Bob Fox
Good Stuff
by Jim Lee

In this day and age when every musician on the planet wants to be a songwriter, it's refreshing to find a singer content to be just a singer. Bob Fox is one such person. Blessed with a rich, powerful and expressive voice, he's made his name first as an interpreter of traditional material and, in recent years, by adding songs by contemporary writers to his repertoire.

Fox is a very personable live performer, telling amusing stories and mixing bits of history from his upbringing in the County Durham coal mining region into his show. He's an underrated guitarist, neither flashy or fancy but able to pick a tune with the best of them when called for. While he'd be the first to deny it, Fox is like Martin Carthy in that it is his force of personality and the way he presents and interprets music that differentiates him from other singers.

In fact, it was hearing Martin Carthy's first album in school that sent Fox off in the direction of folk music. He started as a floor singer in the English folk clubs in 1975 before teaming up with fiddler Tom McConville for two years. But he first gained recognition when he joined up with Stu Luckley. "I met up with Stu Luckley when Tom and I split," said Fox. "Stu was just finishing up with Hedgehog Pie, the electric folk band. He'd been involved in the electric folk thing and I'd been more involved in an acoustic duo. We put music together just to please ourselves, really. We basically tried to produce a band sound with just using the two of us with combinations of acoustic instruments, and that seem to work very well and got us huge acclaim.

"We had about six years together," continued Fox, "and recorded two albums together with one, Nowt So Good'll Pass, being named Melody Maker folk album of the year, and in 1984 we split up."

Throughout the intervening years, Fox kept a lower profile, playing with a Celtic band that recorded one album that never was released, briefly playing keyboards in the Vin Garbut band, and continuing on as a solo performer. He finally returned to the studio in 1997 to record a collection of County Durham mining songs with Benny Graham, called How Are You Off for Coals [Fellside Records].

Around this time, many older folk LPs were being released on CD and there were requests for the two Bob Fox & Stu Luckley recordings to be reissued. The original label, Rubber Records, had been bought out by Celtic Music, and in an all-too-familiar story, they refused to reissue the albums or sell the master tapes back to Fox and Luckley. So the two went back into the studio to re-record the best from the two LPs for Fellside Records in a well received collection called Box of Gold.

While the Box of Gold CD helped to raise his profile, it was a birthday present that really got the ball rolling again. "My wife Marilyn gave me a surprise birthday treat," Fox explained, "and took me to see Fairport Convention. I first met Dave Pegg when Stu and I were support artists on the Richard and Linda Thompson tour in 1979 and Pegg was in their touring band.

"I hadn't seen Peggy up to this point in 10 years and we met up in the bar (of course!) after the show. We met again the next morning at his hotel and I gave him a copy of Box of Gold. We talked for while about old times and he asked me if I'd like to do the support for the Fairport tour the next year. So I thought about it — for a millisecond — and said I'd love to do it. I did the YK2 tour, it was a great time and a great tour. After, Peggy asked if I'd like to do a solo recording for Woodworm Records. I got the album together and never looked back since."

This is an excerpt from issue #96.