The Magic's in the Music: The Strawbs

Legendary British Folk-Rock Band the Strawbs Carry On

Typically, in the world of rock music, the memory of most bands fades as their music slips off the charts or their albums gradually fall out-of-print. For British folk-rock legends the Strawbs, however, the years have been kinder. Since 2001, founder David Cousins has toured regularly both in Europe and the United States with a shuffling line-up of former band members as both an acoustic trio (Acoustic Strawbs) and as a full band (Electric Strawbs), performing a mix of new and classic Strawbs material. The band's amazing performance at the 2004 Nearfest Festival in Pennsylvania helped introduce the Strawbs to an entirely new generation of progressive rock fans.

Forty years after the band first came together, the Strawbs are not only fondly remembered by their original fans from the '60s and '70s, but they continue to pick up young new fans. "I am astonished and flattered that people still remember us," says Cousins. "I think that it shows the longevity of the music that we did, the songs that we played at the time. I think that maybe they were too complicated for the pop charts of those days, but I do believe that people nowadays...what has happened is that people have passed their record collections on to their kids, and they're picking up vinyl albums and they're not picking up the new stuff."

The band's recent appearance in Holland is an indication of the band's lasting appeal. "People were coming up and asking for autographs," says Cousins, "asking me to sign Hero And Heroine or Bursting At The Seams. By the same token, young kids were coming up and saying 'will you sign an autograph for me?' and they can't have been any older than ten or twelve."

The reaction of the fans, both old and new, to material created decades ago is gratifying to the band. "We'll never be rich or famous," says Cousins. "We'll never be U2, we'll never be Bob Dylan, we'll never be the Rolling Stones...but we've always been the Strawbs. I believe that there will always be an audience for us, how ever be it small, but it's an audience that appreciates the atmosphere and the emotion that went into the writing that we did at that time."

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