Articles - Miscellaneous

St Edmund's - an important ledge?

Fairport Convention are a UK folk-rock group which was formed in the late 1960's. Although they never had more than 5 or 6 members at any one time somewhere around 15 people have played in the band. These included some of the best exponents of modern and roots folk music of the time such as Richard Thompson (one of the founder members), Sandy Denny (the lead singer until her death from a brain haemorrhage in 1978 when she was just 31), Dave Swarbrick (perhaps the greatest ever player of the electric fiddle in folk music) and Dave Pegg (bass player, of whom more later). The band was never a great commercial success - their only hit single was with the Bob Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" in a French translation. The band officially called it a day in 1979 saying farewell with a series of concerts at British universities - around 10 years after I had seen them play when I was a hippie undergraduate in Manchester.

Dave Pegg and his wife Chris lived in Cropredy, a village in Oxfordshire. The local Church hall needed a new roof. Chris decided to help by organising a concert at which her husband's old band would be the star turn. A few hundred people came and the rest, as they say is history. The Cropredy festival now attracts around 15,000 fans. The event has become an annual fixture on the British folk-rock/roots scene. Unfortunately Dave and Chris are splitting up so it was feared that Cropredy 2004 would be the last one.

Fairport's farewell tour was recorded on an LP imaginatively called Farewell, Farewell. (Younger readers please ask your parents or grandparents to explain what an LP is). I dusted my copy off recently in preparation for the putative project of transferring some of my LP collection on to the PC's hard drive. The last track on the album, Meet on the Ledge, was also the song with which Fairport closed their gigs and which has closed the Cropredy festival for the last 25 years, leaving not a dry eye in the house or muddy field. The song was written by Richard Thompson and first recorded on Fairport's 1969 album What We Did on Our Holidays. It uses, not particularly originally, the act of climbing a mountain as a metaphor for life's journey. The ledge is the place where friendly fellow climbers meet to rest on the journey, survey the scene, and take stock before moving on. The lyrics have no overt Christian content but have resonated more strongly with me as my climb, like that of most people has been interrupted by occasional tumbles into crevasses. St Edmund's has been an important ledge for me at such times. The house groups will be concluding their study of Acts by the time you read this. I am sure there were ledges which the early Church members needed in their missionary journey too.

My legal knowledge is not sufficient to know how much, if any of the lyrics can be reproduced here without having to acknowledge copyright but to give you a flavour.

"The way is up, along the road the air is growing thin. Too many friends who tried were blown off this mountain by the wind. Meet on the ledge, we're gonna meet on the ledge. When my time is up I'm gonna see all my friends."

David Everett
PS: If you want to see Fairport live their 2005 gigs include Leeds City Varieties 21st February.

30 January, 2005