Fairport Convention – Cromer Pavilion: Live Review

John Barlass

1 year ago

The bus rolls on…next stop for Fairport Convention, Cromer! We catch the folk rock legends one more time on their Autumn tour.

As we said just recently, you’re never too far from a Fairport tour. Last week we braved a transpennine crossing to catch up with the chaps at Settle’s magnificent Victoria Hall (concert review here). On Saturday 26th October, the Fairport bus arrived in the picturesque Norfolk resort of Cromer to dispense another dose of Fairport magic in the town’s magnificent pier-end Pavilion.

CROMER PAVILION

A word, first, about the venue…

Built in 1902, Cromer Pier is a beautiful example of that most British of seaside attractions, the Edwardian Pier. It’s been wonderfully preserved and maintained by the local district council and it’s a regular winner of the National Piers Society Pier of the Year Award, And the jewel in the pier’s crown is, without doubt, The Pavilion Theatre. The venue is a regular stop on Fairport’s regular jaunts around the country and it’s also the venue for the Folk on the Pier Festival – the self-proclaimed Best Gig on the North Sea – which takes place here every year in May (find out more about Folk on the Pier here.) It’s been a long-held ambition of mine to catch Fairport in this most spectacular of surroundings and that’s an ambition that was finally realised tonight.

Fairport’s Autumn Tour is, traditionally, a lowish-key event, a (largely) acoustic show in which Ric, Simon, Peggy and Chris ply their trade comfortably seated, without the powerhouse drive from DM’s drumkit. It’s a chance to enjoy slightly different, often mellower, versions of favourite songs, performed in a more intimate environment; we always look forward to it.

In keeping with the relaxed nature of the evening, Peggy – as always – took the opportunity to mingle with the incoming punters in the venue’s excellent bar area and, when local impresario Scott Butler introduced Fairport to the stage,. he did so without the aid of a microphone. It was all very “folk club.”

A PRETTY SIGNIFICANT MAKEOVER

And, speaking of taking opportunities, for this autumn’s whirlwind whizz around our island, Fairport have also taken the opportunity to give their setlist a pretty significant makeover, with a number of special favourites – Now Be Thankful, Banks of the Sweet Primroses and Slipjigs and Reels amongst them – making their welcome returns to the live forum. What’s more, Fairport have dug especially deeply into that bottomless archive of theirs to come up with several genuine surprises. For example, a raid on the 2004 Over The Next Hill album (an enduring favourite of mine…) has revived Chris’s wonderful The Fossil Hunter, a song particularly appropriate to tonight’s cliff-side setting, and also I’m Already There, the first of Chris’s two songs (the other being Mercy Bay from 2011’s Festival Bell album) that evoke Sir John Franklin’s fated voyages to find a north-west passage.

All were performed with the loving care that we confidently associate with Fairport and I was left wondering, not for the first time, how Now Be Thankful failed to become the smash hit it so obviously should have been, as Fairport performed a particularly mellow version of the song, Chris’s whistle provided the accompaniment to the gentle ebb and flow of the tide below us during Fossil Hunter, whilst Ric echoed the cries of the gulls on his fiddle and Ric referenced the spirit of the great Swarbrick during his wild coda to the dreamy I’m Already There.

Perhaps even more surprising is the welcome return of Frozen Man, James Taylor’s cryogenic saga that Fairport recorded for their 1996 acoustic album, Old – New – Borrowed – Blue, and which (I may be mistaken) I don’t think I’ve heard them play live for at least 20 years. But, maybe the biggest – and happiest – surprise of the night was the revival of Banbury Fair, Chris’s recollection of teenage visits to Banbury’s autumn street fair, when in-between hanging around outside the fair’s boxing booth and the Talk Of The Town strip joint, he managed to get himself stuck at the top of the big wheel alongside the loveliest girl at the fair… he was quite a lad, our Chris, it seems. Banbury Fair was the song that prompted me to scroll through my iTunes index during the drive home from Cromer to dig out The Wood And The Wire – the song’s parent album – and to remind me, if any reminder was necessary, that there’s a whole lot more buried Fairport treasure alongside songs like this one.

RELIABLE SETLIST STAPLES

Now, don’t go forming the impression that Fairport’s Autumn Tour, 2024 is just about radical change – it isn’t. Alongside the welcome returns and the archive treasures, there’s still room for most of the reliable setlist staples. Walk Awhile is, as always, the set opener – a mill pond-smooth version that sits in extreme contrast to the raucous Cropredy rendition of the song; Crazy Man Michael (included, apparently, to ensure that the band don’t get ‘stuck in the 70s’ all evening…) is mild and gentle; Doctor of Physick is less physically threatening but no less ominous without the drums and electric instruments and John Gaudie had the Cromer audience clapping and singing along. Ric’s and Chris’s twin fiddles dropped a few hints as to what this vibrant song might sound like when performed in a certain Oxfordshire field on a warm August night when Fairport have the full armoury at their disposal.

In other highlights, the joyous Year Of ’59 once again caused me wonder whether the 1959 alien visitation to Banbury left the town with more than just a few memories – the last time I was in The Olde Reindeer, several of the customers DID seem to have assumed a distinctive green hue – and Ric pointed out the flying saucer with his violin bow as it departed at the song’s end. Cider Rain never fails to evoke pictures of Brittany’s Morbihan Coast whenever Fairport play the song, Ric’s Steampunkery was tight and raucous and Simon’s rendition of Stuart Marson’s Over the Lancashire Hills was sheer perfection.

PULL YOUR TROUSERS UP, MATTY…

Everything leads, of course, to that familiar ending. Matty gets caught, yet again, with his trousers around his ankles, admitting his admiration for high-quality bed linen, as Peggy does the actions and Chris twangs his banjo. the Cromer audience is hugely appreciative and they continue to show that appreciation by singing lustily along to Meet On The Ledge and that, at least as far as Cromer is concerned, is it. Fairport were on top of their game here tonight; the tour is now well underway and the band are thoroughly bedded in. It’s clear that Fairport enjoy Cromer Pavilion and, what’s more Cromer Pavilion LOVES them. Cromer is a mighty long way from Fairport Central in Banbury but, tonight, Fairport brought a huge stick of Oxfordshire rock to the seaside.

Now: if Cromer was a tad too far in the direction of Copenhagen for your convenience, fear not – there’s still another twelve dates to go before the tour reaches its conclusion on 10th November at the Twickenham Exchange and, with shows scheduled at venues as diverse as Bridport’s magnificent Electric Palace, Foxlowe Arts Centre in Leek and Perranporth Memorial Hall, the tour is bound to be visiting somewhere close to you. It’s often said that you can’t get too much of a good thing and, believe me, Fairport on tour is a GOOD THING. Get yourself along to a show – See the full itinerary here.

MORE NEWS INCOMING SOON…

And – watch this space. November and December are the months when important news starts to emerge from Fairport-land. The 2025 Wintour when Fairport will be back at full electric power and Dave Mattacks will be back in the engine room. Dates will be announced in the next couple of weeks and we’ll be relaying THAT news as soon as we get it. In December, expect to see the first hints of what treats might be in store us all at Cropredy 2025. As a wise man once said: It all comes round again…