Description
Having played with The Ian Campbell Folk Group across the early 1960s, and collaborated with Martin Carthy on several duo albums, Swarb - to use his nickname - joined Fairport Convention and became an integral part of their classic albums such as Liege & Lief, at the vanguard of the late 60's electric folk rock scene.
In 1976, Dave struck out on his own with the first of a string of six solo albums indulging his love of traditional music - a style of music his day-job band Fairport Convention had been moving away from at that point - helped by many respected guest musicians.
Four of these largely instrumental albums are assembled on this new 2-CD, representing the totality of his solo work for the legendary folk imprint Transatlantic. His first two albums were simply entitled Swarbrick and Swarbrick 2: four tracks appear here for the first time ever on CD.
After two further LPs for a Scandinavian label, Swarb returned to the Transatlantic fold for Smiddyburn, issued in 1981 on the company's more contemporary Logo imprint. The fourth album to be included here is Flittin', funded by Transatlantic but licensed out to a third party label, Spindrift, in 1983. Both albums are notable for featuring between them a clutch of performances by a one-off reunion of the legendary 1970 Full House Fairport line-up: Swarbrick, Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg, Dave Mattacks.