Chris Leslie
Wood, Wire & Wit
by Tom Nelligan

English musician Chris Leslie's favorite word seems to be "fabulous." It's his usual way of describing performers whose music he enjoys, but the adjective applies just as much to his own skills with a fiddle and a bow. A virtuosic fiddler, his animated playing has enlivened Whippersnapper, The Albion Band, and (these days) Fairport Convention. He has also toured or played studio sessions with performers like Richard Thompson, Ian Anderson, Steve Ashley, Roy Bailey, and even gothic rockers All About Eve. Hean appealing singer with an amiable-sounding tenor voice, and he is a master of mandolin and bouzouki. Recently, he's become a serious songwriter, and in his spare time, he's an instrument maker, too.

It quickly becomes clear in conversation that this friendly, soft-spoken man with a ready smile is happy with his lot in life. Contagiously enthusiastic about his music, but modest about his own abilities, Leslie is generous in giving credit to others, and always ready to try something new. He's been performing professionally since the late 1970s, and through a combination of skill and persistence he has quietly earned a place as one of the most respected acoustic musicians in the British Isles.

Leslie was born in 1956 and grew up in Banbury, the Oxfordshire market town that would later become the center of England's unofficial folk-rock district. He seems to have been marked for a musical career from the start. "I was always singing," he recalled over tea last November, while visiting Boston on Fairport's fall tour. "When I was about five or six, I was singing things like 'Hello Dolly.' We used to go to holidays in Southport, where my dad came from, and I used to enter the talent competitions on the seafront. As a little tot I used to win because of the 'cute' factor. I loved performing. Just the way singing feels made me happy."

He enjoyed listening to his older sister's Beatles and Rolling Stones albums ("There were great melodies going on in that period," he noted), but it was the musical tastes of his older brother John that would steer him toward a career in the folk world. "I fell in love with folk music, thanks to John. Without him I never would have run across it. When I was about 10, he started bringing home folk albums from friends he was meeting — the Waterson's Frost and Fire, which was very influential, Rags, Airs and Reels by Dave Swarbrick and Martin Carthy, albums by the Scottish group The Corries. I used to listen outside his bedroom door to this music going on. I didn't know what it was. And then John got a guitar, and being a typical younger brother, I was desperate to do the same. So my stepdad got me a guitar when I was 11. It came through the post, and I just fell in love with music instantly.

"And so from then on, I practiced hard on three chords and learned a few Joan Baez songs. And then, coincidentally enough, John was coming home with Fairport Convention albums, which I thought were fantastic. I thought it was great music, along with Steeleye Span albums and Albion Band albums. And then John decided to learn the concertina, and also the fiddle. He got rootsy in a big way!"

Around the age of 13, Leslie picked up his brother's fiddle and basically taught himself how to play it. "I just fell in love with it. I took it to school every day. All my breaks were spent practicing. I just played all the time. I listened. I soaked up all of Dave Swarbrick I could find, I soaked up all of Barry Dransfield that I could find, I soaked up all of Peter Knight I could find. I loved his playing, but Peter was a more difficult player to tap into when you first try learning because he's got such a great classical technique. I was definitely being drawn, in terms of trying to copy, to Barry and Swarb. I tried to learn every note, every nuance."p

This is an excerpt. Read the full article in Dirty Linen #88 (June/July 2000).