Singer, song writer and multi-instrumentalist, Chris Leslie, has been a member of Fairport Convention since 1997. So, although that makes him a relative newcomer, the band had already been around for 30 years when he joined, he’s nonetheless a veteran of 22 Cropredy festivals, actually it’s 23 if you count the time in the early 90s when he deputised for Ric Sanders. Between opening the festival with Fairport Acoustic on Thursday and the traditional Saturday night closing set, Friday was the nearest to downtime that Chris could expect over a Cropredy weekend. So, Friday afternoon, I met up with a relaxed and chatty Chris who needed only the smallest encouragement to tell me about the most recent addition to his music.
Chris, what have you been up to?
Well, my most recent thing, which is very exciting, I’ve just bought myself a lovely clarsach. I’m completely new to it, well, no, not completely new, I’ve dabbled a little before. I had one about 2 or 3 years ago and recently I was given one by a friend. I took it to the harp shop in Gloucestershire where it came from and I saw this other, small clarsach there. So, I got strings for the big one, bought the small one, and I play it every day. I’m just getting my hands around it and loving it. It’s the sound of the sea for me, I’m working on slow Breton airs at the moment. It takes me straight to the coast. That’s my most recent thing, but I’ve been writing a bit, possibly with a new solo album in mind. I’ll get stuck into that a lot more once Cropredy’s through.
And will the clarsach figure on that?
I hope so, I hope so. It’s a lot to get together to play it live as well as I’d like to. But I think I can quite quickly get together some chordal stuff and maybe sing. Singing a few numbers, that would be really lovely, it would add a texture that I love. I’ll certainly get it on my solo album because, recording, I can take the time to get something down.
Last weekend we had The Outside Track at Wickham with, of course, Ailie Robertson’s harp…
Oh, it’s amazing and I love the harpist’s technique. It’s quite interesting, it’s actually pulling off rather than plucking. Initially quite counter-intuitive, you tend to want to pluck, as you would a guitar string. But it’s actually, fingers on and then you pull off, but you do get a great sound. So that’s my most recent thing.
Can you say more about your plans for a solo album?
The idea is for it to be based around the word ‘earth’. Earth not as in the world but as in the ground. I’m going to try to write stuff about, and take traditional stuff from, the places that I love. Music that’s actually of the place itself, so it’s like feeling the very earth of the place. The places will be, amongst others, Oxfordshire, where I live, where I was born, I love it dearly. It will be Cornwall; it will be Brittany and it’ll probably be a bit of Wales as well. So, it will kind of be leaning towards a Celtic type album. With Oxfordshire very much in the mix.
So, Oxfordshire can discover its Celtic roots?
I just love to play music that moves me and certainly, the Celtic lands have music that really moves me, deeply. And Oxfordshire, the countryside, it deeply moves me as well. And I just think if you go back far enough in history, it wasn’t split up, it was all the Celtic lands. So, I tend to take that approach and I’m just going to explore an album where I’m not going to start with any particular remit other than earth. Everything will come from that word, so it won’t be different songs coming in as different entities, I want everything in the album to be homogeneous, all the elements should have some direct communication.
I love that idea. Do you know Duncan Chisholm?
Yes
His trilogy of albums, taking inspiration from the glens where he grew up and, then, last year, his Sandwood album, focussed on just one very remote place, Sandwood Bay in Sutherland.
I was so delighted to be introduced to his work. I knew his name, of course, but had never actually come across his music until fairly recently. A friend of mine played me this music and it went instantly to my heart. I knew instinctively what it was about, you only had to hear a few bars and you knew, this isn’t just something written from an idea in the head, this is of something (tangible).
Jeanie and I sat on that beach with the iPod and a little speaker, we listened to the album all the way through.
That’s perfect. A musician, who, for me, has done that all my life, and I came across him in my mid-teens, is Alan Stivell. His music is Brittany, it is Brittany. And I love his total use of obscure stuff mixed in with quite popular stuff. It’s the combining of different elements to make something else, to become something else. I just love it.
Music of place is probably my direction, outside of Fairport of course. Fairport, I’ve a different rôle there. I bring songs of place into it sometimes, but in my own work, my solo work outside of Fairport, it’s more and more where I’m going. And my ideal thing is to record in situ as well. We have some great places, in Oxfordshire even, some great prehistoric sites, Rollright Stones, ancient sites that I go to regularly and walk the countryside around there, so they’ll be featuring in the Oxfordshire part.
Now you’ve mentioned Fairport, anything out of the ordinary coming up? Both this weekend and in the near future?
Yes, this weekend we’re expanding in the middle of our set, as well as in the middle of our waistlines, to what we’re calling Fairport extension. We’re bringing on some friends, to get some bigger sounds, so we can do some numbers from the back catalogue that had that bigger makeup in the sound. Certainly, some stuff from Maartin Allcock’s era, so, PJ Wright on electric guitar, Anna Ryder on various things, horns, Edmund on horn, Phil Bond on keyboards and Hammond organ, Dave Mattacks on drums. So, it’s going to expand into such a big sound. We’ve had such fun at the warm-up gigs, it’s been great. Coming up in October we’re recording a new studio album, which will also be great fun. Hopefully, we’ll have it for the winter tour next year.