Fairport Convention consists of Dave Mattacks, Dave Pegg, Dave Swarbrick, Simon Nicol.
Fairport Convention is often credited with being the first British folk-rock band. Formed in 1967, Fairport rapidly developed from playing cover versions of American 'west coast' style music to an individual style which melded rock music with traditional English tunes and songs.
Bedevilled by numerous personnel changes throughout its first decade, Fairport Convention was temporarily disbanded in 1979 but played annual reunion concerts until it reformed in 1985. Since then, it has enjoyed stability and continues to tour and record regularly.
In part, the continuing success of Fairport Convention is due to the annual music festival it organises. Cropredy Festival has been held every year since 1974 near Cropredy, a village five miles north of Banbury, Oxfordshire and attracts 20,000 fans.
In 2002 the band was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
Fairport Convention played its first concert in a church hall in May 1967. Based in suburban north London, the group had coalesced around a bass guitar player and bandleader named Ashley 'Tyger' Hutchings.
The youngsters 'convened' for rehearsals at a house named Fairport, the family home of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol. Thus was born the name of a band that has endured for nearly four decades. As well as Hutchings and Nicol, there was lead guitarist Richard Thompson and Shaun Frater on drums. However, that initial line-up only played the one gig. A young drummer, Martin Lamble, was in the church hall audience and he convinced the band that he could do a better job than the incumbent. It was the first of the bewildering flurry of line-up changes that characterised Fairport's first fifteen years.
