Martin Allcock died aged sixty-one on 16th September 2018. He was a
musician, multi-instrumentalist and record producer playing guitar, keyboards, violin, bass guitar and pipes.
Martin Allcock was born on 5th January 1957 in
Middleton, Lancashire, United Kingdom and studied music at Huddersfield and Leeds. He began playing professionally in January 1976, playing in dance bands and folk clubs. His first tour was in 1977 with Mike Harding as one of the Brown Ale Cowboys. He went to Brittany in 1978, for a temporary stay, but ended up remaining longer than intended, and learned to cook while there. On returning to Manchester he studied and qualified to become a chef, working in the Shetland Islands in 1980.
In 1981 he joined the Bully Wee Band, a Celtic folk group, which led to an eleven-year stint as lead guitarist with British folk rock band Fairport Convention from October 1985 to December 1996, and concurrently four years as keyboardist with rock band Jethro Tull from January 1988 to December 1991. In summer 1991 he also played keyboards for The Mission. From the early 2000's he began working freelance from his home on the west coast of Snowdonia as a session man and record producer with the Welsh language Sain record label.
In 2018, he announced on his web-site that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer and would make his final live performance at the 2018 Cropredy Festival before retirement.
Martin Allcock's session career included more than two hundred albums, including those of Robert Plant, Beverley Craven, Judith Durham, Breton guitarist Dan Ar Braz, Ralph McTell, Dave Swarbrick, Cat Stevens, and Dafydd Iwan. He began producing Welsh music in 2005 and has produced ten albums for Sain Records in Caernarfon. He was also the UK bass guitarist and tour manager for Nashville songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman.
