Fairport Convention play East Grinstead and Worthing

Dates include February 12 at Chequer Mead, East Grinstead; and March 5 at The Connaught, Worthing – with special guest Dave Mattacks taking up residence again on the drum stool he vacated in 1998.

Chris Leslie, who joined Fairport in 1996, is delighted to welcome him back following Gerry Conway’s decision to hang up his drum sticks as far as Fairport are concerned. For Chris, the tour is an encouraging sign that things are finally getting back to normal – though obviously the cost of living crisis is now looming as another major concern.

“In the lead-up to the dreadful March period of the pandemic we had just finished a really good tour. We had recorded a brand-new album and we just started promoting it and then everything closed down for us and for everyone. And now really we've just picked up the story from there. We're now promoting an album that came out two and a half years ago, Shuffle and Go (2020). Shuffle and Go (the title track of the album) was a song I wrote about the 50s dance craze and teddy boys and the fact that I noticed that even when people get to a certain age they still have traces of that style. I observed the place I used to go to which was like a Morris dancing centre and when some of the guys took off their top hats there was still the ghost of a teddy boy quiff under there! I've got several songs on the album. What Fairport has done over a period of history is that when it has writers in the band they tend to write the songs and when it doesn't they tend to go to outside writers that we know really well, people like Ralph McTell. For this album it's something like two-thirds outside material and one-third myself.”

Somehow the band managed to get through the pandemic: “We are such a lucky band in that we've got such a supportive faithful following. All throughout the lockdowns we did stuff like producing T-shirts and people supported us by buying albums. Our Cropredy festival just had to stop, though, and it stopped for two years.”

Because the band is so spread geographically they didn't opt to do Zoom gigs: “We just weren't able to be that flexible but also we thought that if we can't do something well then we should decide not to do it. We did actually do a Youtube version of Meet on the Ledge with other artists coming in. A friend of ours got it together. But it was the only thing. But when Cropredy didn't happen the second year, we did a live show from the gardens of a pub which was very well received.”

That meant however that the band went 18 months without performing: “And I do think that makes a difference. The difference is that you don't take anything for granted either in music or in life. I think people have been changed in so many ways by what happened. Joni Mitchell expressed it so well when she said you don't know what you've got until it's gone, and she was just so right but we were very lucky to be in touch with the people that follow the band and really supported us and then coming out of Covid, when we were able to do Cropredy again last August it was just such a wonderful feeling to be back in the field. People were really up for it and there was a great sense of relief just wanting to be there. But now obviously we've got the new complication of financial stress. We've got rid of the danger of illness but now we've got this creeping in. We have found that our audiences have been pretty good coming back. Cropredy didn’t sell out but it was very very well attended but now I think the test is going to be going on the road again this year. I think there is a real balance between people’s needs for something positive and warm. The great thing with a gig is that you can just lose yourself for two hours.”

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