The Albion Band
| The Albion Band | |
|---|---|
 The Albion Band, outdoor concert at Holland House, London, Summer 1983. |
|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Folk rock |
| founding | 1972, 2011 |
| resolution | 2002, 2014 |
| Founding members | |
| Ashley Hutchings (until 2002) | |
Vocals, guitar
|
Simon Nicol (with interruptions 1972 to 2013) |
| Dave Mattacks (1972, 1976-1983) | |
Singing, concertina
|
Royston Wood (until 1973) |
| Sue Draheim (until 1973) | |
| Current occupation | |
Vocals, guitar |
Blair Dunlop (2011 to 2014) |
Vocals, guitar, cister , concertina |
Gavin Davenport (2011 to 2014) |
Singing, violin, mandolin
|
Katriona Gilmore (2011 to 2014) |
guitar |
Benjamin Trott (2011 to 2014) |
Vocals, drums |
Tom Wright (2011 to 2014) |
Bass, melodeon
|
Tim Yates (2011 to 2014) |
The Albion Band was a British folk rock group, based as the Albion Country Band in 1972 by bassist, songwriter and long-time band leader Ashley Hutchings (born January 26, 1945 ) with the aim of making traditional songs and dances even more authentic than comparable groups to interpret a rock foundation. In the course of its more than forty-year history, the Albion Band has seen a large number of line-up changes and, associated with this, repeated changes in their musical style. In the 1970s in particular, it gave English folk rock a number of innovative impulses and made a significant contribution to the further development of this genre.
Band history
The beginnings (1967 to 1973)
After shared experiences in an amateur band, Ashley Hutchings founded the band Fairport Convention with guitarists Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson in the spring of 1967 , whose debut album was released in mid-1968. In the course of the next year three more albums followed, which increasingly tended towards folk rock. The record Liege & Lief , released in November 1969, is now considered the most influential folk album of all time. Although the band was now also commercially successful, differences arose within the group about the future musical course. Ashley Hutchings wanted to incorporate the English folk song tradition even more strongly into the repertoire, while the singer at the time, Sandy Denny, focused on her own compositions and "more modern" song structures. Both eventually left the band on separate paths.
In late 1969, Hutchings joined the folk duo Maddy Prior and Tim Hart . From this connection came the group Steeleye Span , which produced three albums over the next two years with the participation of Hutchings. Then the separation took place here as well, partly due to personal animosities within the band and also due to different views on the musical style.
In the late summer of 1971, Ashley Hutchings married the folk singer Shirley Collins . Together with her and 24 other musicians, who operated under the collective name The Albion Country Band , the folk rock album No Roses was created in the same year . Some chroniclers consider this production as the birth of the later Albion Band , although the plate rather the oeuvre of Shirley Collins counts and the band name was originally intended only for that one recording session.
After several short-lived projects, in 1972 Hutchings resorted to the existing name Albion Country Band and put together a new band under this name. Throughout the year, the group performed in clubs and universities with frequently changing and sometimes “up-to-date” cast. Members included Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol and Linda Peters , later known as Linda Thompson. Finally, at the beginning of 1973, Ashley Hutchings, Martin Carthy , Sue Harris, John Kirkpatrick, Simon Nicol and Roger Swallow were permanently cast.
Only a few recordings exist from the early days of the band. One of them can be found on Steve Ashley's solo album Stroll On (produced 1972, published 1974) in the form of the eight-minute title Lord Bateman . Finally, the Albion Country Band got the chance to make a record in 1973 from the Island Records label . The Battle of the Field , which was later largely positively assessed by music critics, contained only traditional material with the exception of two compositions by Richard Thompson. Before the album was even released, the Albion Country Band broke up in August 1973. Island Records postponed the record release indefinitely as it made little sense from the company's point of view to promote a group that no longer existed.
The setback hit Ashley Hutchings hard. He retired to the country, where he worked as a postman for a few months. At times he stopped playing completely, and the corresponding chapter of his biography closes with the words: “I had finished.” (German: “I was at the end.”)
From the Etchingham Steam Band to the Albion Band (1974 to 1978)
At the beginning of 1974, at the time of the oil crisis and the economic recession , Ashley Hutchings decided not to start a new folk rock formation. Instead, he toured with his wife Shirley Collins in a small and purely acoustic line-up to appearances in folk clubs and at various festivals. The phase of the Etchingham Steam Band lasted about two years until the beginning of 1976 and was first documented on a 1995 live CD.
The return to electric folk was facilitated by Ashley Hutchings' successful solo albums: In 1972, Morris On (with the participation of Richard Thompson), a folk-rock version of traditional English Morris Dances , was released. This was followed in 1974 by the album The Compleat Dancing Master (together with John Kirkpatrick), a collage of dance compositions and music-related texts that were recited by actors from works by William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens . The four-fold LP The Electric Muse: The Story of Folk into Rock , initiated by the music journalist and book author Karl Dallas , caused a sensation in 1975 . The carefully edited retrospective contained several titles from the "lost" record Battle of the Field . Now the number of voices calling for Island Records to release the album increased. This happened in April 1976, and at the end of the year the successor opus of Morris On , the instrumentally broader Son of Morris On , came on the market. The album set the stylistic direction of the newly founded Albion Dance Band for the next few years: a solid rock foundation with sufficient scope for wind instruments as well as for melodeon and concertina . The new formation played in front of a large audience for the first time in 1976, including in the Royal Festival Hall . She not only surprised with two drummers (Dave Mattacks and Michael Gregory), but also presented Philipp (Phil) Pickett and John Sothcott, two classically trained artists on various Renaissance wind and string instruments . For the recording of the semi-studio album The Prospect Before Us (February 1977), ex- Gryphon guitarist Graeme Taylor became an integral part of the ensemble, which at times comprised eleven members.
The Prospect Before Us was carefully arranged and contained a 13th century instrumental title La Sexte Estampie Real . The album received consistently good reviews, and expectations of the successor were correspondingly high. Rise Up Like The Sun was released in March 1978 and had two peculiarities: On the one hand, the group shortened their name to Albion Band for the first time , and on the other, Ashley Hutchings, who at the time had a "second career" as musical director at the Royal National Theater began to entrust the conception of the album to the singer, songwriter and melodeon player John Tams . Tams used the freedoms granted to him by redefining what was then folk rock and merging jazz and electronic stylistic devices with traditional elements. To this day, Rise Up Like the Sun is considered the musical highlight and most innovative performance of the Albion Band .
The National Theater Years (1978 to 1981)
In the next few years, the Albion Band worked primarily for the Royal National Theater . Ashley Hutchings and John Tams as "Music Directors" conceived the incidental music for a number of theater plays and staged performances, where they made extensive use of traditional music material. In March 1978, launched Lark Rise in the National Theater belonging Cottesloe Theater (now Dorfman Theater ), and in November 1979 was followed by the premiere of Candleford , each based on the trilogy Lark Rise to Candleford the English writer Flora Thompson from the year 1945. The strong autobiographical work describes the gradual change in England from a value-conservative agrarian society to a modern industrial nation towards the end of the 19th century. In both Lark Rise and Candleford , everyday village or small town life was the focus of the action. Thus a folk rock formation like the Albion Band offered a multitude of musical points of contact. A studio album of incidental music (including some spoken scenes) was released in November 1980. Although the band was also involved in other projects such as the Bible productions The Passion and The Nativity , Lark Rise to Candleford remained the only album of this period.
After the theater phase was over, there were disagreements within the band about the future musical course. Above all, John Tams and Graeme Taylor wanted to expand the progressive direction in the style of Rise Up Like the Sun , while Ashley Hutchings stuck to the tried and tested folk rock scheme. The different views could not be reconciled, and so the Albion Band broke up in their previous form.
Regrouping and Consolidation (1982 to 1990)
From 1982 the Albion Band presented itself with a smaller and heavily changed line-up. The vocalistic figurehead for the next few years was the singer Cathy Lesurf (previously with Fiddler's Dram and the Oyster Band ). The album Light Shining (January 1983) signified in a way a break with the objectives of earlier productions: The proportion of traditional songs declined, but the original compositions of the individual band members took up a lot of space. Ashley Hutchings in particular, who previously only appeared sporadically as a songwriter, now composed and wrote a considerable part of the repertoire.
For the traditionally oriented and purely instrumental shuffle off! (also 1983) was the brief revival of the old name Albion Dance Band . A year later, folk musicians Phil Beer (guitar, mandolin and violin) joined the group as part of a further restructuring . The further course of the 1980s was a relatively crisis-free phase for the Albion Band . A new album was released almost every year, and the band was also involved in several theater and multimedia projects, excerpts of which can be found on the double CD Songs from the Shows, Vol. 1 and 2 . After the album The Wild Side of Town (1987), which was dominated by ecological issues, the singer Cathy Lesurf left the band without an equivalent replacement in their place. The vocal parts were now mainly taken over by Phil Beer and Ashley Hutchings, and occasionally also by guest singer Polly Bolton. The decade ended with the stylistically closed production The Albion Band 1990, which again emphasized the folk rock roots .
Short-lived band projects and turn to acoustic folk (1991 to 1997)
In 1991 the singer / songwriter Julie Matthews (vocals, guitar, keyboards) added to the group, which made another change in style and personnel the following year. With Keith Hinchliffe another guitarist was added, but Ashley Hutchings decided to do without a drummer. No separate album was released by either group, only the review Captured , published in 1994, summarizes the years 1991 and 1992 on one CD.
In a consequent pursuit of the new musical path, Ashley Hutchings founded a four-piece, purely acoustic Albion Band in 1993 , consisting of Hutchings himself (vocals, acoustic bass guitar), Simon Nicol (vocals, guitar), Chris While (vocals, guitar) and Ashley Reed (vocals , Violin). The songs on the first joint CD Acousticity were only to a small extent traditional, but mainly new compositions in the folk style or came from artists such as Beth Nielsen Chapman or Nic Jones . Julie Matthews returned to the band for the studio work on Albion Heart (1995) and stayed until the end of the acoustic phase.
Return to folk rock (1998 to 2002)
The return to the narrower segment of British folk rock presented the band with the task of having to adapt to a changed musical environment. Ashley Hutchings opted for the classic rock line-up with guitar, bass and drums, which was only expanded in the direction of folk style by the violinist Joe Broughton. The first joint album Happy Accidents renounced traditional borrowings and offered a special variety of independent rock. Little changed in this stylistic direction in the following years. Despite some positive reviews in the music press, public interest remained moderate. The group found it increasingly difficult to find suitable venues and was booked less and less for live performances. In view of this precarious situation, Ashley Hutchings declared his last Albion band project to date after four studio albums and a live CD in autumn 2002.
The Albion Christmas Band (2003 to date)
The Albion Christmas Band as a side branch of the Albion Band has been interpreting traditional English Christmas carols and "winter songs" on acoustic instruments for more than 15 years. Apart from the occasional guest musician, the group includes the four members Kellie While (vocals, guitar), Ashley Hutchings (vocals, bass), Simon Nicol (vocals, guitar) and Simon Care (vocals, melodeon, concertina). The Albion Christmas Band as a “seasonal project” goes on tour once a year in the run-up to Christmas and has so far recorded eight CDs with this special music.
New beginning and final dissolution (2011 to 2014)
The "rebirth" of the Albion Band was marked by a generation change. Blair Dunlop, the son of Ashley Hutchings and the folk singer Judy Dunlop, took over the musical legacy from his father in 2011 and thus led a newly formed six-member band. The 2012 album The Vice of the People contained some traditional songs and also gave the impression from the instrumentation that the group was again oriented more towards classic folk rock. On January 10, 2014, Blair Dunlop announced the breakup of the Albion Band in the form of an open letter on his website and announced in this context that the band members would now concentrate on their solo careers. However, further cooperation is also intended in the future.
Band members (selection)
Over the course of several decades, around 160 folk and rock musicians were more or less closely intertwined with the Albion Band. The following selection takes into account those people who have been members of the group for a long time or who helped shape its style (in alphabetical order).
- Phil Beer (vocals, guitar, oud , mandolin, mandoloncello , violin + song composition ), 1984 to 1992, 1999
- Joe Broughton (violin, piano, guitar, mandolin, synthesizer, keyboard + song composition ), 1997 to 2002
- Pete Bullock (keyboard, saxophone + song composition ), 1977 to 1981
- Simon Care (melodeon, concertina, percussion, drum + song composition ), 1987 to 1992, 2003 to 2013
- Martin Carthy (vocals, guitar), 1973, 1978 to 1981
- Shirley Collins (vocals), 1972, 1974 to 1977, 1979 to 1981
- Gavin Davenport (vocals, guitar, cister , concertina), 2011 to 2014
- Blair Dunlop (vocals, guitar + band leader ), 2011 to 2014
- Trevor Foster (drums), 1984 to 1990
- Katriona Gilmore (vocals, violin, mandolin), 2011 to 2014
- Michael Gregory (drums), 1976 to 1981
- Sue Harris (vocals, oboe , dulcimer ), 1973
- John Kirkpatrick (vocals, concertina, accordion , melodeon, piano), 1973, 1980
- Chris Leslie (vocals, violin + song composition ), 1996 to 1997
- Cathy Lesurf (vocals + song composition ), 1982 to 1987
- Neil Marshall (drums, percussion, guitar), 1998 to 2002
- Dave Mattacks (drums, piano, synthesizer, keyboard), 1976 to 1978, 1982 to 1983
- Julie Matthews (vocals, guitar, keyboard + song composition ), 1991 to 1992, 1995 to 1997, 1999
- Doug Morter (vocals, guitar), 1979 to 1981, 1984 to 1985
- Ken Nicol (vocals, guitar, mandolin + song composition ), 1998 to 2002
- Simon Nicol (vocals, guitar, dulcimer, piano), 1973, 1976 to 1978, 1982 to 1983, 1993 to 1997, 2003 to 2013
- Gillie Nicholls (vocals, guitar + song composition ), 1998 to 1999
- Philip Pickett ( dulcian , shawm , flute , crumhorn , bagpipes , trumpet , chalumeau , Rankett , synthesizer), 1976 to 1981, 1987
- Jean-Pierre Rasle (vocals, bagpipes, crumhorn, flute, harmonica), 1982 to 1983
- Ashley Reed (vocals, violin), 1993 to 1994
- Ric Sanders (violin + song composition ), 1977 to 1981
- John Shepherd (piano, synthesizer, keyboard + song composition ), 1988 to 1990
- John Sothcott (Krummhorn, Vielle , citole ), 1976-1977
- Roger Swallow (drums), 1973
- John Tams (vocals, melodeon, harmonica + song composition ), 1976 to 1981, 1990
- Graeme Taylor (guitar, piano), 1976 to 1981
- Benjamin Trott (guitar), 2011 to 2014
- Dave Whetstone (melodeon, concertina, guitar, dulcimer + song composition ), 1982 to 1983
- Chris While (vocals, guitar + song composition ), 1993 to 1997, 1999
- Kellie While (vocals, guitar, drums, percussion + song composition ), 1998 to 2013
- Tom Wright (vocals, drums), 2011 to 2014
- Tim Yates (bass, melodeon), 2011 to 2014
Discography
Singles
AlbumsThe following list shows the year an album was released. The year of production or the recording date may differ from this in individual cases. As an Albion Country Band
As an Albion Dance Band
As an Albion band
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As an Albion Christmas Band
Under other names
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Individual evidence
- ↑ BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards
- ↑ The Guv'nor & The Rise of Folkrock, page 179ff.
- ↑ Information on the album: All tracks Trad. Arr. Shirley Collins (German: All Titles Traditionals, Arrangement Shirley Collins).
- ↑ Shirley Collins wrote in the booklet of the first CD edition of No Roses (Mooncrest Records, 1991): “When Ashley and I eventually parted, he took the Albion Band with him. No Roses stayed with me. "German:" When Ashley and I finally separated, he took the Albion Band with him. No Roses stayed with me. "
- ^ The Guv'nor & The Rise of Folkrock, p. 278.
- ↑ Details are given by music journalists David Suff and John Tobler in the booklet of the CD edition of Rise Up Like the Sun , EMI Records, 1992.
- ↑ To realize their musical ideas, John Tams, Graeme Taylor and Michael Gregory joined a number of other musicians in 1983 to form the folk rock band Home Service . Music journalist Ken Hunt describes the history of their founding in the booklet of the home service CD Alright Jack , Fledg'ling Records, 1997.
- ^ A history of the Albion Bands
literature
- Karl Dallas, Robin Denselow, Dave Laing, Robert Shelton: Folksong. From folk songs to folk rock. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-499-17151-1 .
- Family trees and discographies 3 / Family Trees and Discographies 3. Star Cluster Publications, Verlag U. Zimmermann, Balve 1998, ISBN 3-925005-65-X .
- Brian Hinton, Geoff Wall: Ashley Hutchings. The Guv'nor & The Rise of Folkrock. The Authorized Biography. Helter Skelter Publishing, London 2002, ISBN 1-900924-32-3 .
- Britta Sweers: Electric Folk. The Changing Face of English Traditional Music. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2005, ISBN 0-19-517478-X .