The time has come, the bassist said, to talk of many things, of Wood & Wire and a fiddler who sings …
Steve Morris talks to Fairport Convention's Dave Pegg
The time has come, the bassist said, to talk of many things, of Wood & Wire and a fiddler who sings …
Steve Morris talks to Fairport Convention's Dave Pegg
January 17th 2000 proves to be a feelgood day. Driving down an almost deserted M40, the sun is optimistically bright bringing an unseasonal warmth - "it's warmer here than it was this time last year in Barbados," Chris Pegg will later remark - and clarity to the Oxfordshire countryside. I'm on my way to the small area of that county that has often been tagged the folk rock belt - eighty percent of Fairport live within a ten mile radius - and that fact, combined with the presence of Cropredy somewhere to my left and the River Cherwell (of Red And Gold fame) being sign posted suggests entry to a different, and somewhat charmed world.
I'm on my way to Woodworm Records HQ to meet Dave Pegg, bass player with Fairport Convention, a band whose checkered 33 year history and immeasurable musical influence has made them at least an institution if not one of the very foundation stones of Britain's musical heritage. Now I've met Peggy several times before, spoken to him frequently on the phone and, over the years, interviewed him on several key occasions, but the thing is, no matter how down to earth and accommodating he may be, when you hold Fairport in the esteem that I do, it's a little like being invited to Buck House for a chat. Well actually, that's not true 'cos there's no-one there I'd want to pass the time of day with.
I arrive at Woodworm early, a timekeeping habit can't break, and find Peggy's wife and Cropredy Festival co-organiser Chris in the kitchen. Happily, she too can't stand lateness. Small talk reveals that we have met before at husband Dave's 50th bash at Dudley Town Hall in late '97 though as "we were a bit drunk that night" memories are vague. Peggy's in the shower having just flown in from Germany where he'd been at his own expense to remix a live festival set that he'd given the promoter permission to record. "There was no violin at all on the DAT," Chris explains, "and he wasn't going to have substandard stuff going out." The first of many pots of coffee is made and Peggy, looking fresh in black jeans and a Cropredy '99 T-shirt despite an early morning stacking over Heathrow in an almost fuel free jet, joins us. Small talk about sharing festival bills with Little Feat and singing Happy Birthday onstage with James Taylor is cut short by a phone call from Robert Plant, apparently discussing the possibilities for Cropredy 2000.
Lunch at the nearby Joiners Arms is suggested so we clamber into Peggy's car. "I took my car in for a service and they lent me this one. The chap said I'd buy it after I'd driven it ands once I'd heard the stereo system, I did. It's better than at home." He goes on to tell the tale of loading the Zeppelin box set into the CD changer for a journey to Sunderland and the strange looks that were afforded "a car load of old blokes" when they finally stopped without realising the volume of the music!
There's a telling diversion on the way to lunch. We call at the local post office, situated in what appears to be an outbuilding on a neighbouring farm, to post the day's Woodworm mail out. The Peggs explain that it's actually far better to buy the stamps from the local PO than use a franking machine as it helps preserve a village facility. And when the twice yearly Fairport mailing list goes out, every one of the 20,000 envelopes is individually stamped. A small thing maybe, but the kind of small thing that goes a long way to making Fairport / Cropredy what they are.
Arriving at The Joiners we find friends of Peggy's and hear tales of elopement and fatwahs that are too much of a diversion for this tale. Beers are ordered - Theakston's Best Bitter, the recommended and chosen tipple, it should be noted by those who keep a watch over such things - and food far too good to be called pub food - relished. At this point Ric Sanders amble in and discusses remodeling bathrooms with Mrs. Pegg. We are introduced and dive in to a conversation about music sparked by Ric's purchase of an orchestral Paul McCartney CD and his effusing over the song, Calico Skies. We find mutual enjoyment in Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett and Captain Beefheart but part on Jamiroquai and The Prodigy.
Eventually it's time to return to Woodworm HQ, break out the mini disc recorder and get to business. The interview takes place in Peggy's lounge. I sit on the sofa opposite a fireplace that houses hi fi and video systems. The back wall of the alcove is lined with VHS boxes; each one titled Fairport and appended with venue name and date. What treasures lie within?
I
start the ball rolling by remarking that Fairport (
pictured left,
top to bottom, Dave Pegg, Simon Nicol, Ric Sanders, Chris Leslie,
Gerry Conway) seem to
be in renaissance…
"Last year was very busy for us because the year before we had a line up change and Dave Mattacks our long standing drummer left. Gerry Conway joined and he did Cropredy and The Winter Tour last year. It was similar to when Chris Leslie joined a couple of years back because we thought rather than get the new member to learn all the old material we'd try and come up with some new stuff. and play it in live rather than just get somebody to learn someone else's music. It's OK doing it like that and historically Fairport's always been like that to some extent because we've had a lot of line up changes, especially in the first ten years or so. We thought it would be fair to all start from the same level and come up with some new music. Luckily Chris Leslie was inspired to write. He's always written the occasional song but he met this guy Nigel Stonier. He's a very good musician, producer and songwriter who's done a couple of things in our studio. I got the last Lindisfarne album, I really like Lindisfarne and was really pleased to hear it 'cos it had some really strong songs on it. I saw that Stonier was credited along with Rod Clements and some of the other guys and I wondered if it was the same chap, so I called him. He told me that they'd thought it would be good to have an outsider in the band to help put some songs together to give them more strength and identity. I suggested that he should have a go at writing with Chris so he came down for a couple of weeks and between them they came up with some very good songs. It was very good for us because when we went out on the last winter trek we were able to play seven or eight new songs including the title track of the new CD The Wood And The Wire."
As these songs remained unrecorded until the summer, it suggests that Fairport have adopted a policy of road testing new material.
"Definitely now because it worked when we did the Who Knows Where The Time Goes CD, playing it in on tour really works for us. It's the way Fairport used to be when it first started and it's an old fashioned way of making music. You sit around and learn the song together and then take it out on the road. Over thirty gigs it will change, by the end of the tour it's not going to alter much by the time you go in the studio and you put things down very quickly, which I like. The last two albums we've made have been recorded that way, without click tracks or any programming at all."
There is an exception.
"Rocky Road was done with a click and I think it suffers because of that. It doesn't feel as natural to me as the rest of the songs do."
So, what was the reason for doing that track differently?
"Drummers love playing to clicks …"
Before you jump to conclusions about Gerry Conway's rhythm method, let Peggy elaborate.
"He has a fantastic sense of rhythm; he's his own drum machine. He has a really great sense of feel and timing and it's better for me to play with him than have a click going in the background but drummers tend to feel secure with a click. It's just the way recording's been for ten or twelve years."
Elaborating, he tells me that unless it's obvious that the rhythm has wandered - "gone raga" is his description - he's not bothered by a bit of movement, suggesting that a natural speeding up and slowing down can be beneficial to the emotional pull of a song. He does, however add the proviso that everyone should be doing it at the same time! Staying on the subject of new man Conway, Peggy enthuses about his additions to the Fairport paint box, agreeing that he's brought a lot to the band.
"Definitely, especially in terms of percussion and stuff. Over the past couple of years it's become his forte to layer up textures. We've done quite a few records here (Woodworm) with Gerry. I don't know if you're familiar with David Hughes, a wonderful guitarist and great songwriter with a very dry sense of humour, his last CD (This Other Eden on the Folk Corporation Label) was done here and Gerry's percussion is so much a part of it. He's wonderful to play with and it's just much better for us to sit around and play stuff live and the stuff we hadn't played in the last tour that's how we recorded it; we literally had a couple of days rehearsing and then recorded. They evolved very naturally in the studio. Some are just two or three takes. It was done very quickly which gives the CD a continuity of sound and feel. We did two or three tracks a day."
There's clearly a paternal pride in The Wood And The Wire. Does Peggy see it as an important album?
"It's important to us because so much of it has come from within the group. In terms of Chris Leslie's songwriting and the fact that he does half of the vocals it's the first record on which he's been utilised. I really like the way he sings. It's the complete opposite of the way Simon sings in terms of registers. Simon sings much lower and Chris is up there …"
Dave Pegg reaffirms the album's importance but explaining why gives way to an apparent minor impatience with the outsiders' view of his band.
" We've made so many records now and people tend not to want to hear new Fairport stuff. They want to hear stuff from the sixties or seventies. you know. It's like Fairport was written off by a lot of the media when Richard Thompson left the band. The difficulty is to get people to play it; it's not going to get played on the radio. It's just getting people to listen to it."
Time to toss in the old chestnut and internet chat group fave - are Fairport going soft?
"Yes, I've felt that in the past we have gone soft and done a lot of ballady type of songs, of which there are a lot on the new album, but I think it's just one of those ageing things. You can only do what feels right at the time and if the rock element has gone from the band and we do so much stuff acoustically when we work without Gerry, it's because we like those kind of songs."
As if in confirmation to himself, he carries on;
"Simon rarely plays electric guitar and Chris is really an acoustic player. What we do we do very well and I think that it's better than compromising and playing something loud and danceable just for the sake of it. That would be very easy to do, to come up with an album that was very jiggy or very reely and do kind of a folk-rock thing. I don't think that we can do that any more. We have difficulty playing dance music because when we play concert halls the kids can't dance because the more mature people in the audience don't like it. People of my age just want to sit there ands have a good time. We even get complaints at Cropredy when people get up and dance. It's one of the reasons why young people don't come along to our gigs in numbers we would want them to. They'll go and see the Saw Doctors or a band that just gets people up and dancing. It's not what we want to do, and I think we have gone a bit soft in that respect."
Maybe, I venture, the jigs and reels Fairport was merely a diversion away from the lack of a songwriter in the ranks and the blossoming of Chris Leslie (pictured right in Woodworm Studios) in that department plugs right into the stronger tradition of their being a song based band. Peggy agrees.
"Yes.
I think it is true to say that and we would rather do a song than a
set of tunes though there are a couple of sets of tunes on the CD and
there's one that's very up and old fashioned in its approach even
though it's been specifically written by Ric Sanders. Fairport was
one of the first bands to put tunes to an electric backing but it's a
small part of what we do and we don't want to come over as the sort
of band you have a few pints to and then throw yourself around the
room."
He goes on to describe his boredom with the vast number of bands who operate in that area and the volume of predictable CDs he receives from such outfits looking for Cropredy bookings.
"I just couldn't watch a band playing jigs and reels all night. It's like when the Pogues did it, I never got of on that. I could see why people did but I could never drink enough Guinness for myself to enjoy it. I'd have to be very relaxed."
Ah, drink, a strand that runs through the Fairport myth. A myth about to shattered by the creative ascent of Chris Leslie, a teetotal vegetarian, I suggest. Peggy laughs out loud …
"Yes, it's true though there aren't any songs about drinking on the record. Rocky Road does have a verse which talks about taking delight in drinking pints of beer and smoking and blowing smoke rings. We gave Chris that verse because he wasn't always a vegetarian Buddhist. There were times when I'd have to carry him back from the pub, before he joined Fairport. It's not essential to be an alcoholic to be in the band but it does help."
Laughter almost cancels his final word.
"… sometimes."
Mini disc recorder turned off, the conversation rambles on for some time. We talk about Simon's often moving interpretation of Who Knows Where The Time Goes whilst discussing the weight of the band's three decades plus heritage. A heritage that Peggy agrees that the band cannot escape and indeed in which they have great pride evidenced by the continued inclusion of Crazy Man Michael and Matty Groves in the set and the re-inclusion for the 2000 winter outing of Now Be Thankful and Hexhamshire Lass. He admits that he misses having a great lead player on stage reminiscing about playing next to Richard Thompson in FC or Martin Barre in Jethro Tull. Maartin Allcock, FC's last lead player, brings forth other memories. Seems that Maart's forte was "great arrangements, but you'd be left for thirty six bars with no drums just watching a light keeping rhythm in front of you".
We talk about the profusion of reissues and compilations of Woodworm Records material. "Woodworm Records is my garage," he half jokes pointing out that storage space is at a premium for a small label such as the band's and that along with the financial risk inevitable in repressing back catalogue, letting others exploit it makes perfect sense. And face it, if that cash flow enables him to champion such fine works a Anna Ryder's Woodworm release so be it. And a telling story associated with that record brings us full circle from his voluntary remixing flight to Germany. Seems that Peggy was so impressed with Anna's Pockets On Fire that he became unpaid A&R advocate approaching (in a fit of unbounded optimism?) major label's looking for a deal.
Fairport Convention may, in the words of The Birmingham Post, be 'desperately unfashionable', but we all know what happens to fashion, don't we?
Fairport Convention play Birmingham Symphony Hall
on February 10th 2001
For more info on the band, the tour, record releases, merchandise, The Cropredy Festival and more, go to www.fairportconvention.co.uk