ICONIC folk group Fairport Convention will celebrate their golden anniversary in 2017 with a brand new album and a UK & Ireland winter tour, which stops off at Whitby Pavilion on Friday, March 3.

The folk-rock heroes will be marking 50 years of performances with an extensive series of dates and the release of '50:50@50' which features new original songs and live recordings of various fan favourites.

The winter tour will see the band playing a selection of tracks from the new record, alongside established hits from their ever-growing repertoire.

Founding member Simon Nicol hasn't lost the buzz of performing even after a half-century of tours.

“Fairport Convention have been extraordinarily fortunate to create a work ethic based on live performance," he said. “As someone whose hobby ultimately became a career, I'm happy every time the van pulls up outside my house to take me off on my travels, where the stage awaits, and I get a chance to make everyone happy that they made the choice to buy a ticket.”

The group, who revolutionised British folk music with their electric sound and traditional tunes in the summer of love of 1967, has survived numerous line-up changes over the decades and still performs with the passion and precision their reputation demands.

It’s not just the audiences who keep coming, Fairport Convention still attracts critical acclaim and won a coveted BBC Lifetime Achievement Award at the turn of the century. Radio 2 listeners also voted one of British folk music’s high water marks - the groundbreaking album ‘Liege & Lief’ - 'The Most Influential Folk Album of All Time’ around the same time and the band still play many songs from the disc during their performances.

Fairport Convention’s current line-up is the longest running in the band's history, and with Simon Nicol on guitar and vocals, Dave Pegg on bass guitar, Chris Leslie on fiddle, mandolin and vocals, Ric Sanders on violin and Gerry Conway on drums and percussion, audiences across the land will be in safe hands for an unforgettable night of folk history.

Opening the concerts on this celebratory tour will be BBC TV’s ‘The Voice’ 2014 Runner Up, Sally Barker, one of England’s most talented singer-songwriters and formerly of all-girl folk group, The Poozies.

Tickets for ‘Fairport Convention’ at Whitby Pavilion are available from The Pavilion’s Box Office (01947) 458899 and via www.whitbypavilion.co.uk