Fairport Convention – What We Did On Our Saturday
Matty Groves – 15 June 2018
A glorious celebration of 50 years of Fairport with a family gathering of former members (and 20,000 friends in a field in Oxfordshire). This two-CD set mostly features classic music from the first 10 years of the folk-rock pioneers, but it also serves as a showcase for the current (and most enduring) lineup of the band.
It was a glorious evening at Fairport’s Cropredy Convention on Saturday 12 August last year. My best mate and I stood in the crowd just a few feet away from the stage as Fairport bandmates old and even older performed a 31-strong setlist. By Fairport standards, it was relatively short: three hours and only one evening headline performance from the band. But every moment is a treasured memory.
Now that momentous concert has been whittled down to 25 tracks across two discs, is it more than a memento for the fans in the field? Well, I can’t say for absolute certain, but it still sounds pretty fine ten months later…
Since the last major anniversary ten years ago, much has happened to the Fairport ranks – and most of it not good. Short-lived guitarist Roger Hill (and good friend of longstanding bassist Dave Pegg) died in 2011, as did the mayfly Fairporter and replacement guitarist Dave Rea. Drummer Bruce Rowland, who was a Fairport mainstay 1975 to 1979 in the dying embers of the bands first flush before the group temporarily disbanded, died in 2015.
But the biggest loss was the powerhouse fiddler, songwriter and singer the legend Dave Swarbrick who, after joining in 1969, was the de facto leader of the band from 1970 to 1979, he died in June 2016. Another momentous musical loss happened when guitarist extraordinaire Jerry Donahue suffered a stroke just one month later. By all accounts, he is making good progress but is very sadly unlikely to perform again.
Alongside the losses of Sandy Denny and Trevor Lucas many years ago, this leaves a huge hole in the possible Fairport lineups from 1972 to 1979. Thankfully, members of the earliest incarnations of the band (aside from early casualty, drummer Martin Lamble) are still able and willing to re-create some of the glories of 60s Fairport.
As showcased in each of their current projects at the festival, Judy Dyble, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Iain Matthews and (it goes without saying) Richard Thompson are still musical forces to be reckoned with five decades on. Alongside Mattacks on drums, the very earliest Fairport re-convened and the two tracks included on this CD still sends a thrill, as well as a chill as this ghost of a long-lost band bursts gloriously back to life.
It’s a little sad that Judy Dyble’s lead vocal showcase, I Don’t Know Where I Stand, has been missed off the set – and that you don’t get to see her ironic knitting during Thompson’s extended guitar work out on Reno Nevada. But Jude ably demonstrated her artistic renaissance with her Band of Perfect Strangers earlier that day at Cropredy (also not featured here).
After the stunning early Fairport arrangement of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne (with Chris While covering for Sandy, as she does for most of the event), the rest of the first CD sticks to Fairport’s stone-cold classics, with tracks from Liege and Lief and Full House. In fact, Liege is one track away from being performed in its entirety, and the Full House repertoire is represented in six performances here (with Chris Leslie in fine form covering Swarbrick’s fiddle and mandolin parts).
As for the other seminal Fairport albums, What We Did On Our Holidays, despite inspiring the title of this release, only serves up two tracks Fotheringay and the inevitable closer, Meet on the Ledge (in which I guest on backing vocals along with 19,999 others in Field 9). Unhalfbricking is only represented by Who Knows Where The Time Goes, but when there are no tracks at all covering albums recorded from 1996 to 2015 you can understand the tricky choices necessary to cut down 50-years of music to a 180-minute set.
While this might seem to overlook the achievements of the current lineup (who celebrate a Fairport-split-myth-busting 20 years together this year), delving deeper the Nicol-Pegg-Sanders-Leslie-Conway team have more influence than you might think. The arrangements of many of the tracks here are variations on re-recorded versions of classic songs from 2011’s Festival Bell (Rising for the Moon) and the majority from the 45th anniversary release of all-new old songs, 2012’s By Popular Request (including the latest line up tackling Farewell, Farewell and Fotheringay with the addition of Mattacks on drums).
The Denny/Lucas/Donahue eras are represented by the Fotheringay song Ballad of Ned Kelly (performed live the band often in the Fotheringport Confusion years), with PJ Wright standing in for Lucas and offering a rockier guitar solo than Donahue’s trademark sweet twang, and Sally Barker injecting some soul into the Denny parts both here and on the aforementioned Rising. Ralph McTell’s heartfelt performance of White Dress pays tribute to both the song’s co-author (Swarbrick) and its subject (Denny again).
I couldn’t end this review without acknowledging how blisteringly brilliant Richard Thompson is (as always) on all the tracks he features, as is (the underrated) Maartin Allcock and how little Iain Matthews’ pure vocals have changed in five decades. It all comes round again. And good on Fairport for producing a plastic-free cardboard sleeve too.
Whether we can ever again expect so many Fairports together on a stage to celebrate is a question for crystal ball gazers, but for now what we have is a brilliant best-of collection performed with the musicianship you might expect, but a vibrancy you possibly wouldn’t from a band with a half-century heritage. This is Fairport live, and still kicking.
Order What We Did On Our Saturday via Amazon