Fairport’s Cropredy Convention 2024 was a great success. In the face of adversity, the festival saw one of its’ most consistent bills in many a year. We look forward to 2025 and who we would love to see on the bill.

Keep your eyes on Fairport Convention’s website over the coming months for line up announcements and tickets information.

FIVE POINTS GANG

During the 2024 iteration of Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, The Zac Schulze Gang delivered a stomping blues set. The line up poster looked good with the word ‘gang’ on it. Why not make it happen again in 2025? Five Points Gang are a band in the same vein as The Zac Schulze Gang. Thumping tempos, great low end, and fiery solos. The band have one album to their name as well as several singles. We were very impressed with their 2021 debut, Wanted. Then followed an incendiary live album. We think they’d go down a storm at Fairport’s Cropredy Convention.

SAVING GRACE

Seems a while since Robert Plant has played at Cropredy. Of course he’s been spotted in attendance, Toyah and Robert Fripp even doing Kashmir while he was watching from the crowd. After him missing the 2022 Underneath The Stars with illness, but seeing him with the Saving Grace project both indoors (on my birthday this year) and at the 2024 Cambridge Folk Festival, we reckon he’s ‘due’. They may not have recorded an album but he has a crack band and with Suzi Dian providing the partnership with which he appears very in tune, they’d be a great headline draw. Plus there’s the added bonus option that he could be a Fairport ‘special guest’ on Saturday night…

BRAVE RIVAL

With the number of blues/Rock outfits who’ve lit up the Cropredy stage over the past couple of years – Zac Schulze (again) in 2024 a prime example – another outfit who’ve impressed us here At The Barrier is Brave Rival. A mere five years in existence with a strong female balance (think the Elles Bailey band from 2024), our man Damian Liptrot was most impressed with their live set at the Blackpool UK Blues Festival and also by their recently released Fight Or Flight album. “All the ingredients to set your heart racing,” sounds like just the thing we’d need on a sunny afternoon in the field.

PAUL HEATON

Paul Heaton has a songbook to die for. His work with The Housemartins offers up plenty of great pop songs, and then there is the massive canon of The Beautiful South. His performances over the years have gained widespread acclaim. This year he conquered Glastonbury and played a big part in the BBC Radio 2 In The Park show in Preston. Beyond the bands mentioned, some of Heaton’s best work has come as a solo artist alongside Jacqui Abbot. Songs like Manchester and DIY are proper earworms that are upbeat, melancholy and uplifting all at the same time.

THE MAGPIE ARC

One of our favourite Folk Rocking bands who’ve emerged over the past few years. A line up that classes as ‘fantasy folk rock’ – Martin Simpson, Nancy Kerr, Tom Wright, Alex Hunter and Findlay Napier – we’ve had several encounters over the period. TMA is an embarrassment of riches and a tsunami of influences that pour from the might of Simpson and Kerr not to mention the Prog leanings of Alex Hunter. As for big festivals, Cambridge – done, Beautiful Days – done; they have their own Indoor Festival Of Folk at Cecil Sharp House in early 2025, tour dates already dropping and the promise of new material. 2025 could be the year of the magpie (arc).

EXPLORING BIRDSONG

From the lighter side of progressive metal are the trio Exploring Birdsong. Their melodic brand of rock with the stunning vocals of Lindsey will delight many Cropredy fan who lean towards the proggy side of music. Without a lead guitarist they are very much keyboard focussed with Jonny Knight on bass playing keyboards too. Driven by the expert percussion of Matt Harrison they are developing a bigger fanbase in the Northwest even though they haven’t yet a full album to their name but their EP’s A Thing With Feathers and Dance In The Face of Danger have earned them accolades like best new band in Prog magazine .

MADDIE MORRIS

A previous appearance at Cropredy on the early Saturday Young Folk Artist of the Year spot saw her impress the discerning Cropredy audience. She has steadily increased her reputation on the folk music circuit and with her recently released album Skins, now has enough clout for her to return with a longer session. Her cheery repartee was endearing that day and a spot higher up the bill is much deserved. Her focus is on personal and social issues delivered with exquisite vocals.

PLUMHALL

They were an inspired choice of opening act for Fairport’s 2024 Winter Tour and their album, One Star Awake, was a revelation – definitely one of the albums of 2024. They were invited to join Fairport on stage at the 2024 Cropredy Festival and their vocal harmonies were divine. Plumhall have certainly proved what they bring to the show and we reckon that a place on the bill in their own right should be a shoo-in. And, if they DO make their welcome return to Cropredy in 2025, as well as getting Ric Sanders – and, who knows, maybe a few more of the Fairport chaps, to supplement their lineup when they perform the title track of their album, perhaps Michelle could be invited up during Fairport’s spot to reprise her stunning performance of Who Knows Where the Time Goes…?

BARBARA

We go on about them all the time and if you haven’t yet latched on to Brighton sophisto-fop-poppers, Barbara, you’re missing out on something very special. Earlier this year, the lads toured in support of Paul Weller and they went down a storm with Paul’s notoriously discerning followers. What’s more, their second EP, Happy Days, released back in June, is a stormer and fully supports our contention that Barbara are a band that are getting better all the time. If you like 10cc, Sparks, The Divine Comedy, Stackridge or any number of similarly quirky, intelligent bands, you’ll LOVE Barbara. The perfect way to spend a Friday of Saturday Cropredy afternoon, we say.

BUFFALO SKINNERS

Buffalo Skinners returned to the limelight with a vengeance this year with Picking Up What You’re Putting Down, their first album since 2016. Awash with the rock iconography of the mid-sixties – Vox AC30 amplification, Fender Jaguar guitars and the mellow Fender Rhodes keyboard sound that it’s impossible not to associate with The Doors and a showcase for putting a violin where you’d only expect a guitar to venture, the album is a knockout. And, live, they take your breath away, as we found out when we caught them at the Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds, back in May. Buffalo Skinners are ready for Cropredy and we rather think that Cropredy is ready for them.

BROOKS WILLIAMS & AARON CATLOW

Cambridge-based, Statesboro-native Brooks Williams is no stranger to Cropredy. He wowed us with a mellow Saturday afternoon set back in 2013 and, since then, his output – either solo, or in collaboration with the likes of Dan Walsh, Rab Noakes, Boo Hewerdine, Steve Tilston and Bristol-based fiddler Aaron Catlow can only be described as prolific. The Williams/Catlow duo’s 2021 album, Ghost Owl, a collection of guitar and violin duets inspired by the barn owl was delightful and, just recently, the pair went one better with the excellent Greens and Blues. Brooks and Aaron have attracted comparisons to Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick and such comparisons set standards that most would struggle to meet. Brooks Williams and Aaron Catlow not only meet those standards – they set a few more of their own.

THE MANFREDS

Not the first time that we’ve suggested the Manfreds for the Cropredy bill, but it will hopefully be the last; that is, if Peggy makes the call that finally brings Messrs Jones, D’Abo, McGuinness, Townsend et al to the Cropredy stage. To see the Manfreds is to reignite a golden era when rhythm and blues and pop were one and the same thing – their live show is one long stream of hits.

Regardless of age, we can guarantee that just about every member of the audience will know, and love, just about every song The Manfreds perform, from the early R&B numbers like Mojo Working, 5-4-3-2-1 and Hubble Bubble, through the power-pop era of Do Wah Diddy Diddy and the exemplary Dylan covers including Mighty Quinn and If You Gotta Go, Go Now (sung, for some reason, in English…) to the smoother pop of the Mike D’Abo era – My Name is Jack, Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James and Mr Ragamuffin Man – the big hits just keep on coming. Guaranteed to get the whole field up on its feet. And, if you haven’t see The Manfreds lately, be prepared to be astounded by the vocal agility – and the incredible blues harp skill – of Paul Jones; he might be 82 years old but, by heck, he’s still got it!

LINDA MOYLAN

We’ve been following the adventures of London-Irish chanteuse Linda Moylan for quite a while, now. We described her 2021 album, The Merchant, as “A work of great beauty” and, just recently, she went one better that that, with her new album, The Fool, which is surely destined to be one of our albums of 2024. Linda Moylan is a writer and performer of perfectly-formed, thoughtful songs that express her inner emotions, often to the point of rawness. She’s also a specialist at interpreting traditional or well-known songs in a way that makes the listener believe that they’re hearing the definitive version of the song. Best of all, Linda has a vivid, alluring and thoroughly versatile singing voice that takes on a multiplicity of forms, from the sultry, the bluesy, the smoky and the sweet, often in the same song. Cropredy would fall at her feet.

FEROCIOUS DOG

It really is about time than Ken Bonsall and his merry band of Celtic punks came and showed off their updating of the electric folk paradigm. Road veterans, they have played all manner of festivals in recent years: folk, rock, punk, metal: you name it, they can play it, and do. Broadly from the same sort of template as, and in a lineage that began with Oysterband, and the Levellers then as the next generation, Ferocious Dog are the next one down still.

A perma changing line-up, always with Red Ken Bonsall at the helm, on vocals and thrashing his old guitar, the band has now stabilised around a core of Jamie Burney on fiddle and Sam Wood on mandolin, accordion, banjo, whistle, guitar and, by now, probably a whole lot more else. They are in turn bolstered by a crack rhythm section of Kyle Peters, Nick Wragg and Luke Grainger on guitar, bass and drums. With often a political whack to Bonsall’s lyrics, they are a powerhouse live and a force to be reckoned with. Plus, in perhaps an overt bid to the festival, their last album, ‘Kleptocracy, includes a belting version of Matty Groves!

Fairport Convention: Website / Facebook / X (formerly Twitter) / Instagram / YouTube

Keep up with At The Barrier: Facebook / X (formerly Twitter) / Instagram / Spotify / YouTube