for the Rock & Blues weekends. But now it was finally all coming to an end. My review of the final ever Rock & Blues weekend.

Read full review here

2. Live review: Francis Rossi – ‘Tunes & Chat’ at White Rock Theatre, Hastings 3/6/23

Always quite a Quo fan since being a young teenager, I’d originally booked to see Francis Rossi on his ‘I Talk Too Much Tour’ back in 2020. Covid came along and that got rescheduled and then cancelled altogether but Rossi finally made it to Hastings’ White Rock Theatre on his follow-up tour, ‘Tunes and Chat’.

Read full review here

3. Goth without the gloomy bits: five cheerful, upbeat and joy-inducing songs by goth bands

My affectionate but somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at some of my favourite tunes from goth bands. Features Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cult, Sisters of Mercy and The Cure.

Read full post here

4. Live review: Steeleye Span at the Old Market, Brighton & Hove 23/11/23

This tour saw Steeleye Span promoting a new album The Green Man Collection. The band revisit some of their past material with a mixture of songs written by members of the band at the time and some traditional numbers. The new album also includes a newly-composed song from Maddy Prior, a couple of well-chosen covers and something that was written for the band by (the sadly now recently deceased) Bob Johnson back in the ‘80s, committed to tape and then completely forgotten about for the next four decades.

Read full post here

5. Notes from the Lust For Life Tour – Feb/Mar 2023

The Lust For Life tour brought together Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop), Clem Burke (Blondie, Iggy Pop), Katie Puckrik (Pet Shop Boys, Sparks), Kevin Armstrong (Iggy Pop, David Bowie), Luis Correia (Earl Slick) and Florence Sabeva (Heaven 17). Having had the immense privilege of spending the past few months working on the PR campaign for the tour it was a joy to finally witness the band live, not just in a professional capacity but most importantly as a fan, of both that glorious Iggy Pop album and of the individual players in the band, too. The band are back for a new tour in Feb/March 2024.

Read full post here

6. Live review: Graham Nash at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill 30/8/23

Billed as ‘Sixty Years of Songs & Stories’ the ten-date UK tour celebrated Graham Nash’s six decades of writing, recording and performing. I’m aware of his hits with The Hollies in the early days, of course, and (courtesy of a couple of compilations) I’m also pretty familiar with some of the best-known songs by both Crosby, Still & Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I can’t claim to have followed his solo career in any great depth but, nevertheless, I felt confident that this tour was going to be something rather special and something I didn’t want to miss.

Read full review here

7. Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2023

Following an enforced two-year break due to Covid, going to last year’s Cropredy festival almost felt like a novelty. This year, though, it very much felt like being part of an annual fixture once more, the two-year gap now but a distant memory. With various combinations of friends and family over the years, I’ve been going to Fairport Convention’s annual bash in rural Oxfordshire since 2010 so it’s been part of my summer for a good chunk of my life now.

Read full review here

8. Live review: Iggy Pop, Blondie, Generation Sex, Stiff Little Fingers & Buzzcocks at Crystal Palace Park 1/7/23

One thing I like about the music scene these days is how much less tribal it all is compared to when I was a teenager. The intense rivalry between punks and metalheads has certainly dissipated since I was at school in the late 70s and early 80s. The passage of time, for many of us, has led to a much broader appreciation of rock and roll in all its many guises. As a teen, I was firmly in the hard rock/metal camp rather than the punk/new wave camp but looking around at those attending what has been billed Dog Day Afternoon today, there doesn’t look to be much difference in appearance between all the crop-haired, ageing punk fans clad in regulation khaki shorts and black T-shirts and all the crop-haired, ageing metal fans clad in regulation khaki shorts and black T-shirts.

Read full review here

9. Absolute Beginner: Interview with Bowie/Iggy guitarist Kevin Armstrong

Kevin Armstrong has played alongside icons like David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Thomas Dolby, Sinéad O’Connor and many others. We catch up to talk about his forthcoming autobiography Absolute Beginner which came out in October; as well as the Lust For Life project which has brought together the likes of Clem Burke, Glen Matlock and Katie Puckrik to celebrate the classic Iggy album; plus our mutual love of the live music scene down here in Hastings.

Read full interview here

10. Live review: John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest at Salle Pleyel, Paris 19/11/23

I was fairly late coming to Barclay James Harvest. I was aware of the likes of ‘Mocking Bird’, of course, but picked up a second-hand compilation from a charity shop in about 2019 and my fasciation grew from there. By the time lockdown came, I found myself tracking down the band’s entire back catalogue on ebay. When I saw that John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest were doing their final tour I decided I just had to be there. With only one remaining UK date I wasn’t particularly keen on a trek all the way up to Huddersfield from my home in Hastings and so I hit on the idea of a trip to Paris. I could meet up with friends and make a long weekend of it.

Read full review here

2022 in Darren’s music blog

2021 in Darren’s music blog

2020 in Darren’s music blog

2019 in Darren’s music blog

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2023

Folk music, Live reviews, Rock music, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Following an enforced two-year break due to Covid, going to last year’s Cropredy festival almost felt like a novelty. This year, though, it very much felt like being part of an annual fixture once more, the two-year gap now but a distant memory. With various combinations of friends and family over the years, I’ve been going to Fairport Convention’s annual bash in rural Oxfordshire since 2010 so it’s been part of my summer for a good chunk of my life now.

Day One – Thursday

As usual, Fairport Convention opened the festival with a short acoustic set, Dave Mattacks now returning to the band he’s been in and out of since 1969 in order to take the place of Gerry Conway (who departed last year). As is now traditional, the band opened with Chris Leslie’s ‘Festival Bell’ timed to coincide with the ringing of the church bells over in the village (although even after all these years I’ve never actually managed to hear the ringing from the festival arena).

Chris Leslie up on the big screen for Fairport’s acoustic set (Photo: Simon Putman)

It was then straight into a blistering set from Merry Hell. The Wigan-based folk rockers have been frequent performers at the ‘Festival Fringe’ in the village of Cropredy but until now had never actually performed on the main stage. Formed back in 2010 out of the ashes of ‘folk-punk’ band, the Tansads, they’ve now put out six studio albums and released a double-disc best-of compilation earlier this year, a number of the songs from which they performed as part of their Cropredy set here. The band certainly know how to turn out a rousing anthem and many of the songs have a theme of communal togetherness (‘We Are Different We Are One’, ‘Lean On Me Love’, ‘Come On England’, ‘We Need Each Other Now’). More recently there’s been an additional (and very welcome) focus on environmental themes, represented today by ‘Leave It In The Ground’ and Greta Thunberg tribute, ‘Sister Atlas’. I suspect many Cropredy-goers will already have been very familiar with the band but they are sure to have won over many new fans this weekend.

Merry Hell’s John Kettle (Photo: Simon Putman)

Damian Wilson & Adam Wakeman were an entertaining duo, largely performing the latter’s songs rather than material from the more proggy or heavy metal-oriented parts of Wakeman’s past CV. However, by far the standout moment for me was their rendition of Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ which Wakeman’s father so memorably played piano on. Maybe it was just that I’d reached that time of the evening where I just wanted a succession of sing-along-to-every-word rock covers. Which was very fortunate indeed as soon it would be time for Toyah and Robert…

Fresh from the success of their Sunday lunchtime YouTube performances which became an unexpected lockdown hit, Toyah Wilcox and Robert Fripp made a surprise guest appearance last year as part of Trevor Horn’s set. This year they are back in their own right. Who could have guessed that an ’80s pop icon and her prog-rock-royalty husband would make such a fantastically entertaining duo. Blasting out one rock classic after another (‘Paranoid’, ‘Kashmir’, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, Sharped Dressed Man’…) as well as Toyah’s own ‘I Wanna Be Free’ and ‘It’s A Mystery’ it was utterly, utterly joyful.

Welcome to Cropredy festival (Photo: Simon Putman)

From being a young teenage heavy metal fan my musical tastes have certainly broadened over the years to incorporate so many additional genres: from folk to blues to country to prog to reggae to punk and much. much more besides. Would Nile Rodgers & Chic be a step too far, however? When the disco craze was in full swing at the end of the ’70s I absolutely loathed the music with a passion but I tried my hardest to approach the Thursday night headline slot with an open mind. What can I say? Engaging showmanship, consummate musicianship and hugely talented vocalists but to my ears it turned out to be little more than a compendium of some of the most irritating hit songs of my entire lifetime. I didn’t get it back then and it looks like I’m never going get it now. It was nice to see others clearly enjoying it, however.

Day Two – Friday

The Joshua Burnell Band kicked off Friday’s music on the main stage. While I’d never seen Joshua or his band live before, I’d previously reviewed his extremely impressive Flowers Where The Horses Sleep album back in 2020. He’s since recorded another album, Glass Knight, which he was actually releasing this very weekend at Cropredy. It’s a stunningly good set, best described as Hunky Dory-era Bowie meets folk rock meets prog, and the band are extremely well-received by the Cropredy crowd. The decision to time the release of the new album to coincide with their Cropredy slot was a smart one as they are bound to have shifted a sizeable number of copies based on that performance.

Joshua Burnell and bandmates (Photo: Simon Putman)

Next up was Kiki Dee & Carmelo Luggeri. I’d already made arrangements to spend Friday afternoon at Cream Of The Crop, the boutique festival that takes place on an adjacent field (but where ticket-holders for the main festival are very much welcomed). It meant I wouldn’t have time to see much of Kiki Dee but I was rather hoping she’d do ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ very early on before I headed over to the other festival – and I’m pleased to say she did! Her musical partner explained that since he began working with Kiki Dee he was never going to attempt to pass himself off as Elton John, so that most famous pop-rock duet has been reinvented as a tender, laid-back solo ballad with some neat guitar work from Carmelo Luggeri.

Over at Cream of the Crop I was looking forward to seeing Parkbridge, but as a small festival with a couple of a hundred attendees maximum at any one time it has also proved to be the perfect location for catching up with old friends, a succession of whom I bump into before Parkbridge come on stage. Hailing (unsurprisingly) from Park Bridge in Greater Manchester, the band combine a love of folk rock, 70s-era classic rock and blues to come up with their own unique formula. Seasoned musicians all, the band have their debut album coming out in October, which would provide the bulk of their set today, albeit with a couple of well-chosen covers thrown in, too, courtesy of the Stray Cats and Free.

Parkbridge on stage at Cream of the Crop (Photo: Simon Putman)

We made it back to the main stage well in time for Strawbs, for what would be the last ever public performance by Dave Cousins, following medical advice. I must confess that the only Strawbs album I ever listen to with any regularity is the one they recorded with Sandy Denny before she joined Fairport but it was an emotional experience witnessing Cousins making his swansong performance. He was visibly moved by the warm response he got from the crowd. Just as I was secretly hoping all the way through, they even threw in ‘Part Of The Union’, too. It’s not one of Cousins’ own songs but it was definitely a defining Cropredy moment this year as we all bellowed out the words to that famous pop-folk novelty workers’ anthem of the early ’70s.

Dave Cousins gives an emotional final performance (Photo: Simon Putman)

The crowd-singalongs did not stop with ‘Part Of The Union’ because before too long we were on to a rip-roaring set from Fisherman’s Friends. I’ve seen the film, bought their top-selling ‘major label’ album and even saw them live when they came to Hastings a few years ago. I always knew they’d be a stonking festival band though and they did not disappoint. With raucous sing-alongs, tongue-in-cheek banter and shanties galore, for sheer unadulterated fun it actually turned out to be one of my highlights of the entire weekend.

Jon Cleave of Fisherman’s Friends (Photo: Simon Putman)

A combination of age, beer, cider and waking up at the crack of dawn this year due to our tent being right next to the busy railway line meant we decided to call it an early night and give 10cc a miss. Plus I didn’t want to miss out on a certain midnight rendezvous with Fairport the following evening. If I was going to be a party pooper better it be for ‘I’m Not In Love’ than ‘Meet On The Ledge’.

Day Three – Saturday

If Friday afternoon was all about bunking off from the main festival to spend time at Cream of the Crop, Saturday afternoon was all about spending time in Cropredy village. It’s an adorably picturesque Oxfordshire village, steeped in history – both of the English Civil War variety and of the folk rock variety, with a number of Fairport members having lived there (or in neighbouring villages) over the decades; an iconic shot for the band’s Nine album being taken outside one of the village pubs and, of course, the annual festival taking place following the band’s self-proclaimed ‘farewell concert’ here in 1979.

Welcome to Cropredy village (Photo: Simon Putman)

This year there was an extra special reason to be visiting the village, however, and that same pub The Brasenose. The late Sandy Denny’s daughter, Georgia, was hosting an exhibition at the pub, celebrating Sandy’s life. Featuring dresses and jewellery worn by Sandy, together with other personal effects and notebooks of song lyrics, it’s a lovingly put-together tribute to one of England’s greatest ever singer-songwriters. I also had the opportunity of to meet and chat with Georgia who kindly signed my exhibition programme.

Souvenir book from the Sandy Denny Exhibition (Photo: Darren Johnson)

The village of Cropredy really throws itself into the festival weekend and local residents make the most of thousands of people descending on them for a few days each year. The village hall, village school and sundry other buildings are repurposed as temporary dining establishments and every spare bit of space seems to have a pop-up stall of one sort or another. I got waylaid at the CD stall where the stallholder cheerfully told me that he was now selling everything off for a pound. It was good stuff, too. I ended up coming away with 40 CDs. Passing by half an hour or so later I could hear I’d even been enlisted as part of his sales pitch: “It’s all quality stuff. See that bloke over there in the orange shirt. He’s just spent forty quid here. ”

Forty more CDs for the collection (Photo: Simon Putman)

After depositing my second-hand CDs back at the campsite I was back at the main festival in time for Solstice. They were one of the bands that materialised as part of the prog renaissance in the early 80s, along with Marillion, Pallas, Twelfth Night and Pendragon who were all on the bill for the 1983 Reading Festival which I attended as a 17year-old. I can’t remember whether I saw Solstice then or not but I certainly remember walking around with the band’s name on the back of my festival t-shirt for a couple of years afterwards. At least I will know for sure that I saw them this time. Probably the most out-there and proggiest band of the weekend, at first I thought it was all a tad self-indulgent but after starting on another four-pint jug of cider I began to think it was all rather glorious. I would definitely go and see them again.

Stocking up on cider (photo: Kevin Smith)

The Young ‘uns I’d seen many times before and was confident the Cropredy crowd would immediately warm to them – which they did. When the trio first started out it was very much with a focus on traditional songs but as the songwriting of Sean Cooney developed, the Young ‘Uns carved out a niche for themselves singing songs about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Whether the stories are historical or contemporary (from the Spanish Civil War to the London Bridge terror attacks to one young woman’s uniquely heartfelt approach to suicide prevention) they sing with gusto, passion and strong regional accents. It’s always a delight to see them and they end their triumphant set with a suitably folked-up cover of ‘Sit Down’ by James. Fantastic stuff.

Gilbert O’Sullivan I remember from my childhood as my step-mum played his albums a lot when I was a young kid. In other circumstances I would have happily stayed, being both familiar with many of his big hits and mildly curious about what he’s been up to in the intervening decades. But it was time for a break from the cider, some chill-time at the tent and a strong cup of tea – ready to be rested and reinvigorated for the festival’s perennial headliners themselves.

Dusk over Cropredy festival (Photo: Simon Putman)

As Fairport Convention were not celebrating any major milestones at Cropredy this year (albeit that 2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of both the Rosie and the Nine albums) we didn’t get any reunited line-ups of surviving former members or albums played in full – although Fairport founder member Ashley Hutchings was one of the guests invited on stage this year and, of course, long-time member Dave Mattacks is now back playing with the band following the departure of Gerry Conway. As such, Fairport’s set perhaps lacked some of the dramatic “pinch me” moments of previous Cropredy appearances. But it was still a very fine two-and-a-half-hour set with a plethora of classic Fairport songs from the band’s early days and a heavy sprinkling of songs from their most recent studio album, Shuffle & Go. Indeed, there were perhaps rather too many of the latter since it is now three years old and the band have made far better albums in the past decade or so in my view, such as the truly excellent Festival Bell.

Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg up on the big screen (Photo: Simon Putman)

No matter, it was an enjoyable set with guest appearances from the aforementioned Ashley Hutchings along with Vikki Clayton, Becky Mills (who is one of the very best interpreters of Sandy Denny material around today in my view) and Hannah Saunders & Ben Savage. At least having a fairly minimal number of guests this year and no logistics to juggle with that come through performing an entire album in full, it meant they could avoid cutting the set short this year – unlike last year where ‘Matty Groves’ had to be unceremoniously dumped to make sure they still had time for ‘Meet On The Ledge’. Once again, an emotional and triumphant end to a highly enjoyable weekend. It all came round again.

Related reviews:

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2022

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Fairport Convention at Bexhill 2020

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2018

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2017

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘Come All Ye: The First Ten Years’

Fairport Convention – 50th anniversary gig at Union Chapel 2017

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2014

Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2014

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘What We Did On Our Saturday’

Album review – Ashley Hutchings ‘From Psychedelia to Sonnets’

Album review – Ashley Hutchings ‘Twangin’ ‘n’ a-Traddin’ Revisited’

Album review – Sandy Denny ‘I’ve Always Kept a Unicorn: The Acoustic Sandy Denny’

Folk-rock: album review – Merry Hell ‘Let The Music Speak For Itself’

Album reviews, Folk music, Rock music, , , , ,

A fixture on the adjacent “festival fringe” of Fairport Convention’s annual Cropredy extravaganza each year, Wigan-based folk-rockers, Merry Hell, have finally made it to the main stage and will appear there this August. With impeccable timing (and something that will sell like hot cakes at this and other festivals this summer, I’m sure) the band have released their first ever ‘best of’ compilation.

Emerging back in 2010 from the ashes of 90s folk-punk outfit, The Tansads, the band weren’t quite sure how things would take off but six albums later Merry Hell have more than proved themselves and there’s no shortage of strong material for a proper career retrospective.

Never afraid of wearing their hearts on their sleeves and standing up for what they believe in, Merry Hell have developed a strong niche as purveyors of rousing folk-rock anthems with socially-conscious lyrics, all delivered with characteristic good humour, energy, verve and passion.

In compiling the album the band had some assistance from fans, alongside each individual band member also choosing their own particular favourite. The result is a whopping 28 tracks over two discs and, for me, there’s plenty of personal favourites among the final selection: from the ecologically-themed paean to decluttering, ‘Bury Me Naked’; to the band’s self-proclaimed “alternative national anthem” ‘Come On England!’; to the rousing ‘Leave It In The Ground’ from the climate-themed Emergency Lullabies album.

With over half of the members of the eight-piece band also being songwriters, Merry Hell explore a variety of styles and influences in their output and so it’s not all rousing, amped-up sing-alongs, albeit that is very much their forte. The compilation has its mellower, tender moments, too, such as the beautifully-poignant acoustic number, ‘No Place Like Tomorrow’.

Whether you’re a long-term follower of Merry Hell or just discovering them for the first time at a festival this summer, Let The Music Speak For Itself is a strong compilation which is sure to find favour with fans both new and old. Role on Cropredy!

Released: 12th May 2023 http://www.merryhell.co.uk/

Band photo credit: Jenfoto

Live dates:

May 26th: Chester Folk Festival

June 3rd: Wessex Folk Festival

June 16th: National Forest Folk Club: Moira, Leicestershire

June 18th: Beardy Festival, Shropshire

July 14th: Folk On The Farm Festival: Anglesey

July 28th: Chickenstock Festival: Kent

July 28th: Trowbridge Festival

July 29th: Oswestry TBC

August 5th: Grayshott Folk Club: Hampshire

August 6th: Wickham Festival

August 10th: Fairport Convention’s Cropredy Festival, Oxfordshire

August 24th: Towersey Festival

August 28th: Towersey Festival

September 10th: Swanage Festival

September 14th: Hungry Horse Festival, Ellesmere Port

September 16th: The Peace Through Folk Gathering, Staffordshire/Peak District

October 4th– 10th: Costa Del Folk Festival: Portugal

Related posts:

Album review – Merry Hell ‘Emergency Lullabies’

Album review – Virginia Kettle ‘No Place Like Tomorrow’

DVD review: Merry Hell ‘A Year In The Life’

Album review: Merry Hell ‘Anthems To The Wind’

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2022

Folk music, Live reviews, Rock music, , , , , , , , ,

With all the performers originally booked for 2020, then rescheduled for 2021, then rescheduled again for 2022, a lot has happened since this festival line-up was first announced at the back-end of 2019. Festival mainstay, Richard Digance, could no longer make it. He had a booking at the Edinburgh Fringe this year so his Saturday lunchtime set was given over to Seth Lakeman. Matthews Southern Comfort, who had originally been down for the early Saturday evening slot, had now morphed into The Matthews Baartmans Experience, the band having gone their separate ways during their Covid-enforced career interlude leaving just Iain Matthews and BJ Baartmans to fly the flag as a duo. And for myself (who had originally booked tickets for me and my now ex-partner) I would now be accompanied by Simon (below right) who has stacks and stacks of camping experience but had never been to a musical festival before.

Simon’s verdict: “I couldn’t believe how well-organised it was . It was just like a proper campsite. I was expecting it to be really rowdy and nowhere near as civilised as it was.”

Day One – Thursday:

I’ve been at Cropredy in all sorts of weather conditions, from thunder and lightning to torrential rain to baking hot sun, but it soon became clear that we wouldn’t be able to just sit in the field all day watching pretty much every band that came along. Me and heatwaves don’t mix. I could just about cope with the mid-day sun and the late evenings were exceptionally pleasant once the sun had dipped below the horizon but after downing several pints waiting for Fairport Convention’s twenty-minute opening acoustic set on the Thursday afternoon it soon became abundantly clear that a very different strategy was needed this year.

This was fine as pretty much all of the artists I really, really wanted to see had either early lunchtime slots or later evening slots. It meant I would miss out on the experience of trying out some new bands in the afternoon but even a jam session with the reincarnation Elvis and Jimi Hendrix would not have got me back on that festival field in the afternoon sun.

Following a snooze to recover and then listening to Edward II from the comfort (and shade) of our campsite gazebo, we headed back over for Clannad. A band I’d long wanted to see, their set was absolutely stunning and a fitting finale to their 52-year career. Back in 2020 they had decided to call it a day but the pandemic has meant a two-year delay to the completion of their farewell tour. When Cropredy 2020 was cancelled I treated myself to a copy of their double-disc career retrospective so I was pretty familiar with pretty much all of their set-list (not just the ubiquitous TV theme-song classics) by the time it came to Cropredy. Well worth the wait.

When they last played Cropredy in 2017 The Trevor Horn Band went down an absolute storm. However, not particularly being a fan of either Buggles or 80s-era Yes, back then I decided to take a break for a snooze. I soon realised I’d made a big mistake as we heard Horn and co. churn out hit after hit from the comfort of the campsite. No such snobbery from me this time around and we made sure we were there for a set that encompassed songs from the back catalogues of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 10CC, Tears For Fears, David Bowie, Dire Straits and many more – not to mention the obligatory Yes and Buggles hits. There were numerous guests, including Lol Crème from 10CC, Steve Hogarth from Marillion and the wonderful Toyah Wilcox and Robert Fripp who became those surprise YouTube sensations during lockdown. It was fun, brilliantly-performed and a wonderful party atmosphere, even for me who is generally quite snooty about 80s chart hits.

Day Two – Friday:

Our heatwave survival strategy came into play whereby we would catch a couple of lunchtime acts and then retreat from the afternoon sun until the evening. BBC Young Folk Award 2019 winner, Maddie Morris, finally got to perform and wowed the crowd with her sweet voice, socially-conscious lyrics and powerful advocacy of LGBT rights. Next up was Australian singer-songwriter, Emily Barker, who I’d enjoyed twice before, once doing an in-store performance promoting her wonderfully-soulful Sweet Kind of Blue album (recorded in Memphis) and once on tour with Marry Waterson (daughter of Lal) of the legendary Waterson family. The was no Marry on stage this time but we did get a wonderful rendering of the Watersons’ ‘Bright Phoebus’, alongside Emily Barker’s own unique blend of soulful Americana.

It was then time to escape the sun and also meet a late-comer to our ten-strong Cropredy camping group so I spent some time in one of the marquees at the Cream of The Crop campsite in Field 8 which runs its own parallel small festival alongside the official Fairport one. Anyone with a wristband for the main festival can get in and while I, unfortunately, missed the brilliant Dandelion Charm I did catch some other great music. After showing our new arrival to the camp it was then time to head off to the main stage for Turin Brakes.

Formed at the turn of the millennium their chilled-out and gorgeously-melodic brand of indie rock was just perfect for a summer evening and one of the weekend highlights for me. Playing a mixture of old favourites like their 2005 top five hit, ‘Painkiller (Summer Rain)’ alongside newer material, they certainly looked happy to finally be performing and it was an emotional moment for drummer, Rob Allum, when it was revealed his first visit to Cropredy was as a youngster way back in 1980.

If the previous night ended with the party sing-along atmosphere of the Trevor Horn Band’s set, this was not exactly what Steve Hackett was offering. I can dip in and out of early Genesis but this seemed very much a strictly-for-fans only set, I’m afraid, and after grabbing some pictures of the stunning full moon over the festival crowd we decided to call it a night.

Day Three – Saturday:

Seth Lakeman never disappoints at a festival and although his set is a world away from the entertaining mix of sentimentality and silliness served up by Richard Digance, he was an inspired choice to fill the latter’s regular Saturday lunchtime slot and a big enough name to guarantee that the field would be full by the time he came on stage to open proceedings.

After Seth Lakeman we slipped away, once again, before the afternoon sun really started doing it’s worst but were back at the main stage by early evening.

Early Fairport alumni, Iain Matthews, always seems as comfortable playing solo with just his guitar as he is playing with a full band, so the duo format suits him down to the ground. Playing a mixture of Matthews Southern Comfort and solo material, plus some well-chosen covers (including ‘Reno Nevada’, a regular live fixture from Fairport Convention’s early days) the Matthews Baartmans Experience are nicely timed to start off an evening of Fairport and friends. Richard Thompson (who would be back on shortly for both his own set and Fairport’s) comes on for one song. In a colourful shirt and baggy shorts sans his usual black stage uniform, he joins the duo to perform a crowd-pleasing cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’, Matthews Southern Comfort’s biggest and best-known hit.

Then it’s straight into a set from Richard Thompson. With a great mix of old favourites (‘Genesis Hall’, ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning’, ‘Beeswing’, ‘Bright Lights’ et al) and newer material (‘Singapore Sadie’, ‘The Rattle Within’), he’s always a star turn any time he’s been at Cropredy and he had the crowd roaring for him from the word go. The voice, that guitar, those songs: this was always going to be a winning combination at Cropredy. And it was. Iain Matthews returned the favour by providing vocals on the wonderful ‘From Galway To Graceland’ and, all in all, it was the perfect prelude to the grand finale.

2020 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Fairport Convention’s first post-Sandy Denny album, the much-celebrated Full House) and two years later they finally get to perform it in full with all of the original line-up from that album, bar Dave Swarbrick (whose place was taken by current member, Chris Leslie, taking on the late Swarb’s fiddle and vocal parts). First, however, the current line-up deliver a handful of old favourites not from that album like ‘Ye Mariners All’ and ‘Fotheringay’, alongside a very hefty dose of songs from the most recent studio album, Shuffle And Go, which was released back in 2020. On their 2022 Winter Tour earlier this year Dave Pegg joked that given they had not had chance to flog them on tour for the last couple of years, there were still stacks of these albums sitting in his garage and so they were making no apologies for heavily pushing it. Clearly, the same rule applied but there are some pretty entertaining songs on the album and the musicianship is never less than excellent.

The moment virtually all of us were waiting for, however, was the start of the Full House segment and it was a really special seeing ex-Fairporters Dave Mattacks and Richard Thompson taking their places alongside Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg and Chris Leslie. Together they captured the drama, intensity and outright weirdness of that classic 1970 album – and some more. All are seasoned players compared to their younger selves and while Dave Swarbrick’s presence was sorely missed, they played and sang with such confidence and swagger that it almost felt better than the original album.

The between-song banter in the early part of the set and the non-negotiability around playing the Full House album in full meant that they had started to run short of time towards the end of the set, where they were up against an equally non-negotiable curfew. ‘Matty Groves’ was unceremoniously dumped but we still got a beautiful rendition of ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’ with a lovely video introduction from Sandy Denny’s daughter, Georgia Lucas, as well as the traditional end-of festival emotional sing-along that is ‘Meet On The Ledge’.

I didn’t mind missing ‘Matty Groves’. My only real niggle is that I felt there should have been a proper on-stage tribute to original vocalist, Judy Dyble, who sadly passed away in 2020. I was expecting something to be played from the first album and perhaps an accompanying video tribute. Yes, she was only around for one album but she participated in numerous reunions and was an enthusiastic attendee of the festival each year.

Nevertheless, it was great to be back, it was a spectacular evening courtesy of Fairport and friends and it was an emotional end to the festival. It all comes round again (eventually).

Photo credits: Simon Putman

Related reviews:

Book review: ‘On Track: Fairport Convention – every album, every song’ by Kevan Furbank

Fairport Convention at Bexhill 2020

Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2018

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2017

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘Come All Ye: The First Ten Years’

Fairport Convention – 50th anniversary gig at Union Chapel 2017

Fairport Convention at Cropredy 2014

Fairport Convention at Union Chapel 2014

Iain Matthews in Etchingham 2016

Album review – Fairport Convention ‘What We Did On Our Saturday’

Album review – Ashley Hutchings ‘From Psychedelia to Sonnets’

Album review – Ashley Hutchings ‘Twangin’ ‘n’ a-Traddin’ Revisited’

Album review – Sandy Denny ‘I’ve Always Kept a Unicorn: The Acoustic Sandy Denny’

Fotheringay at Under the Bridge, London 2015

Fotheringay at Great British Folk Festival 2015

Richard Thompson at Royal Festival Hall 2015

Richard Thompson at Folk By The Oak 2014

Album review – Richard Thompson ‘Acoustic Classics’

Judy Dyble at WM Jazz at The o2

Albion Christmas Band at Kings Place 16/12/14