Cropredy Festival was held between 10 and 12 August 2006.
John and band performed at 8:35pm on Friday 11 August, the compere was Geoff Hughes. The one page introduction to John is reproduced below.
John Martyn has been giving enerously with his unashamedly romantic music for more than thirty years now and he doesn’t do pretension or insincerity. Fame and fortune have always been secondary considerations to musical integrity.
As soon as Martyn emerged from the Scottish folk clubs looking like a teenage cherub all those years ago, it was obvious that he possessed a talent which would not be confined to any single musical genre. At the age of 19 he became the first white artist to be signed to Chris Blackwell’s Island label and while his first two albums, London Conversation and The Tumbler were acoustic affairs, his folk stylings were flecked with jazz and blues tinges that hinted at what was to come.
A series of classic albums through the seventies: Bless The Weather, Solid Air, One World saw him transcend the boundaries of conventional singer-songwriting and develop a groundbreaking guitar style, at the same time pushing his voice into uncharted territory, using it in the same way Coltrane used a sax or Hendrix a guitar, to convey depths of emotion which his lyrics could only hint at.
And he’s still going strong. You get the feeling there’s a lot of music and a lot of giving still to come.
