Audio Exclusive: Green Gartside Sings Nick Drake

One of the great British singer-songwriters of the past half-century, Nick Drake is the subject of a new tribute album, Way to Blue, released next Monday on Navigator Records. A companion piece to the concerts staged worldwide over the last four years, the artists involved include Teddy Thompson, Vashti Bunyan, Robyn Hitchcock, Lisa Hannigan, Scott Matthews and Danny Thompson.

According to Joe Boyd, Drake’s producer and the man who coordinated the album and the associated Way to Blue live shows: “Shortly after the Birmingham Town Hall show, as I was preparing a concert of Incredible String Band songs at the Barbican, I learned that Green Gartside, whose Scritti Politti recordings I had loved in the 1980s, wanted to come and ‘play some back-up guitar or sing harmony’. I asked him whether he was equally fond of Nick Drake. You can hear the response in his performance of ‘Fruit Tree’.”