The story is this: I had an unusually-rotten cold. My husband and his best friend had bought tickets for us to see a band that I hated -- a band that also happened to be my husband's favorite band -- Jethro Tull. I was new at this marriage thing, so I tagged along -- a decision I'd still make today, it turns out.
It was this iteration of Fairport Convention that opened the show. The minute they started to sing, I stopped wondering what I was doing there. Deep in my heart, I had been looking for this music, or something like it, for a very long time.
I'd found flashes of it in the California sound, the music of Emmylou Harris, even some of Tom Petty's work; although, curiously, not in the work of the East Coast folkies so admired by Fairport in their early days (Personally, I think Anna Russell nailed East Coast folky pretention in this piece). This Fairport Convention, a band I'd read about but never explored, was closer to the truth of what I was looking for; but I wouldn't figure that out for nearly 20 years. For me, Fairport Convention would be a lifeline, a doorway, a path to the next place, which was also the first place.
Fairport closed their set, fittingly, with this song. I've been a Fairport Convention ever since, and a huge fan of this particular lineup. I get it: Richard, Sandy, Trevor ... but Simon, Dave, and Ric! Not that I don't adore Swarb but, you know ....
This one's for him. And for my husband, who passed in 2009. And for all my friends.
Fairport Convention with "Meet On the Ledge".
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