TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

I heard/read that you were a member of the Albion Band, but this (I think) must have been inbetween recordings. What was the line up and when was this approximately?
My mate Dick, a few years before I met him, saw the Albions live in Holland, he thinks this was early 90s, and he thinks it was Utrecht. He didn't recognize anyone in the band apart from the obvious one. It was one of the few gigs he ever walked out on because he thought it was very sloppy - then again, maybe he just wasn't in the  right frame of mind!
Were you ever in Holland with the Albion Band? I've tried to figure out what band he saw; it sure wasn't the acoustic band with Simon Nicol and Chris While from the mid-90s, yet Dick doesn't remember Phil Beer being there either. It was somewhere inbetween these line ups.
If indeed you were in that band Dick walked out on, then at least you made up for it later with LJE, as you well know  ;)

Blimey!! had he stopped for a drink on the way??

There is every chance that the Albions had a sloppy box player with them on that gig as it was his first one ever! Lol
I was twenty one, It was my first serious gig. I was picked up outside my Mum and Dad's house about eleven hours prior to that. By way of rehearsal I'd been sent a cassette of 'Albion 1990' three days prior to...
Simon had done the usual thing of telling Ashley I'd be up to it as he was off with E2 somewhere that required T-shirts and sunglasses.I was that green at that point, that that was all I had packed to go to the Netherlands in January!.
My first experience of being a part of the Albion Band was parking my squeezeboxes on top of Julie Matthews's stage tackle in the back of the transit minibus. Which was met with "NOT ON TOP OF ME STAGE CLOTHES YOU TW**T!"or something to that effect.
I don't think I said a word all the way to Holland. :-[
However making up for me, shaking somewhere in a corner, were a contractually obligated (in spite of the new acoustic AB lineup which featured Ashley Reed) was: Phil Beer,Trever Foster,Julie Matthews and the Guvnor himself so it can't have been that bad can it?

Post script

Eleven months later that lineup had forfilled all obligations and therefore ceased to be.At that point Ashley and Phil B went their separate ways.
On the same day I found out I was to a father to Jake. Ashley called and asked me to be part of the Ashley Hutchings Dance band and within an hour Phil Beer phoned saying he had a band called Drummer Boy Stone (which very quickly became the Phil Beer Band) and did I fancy it?
I didn't tell either of them that we were expecting at that point, as I thought it might ruin me chances!
I could do with a few more days like that.

Do please pass on to Dick how happy I am that he mentioned that to you! Lol

Love GT  
 
   

Ha! So finally I know where Dick walked out of. How inconsiderate - it being your first gig with them. I'll tell him when I see him tomorrow and slap him  ::). I'll ask if he remembers anything else about the gig ... it does figure that he didn't recognize Trevor Foster and Phil Beer from the previous line up - by then he only knew of the 70s Albion Band. Much later, I brought him up to date. So if he came to expect that he was in for a surprise anyway.

Squeezeboxes on top of women's stageclothes! The horror  ;D

Although I was very much into all things Fairport etc by then (it being 1992, it was the year of my 4th Cropredy), I never knew about an Albion Band appearance on these shores ... had I known, I'd have been there for sure.
(BTW I even missed out on Whippersnapper less than 5 miles away in 1989; I read a review in the local newspaper the next day, tearing my hair out. Ah, pre-internet. I did know about a Whippersnapper appearance in De Melkweg (Milky Way) in Amsterdam a few days earlier. I was very excited - I'd go and see Swarb. I went in that afternoon to buy a ticket ... only to learn that the gig was cancelled. Swarb had left that day! The concert I didn't know about near to my home was probably the first of the 3-piece Whippersnapper).

... and now to come full circle re Whippersnapper... they have reformed as a four piece for a short tour again this June.. saw them last year.. just brill... and will again in a couple of weeks  ;D ;D