Fairport Convention didn't start the British folk revival, but their 1969 album Liege and Lief proved folk music could be pop music. With a line up that included ace guitarist Richard Thompson, stellar singer Sandy Denny and long time rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, Fairport made their transition from a band that used folk music as an influence to a band that helped reinvent traditional British music.
"[Liege and Lief] was conceived as a way to push the envelope—to make traditional songs seem contemporary," says Simon Nicol, the only founder member of the band still in the current line up. "The best folk songs are invariably cinematic, some very dark and R-rated. We'd experimented [with folk music] on previous albums and the way we treated traditional material pricked up a lot of ears and encouraged us to continue in that direction. We were also rebuilding the band after the van crash and wanted to make a big splash with the new line up."
Fairport had already made a name for itself with a style that combined material from the American and British folk repertoire and tunes by the new crop of singer/songwriters. They were moving toward a style that was more particularly British when one night, driving back to London after a gig, their tour van flipped into a ditch. Drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn were killed; bass player Ashley Hutchings and Thompson were badly injured.
The band thought about chucking it in, but decided to continue with a new line up that included drummer Dave Mattacks and fiddler Dave Swarbrick, already a well-known folk musician. "[Liege and Lief ] was a logical extension of what we'd been doing before," Nicol says. "It seemed more dramatic because of the accident. [The album's success] stirred up a lot of debate with the hard line folkies that were horrified by the electric guitars, although they were usually quite polite about it to our faces. Our feeling was that nobody had the right to put folk music in a glass cabinet. The source material is so strong, it's always going to be there, no matter what you do to it. If you don't like it, then don't listen to it."
The personnel shifts that are part of the band's checkered history have allowed Fairport to stay vital and timely. The 25 musicians who have cycled through their ranks include a veritable who's who of the British folk scene.
"Fairport is more like a family than a band," Nicol says. "Nobody ever really leaves the band. They get time off for good behavior and show up again at odd times. Finding Sandy [Denny] when we were looking for a girl singer in '68 was pure synchronicity—she was ready to move into an electric band and we wanted a traditional singer, so it's not always cold planning that gets results. [Guitarist] Martin Allcock was one of those fans who as a schoolboy used to come to gig after gig and hang about in our dressing rooms. Ric Sanders [fiddler, songwriter and current Fairport member] taught himself the violin by listening to Liege and Lief."
As influential as Liege and Lief has been, Fairport has never actually played the entire album live. That will change this August, when the classic line up reconvenes at Fairport's annual Cropredy Convention, the three-day music festival that's now the highpoint of Fairport's year. This convention will celebrate the band's 40th Anniversary.
"Finally playing the album live is exciting, and not just because I'm getting back in harness with the rest of the 'old firm," Nicol says. "We've all worked with each other individually down the years since those days, but not all at once and all together. Performing the whole album from start to finish has never been done. I don't ever remember playing 'Farewell Farewell' live on stage for instance. It will be a truly magical occasion.
"The seed was sown when the BBC Folk Awards voted Liege and Lief the Most Influential Album of All Time and invited us to reconvene for a live performance of Matty Groves," says Nicol. "We invited Chris While [one of the bright new British folk stars] to sing Sandy's part and we just grinned all the way through, like a bunch of happy idiots."
Unlikely enough, Fairport's Cropredy Festival rose out of the ashes of what was to be their last gig. "In 1979 we played a farewell gig," Nicol explains. "Punk had changed the music business and we were going to chuck it in. So many people turned up, we decided to do another farewell gig a year later and drew more people than the original. The annual 'farewell' gigs draw about 20,000 people these days, not bad for a band that's out of the mainstream. When we lost our last major label contract we thought it was over, but today we manage ourselves, release our own records and play as many gigs, if not more, than we ever have."
While Fairport is the centerpiece of Cropredy, the event is not a folk festival as such. This year's line up includes singer/songwriter Anthony John Clarke, The Strawbs, Jules Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra and The Richard Thompson band in addition to two Fairport sets. "We run the festival like benevolent tyrants, selfishly pleasing ourselves," Nicol explains.
"There's just the one stage, with leisurely but efficient changeovers to give the punters time to relax between acts, to chat or wander about the concessions or grab a bite to eat. Musically, the festival doesn't have a single theme any more than the audience has an easily defined demographic. The only criterion is that we like the music and the way they play it. We know the audience likes the music we make, so we hope they like the music we like. Besides, Cropredy is about more than just music. People have told me they'd come along that weekend and stand around in that corner of North Oxfordshire nattering to each other even if we didn't put a show on."
Since Fairport is still nominally a folk band, does the band keep an eye on England's folk scene? "The folk scene here in the UK is very much 'on the up' these days with some quite glamorous and exciting young people shaking the dust off the beards-and-chunky-sweaters image. Kate Rusby, Seth Lakeman and Eliza Carthy are mainstream cultural figures, which of course does Fairport Convention no harm."
And how long can Fairport keep it up before the real farewell gig? "Sometimes it does feel like you're doing a young man's job in an old man's body," Nicol allows, "but Fairport has always been a touring band with gigging at the centre of what we do. It's not unusual for us to do 200 gigs in a year, which would beyond the compass of less-experienced and many younger bands. I guess that an ounce of experience is worth a pound of theory—the wisdom we've accrued has taught us all coping strategies for the exigencies of the touring life—and we've seen pretty much everything life can chuck at us by now. I'd like to think that Fairport can become as ongoing and legitimate a musical institution as the Boston Symphony or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, perhaps with a slightly different social ethos. As long as continuity is maintained and the spirit stays the same why shouldn't there be a Fairport Convention in 2050?"
This spring, before Cropredy, Fairport will undertake another brief US tour, with a stripped down version of the band: Nicol on guitar and vocals; lead vocalist, fiddle and mandolin player Chris Leslie; and Ric Sanders on second fiddle. "The trio travels the lightest," Nicol explains, "although we still punch our weight. We play a cross section of songs by ex-members and a few traditional things, but the backbone is generated by the band as it is now. Chris Leslie is a great songwriter and Ric Sanders has a knack for inventing great fiddle tunes. We won't disappoint people new to the band, or people who know our 40-year history, but we want to avoid becoming our own tribute band."
Fairport's Cropredy Convention takes place the weekend of August 9 through 11 in Cropredy, five miles north of Banbury in Oxfordshire, England. Details at www.fairportconvention.com/crop/cropmenu
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