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Steeleye Span

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Steeleye Span is a British folk-rock band that has been active since 1970.

History

Steeleye Span was founded by Ashley Hutchings, the London-born bass player who had founded Fairport Convention in 1967. Fairport was involved in a road accident in 1969 in which the drummer, Martin Lamble, was killed and other bandmembers injured. They convalesced in a rented house near Winchester in Hampshire and worked on their album Liege And Lief. Despite the success of the album, Ashley Hutchings and the band's vocalist Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention in early 1970.

In part, Hutching's departure was because he wanted to pursue a different, more traditional, direction than the other members of Fairport did at that time. However, Fairport's co-founder, guitarist Simon Nicol, says in an interview on the band's website [1] (http://www.fairportconvention.com/nicolint.htm): "Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn't continue with us."

In the years since, Steeleye Span has seen a great many personnel changes but has maintained a strong continuity of tradition throughout. Their lead vocalist, Maddy Prior, was one of the main attractions of the band's music, being one of a handful of strong-but-melodically-voiced women in rock music in the 1970s (along with Sandy Denny, Renaissance's Annie Haslam, and Linda Thompson).

Steeley Span is named after a character in the traditional song "Horkstow Grange", which they did not finally record until they released an album by that name in 1998. The song gives an account of a fight between John "Steeleye" Span and John Bowlin, neither of whom are proven to have been real people.

Steeleye Span's first album, Hark! The Village Wait (1970) is fairly conventional folk music for the time. Their lineup at the time consisted or Prior and Hutchings, the husband/wife team of Terry (formerly of Sweeney's Men, later of The Pogues) and Gay Woods, and Tim Hart, who had been part of a duo with Prior. They were to undergo many personnel changes, with the Woods departing after their first album, and veteran folk musician Martin Carthy joining. By the time they had released their fourth album, Below the Salt, in 1972, they had settled on a distinctive electrified rock sound, although they continued to play mostly very old material. Their early albums had no permanent drummer but in 1973 Nigel Pegrum joined them, playing flute as well as drums. Thereafter the line-up has generally been that of a conventional rock band -- an electric guitar, electric bass, and drum kit -- supplemented by a fiddle and fronted by a female vocalist for most of their songs. During one of the many personnel changes there was a substitution of an accordion for the fiddle.

Recording style

Their typical album is a collection of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reels added in. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never gotten completely away from the traditional music, which draws upon both the English and the Celtic traditions. Recent tendencies to re-record previously released songs climaxed in Present (2002), a 2-disc set of new recordings of songs chosen by fans on a Steeleye web site as the best of their previous output.

All of their LP-era recordings have now been re-released on CD by the Shanachie label.

Performance

Steeleye Span has been performing, on and off, from their foundation to the present day. After a slight lull in the late 1990s and 2000 / 2001, Maddy Prior rejoined and the band undertook substantial UK tours.

Steeleye Span usually plays in theatres and arts centres but also performs at festivals. The band has recently toured extensively in Australia and will close 2004 with a gala performance in London's Paladium theatre. The current line-up of Maddy Prior (vocals), Ken Nicol (guitar, vocals), Rick Kemp (bass, vocals), Peter Knight (violin, piano, vocals), and Liam Genocky (drums and percussion) draws on past and current Steeleye Span repertoire and their concerts usually include their chart hit All Round My Hat. The final encore is often Gaudete, a 16th century Latin religious song performed a capella, an unusual ending for a non-classical modern concert.

Discography

(full-length albums, excluding reissue compilations and "irregular" live albums)

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