page_title: Fairport Convention
section_title: 1998–present
hierarchical_section_title: Fairport Convention / History / 1998–present
caption_attribution_description: English: A view of the stage at Fairport's Cropredy Convention music festival in August 2009
context_page_description: Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings and Shaun Frater, with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig. They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock and singer-songwriter material, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane'. Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews leaving during the recording of their third album.
  Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking; the latter featured Fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat.
context_section_description: Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then, for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).
  2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD.
  The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
  In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans).
  As of 2020 the band still continue to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go.
caption: The stage at Fairport's Cropredy Convention in August 2009
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