Fairport Convention
Mick Jagger Centre
Friday 1st May 2009
I had never seen Fairport before and as I have never even remotely considered buying any of their albums this isn’t going to be list of all the songs they did as I only recognised one! That said I was looking forward to the gig to fill in a quite serious gap in the music had seen over the years. Mercifully the Bank Holiday weekend traffic was light and I took a cunning route to avoid some potentially nasty stuff on the way to the A2.
We got there in plenty of time for a drink, to order the interval drinks (I suspected a rush from the folkies to the bar) and check out the audience. Teresa reckoned that generally the aging folk crowd were hairier than the aging blues and rocker mob. We had decent seats about halfway back in the centre and after an intro from Nicola, one of the MJC officials the band trooped on having asked to be known as the Frock Rockers from Oxford (or something similar).
This confused me as not having seen them before I had no idea if this was a support band. The audience seemed very happy to see them and it took me a couple of songs before I was confident that I was seeing the main band! Wikipedia has a very useful grid of who had played in the band and when that’s worth looking at. From the word go it was obvious that this band knew what they were doing and were very comfortable doing it.
As we looked at the stage from the left we had Ric Sanders the fiddler, Simon Nicol on guitar, Gerry Conway percussion, Dave Pegg bass and Chris Leslie mandolin, fiddle and bouzouki. Ric Sanders is one of those folk fiddle players who plays and plays and plays seemingly without pause or interruption. I don’t know how they do it. Either they have a phenomenal memory for tunes and a great capacity for improvisation or there are only a few standard tunes that have variations on them. He came under the heading of a funny little man and is the only bloke I have seen on stage wearing Crocs.
He wore a sort of peakless black baseball cap with his long pony tail poking out of the back. He could have been Griff Rhys Jones’s younger brother and somewhat disconcertingly sounded like him as well. As I said his playing was continuous, inventive and well amplified. Having been in the band over 20 years he weaved his magic through every song and was a delight to listen to.
Simon Nicol on guitar could be counted as the leader but being folkies he would probably say that it’s all a band effort. He played a very good rhythm guitar on a Martin jumbo (or similar) and I thought he was a bit underused. He sang a lot and his rhythm chops reminded me of a good jazz 2nd guitarist. He did get the odd solo but t was never very loud with the mandolin and fiddle seemingly getting priority. He was the main chat man and like all the bands that have been together for years each song had a story. He was very trim with his neat white beard and nearly white slightly floppy hair and everything was said with a joke or humorous comment in mind. He looked like the granddad you’d like to have, full of fun and good stories.
Gerry Conway had about the most minimal drum kit I had ever seen on stage. Al he had was a snare drum, a bass drum pedal but no bass drum and a device that Simon Nicol told us was called a Handsonic. This was a circular sort of electronic drum made by Roland that he played in conjunction with the snare. I think we were told that he was fairly new to the device as sometimes he got it wrong or the bands amusement.
Dave Pegg on bass has been around for a long time and is the longest continually serving member of the band having joined in 1969. He played electric, nice and simple and did his fair share of the vocals. Chris Leslie, very neat & trim looked like he worked in local government and whose idea of excitement was to be allowed to wear a pair of M & S jeans on a Sunday. That appearance was deceptive as looking at all the pictures on various websites of him he had very long hair. He was equally at home on mandolin, bouzouki, fiddle (he kept up with Ric Sanders easily) and when they did their novelty number on ukulele as well. All 4 string players played ukuleles on it and it went down a storm.
The vocals were handled by Simon Nicol, Chris Leslie and Dave Pegg with the confidence you’d expect from experienced folkies and all the songs were greeted with murmurs of recognition from part of the crowd (except from me of course who knew none of them). All of the tales they told were very good and unlike some bands they were pertinent and usually very funny. We had an interval followed by more of the same and they played for a good two hours plus and it was a sign of how enjoyable it was that I had no idea that it was that long.
The encore was the one song that I did vaguely recognise and that was Meet on the Ledge, a Richard Thompson song and he left he band in 1971. It was a very good evening and I’d certainly see them again. They plugged their Cropredy festival a lot. It’s in August and has a very good line up including Steve Winwood, Richard Thompson and Ralph McTell.
http://www.fairportconvention.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairport_Convention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Leslie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Nicol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Pegg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Conway_(musician)
http://www.roland.co.uk/drum_room_catdet.asp?ID=HPD15
Mick Jagger Centre
Friday 1st May 2009
I had never seen Fairport before and as I have never even remotely considered buying any of their albums this isn’t going to be list of all the songs they did as I only recognised one! That said I was looking forward to the gig to fill in a quite serious gap in the music had seen over the years. Mercifully the Bank Holiday weekend traffic was light and I took a cunning route to avoid some potentially nasty stuff on the way to the A2.
We got there in plenty of time for a drink, to order the interval drinks (I suspected a rush from the folkies to the bar) and check out the audience. Teresa reckoned that generally the aging folk crowd were hairier than the aging blues and rocker mob. We had decent seats about halfway back in the centre and after an intro from Nicola, one of the MJC officials the band trooped on having asked to be known as the Frock Rockers from Oxford (or something similar).
This confused me as not having seen them before I had no idea if this was a support band. The audience seemed very happy to see them and it took me a couple of songs before I was confident that I was seeing the main band! Wikipedia has a very useful grid of who had played in the band and when that’s worth looking at. From the word go it was obvious that this band knew what they were doing and were very comfortable doing it.
As we looked at the stage from the left we had Ric Sanders the fiddler, Simon Nicol on guitar, Gerry Conway percussion, Dave Pegg bass and Chris Leslie mandolin, fiddle and bouzouki. Ric Sanders is one of those folk fiddle players who plays and plays and plays seemingly without pause or interruption. I don’t know how they do it. Either they have a phenomenal memory for tunes and a great capacity for improvisation or there are only a few standard tunes that have variations on them. He came under the heading of a funny little man and is the only bloke I have seen on stage wearing Crocs.
He wore a sort of peakless black baseball cap with his long pony tail poking out of the back. He could have been Griff Rhys Jones’s younger brother and somewhat disconcertingly sounded like him as well. As I said his playing was continuous, inventive and well amplified. Having been in the band over 20 years he weaved his magic through every song and was a delight to listen to.
Simon Nicol on guitar could be counted as the leader but being folkies he would probably say that it’s all a band effort. He played a very good rhythm guitar on a Martin jumbo (or similar) and I thought he was a bit underused. He sang a lot and his rhythm chops reminded me of a good jazz 2nd guitarist. He did get the odd solo but t was never very loud with the mandolin and fiddle seemingly getting priority. He was the main chat man and like all the bands that have been together for years each song had a story. He was very trim with his neat white beard and nearly white slightly floppy hair and everything was said with a joke or humorous comment in mind. He looked like the granddad you’d like to have, full of fun and good stories.
Gerry Conway had about the most minimal drum kit I had ever seen on stage. Al he had was a snare drum, a bass drum pedal but no bass drum and a device that Simon Nicol told us was called a Handsonic. This was a circular sort of electronic drum made by Roland that he played in conjunction with the snare. I think we were told that he was fairly new to the device as sometimes he got it wrong or the bands amusement.
Dave Pegg on bass has been around for a long time and is the longest continually serving member of the band having joined in 1969. He played electric, nice and simple and did his fair share of the vocals. Chris Leslie, very neat & trim looked like he worked in local government and whose idea of excitement was to be allowed to wear a pair of M & S jeans on a Sunday. That appearance was deceptive as looking at all the pictures on various websites of him he had very long hair. He was equally at home on mandolin, bouzouki, fiddle (he kept up with Ric Sanders easily) and when they did their novelty number on ukulele as well. All 4 string players played ukuleles on it and it went down a storm.
The vocals were handled by Simon Nicol, Chris Leslie and Dave Pegg with the confidence you’d expect from experienced folkies and all the songs were greeted with murmurs of recognition from part of the crowd (except from me of course who knew none of them). All of the tales they told were very good and unlike some bands they were pertinent and usually very funny. We had an interval followed by more of the same and they played for a good two hours plus and it was a sign of how enjoyable it was that I had no idea that it was that long.
The encore was the one song that I did vaguely recognise and that was Meet on the Ledge, a Richard Thompson song and he left he band in 1971. It was a very good evening and I’d certainly see them again. They plugged their Cropredy festival a lot. It’s in August and has a very good line up including Steve Winwood, Richard Thompson and Ralph McTell.
http://www.fairportconvention.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairport_Convention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Leslie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Nicol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Pegg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Conway_(musician)
http://www.roland.co.uk/drum_room_catdet.asp?ID=HPD15
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