He played alongside Jimi Hendrix, made the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and was co-creator of the folk rock genre.

Yet few but the most dedicated of music fans will know the name of Ashley Hutchings.

Founder member of folk rock legends Fairport Convention, creator of Steeleye Span and the Albion Band, bassist Ashley Hutchings has been at the creative edge of folk music for more than forty years.

At the age of 63 he's still seeking fresh forms through which to express the traditional – new ways of singing old songs – but there's no way of going back.

Now playing with the Rainbow Chasers and the Lark Rise Band, he is still looking for inventive ways to re-present and re-work the music that grew from the fields and workshops of pre-industrial Britain rather than recycling pop's golden age of the 1960s.

"I can't think of anything sadder than bands going round doing the old hits – bald and fat now and still doing what they did in the 60s," says Ashley on the lawn of his Cutthorpe home with views of hedgerows and fields stretching to Ashover and beyond.

"It's a tough enough life and you should get enjoyment wherever you can and I play a reunion concert with Fairport every summer but as a creative musician I want to keep moving on and exploring new music.

"We were up there with Pink Floyd in the top ten in those days and some people went that way in terms of commercial success but I wanted to learn more and more about traditional music – that has been the pursuit of my life".

Ashley is originally from Southgate in north London and as a teenage formed several groups, including Dr K's Blues Band in 1964. When he met guitarist Simon Nicol, they rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called Fairport which they took for the name of the group they formed.

The band's 1969 album Liege and Lief – meaning 'loyal and ready' in Middle English – caused a sensation and created the folk-rock genre overnight.

"We knew we were doing something special when we were putting it together, " said Ashley who has lived in the Chesterfield and Sheffield areas since 1990.

"When it first came out it shocked the music world. I remember we were on the front cover of Rolling Stone magazine in America. Dylan was a song writer, but we were taking old tunes and rocking them up."
Rocking them up indeed.

The album has been voted the most important and most influential folk album of all time in two separate polls by BBC Radio Two listeners.
And there have been one or two big-name admirers over the years.

"I played with Jimi Hendrix on stage a couple of times. Fairport were playing at the Speakeasy club in Soho in 1968 and he was in the audience. "He listened to us and in the break he came over and said he liked the music and asked if he could play with us.

"Of course we said yes and he got up busked with us and sang Like A Rolling Stone. He did it on a couple of occasions. He was a lovely man who loved music and it was no surprise that he wanted to join in."
Ashley started his working life as a journalist at the age of 16 on London magazine Furnishing World but it was music that became his overriding passion.

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Inspired by Dylan, bass player Ashley has always listened avidly to all kinds of music from classical to jazz and says it's how he discovered his own musical voice.

Now acknowledged as the reigning intellectual of the folk-rock movement, Ashley was Musical Director of the National Theatre for four years – during which time he created the music for the highly successful play Lark Rise To Candleford.

One of his current projects The Lark Rise Band is revisiting and reworking the play's music – with a new version of the music on CD.
Said Ashley. "Traditional music has done me no favours in a commercial sense but it's been a great and rewarding artistic life. I had an opportunity of signing with a big London-based manager in 1979. I had a meeting with Jo Lustig from New York, who had great success with the Chieftains, Ralph McTell and Pentangle, and he said 'I'll make you a success – but you have to do everything I say'.

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't relinquish control of the music. I had always been a band leader. From that moment I knew I wasn't going to hit the commercial heights.

"But it's been a great life and still is. I have worked in the theatre, acting, singing and collecting songs. I have not made a fortune but I have made a living and kept control of my musical destiny.
"That will do for me."

You can see Ashley Hutch-ings' Rainbow Chasers at the Rock@Maltby, Wesley Centre, Blyth Road, Maltby, next Friday, May 23. Doors: 7.30pm.
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