The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Archie Fisher
Glenfarg Folk Club, January 15
Archie Fisher’s road to Damascus experience happened, not in Syria but in a dockside cafe in Newark, New Jersey.
The juke box was playing Rock Island Line by Lonnie Donegan, a fellow Glaswegian as the then 16-year-old who had run off to sea later discovered, and Fisher was instantly moved to take up the guitar.
It was the beginning of a journey that brought Fisher to the forefront of Scottish folk music in the 1960s and has taken him around the world, forging lasting friendships with icons including Bert Jansch and Tom Paxton and having his songs covered by Fairport Convention, Barbara Dickson and Eva Cassidy, among others.
Fisher, who presented BBC Radio Scotland’s Travelling Folk for 27 years, didn’t actually teach Jansch to play guitar, as is sometimes claimed.
He did, however, show Jansch some chords and has been an inspiration to many as the clear-voiced doyen of Scottish singersongwriter-guitarists