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Sandy and the New Band

Melody Maker, 21 March 1970

Reproduced from Hokey Pokey #19, Summer 1990
Copyright © 1990 Hokey Pokey. Reproduced by permission
Submitted by Dr. Levent Varlik from Turkey.

Fotheringay, the new band which has been formed by Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention and Trevor Lucas of Eclection, with Gerry Conway (Eclection) and Pat Donaldson and Jerry Donahue (Poet & the One Man Band), is basically an acoustically - oriented group. Which is going to make it hard for visitors to their Festival Hall debut concert at the end of the month to understand why the stage is flanked with the hugest WEM speakers they have ever seen.

The answer is simple: to convey the acoustic sound with the highest possible fidelity. Trevor explained the whole thing to me at one of a series of special “balancing” rehearsals they've been having in various halls around town.

“Most groups' speakers have been built with one thing in mind: to get the most power out of the smallest possible unit,” he said. “As anyone with good record playing equipment knows, that isn't the way to get the best sound.

“So what WEM have done for us is to build units on proper high fidelity principles so that the whole group can be properly balanced, from the voice to the drum cymbals.”

In fact, balancing is going to be an art in itself, with a total of 14 channels for the group, three of them for drums alone. To get the job done at the Festival Hall they have brought in Jerry Boys from Sound Techniques, where they will be recording their first album.

But Fotheringay's real significance after all will be in its music, a blend of Sandy and Trevor's songwriting talents, with just a bit of traditional music thrown in for good measure. Before hearing them play a proper set, it's dangerous to predict, of course, but it doesn't seem to me that there'll be quite the same sort of emphasis upon tradition as you find in the current Fairport, for instance, and especially in the Steeleye Span group that ex-Fairport bassist Tyger Hutchings has formed.

“We love traditional music,” said Sandy, “and after all Trevor and I were originally folk artists. But we've got a lot of contemporary music we want to do, and that's very important to us.”

It sounds to me rather as if the group will be a cross between the old Fairport of pre-Liege and Lief days, and what the Eclection was expected to be, but never quite achieved. Trevor sang me one of his songs, an incredibly good country-flavoured ballad about the Australian outlaw hero, Ned Kelly. “You know,” he said with a grin, “you could almost say that was the song that broke up Eclection.

“We were trying to record it as a demo, and when I heard it I realised we would never get close to what we were trying to do. Of course, that came after a long period of frustration, not being able to get a second album out, and all sorts of problems.”

As a matter of fact, Sandy got quite uptight with Trevor for singing the song to me by himself. “It gives you no idea at all of what we are trying to do,” she protested. “The band's complete sound is what really counts.”

Which is what all the trouble they are taking over their PA is all about.