As the Turkey-fare winds down and the boxes of Christmas decor make their way from the basement, a transition is needed. Ringing in the holiday season in subtlety requires a look no further than America’s finest composer and most innovative maestro of steel string. With a discography expanding beyond 40 titles, it’s possible to overlook the holiday offerings among masterworks like Fare Forward Voyagers, The Yellow Princess, and those first five Takoma releases. Smack dab in the middle of John Fahey’s first decade shifting around the tectonic plates of traditional music came The New Possibility.
Category: John Fahey
John Fahey :: Live in 1967
John Fahey: resurrected once again. This 1967 soundboard recording, discovered among lost readings by beatnik poets Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, is the oldest recorded solo concert from the acoustic guitar innovator.
Frozen Fingers :: An American Primitive Holiday Meditation
Fingerpickers can’t seem to resist uncovering (or just plain inventing) the folk-blues roots of these timeworn melodies. Whatever the motivation, it’s always nice to have an alternative to the treacly seasonal music that is inescapable this time of year. Frozen Fingers is playlist of (mostly) acoustic wintry music that’ll put a little wonder into the most wonderful time of the year…
John Fahey :: The Zabriskie Point Tapes
For his 1970 counterculture headtrip epic, Zabriskie Point , Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni had an inspired idea. He’d hire American Primitive pioneer John Fahey to supply (at least part of) the soundtrack. […]
Dance of Death: The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist
In his new book, Dance of Death: The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist, author Steve Lowenthal cites a review of John Fahey’s performance at Hunter College in New York by the Village Voice’s Paul Nelson in 1975: “His guitar-playing is a […]
John Fahey :: The Record Plant, Sausalito, CA – September 1973
John Fahey would’ve been 75 today, and though he’s been gone for some time now, the legend of Blind Joe Death seems to grow larger with each passing year. There’s no shortage […]