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/
