The story of English rock music in the 1960s often revolves around some mates meeting up and bonding over a love of blues music or wanting to be the next Beatles.
Then
there's Fairport Convention.
Welcome
to episode 136 of Love That Album podcast.
Fairport
Convention assembled around 1966 and rehearsed in the same
neighbourhood as another band of Muswell Hillbillies. The line-up has
changed over the years, but the mission has always been to adapt folk
music to a rock setting. Early on, they interpreted contemporary folk
songwriters from North America like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and
Leonard Cohen. Before too long though, the band looked too their own
history to make British folk music contemporary.
Bondi
Cigars' guitarist Shane Pacey joins me once again, and we speak with
John Penhallow, the first manager of Fairport Convention. John was
there right at the very beginning due to his friendship with
guitarist Simon Nicol. He played a large part in looking after the
band on day-to-day business before Joe Boyd, so he regales us with
stories from that period.
We
speak about the early FC days, his work in archiving Sandy Denny's
music, Cropredy, some band called The Ravens, and the late Judy
Dyble. Beyond telling the story of a band, this is a great story
about friendship and community. What other long running band still
has ex-members regularly turn up to play with them?John was very
generous with his time and memories. Shane and I are thankful for him
making himself available.....on his birthday weekend at that!!! Also
huge thanks to David Kelly for arranging this, and Mark Snowden for
getting us to clarify a very important part of Fairport history.
Please
explore Shane's music at both https://bondicigars.com/ and
https://shanepaceytrio.com.au/
Download
this episode of LTA from Spotify, Stitcher or iTunes (search for
“Love That Album podcast”). Love That Album is proudly part of
the Pantheon Podcast network. Go to http://pantheonpodcasts.com/ to
check out all their great shows.
You
can send me feedback at rrrkitchen@yahoo.com.au (written or mp3
voicemail) or join the Facebook group at
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you’d consider writing an iTunes review we’d be immensely
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the podcast and Pantheon – at a (socially distanced) barbecue, over
coffee (on Skype), on social media….whatever way you choose,
consider me grateful.
Right
click to download episode 136 here.
