Fairport Convention - Suzanne

 #Fairport Convention #Sandy Denny #Ian Matthews #Ashley Hutchings #Richard Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #electric folk #British folk #psychedelic folk rock #1960s #Leonard Cohen cover

Fairport Convention has long been British folk-rock with the emphasis on British and folk, but listeners most familiar with their revved-up interpretation of traditional English ballads (and like-minded originals) often forget that the band started out as the U.K.'s response to Jefferson Airplane. Heyday collects 12 performances (ten of them covers) recorded for the BBC during the early period when Sandy Denny and Ian Matthews were both singing for the group (and a bus accident had not yet taken the life of original drummer Martin Lamble). While most of the songs were written by noted American folk-rockers of the day, the Fairports put a very individual stamp on every selection here; if you don't think you ever need to hear another version of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" or Bob Dylan's "Percy's Song," you might well change your mind after hearing Fairport work their magic with them, and their takes on Joni Mitchell's "I Don't Know Where I Stand" and Gene Clark's "Tried So Hard" actually improve on the very worthy originals. Fairport Convention approaches these songs with taste, skill, and subtle but potent fire, and Richard Thompson was already growing into one of the most remarkable guitarists in British rock (and if you're of the opinion that he doesn't know how to be funny, check out his goofy double entendre duet with Sandy, "If It Feels Good, You Know It Can't Be Wrong"). While Fairport Convention would create their most lasting work with Liege and Leif and Full House, Heyday offers delightful proof that this band's talents (and influences) took many different directions, and it captures one of the band's better lineups in superb form.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/heyday-bbc-radio-sessions-1968-1969-mw0000201000

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half-crazy but that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer that you've always been her lover

And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind
And then you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with him, and you want to travel blind
And then you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind

Now, Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river
She's wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor
And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind
And then you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind

Richard & Linda Thompson - A Little Night Music - Nocturnes BBC 1981

Part 1

 

Part 2

 

 #Richard & Linda Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #ex-Fairport Convention #1970s #music video

It’s nearly 55 years since Richard Thompson began his career in music. A pioneer of folk-rock, hugely influential singer-songwriter and one of Britain’s most astonishing guitarists, he was only a month out of his teens on the morning of 12 May 1969 when all promise was nearly stopped short. His band, Fairport Convention, had been signed on the spot in 1967 when producer Joe Boyd saw his talent with a guitar at 17, and their mission to reconnect British rock with the older, beautiful songs of their home country was well under way. He’d already jammed with Jimi Hendrix and supported Pink Floyd; now Thompson’s band had recently finished their third album, Unhalfbricking, with singer Sandy Denny. A work full of ambitious originals and covers that still regularly appears in best British album polls.
That morning they were driving back to London from a Birmingham gig, approaching the last service station on the M1. Guitarist Simon Nicol was trying to sleep off a migraine, stretched out on top of the speakers in the back. Thompson’s girlfriend, fashion designer Jeannie Franklyn, was asleep. Thompson was dozing between her and roadie Harvey Bramham, who was driving. “It was starting to get light. Nearly dawn, nearly home,” Thompson writes in Beeswing, his forthcoming memoir. Thompson noticed the van, travelling at 70mph, suddenly veering towards the motorway’s central reservation. In those days there were no crash barriers. He turned his head to Bramham – his eyes were closed. Thompson grabbed the wheel to avoid hitting a pole. The van came off the road. In one of the most arresting passages of the book, he describes crawling over to Jeannie a few yards away. He is bleeding, with broken ribs; he finds her upside down on a sloping embankment. They had been together a fortnight: he didn’t really know her at all, and then she died. Martin Lamble, the band’s 19-year-old drummer, also didn’t survive. Remarkably Nicol got out and walked down the road, flagging down a passing car. He is still the leader of Fairport Convention, 52 years later.
But Thompson left in early 1971, still shell-shocked by the crash, to pursue a solo career that flew well beyond British folk. Ever since, he’s lovingly explored and excavated genres from rockabilly to flamenco, music-hall to pop. A favourite of both Robert Plant and Elvis Costello, Thompson has also been covered by acts as varied as feminist punks Sleater-Kinney, REM, David Byrne and, most recently, Mark Ronson, who covered the 1974 title track of Thompson’s album with first wife Linda Thompson, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Ronson tweeted how much the song had given him comfort during lockdown. “It’s the ultimate song about a messy weekend night out. I miss that all very much.”
That period of Thompson’s career is especially rich: he met Linda in 1969, and they married in 1972, then made fantastic music together for the next decade. Linda is one of Britain’s greatest, but most overlooked, singers, possessed of a bold, beautiful voice that carried the songs Richard wrote for her, and accompanied dramatically with his guitar. Their story outside music is dramatic too. It involves Richard’s conversion to Sufism, a move with their two young children to a rural commune without hot water and electricity, subsequent adultery during pregnancy, and a traumatic tour after their breakup where Linda kicked Richard in the shins while he played guitar solos (it’s known by their fans as The Tour from Hell). From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/mar/14/richard-thompson-beeswing-fairport-folk-rock-interview

Richard Thompson left Fairport Convention after 1970’s Full House, his reputation secured as an excellent songwriter and guitarist. He released a spectacularly unsuccessful solo album, Henry the Human Fly, in 1972. He then married Linda Peters and they released six albums between 1974 and 1982; their relationship broke down before an ill-fated North American tour in 1982. The duo’s music is often melancholic, and it’s a common trick of Richard Thompson to pair upbeat music with depressing lyrics. They often play acoustic folk-rock, especially on their early albums, but 1978’s First Light uses an L.A. rhythm section and 1982’s Shoot Out The Lights has few vestiges of folk remaining. Linda and Richard share the vocal duties – while Richard’s gruff voice is limited, Linda’s pristine voice is able to capture a range of moods, from joy on ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’ to resignation on ‘Walking on a Wire’. The pair’s first album, 1974’s I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and their 1982 swan song Shoot Out The Lights are generally considered as their strongest. In between they spent time in a Sufi Muslim commune, taking three years away from music. Richard has stated that he considers their late 1970s albums as weak, as he didn’t have his mind on the job.  From: https://albumreviews.blog/reviews/1970s-album-reviews/richard-and-linda-thompson/

Four decades after Richard and Linda Thompson released 1974’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, their beautiful and terrifying first album as a duo—after their music failed to attract significant commercial interest; after the conversion to Sufism, the three kids, the arduous years spent living on a religious commune; after he left her for another woman just as mainstream success seemed within their reach; after she clocked him with a Coke bottle and sped off in a stolen car during their disastrous final tour —after everything, Linda was working on a new song about the foolishness of love. It was a lot like the songs Richard used to write for them in the old days: Despairing, but not hopeless, with a melody that seemed to float forward from some forgotten era, and a narrator who can’t see past the walls of his own fatalism. “Whenever I write something like that I think, ‘Oh, who could play the guitar on that?’” she recalled later. “And then I think, ‘Only Richard, really.’”
Can you blame her? Though both Thompsons have made fine albums since the collapse of their romantic and musical relationships in the early 1980s, there is something singular in the blend of her gracefully understated singing and his fiercely expressive playing, a heaven-bound quality that redeems even their heaviest subject matter, which neither can quite reach on their own. As lovers, they could be violently incompatible, but as musicians, they were soul mates. The existence of latter-day collaborations like Linda’s 2013 song “Love’s for Babies and Fools,” one of a handful of recordings they’ve made together since the 2000s, proves the lasting power of a partnership that seemed doomed from the start.
The Thompsons met in 1969, while Richard was working on Liege & Lief, the fourth album by Fairport Convention, the pioneering British band he’d co-founded when he was 18. With his bandmates, he envisioned a new form of English folk music, combining scholarly devotion to centuries-old song forms with the electrified instruments and exploratory spirit of late-’60s rock. The misty and elegiac Liege & Lief was their masterpiece, but it had come at a price. Months earlier, Fairport’s van driver fell asleep at the wheel on a late-night drive home from a gig, and the ensuing crash killed Martin Lamble, their drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson’s girlfriend at the time. According to Thompson, the decision to press on and record Liege & Lief was driven in part by a desire to “distract ourselves from grief and numb the pain of our loss.”
The folk-rock musicians who orbited Fairport in London comprised a hard-drinking scene, where money was usually tight, and revelry and song took precedence over talk about feelings. “They didn’t send you to therapy in those days - we didn’t grieve properly,” Richard Thompson told a podcast interviewer this year. The losses would keep coming. Nick Drake, an ex-boyfriend of Linda’s and occasional collaborator of Richard’s, who struggled to find an audience during his short life, was sliding toward oblivion by the early 1970s. And Sandy Denny, the radiant and mercurial former singer of Fairport, as well as a close friend of both Thompsons, was not far behind him. The fading spirits of fellow travelers like these haunt I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Its songs treat drink, festivity, and even love as fleeting escapes from life’s difficulties, staring through the good times to the black holes that often lie behind them.
Richard lasted for one more album with Fairport, then left the band with hopes of making it as a solo artist. Legend has it that Henry the Human Fly, his 1972 debut, was the worst-selling album in the history of Warner Brothers at the time. He was working steadily as a session and touring musician, but at the ripe old age of 23, he couldn’t help feeling a little washed up. Linda’s career as a folk singer, despite the arresting clarity of her voice, had been only moderately successful, and she was entertaining thoughts of cashing in, going pop. She was only a “weekend hippie,” she has said. And though he was still a few years away from embracing Muslim mysticism, he was already something of a monastic: declining to cash checks for his session work, and following a devotion to modernizing English folk that was so intense it led him to turn down invitations to join several high-profile bands because their styles were too American. Despite their differences in approach to life and career, something clicked. She moved into his Hampstead apartment, and they married in 1972.
Their reason for starting a musical duo was practical, but also sweetly romantic: They wanted to spend more time together. They began touring the UK’s circuit of folk clubs, humble institutions that mixed socialist idealism with commercial enterprise, often operating in the back rooms of local pubs, where Richard and Linda would share stage time with whatever barflies wanted to belt out “Scarborough Fair” or “John Barleycorn” on any given night. Audiences were receptive, but it was a rugged and unglamorous way to make a career, even compared to the modest success Richard had seen with Fairport Convention. After about a year on the circuit, they were ready to graduate to bigger stages, and to make an album.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/richard-and-linda-thompson-i-want-to-see-the-bright-lights-tonight/

Circulus - Little Big Song

 #Circulus #psychedelic folk #progressive folk #folk rock #British folk rock

A fanciful blend of traditional British folk, prog rock, psychedelia, and folk-rock, with a cultural mindset that is rarely seen outside of a revival screening of The Wicker Man, Circulus is the brainchild of Michael Tyack, a songwriter and musician who has set out to create music that exists in the 20th and 16th centuries at once. Based in South London, with Tyack the only constant member after dozens of personnel shifts, Circulus incorporate the drums, guitars, and Moog synthesizers you'd expect from a rock band with a retro early-'70s approach, but also features a variety of medieval instruments, including crumhorns, recorders, and a reed instrument called the rauch pfeifer, whose intense volume Tyack declares "isn't really acceptable to modern ears." Circulus are nearly as well-known for their collective fashion sense as for their music, with Tyack costuming himself and his accompanists in thrift-shop capes, caftans, hats, and masks that are equally influenced by the British hippie scene and Tyack's self-proclaimed model in style, Philip the Good, who was the Duke of Burgundy in the 13th century. Add to this the stated belief of Tyack and his bandmates in pixies, fairies, and "old gods" and you get a group whose reputation for eccentricity precedes it, but Circulus have also won a loyal audience for the strength of their music, with fans ranging from traditional music enthusiasts to death metal addicts. Circulus made their recorded debut in 1999 with an EP entitled Giantism, but it wasn't until 2005 that the band found a sympathetic record label interesting in financing an album-length recording - Rise Above Records, an extreme metal label that issued Circulus' full-length debut, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to Be Sent. A second album, Clocks Are Like People, followed a year later.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/circulus-mn0000306289/biography

With its rauch pfeifers and crumhorns, psychedelic guitar solos, squealing vintage synthesizers and songs about pixies and burning scarecrows, Circulus' debut album, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to Be Sent, is so far removed from anything else currently available, so blithely unconcerned with any contemporary notions of cool, that it makes for genuinely shocking listening. It is by turns preposterous, unsettling, tear-jerkingly beautiful and wonderfully refreshing: the one thing it is not is a concerted effort to storm the charts by sounding a bit like Coldplay or Franz Ferdinand, which may explain the flurry of critical excitement the band are currently generating. But it is merely the tip of the iceberg, the musical wing of a wilfully skewed world view that vocalist and band "auteur" Michael Tyack has been formulating since a visit to America in the late 80s, when homesickness led him to begin attending Elizabethan music concerts: "When I discovered Elizabethan music I was like, wow," he says. "It was exactly what I was pining for, some ancient culture. I didn't really want to hear any modern music at all. All I did was go to early music concerts and mix with early music boffins for about five years, discovering a whole world of ..." His voice trails off as he searches for the right phrase. "Something great," he decides, with a beatific grin. The medieval era, he says, "is my ideal, the whole style and the music. I mean, I like tights. I like the way those dresses look on women. It's all just beautiful. Take away the diseases and the brutality and it's a very stylish period. Very, very long pointy shoes." As a result, he says, he has dedicated his life to creating his own world, "which has nothing to do with Tesco or anything. You get people in Finland doing it, they live their lives as Iron Age people and have a good time. That's the plan, to set up an alternative way of life, where all like-minded people can congregate."  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jun/17/worldmusic.folk

Shireen - Umai

 #Shireen #witchpop #folk rock #dark folk #neo-medieval #folk metal #electronic #Dutch #music video

Shireen is a band that comes from Netherlands and has managed in a little while to form a completely personal sound which is constantly evolving. By mixing folk and acoustic rock with ambient and pop and introducing the use of electronic samples and beats in their music, they created their own genre they call Witchpop. The "acrobatics" between various genres produces an excellent result that dresses the wonderful voice of Annicke, frontwoman and Shireen's lyricist. Annicke very kindly gave us an interview about the band's work and dreams.

What motivated Shireen to go on their own genre and what reactions do you get when you say “We play Witchpop”.

The genre we play (or actually, not conforming to a set genre at all) has never been a choice for us. We write whatever we like, and don’t try to fit it somewhere because that would only retain us from using the full scale of possibilities. So it happens naturally that our music usually floats in-between genres. We get our inspiration from a lot of different artists and music styles. We gave our style the name Witchpop to get rid of the “describe what you play” questions (which actually didn’t work haha). But even if people don’t know the genre, they immediately have a general idea or a feeling about what kind of music we play.

When someone listens to your works for the first time, they might be surprised by the contradiction that comes from the atmosphere of your music and your lyrics. How do you manage to combine social and inner matters (like the human cruelty and endurance or femininity and modern religion) in a style of music that in its "traditional" form is more "out of this world" and how does the audience respond to it?

I don’t feel there is a contradiction in the style of our music and my lyrics. I write the lyrics and sing vocals exactly how I feel them. The rest of the musicians in the band are really attuned to what I mean by it, and every single one of them has their own unique influence on the sound when writing songs. I strongly believe in using people’s strengths as good as possible. When we write a song for me it feels as if it grows like an organic thing. People who like our music sometimes tell me in person that they are very touched by the lyrics and their meanings, that is the most rewarding thing for me.

How do you evaluate Shireen’s musical evolution since 2014 and ‘Unmarked’, until today and what changes brought the new member addition to the Shireen sound?

We took it slow, deliberately. I’d rather do things good than rush it. I don’t want to make “fast food music” anyway; bringing out singles for the sake of exposure, or fill an album with less good songs just to finish and be able to sell the album sooner. The whole modern world is already filled with stuff like that, and I feel, and hope that people also feel that there is no soul in it. We all deeply enjoy the positive reactions we get from people, and it motivates me to make new things. Every new band member has a big influence on our writing music. When Guido joined us with electronics he brought a complete new world of possibilities with him, and we started to (re)write songs to implement his amazing sounds. So does Berend, our newest band member and guitar player, bring in his style and we get inspired by the new possibilities of it.

Starting with the Umai video we can see a character like an alter ego developing and we find her again on the covers of Shireen’s three digital single releases and of course on the ‘Matriarch’ album cover. Is this character going to be Shireen’s optical signature?

I have always styled myself quite dramatically for our live shows. It is like a ritual; I always do my own hair, makeup and design and make my own stage outfits. I try to catch this feeling in a sort of character design that I then wear and become it. It’s not like becoming a different person to me, it’s more like “wearing my extra special skin”. I just don’t like “normal”, So I would say yes, as long as I’m the frontwoman of Shireen it will probably always be a dramatic signature style.

From: https://www.blackvelvetradio.gr/index.php/synentefkseis/430-interview-with-shireen-welcome-to-sound-world-of-witchpop

 

Fairport Convention - Time Will Show The Wiser

 #Fairport Convention #Ian Matthews #Ashley Hutchings #Richard Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #electric folk #British folk #psychedelic folk rock #1960s #music video

Fairport Convention’s wonderful performance from the French TV Show "Bouton Rouge" was broadcast live on 27 April 1968 and features the original Fairport Line up of Judy Dyble, Iain Matthews, Simon Nicol, Tyger Hutchings, Richard Thompson, and the late Martin Lamble playing Morning Glory, Time Will Show The Wiser and a simply awe-inspiring mind-melting performance of Reno, Nevada. At this time Fairport had just released their first album and were very influenced by American folk rock and psychedelic groups like Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan and The Byrds. The sound, look and name of the band led many to think that either they were an American band or at best just a British version of Jefferson Airplane. The star of the show is definitely Richard Thompson who is seen here in mega guitar hero role. After a fairly muscular solo in Morning Glory he delivers an astonishing perfectly paced 4 and a half minute six string marathon in Reno Nevada - so full of power, invention, imagination that the solo seems to run away with itself. Is Richard playing the guitar or is the guitar playing Richard? For the duration of this nearly 5 minute solo they are no longer the British Jefferson Airplane copying their heroes but arguably go beyond anything the Airplane, Grateful Dead or other San Francisco bands were doing in early '68 (although it must be said that the Dead would start to achieve similar high levels of  jazz inspired improv syncopation before the year was out but that is another story and post). And to top it all the band just look so damned cool. As the solo finishes Judy Dyble slowly gets up and wanders back to the microphone and the whole band just have a look of “Hey, this is nothing special. We are this shit hot every night.” After this performance they signed with Island Records, Judy Dyble left the band to be replaced by Sandy Denny and they went off to reinvent British folk rock.  From: http://strangerthanknown.blogspot.com/2013/01/fairport-convention-bouton-rouge.html

Steeleye Span - Long Lankin

 #Steeleye Span #Maddy Prior #Tim Hart #folk rock #British folk #British folk rock #traditional folk #electric folk #British roots rock

Long Lankin is based off a Northumbrian legend where Lankin (who was either a stonemason or robber, depending on the story) entered the hall of a rival lord, and with the help of a nursemaid murdered both the lord’s grandchild and daughter. Lankin is said to have hanged himself, while the nurse was burnt at the stake. Steeleye Span’s version of this traditional song omits the origin story of Long Lankin, instead portraying him as more of a cruel boogeyman.  From: https://genius.com/Steeleye-span-long-lankin-lyrics

"Lamkin" is an old ballad and probably one of the darkest. It gives an account of the murder of a woman and her infant son by a disgruntled mason. Versions of the ballad are found in Scotland, England, and the USA. In the most common version Lamkin, the stonemason, is hired by Lord Wearie to build him a castle. When it is complete, the Lord refuses to pay, saying he would have to sell his land to pay for the castle he had built on it. Wearie soon makes a trip across the sea, and Lamkin, with the aid of the Lord's nursemaid, takes his revenge on his family during his absence. He first attacks Lord Wearie's baby.

Then Lamkin a' tane a sharp knife,
That hang down by his gaire,
And he has gien the bonny babe
A deep wound and a sair.

This gets the attention of Lady Wearie, who offers gold and riches to Lamkin if he will spare her life. No rationale is ever given for the extreme measures Lamkin takes, nor why he refuses money at this stage, if his grievances were merely financial. It is speculated that some verses may be missing, although there is some evidence that the nurse may have had a long-standing personal grudge, and played a more active role in the killings.

"O sall I kill her, nourice,
Or sall I lat her be?"
"O kill her, kill her, Lamkin,
For she neer was good to me."

Lord Wearie returns months later to find his wife and son dead, and Lamkin gloating over the deed.

"And wha's blood is this' he says,
'That lies in my ha'?"
"It is your young son'd heart's blood;
'T is the clearest ava."

Lamkin is hanged for his crimes, as he must have known he would be, again giving him no motive but the cruelest revenge. In some later version, the nurse is burned at the stake, the punishment for petty treason. Other versions follow the same basic story, but the antagonist has many different names, among them "Balankin", "Lambert Linkin", "Rankin", "Long Lankyn", and "Lammikin". Later versions lose the opening of the story, which explains that Lamkin is a mason who has not been paid; in these, Lamkin becomes a sort of a bogeyman who dwells in the wild places; the lord, before leaving, warns against him:

Says milord to milady as he mounted his horse,
"Beware of Long Lankin that lives in the moss."
Says milord to milady as he went on his way,
"Beware of Long Lankin that lives in the hay."

These versions add peculiar incidents that add to the grisliness of the crime. Lamkin and the nursemaid collect the baby's blood in a basin, for no named purpose. This has led to speculation that Lamkin was a leper who sought to cure himself by bathing in the blood of an innocent.
The song has been recorded as "Long Lankin" on "But Two Came By" (1968) by Martin Carthy. Steeleye Span perhaps most famously recorded it as "Long Lankin" on Commoner's Crown (1975), and vocal trio The Devil's Interval also recorded it as Long Lankin on their debut album "Blood & Honey" (Wildgoose 2006). Dave Burland recorded "Lamkin" on his album You Can't Fool The Fat Man (1979) with Nic Jones. The Neofolk band Fire + Ice recorded "Long Lankin" on their album Gilded By The Sun (1992). The song has also given its title to Long Lankin, a collection of short stories by John Banville

From: https://www.last.fm/music/Steeleye+Span/_/Long+Lankin/+wiki

Richard & Linda Thompson - A Heart Needs A Home

 #Richard & Linda Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #ex-Fairport Convention #1970s #music video #The Old Grey Whistle Test

Richard Thompson left Fairport Convention after 1970’s Full House, his reputation secured as an excellent songwriter and guitarist. He released a spectacularly unsuccessful solo album, Henry the Human Fly, in 1972. He then married Linda Peters and they released six albums between 1974 and 1982; their relationship broke down before an ill-fated North American tour in 1982. The duo’s music is often melancholic, and it’s a common trick of Richard Thompson to pair upbeat music with depressing lyrics. They often play acoustic folk-rock, especially on their early albums, but 1978’s First Light uses an L.A. rhythm section and 1982’s Shoot Out The Lights has few vestiges of folk remaining. Linda and Richard share the vocal duties – while Richard’s gruff voice is limited, Linda’s pristine voice is able to capture a range of moods, from joy on ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’ to resignation on ‘Walking on a Wire’. The pair’s first album, 1974’s I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and their 1982 swan song Shoot Out The Lights are generally considered as their strongest. In between they spent time in a Sufi Muslim commune, taking three years away from music. Richard has stated that he considers their late 1970s albums as weak, as he didn’t have his mind on the job.  From: https://albumreviews.blog/reviews/1970s-album-reviews/richard-and-linda-thompson/

Linda Thompson's experience with Sufism was, by her own reckoning, not such a good one. She moved to a commune in Maida Vale with Richard, then her husband, after making "Hokey Pokey," and she describes her experience there as grim and self-punishing. For awhile, Richard's mullah told him not to play the guitar, so he didn't play the guitar. Richard & Linda Thompson, British folk-rock royalty, disappeared for a few years in the mid-'70s. Before they did, they sent this epistle. "A Heart Needs A Home" pointed straight toward the "Pour Down Like Silver" LP, Thompson's most explicit bout of Sufi songwriting. "Home" caps "Hokey Pokey," a collection of songs that describe the world as a cold, forbidding, sin-soaked place. Richard Thompson turns to Allah in emptiness, and finds fulfillment there. Odd, then, that he didn't sing it. He gave the song to Linda. Perhaps he identified with her so strongly back then that he felt no separation between his perspective and hers. Or maybe he was trying to convince her of something. Since leaving the commune (and the marriage), she's occasionally suggested that her heart was never really in it; that she followed Richard to Maida Vale because she loved him, and she wore the headscarf because that's what was expected of her. Do we believe her? She certainly does not look uncomfortable singing "A Heart Needs A Home." On the contrary: Linda Thompson is completely possessed, her eyes on the great beyond. Maybe she's singing about Richard, maybe she's singing about Allah. Maybe it doesn't matter. The Sufis have a concept called wahdat-al-wujud: God is the only reality, and all that we perceive is a decipherable pattern emanating from Allah. Nothing exists that isn't a piece of the divine. Linda might have got it better than the mullah did. She might have got it better than Richard did.  From: https://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/2010/08/song_of_the_day_a_heart_needs.html

Pentangle - House Carpenter

 #Pentangle #John Renbourn #Bert Jansch #Jacqui McShee #folk #British folk #folk blues #jazz folk #progressive folk #British folk rock #1960s

By pulling together folk, jazz and blues into evocative, melodic albums, Pentangle were ahead of the curve in the late 1960s. An early "supergroup", they set the scene for more celebrated artists. Long before singer-songwriters – from Van Morrison to Carole King to Joni Mitchell – discovered the joys of mellifluous bass and jazzy drums, double bassist Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox added a startling perspective to the folk club frontline of guitars and vocals, contributing gravitas and spirit to Jacqui McShee's traditional songs of lost love and abandonment. Guitarists John Renbourn and Bert Jansch were accomplished musical storytellers, who occasionally spiked the brew with sitar and banjo.  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/aug/03/pentangle-review-royal-festival-hall

Were Pentangle a folk group, a folk-rock group, or something that resists classification? They could hardly be called a rock & roll act; they didn't use electric instruments often, and were built around two virtuoso guitarists, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who were already well-established on the folk circuit before the group formed. Yet their hunger for eclectic experimentation fit into the milieu of late-'60s progressive rock and psychedelia well, and much of their audience came from the rock and pop worlds, rather than the folk crowd. With Jacqui McShee on vocals and a rhythm section of Danny Thompson (bass) and Terry Cox (drums), the group mastered a breathtaking repertoire that encompassed traditional ballads, blues, jazz, pop, and re-workings of rock oldies, often blending different genres in the same piece. Their prodigious individual talents perhaps ensured a brief lifespan, but at their peak they melded their distinct and immense skills to egg each other on to heights they couldn't have achieved on their own, in the manner of great rock combos like the Beatles and Buffalo Springfield.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/pentangle-mn0000838559/biography

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/

Fotheringay - Too Much Of Nothing

 #Fotheringay #Sandy Denny #Trevor Lucas #folk rock #British folk rock #singer-songwriter #ex-Fairport Convention #Bob Dylan cover #1970s #Beat-Club

Fotheringay was a short-lived British folk rock group, formed in 1970 by vocalist Sandy Denny on her departure from Fairport Convention. The band drew its name from Denny's 1968 composition "Fotheringay" about Fotheringhay Castle, in which Mary, Queen of Scots, had been imprisoned. The song originally appeared on the 1969 Fairport Convention album, What We Did on Our Holidays, Denny's first album with that group. The band expressed Denny's vision of the potential of folk rock to express complex meaning and deep personal emotion, using traditional ballad forms, but with the power of a rock band. Their self-titled first album was one of only two albums, as they broke up a year later, in January 1971, while working on their second (recently released). The rhythm section was formed by Gerry Conway and Pat Donaldson, lauded by Denny as the best in the business. In the absence of Richard Thompson - who was prepared to tour with her, and act as session musician, but wanted to follow his own career - lead guitar was taken by Jerry Donahue, whose transatlantic country roots and softer personality brought a different, less edgy feel to the music. However he was a skilled technician, with great feel, as he showed on their album, and later Fairport Convention records. The group was completed by rhythm guitarist and second lead vocalist Australian Trevor Lucas, whom Denny was to marry, and who also later accompanied her back into Fairport.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Fotheringay/+wiki

Silly Sisters - Four Loom Weaver

 #Silly Sisters #Maddy Prior #June Tabor #Steeleye Span #folk #British folk #traditional #a capella #1970s

Silly Sisters is a collaboration between Maddy Prior, vocalist of Steeleye Span, and June Tabor, the queen of British folk. Originally formed in 1976, during a hiatus in Steeleye Span's recording activity, the "group" was more or less a glorified excuse for a hootenanny, with two of Britain's finest female folk vocalists (Prior from the more "progressive" camp and Tabor from the more "trad") teaming up for rousing versions of traditional ballads and rave-ups. On the 1977 album, Silly Sisters, they were joined by Steeleye Span's Martin Carthy (later associated with the Pogues) among a host of other capable musicians. Most often, either Prior or Tabor takes a "lead" role in a song, with the other providing backup, but on a few tracks, like "My Husband's Got No Courage In Him", a harrowing (from the male perspective) a capella lament, they both shine equally alongside each other.

"Four Loom Weaver" (Traditional) A song about unemployment in the nineteenth century, possibly dating from 1819-20. First recorded by Ewan MacColl in 1951.  

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_Sisters_(album)

Ewan MacColl was one of the key architects of the post-war British folk-song revival, and a dominant but controversial figure in its development for decades. A lifelong communist, his initial passion was workers' theatre, and in a series of influential groups throughout the 1930s and 1940s, culminating with the Theatre Workshop, he became well known in left-wing drama circles as actor, producer, writer, and propagandist. MacColl moved away from the theatre after the Second World War, although his expertise in dramatic production never left him and imbued much of his subsequent work. In the early 1950s, at the suggestion of American folklorist and collector Alan Lomax, MacColl teamed up with A. L. Lloyd and others to found the new British folk-song revival movement. The timing was perfect. By means of the Ballads and Blues club (which later became the Singers' Club), radio programmes for the BBC (including drama-documentaries in which MacColl's theatrical experience was evident), articles, innumerable concerts, talks, LP records, appearances at Trade Union meetings, clubs, and other venues, they laid the foundations for a highly successful national movement.  From: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100121901;jsessionid=7B9810173FE95C1CC067432EEE42B223

Fairport Convention - It's Alright Ma, It's Only Witchcraft

 #Fairport Convention #Ian Matthews #Ashley Hutchings #Richard Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #electric folk #British folk #1960s

It could be said that Fairport Convention was the first true second-generation folk-rock band, in that its initial repertoire and model came not from folk songs, but from imported folk-rock records. In our days of worldwide simultaneous releases and block-long music megastores, it can be easy to forget that in 1967, even LPs on Vanguard and Elektra could be hard to come by in England. To learn songs by Love, Richard & Mimi Fariña, and Jim & Jean commanded the same kind of obscurist archivism that American teenagers of the late 1950s and early 1960s needed to locate Alan Lomax field recordings, Library of Congress LPs, and Folkways releases. This is what Fairport Convention, formed in North London by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol and bassist Ashley Hutchings, did to master a repertoire that likely was unduplicated anywhere in the British Isles in 1967. Over the next few months the lineup was filled out by drummer Martin Lamble, singer Judy Dyble, and singer Ian Matthews. Except for Hutchings, all were still in their teens (Nicol was only 16), and, except for Matthews, who'd been on a 1967 pop-rock single by the Pyramid, none of them had played on any records.
"When I received the invitation to check out Fairport I knew absolutely nothing about them," recalls Matthews. "All I knew was that they were beginning to establish themselves as an underground favorite, by playing regularly at the UFO club in Covent Garden. But the crowd I was running with at the time were listening to a completely different genre of music. The day I met the band for the first time they had gathered in a small studio in south London called Sound Techniques, to record their first single. I was between homes at the time and I walked in with my suitcase and a dozen albums under my arm: Tim Hardin, Richie Havens, Tim Buckley, The Byrds, David Ackles etc. I believe these albums got me the job, because it was coincidentally exactly what they were all listening to, plus Dylan, Joni and Richard Farina, of course.
"At the time no one in the band was writing with any seriousness, so we dug deep into that type of approach for inspiration and for stage material. I don't think anyone apart from possibly Joe Boyd had any vision of where the band was headed, or what we might become. We were developing something and placed no boundaries on it. At the back of our minds American folk-rock was the happening thing, both musically and inspirationally. We loved the Airplane, and the two lead vocalist approach appealed to us. Because of our name and our scruffy onstage presence, lots of people around that time thought we were American, and considering the possible rewards, we were not about to attempt to dispel that presumption."
"Wherever Fairport played when we started in '67, there were groups playing improvisational music to a large extent," says Hutchings. "They'd start out on a chord formation and maybe sing a few words, and that would just be the vehicle to go off and paint colors instrumentally, for long stretches. There was really almost no one else tackling the best singer-songwriters and what one might loosely call contemporary folk music. Eclection were the only band I can think of right now touring England at that time who impinged on our territory. Why that is, I don't know. It's just how it was. "And I'm glad it was, really, because we wouldn't have stood out. And we did stand out as a band. In the early days, we weren't that good. But we stood out because we played these short, intelligent, rather lovely songs, and no one else was doing them. Pentangle came from a whole different area. We didn't consider that we were anything like Pentangle. They played acoustic instruments, but also they came largely from the jazz side. They swung the folk. We rocked the folk."
The band's first album, 1968's Fairport Convention, is often dismissed as an irrelevant curiosity due to its dissimilarity to the group's later, more British folk-fueled efforts. To the contrary, it is a highly credible and enjoyable, if derivative, West Coast-styled folk-rock album, owing much to the early Byrds and (particularly in the male-female vocal harmonies and vocal solo tradeoffs) Jefferson Airplane. The songs they covered would have been obscure to almost anyone on either side of the Atlantic: Joni Mitchell's "I Don't Know Where I Stand" and "Chelsea Morning" (both of which she had yet to release), Jim & Jean's "One Sure Thing," the Merry-Go-Round's "Time Will Show the Wiser," and Ben Carruthers's "Jack o' Diamonds," the last of which is a true affidavit to their record-collecting prowess, as it's doubtful the original 45 could have sold more than a few copies. More importantly, the band showed itself capable of writing strong original material in the same mold.  From: http://www.richieunterberger.com/fairport.html 

Fairport Convention - Doctor Of Physick

 #Fairport Convention #Richard Thompson #Dave Swarbrick #folk rock #British folk rock #progressive folk #1970s

The Fairports recall the making of 1970's Full House, the band's first album without founding member Ashley Hutchings and with new boy Dave Pegg “On my 22nd birthday - November 2, 1969 - I went to Mothers club in Birmingham with my ex-wife Christine to see Fairport Convention,” says the group’s current bassist Dave Pegg. “I had never seen them before but I knew [violinist] Dave Swarbrick from his work with Martin Carthy and I had played with him in the Ian Campbell Group.
“It was a new approach to traditional music,” he recalls. “It was such a great band: the interplay between [guitarist] Richard Thompson and Swarbrick instrumentally, and of course Sandy Denny’s singing and the great rhythm section of [drummer] Dave Mattacks, [rhythm guitarist] Simon Nicol and [bassist] Ashley Hutchings. I was blown away and said to Christine, ‘I would love to join that band.’ And bizarrely I got a call next day from Dave Swarbrick saying, ‘Ashley is leaving the band, would you come for an audition?’” Pegg, who had played in rock bands in the Birmingham area including The Uglys with Steve Gibbons and The Way Of Life with future Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, landed the job. The following month, Fairport released the epochal British folk rock statement Liege & Lief, but its release coincided with Sandy Denny also quitting the band.
“It was a blow to lose them both but the mood was optimistic,” Richard Thompson recalls. “We thought it would be hard to replace Sandy, so let’s not replace her. We knew that the vocals would not be as strong, but instrumentally we were a very strong band. In the history of Fairport there had always been personnel changes. This was a big one, but our attitude was to soldier on.”
“It removed the rudder and the best part of the engine room of the Good Ship Fairport,” says Simon Nicol.“But at the same time we’d got this incredible energy coming from Dave Swarbrick. He was a born-again musician because he was a full member of a band for the first time in his life. There was a sense of, ‘I really like this and I’m really going to make it work.’ He made up for the loss of the engine room in many ways. And so we became a boy band.”
On Liege & Lief, Fairport had made the decision to incorporate more traditional British and celtic elements into their music, an approach they carried on to their next album, 1970’s Full House. Stylistically, much of this was essentially still uncharted territory. Musicians had long been playing medleys of traditional jigs and reels, but not in an electric rock band. Fairport were effectively learning on the job and were all in their early 20s, except Swarbrick who was 28, and Nicol who was still just 19.
Before he joined Fairport Convention the summer of 1969 Dave Mattacks had played in a dance band and various pop groups. “On Liege & Lief I was very much, on an aesthetic level, the deer in the headlights. I had no idea what I was doing,” he says. “I was responding to the music around me and starting to grasp it. Then I had a huge light bulb moment when I got what the band was about, and it had a profound effect upon how I wanted to play and how I heard music. But even on Full House, I can still hear a very green drummer.”
Speaking to the four surviving members who played on that album, it’s striking how much they respect each other’s playing. “Ashley had a very distinctive style that contributed to the early Fairport sound,” says Thompson, “but Peggy was much more funky, more solid. And it was astonishing that he started to play jigs and reels on the bass an octave or more under everybody else. That virtuosity became a part of the Fairport sound and was unveiled on Full House.”
Pegg describes Swarbrick as a “walking library of tunes” and for Full House he had put together the dazzling instrumental medley Dirty Linen, on which the bass player came into his own. “I knew something about traditional music from having played with the Campbells,” he adds “On Dirty Linen I play the bass in unison with all the other guys and was able to keep up with them. It got me a bit of a reputation, but to be honest, the only reason I played in unison was I hadn’t got a clue what else to play on it! The Flatback Caper medley is another thing that hadn’t been done before. That was kind of proggy, with Swarb and I both playing mandolin.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-of-fairport-conventions-full-house

Richard Thompson - Beeswing

 #Richard Thompson #British folk rock #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #acoustic #ex-Fairport Convention

In 1976, Richard Thompson’s glory days looked long behind him. The guitarist who had electrified folk music with Fairport Convention and then made a series of bleak albums with his wife Linda was living in a tiny cottage in Suffolk with her and their children, selling their chickens’ eggs to the village shop. “This old tramp used to come round every three to six months,” Thompson recalled to me many years later in a London pub, “and he’d stay with us. He was a great old boy. He had amazing stories.”
Ted, the tramp, dreamt of settling down in a caravan and putting down roots; he never did. “But also, in the Sixties, the thing was ‘getting your head together in the country’: there were these mythological women, like [folk singers] Vashti Bunyan or Annie Briggs, who would disappear for years in caravans, go off to Ireland or live on a farm and you’d never see them again.”
Years passed. The Thompsons divorced. Richard returned to music, making a series of solo albums through the 1980s to (slightly) diminishing returns. Then, he drew for inspiration on Ted and on Annie Briggs and that “rural underclass landscape”, and wrote “Beeswing”.
In the summer of love, the song’s narrator comes to Dundee and falls in love with a laundry worker, as “fine as a bee’s wing”. They go on the road, busking and fruit picking and tinkering. He wants to settle down and have a family; she refuses. “As long as there’s no price on love I’ll stay.” After a drunken quarrel she leaves. Now he hears only rumors of her, sleeping rough; once marrying but finding “even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down”. Free-spiritedness shades into solipsism. And yet he remains obsessed.
The song’s parent album, 1994’s Mirror Blue, was not well received, and the delicate “Beeswing” was lost amid its general clatter. But the song persisted. When he played it on tour that year, usually straight after the rambunctious “1952 Vincent Black Lightning”, with Pete Zorn’s pennywhistle solo hinting at the voice of the beloved, audiences hushed. It became one of the highlights of his songbook, and lent the title to his 2021 autobiography. At his 70th birthday concert in 2019, he played it as a duet with Alistair Anderson on squeezebox, the two of them lit as if by moonlight, a moment of stillness in a celebratory night.  From: https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/beeswing.html

Richard & Linda Thompson - Hokey Pokey

#Richard & Linda Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #ex-Fairport Convention #1970s

From 1973 to 1982, British folk legend Richard Thompson (having quit Fairport Convention in 1971) recorded as a duo with his wife Linda Thompson. This period saw a great amount of critical praise for Richard’s songwriting and Linda’s voice, though not much popular success. Following their divorce, both pursued solo careers.
The Thompsons recorded three albums: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974), Hokey Pokey (1975) and Pour Down Like Silver (1975) before they decided to leave the music business and moved to a Sufi commune in East Anglia. Songwriting was by Richard throughout, lead vocals generally by Linda, and backing by a consistent core band of English folk-rock stalwarts
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight showed a clear development from Richard Thompson’s first solo effort Henry The Human Fly with Linda’s vocals adding grace, as well as the opportunity for Richard to write from a female perspective. Although Thompson’s trademark gloom is already evident, the lightness and beauty of the arrangements counterbalances this to produce moments of great beauty. The use of brass, from the renowned CWS silver band in particular takes forward Thompson’s continuing crusade to find a more contemporary and ordinary expression of Englishness in music (as opposed to, say, the forays into the Morris form of his Fairport contemporary Ashley Hutchings; solo and with The Albion Band). The next year’s release, Hokey Pokey, to some extent repeats the formula, although it is improved in production values, and is stylistically more adventurous still. A Heart Needs a Home is a minor miracle of songwriting, expressing the longing for love without cynicism and has a standout multi-tracked vocal from Linda.  From: https://thevogue.com/artists/richard-linda-thompson/#bio

Steeleye Span - Sweep, Chimney Sweep

 #Steeleye Span #Maddy Prior #Tim Hart #Martin Carthy #folk rock #British folk #British folk rock #traditional folk #electric folk #British roots rock #a capella

 

Steeleye Span are a British folk rock band formed in 1969 in England by Fairport Convention bass player Ashley Hutchings and established London folk club duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior. The band were part of the 1970s British folk revival. Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes; Maddy Prior being the only remaining original member of the band. Their musical repertoire consists of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reels added; the traditional songs often include some of the Child Ballads. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never moved completely away from traditional music, which draws upon pan-British traditions.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steeleye_Span

One of the best children’s tales involves an impressive song and dance number performed by a group of chimney sweeps. Dick Van  Dyke and Julie Andrews did a pretty good job showing how dirty the chimney sweep job is, but I can’t guarantee an in-tune song and dance number. You may ask me to leave before the job is finished if I break out into song and dance. The rooftop acrobatics were a bit on the dangerous side as well. As unusual as this topic is, today I’m going to point out several of the myths surrounding chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins, and I’ll discuss some of the actual lore behind my profession. Many chimney sweep myths have been passed down through the ages. Some cultures believe the chimney sweep is a sign of good luck. Several legends go so far as to say they are the ultimate bringer of good luck. Old European folklore says that if a bride receives a kiss on the cheek from a chimney sweep on her wedding day she will have a very blessed and happy marriage. There’s also the story of the chimney sweep who fell from the rooftop of an apartment building and was dangling from the guttering by one foot. A lovely woman opened her window and pulled him inside her home to safety. They married and lived happily ever after. Most people believe that these chimney sweep myths originated during the reign of King George of England. He was riding astride a horse when a dog startled the animal, which threw King George to the ground. A chimney sweep stepped up, took hold of the horse’s reigns, and calmed him. The king then declared that chimney sweeps should be regarded as lucky.  From: https://loucurley.com/chimney-sweep-song-dance-quite-like-mary-poppins/

Sweep, chimney sweep, is the common cry I keep
If you can but rightly understand me
With my brush, broom and my rake, with my brush, broom and my rake
See what cleanly work I make
With my hoe, with my hoe, with my hoe and my hoe
And it's sweep, chimney sweep for me

Girls came up to my door I looked black as any Moor
I am constant and true as the day
With a bunch of ribbons gay, with a bunch of ribbons gay
Hanging down by my right knee
And there's no one, and there's no one
And there's no one and no one
And there's no one can call me on high

Arise girls, arise, wipe the sleep from off your eyes
Go and fetch to me some beer that I might swallow
I can climb up to the top, I can climb up to the top
Without a ladder or a rope
And it's there you, and it's there you, and it's there you and there you
And it's there you will hear me “Hullo”

Now here I do stand with my hoe all in my hand
Like some soldier that's on the sentery
I will work for a better sort
And I'll kindly thank them for it
I will work, I will work, I will work and I'll work
And I'll work for none but gentery 

Fairport Convention - The Deserter

 #Fairport Convention #Sandy Denny #Ashley Hutchings #Richard Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #electric folk #British folk #1960s 

Fairport Convention may not have been the first to combine British and Celtic roots music with rock, but Liege and Lief was certainly the most effective and successful thrust in that direction, opening the ears of the music world to a new kind of sound. Surprisingly recorded while some of the members were still recuperating from injuries sustained in a horrible auto accident that killed their drummer and Richard Thompson’s girlfriend, Liege and Lief sounds as fresh and alive today as it must have sounded when released in late 1969.
“The Deserter” tells the tale of one of the unluckiest people who has ever lived. A victim of impressment into the British Navy, he tries to escape but is turned in by a comrade, for which he receives three hundred and three lashes (not of the erotic variety). A persevering little cuss, he tries to desert again and his girlfriend rats on him. This time the punishment is death, from which he is rescued in this song by Victoria’s Prince Albert in an ex deus machina role. Sandy Denny pointed out that the song’s origins went further back than the Victorian era and that it was common for broadside printers to “bring songs up to date.” The most poignant aspect of the song is the deserter’s commitment to forgiveness; after the whipping and the death sentence, the line, “May the Lord have mercy on them for their sad cruelty,” reminding us of an aspect of Christianity that has entirely disappeared from the current American version of that religion. Dave Swarbrick’s string work is marvelous on this piece, as are the paired guitars that add a certain sweetness to the tale, reflecting the essential sweetness of the deserter’s soul.  From: https://altrockchick.com/2016/09/19/classic-music-review-liege-and-lief-by-airport-convention/

The Albion Country Band - Hanged I Shall Be

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

After working with the legendary English folk-rock bands Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, Ashley Hutchings put together the Albion Band (sometimes known as Albion Country Band and Albion Dance Band) in a similar style. They were first gathered as the back-up band for British folksinger Shirley Collins’ 1971 album, No Roses. The band recorded it’s own debut album in 1973, but it wasn’t released until 1976. Over the years, the ever-changing personnel in the Albion Band has included a dizzying number of English folk-rock luminaries, including Richard and Linda Thompson, Martin Carthy, Shirley and Dolly Collins, Maddy Prior, and Martin Simpson, to name just a few.  From: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/albion-country-band/3221110 

E.J. Moeran collected the grim murder ballad ‘Hanged I Shall Be’ in October 1921 from ‘Shepherd’ Taylor of Hickling, Norfolk. This is perhaps the most important of all murder ballads carried across England by the street singers. At least, a vast number of pieces of ballad journalism have taken it for a pattern during the last two and a half centuries. The original comes from a broadside from the end of the 17th Century called The Wittam Miller (Wittam is a village near Oxford). Most of the 19th Century stall-ballad publishers printed a version of this form favourite, which was probably the parent ballad to the American murder ballads The Knoxville Girl and Florella.
Hamish Henderson noted: This murder ballad, with its uneasy psychological undertones, is sometimes known as The Murder of Sweet Mary Anne. It appears to derive from a 17th century broadside in which the murdering lover is a miller. In the United States, the ballad is best known as The Lexington Murder or The Knoxville Girl, and has undoubtedly been the inspiration for several other murder ballads. In the form sung here, it is still very popular in Scotland.
American listeners, who are accustomed to the brisk measures of Pretty Polly or the start directness of The Knoxville Girl, may be surprised to encounter a slow and highly ornamented Scots variant of this familiar ballad. It is the favourite British remake of The Cruel Ship's Captain theme and might be called the classic British murder ballad, in the same sense that Omie Wise or Pretty Polly are the central ballads of the Southern American tradition. In most English variants, the murder weapon is a stick cut from a hedgerow, as in Harry Cox's version about Ekefield Town.
Steve Roud noted: Quite widely collected in Britain by Cecil Sharp and his contemporaries, and in the repertoire of several well known post-war singers such as Cecilia Costello, Jeannie Robertson, and Phoebe Smith, this song was even more well-known in North America, where dozens of versions (under such titles as The Wexford Girl or The Lexington Miller) have been noted and published. As pointed out by Laws (American Balladry from British Broadsides, 1957), in a chapter on “ballad recomposition”, the original text appeared in the mid-18th century as The Berkshire Tragedy or The Wittam Miller, and has since undergone not simply the vagaries of oral tradition, but deliberate re-composition, apparently on more than one occasion. Comparing Harry's with the Original, his is severely truncated and avoids the wordiness of 18th century texts, but it includes many of the most telling details, such as the stake from the hedge, and the dragging by the hair. Nevertheless, the omission of the original motif of pregnancy leaves the murder motiveless in Harry's version, which heightens either the song's stark horror, or the sordidness, according to the listener's own viewpoint.
Norman Buchan noted: Though Francis James Child characterised the broadside ballads as ‘veritable dungheaps’ he conceded the occasional ‘moderate jewel’. This one, ennobled by a splendid tune, is a good deal more than that. It contains little of the conventional trappings of the professional product — no last dying speech, no explanation for the murder, usually pregnancy, no ‘take warning by me’. Indeed it shows much of the bare economy of story line of our classical ballads and is obviously moulded by a community in which the great tradition was still very much alive. It will come as no surprise, therefore, that Enoch learned it from perhaps the greatest living expression of that tradition, Jeannie Robertson.

Albion Country Band's ‘Hanged I Shall Be’

Now as I was bound apprentice, I was 'prentice to the mill,
And I served my master truly for more than seven year.
Until I took up to courting with a lass with that rolling eye
And I promised that I'd marry her in the month of sweet July.
And as we went out a-walking through the fields and the meadows gay,
Oh it's there we told our tales of love and we fixed our wedding day.

And as we were walking and talking of the things that grew around
Oh I took a stick all out of the hedge and I knocked that pretty maid down
Down on her bended knees she fell and loud for mercy cry,
“Oh spare the life of an innocent girl for I'm not prepared to die.”
But I took her by her curly locks and I dragged her on the ground
And I throwed her into the riverhead that flows to Ekefield town,
That flows so far to the distance, that flows so deep and wide,
Oh it's there I threw this pretty fair maid that should have been my bride.

Now I went home to my parents' house, it being late at night.
Mother she got out of bed all for to light the light.
Oh she asked me and she questioned me, “What stains your hands and clothes?”
And the answer I gave back to her, “I've been bleeding at my nose.”
No rest, no rest all that long night, no rest there could I find
For there's sparks of fire and brimstone around my head did shine.

And it was about three days after that this pretty fair maid was found,
Floating by the riverhead that flows to Ekefield town.
That flows so far to the distance, that flows so deep and wide.
Oh it's there they found this pretty fair maid that should have been my bride.
Oh the judges and the jurymen all on me they did agree
For a-murdering of this pretty fair maid oh hanged I shall be.

From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/themillersapprentice.html

The Pentangle - Wedding Dress

 #The Pentangle #John Renbourn #Bert Jansch #Jacqui McShee #traditional folk #folk rock #British folk #British folk rock #baroque folk #folk jazz #acoustic #1960s

Were The Pentangle a folk group, a folk-rock group, or something that resists classification? They could hardly be called a rock & roll act; they didn't use electric instruments often, and were built around two virtuoso guitarists, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who were already well-established on the folk circuit before the group formed. Yet their hunger for eclectic experimentation fit into the milieu of late-'60s progressive rock and psychedelia well, and much of their audience came from the rock and pop worlds, rather than the folk crowd. With Jacqui McShee on vocals and a rhythm section of Danny Thompson (bass) and Terry Cox (drums), the group mastered a breathtaking repertoire that encompassed traditional ballads, blues, jazz, pop, and reworkings of rock oldies, often blending different genres in the same piece. Their prodigious individual talents perhaps ensured a brief lifespan, but at their peak they melded their distinct and immense skills to egg each other on to heights they couldn't have achieved on their own, in the manner of great rock combos like the Beatles and Buffalo Springfield.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/pentangle-mn0000838559/biography

By 1971, the strain of working together and of working in the music business in general, was starting to take its toll on members of Pentangle. The atmosphere between the band and their record label was souring rapidly and alcohol was playing an ever increasing part in the creative process. On the plus side, this album was recorded on state of the art 16 track equipment, improving the sound quality of the finished product enormously. After the entirely traditional "Cruel sister", here the band revert to a mixture of band compositions and traditional material, the 11 minute feature (title) track being one of those written by the band.
The opening "Wedding dress" has a real bluegrass feel, Jackie McShee sounding a little like Emmylou Harris (the song is similar to Harris' "Deeper well"). "Omie Wise" returns us to the Atlantic's eastern shores, John Renbourn delivering this traditional folk song without great embellishment. "Will the circle be unbroken" is undoubtedly the best known of the traditional numbers here. The song was first made famous by the Carter Family, but has since been covered by almost as many artists as "Yesterday"! McShee's pure voice is perfect for this pleasantly mournful piece which inevitably invites audience participation on the infectious chorus. "When I get home" is the first of the band compositions. The song has the feel of one of Fairport Convention's early Bob Dylan covers, but to these ears sounds decidedly ordinary among its peers. On the other hand, "Rain and snow" is a personal favourite, this light traditional air offering McShee an opportunity to do her best Joni Mitchell impersonation.
The second side (of the original LP) is altogether more reflective. "Helping hand" is a drifting, downbeat affair with a west coat feel. "So clear" continues in a similar vein, perhaps with hints of Simon and Garfunkel. The lengthy title track takes us towards prog folk territories, the sparse violin and acoustic guitar conversation which opens the track eventually giving way to a fine multi-tracked vocal performance by McShee. The track however gradually settles down into a more orthodox soft folk number. In all, an enjoyable if rather understated album from this fine band. Those who enjoyed their previous works are sure to find this to their liking too.
From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=9925 

Fairport Convention - Percy's Song

#Fairport Convention #Sandy Denny #Ian Matthews #Richard Thompson #folk #folk rock #British folk rock #electric folk #British folk #1960s #Bob Dylan cover

The best British folk-rock band of the late '60s, Fairport Convention did more than any other act to develop a truly British variation on the folk-rock prototype by drawing upon traditional material and styles indigenous to the British Isles. While the revved-up renditions of traditional British folk tunes drew the most critical attention, the group members were also (at least at the outset) talented songwriters as well as interpreters. They were comfortable with conventional harmony-based folk-rock as well as tunes that drew upon more explicitly traditional sources, and boasted some of the best singers and instrumentalists of the day. A revolving door of personnel changes, however, saw the exit of their most distinguished talents, and basically changed the band into a living museum piece after the early '70s, albeit an enjoyable one with integrity. When Fairport formed around 1967, their goal was not to revive British folk numbers, but to play harmony-and guitar-based folk-rock in a style strongly influenced by Californian groups of the day (especially the Byrds). The lineup that recorded their self-titled debut album in 1968 featured Richard Thompson, Ian Matthews, and Simon Nicol on guitars; Ashley Hutchings on bass; Judy Dyble on vocals; and Martin Lamble on drums. Most of the members sang, though Matthews and Dyble were the strongest vocalists in this early incarnation; all of their early work, in fact, was characterized by blends of male and female vocals, influenced by such American acts as the Mamas & the Papas and Ian & Sylvia. While their first album was derivative, it had some fine material, and the band was already showing a knack for eclecticism, excavating overlooked songs by Joni Mitchell (then virtually unknown) and Emitt Rhodes.

What We Did on Our Holidays
Fairport Convention didn't reach their peak until Dyble was replaced after the first album in 1968 by Sandy Denny, who had previously recorded both as a solo act and with the Strawbs. Denny's penetrating, resonant style qualified her as the best British folk-rock singer of all time, and provided Fairport with the best vocalist they would ever have. What We Did on Our Holidays (1969) and Unhalfbricking (1969) are their best albums, mixing strong originals, excellent covers of contemporary folk-rock songs by the likes of Mitchell and Dylan, and imaginative revivals of traditional folk songs that mixed electric and acoustic instruments with a beguiling ease.

Liege & Lief
Matthews had left the band in early 1969, and Lamble (still in his teens) died in an accident involving the group's equipment van in mid-1969. That forced Fairport to regroup, replacing Lamble with Dave Mattacks, and adding Dave Swarbrick on fiddle. Their repertoire, too, became much more traditional in focus, and electrified traditional folk numbers would dominate their next album, Liege and Lief (1969). Here critical thought diverges; some insist that this is unequivocally their peak, marking a final escape from their '60s folk-rock influences into a much more original style. This school of thought severely underestimates their songwriting talents, and others feel that they were at their best when mixing original and outside material, and contemporary and traditional styles, in fact becoming more predictable and derivative when they opted to concentrate on British folk chestnuts.

Full House
The Liege and Lief lineup didn't last long; by the end of the '60s, Ashley Hutchings had left to join Steeleye Span, replaced by Dave Pegg. More crucially, Denny was also gone, helping to form Fotheringay. Thompson was still on board for Full House (1970), but by the beginning of 1971 he too had departed, leaving Nicol as the only original member.

Angel Delight
Fairport have kept going, on and off (mostly on), for the last 25 years, touring and performing frequently. It may be too harsh to dismiss all of their post-Thompson records out of hand; Angel Delight (1971), the first recorded without the guitarist on board, was actually their highest-charting LP in the U.K., reaching the Top Ten. Nicol's exit in late 1971 erased all vestiges of connections to their salad days. Fairport was now not so much a continuous entity as a concept, carried on by musicians dedicated to the electrified British folk style that had been mapped out on Liege and Lief. 

So it continues to this day, supported by a devoted fan base (Dirty Linen, the top American roots music magazine, originally began as a Fairport Convention fanzine). Denny would actually return to the group for about a year and a half in the 1970s, prior to her death in 1978; Nicol rejoined in 1976. Keeping track of Fairport's multitudinous lineup changes is a daunting task, and the group has coexisted on an erratic basis with the various other projects of the most frequent members (Nicol, Mattacks, and Pegg, the last of whom has played with Jethro Tull since the late '70s). They began playing annual reunion concerts in the 1980s (sometimes joined on-stage by Fairport alumni like Thompson), events that turned into some of the most popular folk festivals in Europe. They also released some albums of new material intermittently throughout the last couple of decades, mostly pleasant traditional-oriented outings that appeal primarily to diehards.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/fairport-convention-mn0000162233/biography