Music

Fairport Convention

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

Rob Adams

THREE STARS

IT wasn’t mentioned among the gags about playing in the band being in danger of turning into a proper job but the next time Fairport Convention venture this far north on an annual tour it’s likely to be as part of their fiftieth anniversary celebrations.

Nobody, least of all founding member, singer-guitarist Simon Nicol, would have imagined back in 1967 that the Fairports would a going concern for so long and it would have seemed equally unlikely, two years later, that they’d still be retailing that traditional love triangle tale, Matty Groves to such enthusiasm all these years on. But they are and they do.

Their audience has grown up and grown older with them to the degree that their gigs feel like family occasions. The programme for their annual August weekend in Cropredy is announced from the stage like plans for a family picnic, which it more or less is – a big one – and songs take on the aspect of children, in the case of newer items such as the nutty Bring Me Back My Feathers, or favourite great aunts (the still sprightly Walk Awhile).

While solid and dependable now, rather than scaling the heights of yore, they still produce much to enjoy, not least in Gerry Conway’s precise and musical drumming and Dave Pegg’s sumptuous and nimbly apposite bass guitar playing, and if their fiddle and mandolin tunes have been overtaken by today’s traditional music standards, they can still make history lessons such as the stories of three Johns of differing military fates and eras a much more appealing prospect than the ones we used to get at school.