Culpeper's Orchard

Culpeper's Orchard were a Danish group formed late 1969 by Londoner Cy Nicklin (guitar, mandolin, vocals), Nils Henriksen (guitar, piano, background vocals), Michael Friis (bass guitar, organ) and Rodger Barker (drums). Their first live performance was on January 30th, 1970. Cy Nicklin, who wrote most of their output sang in English, and the music was country rock / folk rock by way of [a254199] and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with some progressive elements. For their second album Rodger Barker was replaced by [a758009] on drums, and on their third album, Tom McEwan was the new drummer, percussionist and sometime vocalist, and Niels Vangkilde had replaced Nils Henriksen on guitar. New member was also Nils Tuxen on steel guitar. In the mid-70s, after their third album, the group had trouble getting a recording deal, but still played live at various events such as Roskilde Festival in 1974, 1976, 1977 and 1978. In 1977 their fourth, self-financed album All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Go was released under the shorter group name Culpeper, and showed a change in musical style towards progressive jazz-rock (Thomas Puggaard-Müller was new on guitar). Cy's brother Gary Nicklin produced and sang backup vocals. The album is regarded by some as being among the best in Scandinavian jazz-rock, comparable to the contemporary [a593715].