A Celebration of John Fahey and American-Primitive Guitar
December 17, 2020 3:23 PM Subscribe
...Fahey was nonetheless in enviable form. There’s sweating! A Charley Patton demonstration! Furrowed brows! And, of course, almost an hour of beautiful guitar-playing. ''Fahey, who did not suffer strangers nor fools, suffered both with us, and gave us a private concert.''John Fahey -- Santa Monica (1981) Via A Celebration of John Fahey and American-Primitive Guitar by Amanda Petrusich
Somehow I managed to miss these until now. Fahey is remarkably warm and engaged. I hope you enjoy him.
Note that all the songs from that record are easily accessed on YouTube. Here's my favorite, the God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen Fantasy.
posted by Rash at 4:49 PM on December 17, 2020
posted by Rash at 4:49 PM on December 17, 2020
I have been a Fahey fan for years, but only recently have I become aware of the term "American-Primitive Guitar" (via Bandcamp). Don't know if I like the term, but I don't have anything better.
posted by CCBC at 4:50 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by CCBC at 4:50 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life by John Fahey is the most intense musician memoir that I've seen, it's something else!
(Saying this as someone who reads every musician memoir/bio within reach, maybe I should make a list...).
posted by ovvl at 5:03 PM on December 17, 2020 [3 favorites]
(Saying this as someone who reads every musician memoir/bio within reach, maybe I should make a list...).
posted by ovvl at 5:03 PM on December 17, 2020 [3 favorites]
I seem to keep on celebrating John Fahey. I started better part of twenty-five years ago* and I've seen zero reason to stop. This just showed up minutes ago in a random shuffle I put together of various moody instrumental stuff:
In Christ There Is No East Or West
and it's appropriate to the season.
* it was Fahey's collaboration with Cul De Sac that first really hooked me all those years ago, an album that used to be very hard to find anywhere, but now I notice that some of it's been posted to Youtube. Meditative without being remotely predictable.
posted by philip-random at 5:28 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
In Christ There Is No East Or West
and it's appropriate to the season.
* it was Fahey's collaboration with Cul De Sac that first really hooked me all those years ago, an album that used to be very hard to find anywhere, but now I notice that some of it's been posted to Youtube. Meditative without being remotely predictable.
posted by philip-random at 5:28 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
this was great - spent a lot of the mid-2000s listening to blind joe death, maybe now’s the time to start in on the other 30-odd studio albums
posted by inire at 5:32 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by inire at 5:32 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
Were he still alive, Fahey would be 80 today. Many things he said and wrote are beyond the pale and cannot be defended. But as for his song titles, offhand I can think of only one which could be criticized as such. A arrangement I have enjoyed hearing over the years without ever recalling the title but which now I will never listen to as easily again. Which is a pity as it is as far clouds in stately formation sonourous as any of his songs of the time.
posted by y2karl at 8:22 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by y2karl at 8:22 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
ovvl, Fahey’s memoir really is...a trip. Extremely entertaining but in a let‘s say borderline kind of way? I say that as a huge fan of Fahey‘s. Have you read Charles Mingus‘ Beneath The Underdog? I find it has a similar — if a bit more serious — intensity.
For fellow enthusiasts — I‘ve found the group ‚John Fahey‘ on Facebook to be very well moderated, stocked with lots of people who knew him, and a resource of knowledge and interesting tidbits.
If you‘re a guitarist, do look into his arrangements — many of them are not too hard to learn, sound fine even if played at a beginner‘s pace, and are a nice change from the usual traditional fingerpicker fare. Good way to get into open tunings if that‘s something you haven‘t explored.
posted by The Toad at 9:17 PM on December 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
For fellow enthusiasts — I‘ve found the group ‚John Fahey‘ on Facebook to be very well moderated, stocked with lots of people who knew him, and a resource of knowledge and interesting tidbits.
If you‘re a guitarist, do look into his arrangements — many of them are not too hard to learn, sound fine even if played at a beginner‘s pace, and are a nice change from the usual traditional fingerpicker fare. Good way to get into open tunings if that‘s something you haven‘t explored.
posted by The Toad at 9:17 PM on December 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
I went to college with a pawn shop 6-string that I got after learning how to strum "Closer to Fine' at summer camp a few years earlier. A guy in the dorm grabs me one day and says "Arctic, you gotta... you gotta hear this." And he leads me back to his room and puts on 'I Yell at Traffic'. It was one of those moments when you realize you've been doing everything completely, completely wrong, and the only thing to do is throw it all away and start over from scratch.
Fast forward a couple years and I'm eating ice cream with a friend in Berkeley, and a poster in the shop window cries out in bold letters that we absolutely must come to the Freight and Salvage the very next night to have our lives ruined by bluegrass at the John Fahey tribute show. And he's like "I don't think I like bluegrass". And I'm like "this ain't no South Austin Jug Band". So we went.
It was a real joy to see Peter Lang perform. I was never sure what happened to him after his attempt to do twenty pushups for the Young Athletes for Christ. And I distinctly remember, totally incorrectly, a story about an Antarctic snow cat that needed an exorcism after mundane techniques failed to repair the electrical system. You could either run the heater, the headlights, or the stereo... but only one at a time. So you could be warm, but not see where you were going, and bored. Or you could be cold, drive safely, and bored. Or you could be entertained but freeze to death in the dark. I can't remember if the exorcism worked but it sounded amazing.
Anyway, the actual point I'm trying to make here is that the rambling, directionless stories are an essential component of the American-Primitive style. The guitar playing is just half of the experience. There's a story behind each song and it's just as important as the music.
BUT! Part way through telling the story, you just abruptly stop and switch to tuning the guitar. And the audience is left wondering, "that was strange... surely there is more to the story? Why is he telling us this? Is this going to be a joke about accordions?" And you noodle around a bit to test the tuning, and the noodling just flows into the start of the next song.
And the audience will think "Great! This one's my favorite! I spent untold hours trying to learn the first few bars on my pawn-shop 6-string!".
THEN you stop playing after those first few bars and go back to the story. I'm not sure it was a snow cat or if the problem was the electrical system at all. There may have been an accordion in the back of the snow cat. Take that out and you'll be good to go.
posted by Arctic Circle at 10:01 PM on December 17, 2020 [6 favorites]
Fast forward a couple years and I'm eating ice cream with a friend in Berkeley, and a poster in the shop window cries out in bold letters that we absolutely must come to the Freight and Salvage the very next night to have our lives ruined by bluegrass at the John Fahey tribute show. And he's like "I don't think I like bluegrass". And I'm like "this ain't no South Austin Jug Band". So we went.
It was a real joy to see Peter Lang perform. I was never sure what happened to him after his attempt to do twenty pushups for the Young Athletes for Christ. And I distinctly remember, totally incorrectly, a story about an Antarctic snow cat that needed an exorcism after mundane techniques failed to repair the electrical system. You could either run the heater, the headlights, or the stereo... but only one at a time. So you could be warm, but not see where you were going, and bored. Or you could be cold, drive safely, and bored. Or you could be entertained but freeze to death in the dark. I can't remember if the exorcism worked but it sounded amazing.
Anyway, the actual point I'm trying to make here is that the rambling, directionless stories are an essential component of the American-Primitive style. The guitar playing is just half of the experience. There's a story behind each song and it's just as important as the music.
BUT! Part way through telling the story, you just abruptly stop and switch to tuning the guitar. And the audience is left wondering, "that was strange... surely there is more to the story? Why is he telling us this? Is this going to be a joke about accordions?" And you noodle around a bit to test the tuning, and the noodling just flows into the start of the next song.
And the audience will think "Great! This one's my favorite! I spent untold hours trying to learn the first few bars on my pawn-shop 6-string!".
THEN you stop playing after those first few bars and go back to the story. I'm not sure it was a snow cat or if the problem was the electrical system at all. There may have been an accordion in the back of the snow cat. Take that out and you'll be good to go.
posted by Arctic Circle at 10:01 PM on December 17, 2020 [6 favorites]
John Fahey is to Mississippi John Hurt as Captain Beefheart is to Howlin’ Wolf.
But Mississippi John Hurt and Howlin’ Wolf were serious artists from a marginalized social mileau, who would have welcomed mainstream acceptance and middle-class lives. John Fahey and Captain Beefheart were born into the mainstream and traded on the 60s fashion for madness, and feigned outsiderdom.
I love Fahey and Beefheart, but take it up a level for Hurt and Wolf who came by their shit naturally.
posted by Modest House at 5:02 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
But Mississippi John Hurt and Howlin’ Wolf were serious artists from a marginalized social mileau, who would have welcomed mainstream acceptance and middle-class lives. John Fahey and Captain Beefheart were born into the mainstream and traded on the 60s fashion for madness, and feigned outsiderdom.
I love Fahey and Beefheart, but take it up a level for Hurt and Wolf who came by their shit naturally.
posted by Modest House at 5:02 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
Fahey, I believe, was very conscious of being ‚fake‘ in the way you describe, Modest House. Maybe too conscious. What you call ‚feigning outsiderdom’, in Fahey‘s case, were serious mental health issues, later also severe chronic physical illness. Addiction, pretty obviously. Those are not ‚trades‘ he made for being well adjusted. This is stuff that just happens to you.
I wish we could look at artists as the complete human beings they are, not as ranks on a scale and you win when you‘re the most authentic or natural (whatever that is). I get the impulse, I really do, but I don‘t think it leads to a deeper understanding of art. It flattens it into a competition, takes out the complexity and contradictions.
posted by The Toad at 7:29 AM on December 18, 2020 [6 favorites]
I wish we could look at artists as the complete human beings they are, not as ranks on a scale and you win when you‘re the most authentic or natural (whatever that is). I get the impulse, I really do, but I don‘t think it leads to a deeper understanding of art. It flattens it into a competition, takes out the complexity and contradictions.
posted by The Toad at 7:29 AM on December 18, 2020 [6 favorites]
But Mississippi John Hurt will lead you down that dark road to Skip James. That’s where the pure drop lies.
A fascinating German video.
posted by misterpatrick at 7:38 AM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
A fascinating German video.
posted by misterpatrick at 7:38 AM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
That’s where the pure drop lies.
Fahey mercilessly mocked the obsession of American folkie audiences with (racialized) purity and authenticity, likening it to essentialist Nazi race ideology. Calling them ‚Volk‘ was a massive troll move, but I can‘t say he didn‘t have a bit of a point.
Speaking of memoirs — Skip James‘ Blues And The Soul Of Man , transcribed from his own words, is definitely worth a read, and also contains TAB if you want to try your luck.
posted by The Toad at 8:24 AM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
Fahey mercilessly mocked the obsession of American folkie audiences with (racialized) purity and authenticity, likening it to essentialist Nazi race ideology. Calling them ‚Volk‘ was a massive troll move, but I can‘t say he didn‘t have a bit of a point.
Speaking of memoirs — Skip James‘ Blues And The Soul Of Man , transcribed from his own words, is definitely worth a read, and also contains TAB if you want to try your luck.
posted by The Toad at 8:24 AM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
Speaking of "American Primitive Guitar," I started listening to Robbie Basho this week after the release of his Song of the Avatars collection, and, yes, I get the "primitive" bit, in a way, but that is some intense, spiritual-but-at-the-same-time-deeply-physical guitar music. Don't know that I'd necessarily put it in the same camp as the music of Fahey's that I've heard, but definitely worth a listen.
posted by the sobsister at 8:47 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by the sobsister at 8:47 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
and traded on the 60s fashion for madness, and feigned outsiderdom.
I love Fahey and Beefheart, but take it up a level for Hurt and Wolf who came by their shit naturally.
I know way more about Beefheart's music (and background) than Fahey's. One thing he (Beefheart) consciously did was NOT pursue a career as a righteously correct interpreter of the old blues. That's where he started, I guess, but he very quickly diverted down some singularly innovative and strange paths.
Feigned?
Trout Mask Replica feels entirely natural to me, and unique. And I suppose I could say the same for Requiem For Molly (parts 1-4).
posted by philip-random at 9:57 AM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
I love Fahey and Beefheart, but take it up a level for Hurt and Wolf who came by their shit naturally.
I know way more about Beefheart's music (and background) than Fahey's. One thing he (Beefheart) consciously did was NOT pursue a career as a righteously correct interpreter of the old blues. That's where he started, I guess, but he very quickly diverted down some singularly innovative and strange paths.
Feigned?
Trout Mask Replica feels entirely natural to me, and unique. And I suppose I could say the same for Requiem For Molly (parts 1-4).
posted by philip-random at 9:57 AM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
I could do without his homophobic titles, though
The dike, or dyke brigade would have been a volunteer informal civic group to manage the dykes in heavy weather and flooding situations.
posted by anazgnos at 11:00 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
The dike, or dyke brigade would have been a volunteer informal civic group to manage the dykes in heavy weather and flooding situations.
posted by anazgnos at 11:00 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
I think I heard a clip from it as a bumper on this morning's Weekend Edition.
posted by y2karl at 3:06 PM on December 19, 2020
posted by y2karl at 3:06 PM on December 19, 2020
→
aye, that'll be shining.
posted by scruss at 3:38 PM on December 21, 2020
a volunteer informal civic group
aye, that'll be shining.
posted by scruss at 3:38 PM on December 21, 2020
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On further thought, maybe I'll put it on now..
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:26 PM on December 17, 2020 [7 favorites]