Sunday, January 29, 2023

The Albion Country Band - I Was A Young Man


 #The Albion Country Band #Ashley Hutchings #Martin Carthy #John Kirkpatrick #British folk #folk rock #British folk rock #1970s #ex-Fairport Convention

The tangled vine that is the family tree of English folk-rock music has several long stems that wind through it, touching many other stems and branching wildly. One of these is Ashley Hutchings. As Ashley “Tyger” Hutchings, he was a founding member of Fairport Convention. Throughout his long career, he founded or influenced so many other bands and musicians that his status as a folk icon cannot be questioned. His insistence on exploring the pre-industrial folk music of England over more rock-based musical styles may have led to musical partings, as seen with Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, but this idealism is compelling. One of the bands Hutchings founded after leaving Fairport Convention (besides Steeleye Span) is The Albion Band.
The Albion Band grew out of a large backing band that played on Shirley Collins’s No Roses album in 1971. The Albion Band’s lineups changed regularly, to say the least, even before the first recording as “The Albion Band.” Before the recording of their first album, the band included Richard and Linda Thompson, among others. An exhaustive history of the band in all its various incarnations, not to mention its some twenty album releases, would be of book-length.
The Albion Band’s first album, Battle of the Field, recorded as The Albion Country Band, had Hutchings, Sue Harris, Martin Carthy, John Kirkpatrick, Simon Nicol, and Roger Swallow as the band’s lineup. Ex-Fairport drummer Dave Mattacks plays on a cut as well, and four sackbuts are used to great effect on “Gallant Poacher.” The album, recorded in 1973, was not released until 1976. The feeling of the music overall is unsurprisingly reminiscent of Fairport Convention, given the musicians involved. Shortly after recording the album, this Albion Band disbanded, and Hutchings is said to have considered leaving music behind. After a break, though, he formed the all-acoustic Etchingham Steam Band, and then in 1975, restarted a new Albion Band, calling this incarnation The Albion Dance Band. In the mid to late 1970s the band concentrated on earlier music and dance music, with John Tams, Philip Pickett, Dave Mattacks, and Ric Sanders, among others, in the lineup.
From: https://agreenmanreview.com/music-2/albion-country-bands-battle-of-the-field-and-the-albion-bands-1990-happy-accident-and-songs-from-the-shows/