Fairport Convention Artistfacts

Fairport Convention song list

Fairport Convention Artistfacts

1967-
Simon NicolLead vocals, guitar, dulcimer, keyboards1967-
Richard ThompsonGuitar, dulcimer, keyboards, mandolin1967-1971
Ashley HutchingsBass1967-1969
Martin LambleDrums1967-1969
Judy Dyble vocals, autoharp, piano, recorder1967-1968
Iain MatthewsVocals, percussion1967-1969
Sandy DennyVocals, guitar, keyboards1968–1969, 1974–1975
Dave SwarbrickFiddle, mandolin, guitar1969-1979
Dave MattacksDrums, percussion. keyboards, bass1969-
Dave PeggBass guitar, mandolin, guitar, fiddle, drums1969-
Ric SandersFiddles, keyboards, ukulele1985-
Chris LeslieMandolin, fiddle, bouzouki guitar, flute1996-
The pioneering English folk-rock band Fairport Convention was formed by teenagers experimenting with American West Coast rock before pivoting to plug centuries-old English ballads into electric instruments. Over the decades that followed, the band built a legacy anchored by an annual festival that has become one of the most enduring traditions in British music.
The band's name has nothing to do with cars, ports, or anything nautical; it comes from a house. Guitarist Simon Nicol lived in a large home in Muswell Hill called "Fairport," owned by his family, where the group's earliest members rehearsed above his father's medical practice. The name was simply an acknowledgment of where they "convened."
The band's original drummer didn't even audition; he was an audience member who talked his way into the job. After the group's first gig at St. Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green in May 1967, 19-year-old Martin Lamble convinced them he could drum better than the guy they had. He was right, and he got the gig.
In May 1969, Fairport Convention's tour van crashed on the M1 motorway, killing Lamble and Richard Thompson's then-girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn. "Meet On The Ledge" was later adopted by fans as a song of mourning and remembrance, though Thompson had written it the year before the tragedy occurred.
"Meet on the Ledge" became so deeply associated with loss that Thompson was asked to perform it at his own mother's funeral, per her written wishes. "It was in her will," he told Mojo magazine. "That's about the hardest thing I've ever done."
Fairport's original female singer, Judy Dyble, was let go after just one album and replaced by Sandy Denny. Denny, so thoroughly outclassed the competition at her May 1968 audition that Simon Nicol said she stood out "like a clean glass in a sink full of dirty dishes."

Tragedy struck the band again a decade later: Denny died in April 1978 at just 31 after a fall down a staircase led to a fatal brain hemorrhage.
The band's 1969 album Liege & Lief is widely credited as the record that invented British folk-rock, and its reputation has only grown with time. In a public vote at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, listeners crowned it the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time."
Fiddler Dave Swarbrick, who joined the band for Liege & Lief, once got to read his own obituary while very much alive. In 1999, during a hospital stay, the Daily Telegraph mistakenly reported his death and ran a full obituary. When Swarbrick made his next public appearance, he cheerfully signed copies of the paper for fans, joking, "It's not the first time I've died in Coventry."
Fairport officially broke up in 1979 with a farewell concert in the Oxfordshire village of Cropredy, on the exact same day they opened for Led Zeppelin at Knebworth. A year later, they reconvened at Cropredy for what was supposed to be a one-off reunion. More people showed up for the reunion than the farewell gig, sparking an annual festival that now draws crowds of up to 20,000 every August.
When no record label wanted to release live tapes from Fairport's farewell tour and final Cropredy concert, the band took matters into their own hands. Bassist Dave Pegg and his wife Christine launched their own independent label, Woodworm Records, specifically to put out the recordings. In 2004, band members formed Matty Grooves Records to carry on Woodworm's legacy and keep their catalog in print.

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