I grew up in Guildford and Don was well known and quite a character! A man of many parts!  His son (Tony) was a musician and had a band (House) that played regularly in the area

Cheers

Slippy

Danny Thompson's Whatever  :  On the Road  (jazz in Britain  3CD   2026).

Good folk/jazz from the 80s/90s.    There's some repetition of tracks, but the sound is good and it's still  value at around   £20.

Nice.

That's Don Backhurst there, on the left. Known as 'the Red Indian' in less enlightened times, he was a ubiquitous character for many years, both in Fairport circles and locally in the Guildford area. The last time I saw him, he was wading through the mud at the top of the field, in sandals, with precious festival food in both hands! A couple of days later, he died. Hard to reconcile that laid-back hippie with a veteran of D-Day, but there you go...

Coming up on this week's Off The Beaten Tracks radio show I have music from...

Steeleye Span, Siobhan Miller, Steve Knightley, Sharon Shannon, The Pogues, The McCalmans, Beans on Toast, Lucas Drinkwater, Meg Baird, Plu, Mike Oldfield, Coreen Scott and Fairport Convention

Tune in at 8pm on https://www.internet-radio.com/station/gingerfeatherfm/

This, today, from The Guardian:

Over two days in August 1996, Oasis played to 250,000 people at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire. Riding high on two bestselling albums, the concerts were seen as the crowning moment in their career.

The Guardian covered the weekend but Caroline Sullivan’s review concentrated on the Charlatans, one of the support acts. There was a picture of the Knebworth crowds on page 7, but the main review that day was of folk-rock band Fairport Convention’s Cropredy festival.

https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2026/08/17/Cropredy_review,_the_Gdn,_12_August_1996.jpg

Beardy 2027 is 17th to 20th June in the walled garden at Hopton Court.

They are currently doing their traditional thing of releasing one act per day. Seems good as per usual.

 So far, a lot of solo singers with a guitar for the acoustic tent, some like Sorrel Nation being very, very good. However, the main stage already has "Sam Kelly and the lost boys". The brilliant "Gaz Brookfield and his company of thieves", and "Xodus" (the premier Bob Marley tribute act) also the traditional folk of "Hase Waites", and the folk/pop of the all-girl outfit "The Deep Blue".  

So, 13 acts are yet to be announced on the main stage and nine for the between acts acoustic stage.

It's the tenth anniversary and tickets seem to be going well .

Agreed. I think Myths and Heroes was the first album for a while that didn't include a re-recorded song and it was all the better for it.

Seconded.

A new album would be very interesting, providing the songs were new and not just rehashes of past glories.