Fairport Convention are back on the road after very nearly two years for their 55th anniversary
A remarkable 23 months after they last managed to tour, Fairport Convention are relishing the prospect of finally getting back on the road again.
Their winter tour includes the De La Warr Pavilion on Feb 16; the Connaught Theatre, Worthing on Feb
17; and Chequer Mead, East Grinstead on Feb 19. Later this year they will also be playing St James’ Church, Emsworth on June 1 and The Pavilion, Hailsham, on June 2. The band features founding member Simon Nicol on guitar and vocals, Dave Pegg on bass guitar, Ric Sanders on violin, Chris Leslie on fiddle, mandolin and vocals and Gerry Conway on drums and percussion – and the resumption of touring comes in a very special year. 2022 marks their 55th anniversary. Simon said: “There is definitely excitement and also a slight trepidation, but certainly I’m very excited about the prospect of getting back into the van which is my natural home. I have missed that for the last 23 months. The last gig on tour was February 24 on the 2020 winter tour.
“It’s the same for everybody. You don’t have to be a musician to miss what you do or to be disturbed by the big changes that we have all seen but the fact is that after 54 years we had developed a lovely working pattern which was great for all of us.”
Simon is looking forward to a new and slightly different normality: “I think we are seeing that wherever we go people are starting to incorporate the new ways.
It is not so strange to be avoiding physical contact and be washing your hands when you get back all the time. It feels less strange now to be doing these things.
The balance of fear and strangeness has shifted. We have still got both of those elements but they have changed proportions with each other in some ways.
“As a band we said goodbye to each other in February 2020 with every expectation of reuniting three months later for the May tour. We didn’t even think about it. If we had known then how different it would be...
“The fact is that I have been in musician in a band for all these years. It is not as if I have got a solo career that I can turn to. Other people started doing little videos of things from home as solo artists, but I am not in that category. I need the presence of company and my buddies around me to make music. “I didn’t really learn any new things during the lockdowns. I suppose I just did more of the same. I’m quite a domesticated animal! But I did… well, maybe start to resent a bit the instrument by turning to the guitar less when there was actually no immediate prospect of any touring duties.
“But I did have to believe that we were going to get back to it. I am of an age. I have been a pensioner for five years but I have got no intention of retiring. I am not finished yet with what I do. I still hope that I am capable of improving what I do. And in fact Fairport has never been a tribute band to itself. It’s about the new material and it’s about getting together as a band. It is the whole idea of being a caravanserai of shared experiences.
“We did manage to squeeze in ten dates in October which was scaled down a little. We did a reduced format without electric instruments and sitting and in smaller venues and each concert had a different flavour. Everyone was getting used to being an audience again. We had to remind ourselves of what we did as players but the audience also had to remind themselves how to comport themselves as an audience but as soon as we started, it all just fell away and it was that great shared experience again.
“I think one of the things that we can all take away from all this experience is the value of the commonplace. It is the joy that we find in community and in sharing things and in enjoying music together. It is very precious and that’s what the arts are for. 10,000 people can buy an album and each of those 10,000 people will have a different experience of it but if you play those songs to 400 or 500 people in a room then everybody is sharing that moment and, as I say, that’s really priceless.”