Andrew Stranglen - Doggone Gone Dog

Folks, I'm proud to present to you a recording by Andrew Stranglen, available for download.  If you aren't familiar with Stranglen's work you need to check it out.  This is an older one that was never released for sale.  But he has those too, be sure to check the links at the end of the post.  His "Harken" release made my Tops of the Decade list.  So without further ado, take it away Andrew...

Doggone Gone Dog

Def.1   An American colloquial expression of exasperation

          at the impermanence of life;   An expression of loss of

          a close friend or relative.  “Doggone it, the doggone

          dog is done gone!”

Def.2  A collection of experimental music recordings ca1999,

          by Andrew Stranglen using two Teac reel to reel tape

          decks in an endless loop setup, a la Steve Reich, or

          Fripp & Eno, earlier pioneers of R2R 2 R2R audio tape

          music experimentation. 

Conception

     Doggone Gone Dog was originally conceived while playing around with two Teac reel to reel tape decks.   And 12-string acoustic guitar with all lighter gages tuned DGGDGD.

Deck 1 is the record & supply deck, and deck 2,  set some few feet away is the playback & take-up deck which plays back into deck 1 opposite channels.   This creates a delayed repeat or long echo that slowly fades as new audio material is continually added, creating riffs that morph throughout time.  Other noisemakers on this collection include an electric guitar(Harmony Gibson S-G copy), kalimba, jaw harp, tambourine, voice, whistling, electronic cicada toy, and on the Bonus track (Jivas extracted from Splendor)  I bring a harmonica into the mix. 

Formerly an extremely limited edition

     Here is the new and improved “Doggone Gone Dog” album originally made in 1999 with a limited issue of probably no more than 20 cdrs ever produced.   I've remastered it for normalization and elimination of some pesky resonances.   It sounds better than ever, and I still enjoy it a lot!    I'm happy to give it away, and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

  

Notes on the cover art

      Front cover: Dog + Lightning = Electrik Dog => Lectrikdog(as currently).

A collage of a lightning sky turned upside down, midground is a blue disc shaped birdbath

sized fountain in front of which: a wolf type dog is eyeing us whilst licking his snout for a better whiff.

           Back cover: another collage I made, “Magic Dust”,  it's what the little girl has in her container, which she's opening whilst looking apprehensively at the undulating reddish-orange blob which is creeping towards and over the boardroom table, or is it creeping away?        

   Is Mr. Executive attempting to warn her?, or is he simply freaked out about his own situation?  There is a radio telescope array seen outside the windows of the boardroom. 

Notes on the Songs

1)     “Doggone Gone Dog, Gone Dog”

Yamaha slotted head acoustic 12-string with custom light gages tuned all mid-high register D-G-G-D-G-D(Dog-Gone-Gone-Dog-Gone-Dog).

2)     “Tropical Force Pt.1”

Title inspired by a pre-Katrina hurricane Floyd(mid September 1999).

Electric guitar in Standard tuning plus assorted other instrumentation.

3)     “Tribal Interlude”

a respite?, from the chaos of tropical storms, maybe.

4)     “Electric Gone Dog”

The original theme of track 1 is reiterated here using a Harmony “Gibson SG” copy tuned DGGDGD.

5)     “Tropical Force Pt.2” 

See Track 2.

6)     “Tribal Interlude(Conclusion)”

See Track 3.

7)     “Gone Dog”

Straight 12-string no tape loop manipulation, Fingerpicking with slide DGGDGD.

8)     “A Song For Jon”

Straight 6 string – again no tape machines, tuned DADFAD(Dm open)

Bonus Track 9

            “Jivas, Extracted from Splendor”

            This piece was made in 2000 also using the dual reel to reel technology. 

To me it sounded like music to accompany Jim Woodring's “Frank” in his world of the Unifactor, see http://www.Jimwoodring.com , or

http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2009/02/04/jivas-and-yuels/ 

see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiva

Guitar 12-string, jaw harp, harmonica, voice.

Ralph Johnston said recently upon hearing Jivas,

“'Twas a curious little field holler performed by nanobotic nematodes while creating  the magnificently monolithic ice crystal cathedrals of the Skapa Flow”.

then:

“Andrew...hiowdy!  I indeed love "Jivas"!...check out Scapa Flow on Wikipedia...they will give you a much better, detailed description than I ever could...at first my impressions were of my late pooch Kyri ecstatically rolling around in my back yard...enthralled with a cookie treat and revelling in my rapt attention to her canine antics...but then...sinister images began to appear...images of nanobotic nematodes and huge chrystalline ice structures being constructed in places where humans labored and fought...for truth...justice...and the...American way...sorry...I loved the 1950s Superman TV series starring George Reeves.”

I figure if Ralph likes it, well that's a job well done then.

ENJOY!

Andrew

Download it HERE includes all artwork.

If you enjoy this please visit Andrew Stranglen's CD Baby page or iTunes 

Thanks to You!

Hi folks,

I just want to say thanks so much for stopping by and reading the ol' Delta-Slider blog.  I've recently hit some good numbers, over 10,000 page views in a 30 day period, 300 feed subscriptions, 50 Google followers and I'm oh-so close to 100 email subscribers.  I know that in the wide world of the internet that is a pittance.  But for my little blog and the tiny little corner of music that it represents, well...I think it's just fine.

I enjoy this blog and I want to keep it that way.  I don't promise any sort of regular content nor can I promise regular posting every day or so.  It just flows where it goes and that is best for my sanity and for keeping it enjoyable.

Really the best part is getting to know all the great musicians that have been SO incredibly generous with their time and music.

THANK YOU!
 

Lionel Young Band - Boulder Creek Festival

Here's a nice little set from The Lionel Young Band, local boys here in Colorado.  If you haven't heard of Lionel Young and you like the blues with a twist you ought to check this out.  Young plays the violin.  He's won the International Blues Challenge twice, only double winner ever.


Lionel Young Band
May 24, 2009 3:30 - 4:30 pm
Boulder Creek Festival
Band Shell
Boulder, CO
Total Time = 60:36

01 Groovin' on a Sunday Afternoon 8:43
02 Down the Road 4:17
03 Everybody come together 9:54
04 Whole Lot Love 5:22
05 Respect myself? 7:18
06 Born on the Bayou 7:55
07 What a beautiful day 4:30
08 Sugar Coated Love 5:34
09 Papa got a brand new bag  3:05
10 Bass Solo  Drum Solo 3:52

Down load it HERE

Vinyl Reissue of John Fahey - Requia

This year, Vanguard Records have announced five albums they are reissuing for the day. Each were remastered from the original master tapes, and will be pressed in a limited edition of 1000 copies each. They will be available ONLY at participating stores on this day, and while it’s safe to say that they may be available elsewhere, if you can scoop a copy or two up, do it early:

Skip James-Today!
John Hammond-So Many Roads
Mississippi John Hurt-The Immortal
John Fahey-Requia (and Other Compositions for Guitar Solo)
Country Joe & the Fish-Electric Music for the Mind and Body

Visit the official Record Store Day site for info.

On the subject of records...
Here's an interesting article on a band that mixed their music to vinyl and back to digital to try to emulate the vinyl sound.  Also a few very interesting words on how the quality of the music changes as the needle moves toward the center of the record.  Very interesting, but short post, though there are numerous links to other articles.


  

BUY John Fahey from EMUSIC

Charlie Schmidt - Doppelgänger Blues

 Folks, I'm happy to present a special treat today.  Charlie Schmidt has sent me an excerpt of an unreleased tune for your listening pleasure.
As Charlie mentioned in his essay earlier this week, he believes in playing Fahey for the sake of Fahey, the artistry of the music itself.  And yet he is perfectly capable of composing and playing in his own voice, his own style.
In this original piece, Doppelgänger Blues, Charlie walks the fine line of blending his own composition with the feel and the spirit of a Fahey tune.  Hence the title.
It starts with a pipe organ and you may not know it yet, but you've just entered the temple of the steel string!  Charlie takes his time developing the tune, building the anticipation, introducing the guitar as though we are actually experiencing the song somewhere in the middle, a transitional point, we aren't quite sure where we are or what's about to happen, but we know something is imminent.  Then the guitar is suddenly there, front and center as though it just broke free.  The pipe organ is left behind as the tune surges forward on the guitar.
So begins the Doppelgänger Blues.  I have to point out that I love just about any tune in a minor key and this is no exception.
Check it out, I hope you enjoy.

 Doppelgänger Blues

( P.D., arr. C. Schmidt, all rights reserved )  guitar by C. Schmidt, pipe organ by Dr. G. North

If you haven't already, be sure to check out Xanthe Terra by Charlie Schmidt

  

BUY Charlie Schmidt from EMUSIC

Glenn Jones on "John Fahey - The Fonotone Years"

Ah, I warned you!  An extended Fahey Week, and no complaints I'm sure.  As many of you know a collection of John Fahey's early years of recordings have been in the works for some time.  And I think we all expected a pretty nice set of music to be produced.  But as you will see, this has been a phenomenal project.  Glenn Jones has been at the center of this effort for years and I asked him if he could tell us a little about it.  Well he's telling more than a little and I think you are going to find this very interesting.
Thanks Glenn for sharing with us a few of the tantalizing details of what we have to look forward to, and thanks for all your hard work!

The road to the Fonotone John Fahey box set, containing nearly all of John’s recordings for Joe Bussard, began, for me, in 1978, when I ordered all of John’s available Fonotone records by mail. A few weeks after Joe cashed my check, a box of 45 RPM acetates and a 12” and 10” LP, each with blank covers, arrived in the mail.

Each record, I discovered, was a unique object – each was individually hand cut (not pressed); each was made from a new pass of the master tape; each label was typed up individually and glued onto each disc.

It’s never been clear how many sets of Fahey records Joe made up. When asked, Joe says, “Oh we sold a lot of John’s records!” But I don’t know if “a lot” is 50 sets, 100, sets, or 1000 sets.

My guess, however, based on the fact that these records almost never turn up for sale, is that Joe probably made less than 50 complete sets. (I know of only five people who mailed away for sets, including me.)

A tiny handful of Fahey Fonotones have turned up on eBay, and in 30+ years of scouring used records stores, I’ve found exactly one Fahey Fonotone 78.

Sharp-eyed fans originally learned that John recorded for a label called Fonotone via the liner notes that came inserted with the first two pressings of Fahey’s Dance of Death. For nearly four decades now, a handful of us have been trying to make sense of this material. That’s nearly 40 years of debate, bafflement, hair pulling and speculation on the part of a good half-dozen or more Fahey scholars in the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Germany.

This box set comprises virtually all the extant issued and never-before-issued recordings that Joe Bussard had of John. Many were recordings Joe made, or, after John moved to the West Coast, come from tapes that John sent to Joe, usually in exchange for 78s he was after.

The set has been more than 10 years in the making. It’s involved the work of nearly half a dozen engineers in nearly as many
studios. It required trips from Boston to Oregon, to Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, Washington state, and Atlanta. It includes contributions from the most knowledgeable Fahey experts on the planet.

The set’s becoming a reality had so much going against it, there were so many hurdles, roadblocks and detours, I despaired of it ever coming to fruition. It suffered many kicks in the shins along the way, and (at least!) three major setbacks (that I can talk about):

--First, the death of John Fahey in 2001 meant we had to get approval from his estate in order to continue the project – which proved a lot harder and more involved than getting approval from John. (This project comes with the full approval and cooperation of the Fahey estate.)

--Second was Revenant’s decision to suspend business several years into the project (more on that below).

--And finally, one of the biggest blows, the loss of virtually everything -- every track committed to computer; every edit, every speed correction, every EQ made; the order of tracks -- four years of work! -- all down the drain, due to our original engineer’s computer crashing and his not having backed up his system.

This meant restarting the project from scratch, some seven or so years into it.

But, after all the effort, the heartache, the death, the rebirth, I can say that it feels, finally, like it’s done (or nearly so – we’re still working on layout and design), out of my hands, and nearly into yours. It feels like a pretty significant accomplishment -- certainly one of the achievements I’m proudest of in my life.

Though not every question will be answered by the set (and, being devoted to Fahey, that’s maybe as it should be), every question has at least been asked, and every possible scenario explored.

* * * *

The set will consist of five CDs, a 78 RPM record, a 12 X 12 book (somewhere between 60 and 80 pages long), several inserts, all housed in a wood slipcase. There will be contributions from Malcolm Kirton, Claudio Guerierri, Eddie Dean, Byron Coley and others; there is a previously unpublished Fahey interview, by Douglas Blazek, from 1968; there are reminiscences from Michael Stewart, with whom John recorded, and R. Anthony Lee, one of John’s close childhood friends; there will be photos galore, reproductions of every Fahey Fonotone record label, color inserts, and lots of memorabilia.

Of the music -- well over six hours of it (some 118 or so tracks, spanning the years 1958 to 1965) -- at least half is previously unissued.

Of the issued material, only the hardest of hardcore Fahey fans, the ones who to took the trouble to write Joe Bussard in the ‘60s and ‘70s to order the 78s or 45s from him by mail, will have heard any of it.

And even the stuff that made it into the hands of a few fans has never been heard at the proper speed, since Joe’s 78-RPM cutter cut fast (records played back at 78 RPM were slower than recorded) and his 45-RPM player cut slow (played back fast).

The music, also, has never been heard in such good fidelity, all of it being transferred from Joe’s master tapes or from clean copies of the actual discs themselves, in the few instances (four tracks) when Joe’s master tapes could not be located.

We spent nearly a week with Jane C. Hayes, John Fahey’s mom, in Louisiana, who gave us something like 150 photos, almost none of which have ever been published. Many will appear here for the first time.

* * * *

I began the actual work on a reissue of the Fonotone Fahey material (for Dean Blackwood’s and John Fahey’s Revenant Records) back when John was still among us. Dean called me up and asked if I’d like to produce a set of Fahey’s complete recordings for Fonotone. Not having the vaguest notion what might be involved, or what I was in for, I said, without hesitation, yes.

My last visit with John, the summer before he died, was to discuss this project.

In the three or four years after John’s death, we made good progress on the set, but then, inexplicably (to everyone, including me), things ground to a sudden halt.

Why? It’s a long story, and it took a long time — a couple years -- to sort itself out, during which time I was either in the dark, or once I got the story, unable to say much, partly because there was a lot I didn’t know (though Dean was pretty forthcoming with me, there were legal issues that couldn't be made public, things he wasn’t allowed to discuss with me, or anyone), and partly because it was my hope that once things were sorted out we could pick up where we left off.

A happy outcome, however, was far from certain.

The upshot was that an expensive and protracted legal battle followed the issue of Revenant’s Albert Ayler box set. Legal fees ate up Revenant’s finances, and shut down everything in the Revenant pipeline, including the Fahey project.

That experience, ultimately, left such a bitter taste in Dean Blackwood’s mouth, that he decided to call it quits, and got out of the record business altogether. (Revenant was one of the very best labels going, as anyone who bought their Patton or Ayler or Beefheart boxes, or any of the American Primitive volumes, the Harry Smith Vol. 4, or Fahey’s Red Cross, knows.)

As things unspooled, the realization that all the work we’d done might be for naught just about broke my heart.

But in the midst of Revenant's legal blood shedding, Dust-to-Digital came charging over the horizon. They’d issued a four-CD set containing a wide selection of Joe Bussard’s Fonotone recordings, after which they also began looking into reissuing the Fahey Fonotone recordings, the rights to which Bussard had originally sold to Revenant.

As things with Revenant wound down, Lance Ledbetter at Dust-to-Digital and I finally reached out to one another, encouraged by the haranguing of our mutual friend, Jack Rose.

Eventually I put Dean and Lance together, and they brokered a deal whereby the project became a Revenant / Dust-to-Digital co-production. The set will, as is only fitting, bear the imprint of both labels.

As for Dust-to-Digital, truly, I can’t think of a better label to have seized the reins of the project. Their Art of Field Recording volumes (both 4-CD sets) are among my favorite releases of the past few years. Their packaging (by Susan Archie, Revenant’s designer) is beyond terrific.

Besides the Fonotone collection, there is in the D2D catalogue an essential album of vintage Sacred Harp recordings, one of the best gospel collections ever issued (Goodbye Babylon), and much much more.

Everything they put out is lovingly assembled, comprehensively annotated and well worth investigating.

Limited to 2500 copies, the John Fahey box set (titled Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You) will be, for Fahey fans, a treasure trove. (If the child is father to the man, it’s not such a stretch to see Blind Thomas as the father to Blind Joe Death.) Look for it (really!, finally!) later this year

Glenn Jones
Cambridge, MA
February 28, 2011

John Fahey - Azalea City and Turtle Outtakes

Sorry I missed posting yesterday, sometimes these things happen.
Today is Fahey's birthday, normally the end of Fahey Week but...one never knows...eh?

Here's today's treats: The unreleased album called

AZALEA CITY MEMORIES AND OTHER TOXIC MEMORABILIA (1990)


Download it here


And all kinds of Voice of the Turtle outtakes and such.

Download it here

JohnFahey.com has extensive notes on the effort here

All these cuts were originally uploaded by Stephen over at the Fahey Record Labels site.  He has some great posts on the cover art and his own theories about the release of this material.  All of his links are dead so I've re-upped them.

Charlie Schmidt - When the Catfish is in Bloom part 3

Today Charlie wraps up his tutorial of When the Catfish is in Bloom.   Enjoy, and be sure to let Charlie know how you are doing on your performance of When the Catfish is in Bloom.  Leave a comment here or on his Youtube page!

  

Charlie Schmidt - When the Catfish is in Bloom part 2

Today Charlie leads us through part 2 of his tutorial of When the Catfish is in Bloom.

I want to say a few things about learning to play a song this way.  I am one of many, many people that feels lost without a pile of TAB in front of me to guide me through a song.  For many years now I have all but given up on learning to play a song any other way.  I often have this feeling that I've been doing myself a disservice by insisting on learning songs in this fashion.

Instead of being a slave to the tapping of your foot and the sheets of paper, try to use listening and feeling as your guide.  If you have spent any time at all fingerpicking you may be surprised at how your fingers will know what to do, especially on the right hand.

Besides, with an open tuning of CGCGCC it's hard to hit a wrong note!

Good luck!

Charlie Schmidt - When the Catfish is in Bloom

Many visitors to Delta Slider are familiar with the late guitarist John Fahey, who passed away ten years ago on February 22nd , 2001. As some of you may know, Chicago guitarist Charlie Schmidt has earned quite a reputation for his eerily accurate renderings of John Fahey songs. In the article below, he describes some thoughts and insights into the playing of Fahey material.

I was fifteen when I discovered the guitar world of John Fahey. I wasn’t immediately hooked, it took about six months for me to begin to appreciate what I was hearing. I recall that one album in particular, Death Chants, Breakdowns, and Military Waltzes, had excellent pieces that were especially evocative. I recall that the piece When the Catfish Is In Bloom from a different album proved beyond a doubt I was hearing the work of a genius. By 1978, I was well on my way in my musical journey, one I am still on today, 33 years later.

Watch Charlie play “When The Catfish Is In Bloom.” 

I was enthralled by this music and had the ridiculous idea back then that I was going to listen to these songs really carefully and teach myself how to play them, and all that that entailed. To my surprise I managed to learn a few and the few turned into many. I played as a hobby, with no designs to perform or record. I was content to just experience that music in as direct a manner as possible, for friends and family only. My entire family was musical, and I got plenty of support, especially from my mother Donna. My sister Martha Helen Schmidt is a composer and educator in Minneapolis.

I didn’t write my own songs until much later, when I was in my 30s.

My devotion to the “Fahey oeuvre” however hasn’t changed much in 33 years. I still mostly play for myself, to revisit in an immediately gratifying way the many Fahey songs I have come to revere and enjoy with each passing year. Fahey’s work holds up extremely well over repeated hearings. His work was far ranging, of immense scope, depth, and simplicity; his person unlike any I have known before or since. Glenn Jones’ essay on Fahey “Railroads to Plowshares” is among the notes to Revenant’s Fahey album Red Cross. It captures the experience of what it was like to be around Fahey, which in all honesty was no picnic.

An important fact about John is that he was not only a very good guitar player, he was an also an outstanding composer for the steel-string guitar. I recall a phone conversation John and I had ca. 1996. We spoke about how incredibly good Leo Kottke was, all around. But I quickly added (probably awkwardly) that no one could touch Fahey when it came to his industriousness and musical economy. No one had wielded the spiritual depth and pure inspiration as assertively as he had; on this there was no argument from Fahey. (With all due respect to Mr. Kottke, if I could play like him, I would, believe me. Good heavens who wouldn’t?)

As a “Fahey player” I like to play Fahey’s music like he would play it himself, or at least how I think he’s playing it. Not that one should or shouldn’t improvise. I’ve always felt free to improvise within the style as long as the changes are consistent with what Fahey might do, such as reversing the order of themes, increasing or decreasing tempo, switching from a straight tempo to a syncopated rhythm, putting on or removing of plastic fingerpicks. But usually it’s easiest to just copy Fahey’s recorded version pretty much as is, making as few changes as possible, letting the little flubs add color, working as hard as I can to hit all the notes and control my tempo, while trying to sound effortless. Most of the differences you will hear between my versions of Fahey and the Fahey originals are just flubs that I’ve managed to salvage. In reality, even if one tries to copy, one really can’t. Despite this, I’ve learned that those “flubs and recoveries” turn into internally consistent nuances that can add to the interest and spontaneity of a performance. Of course, there’s no substitute for practice.

It’s rarely the case that adding something to a Fahey tune – adding my stamp for instance - improved it in any way. To the contrary, leaving something out is a far more likely event. When I choose to play from the Fahey repertoire, I’ve consciously tried to preserve the coherence that he so deliberately and beautifully realized in his compositions; from the shorter art songs such as the perennial In Christ There Is No East or West and Some Summer Day to the longer more cerebral tone poems like Voice of the Turtle, and across the terrain of open tunings. The “classical” period ca. 1959-1970 Fahey songs typically have a structure that makes them distinctively transparent to the ear, making it easier (than most guitarists) to identify fingerings, idiosyncrasies, and phrasing.

Is this a completist’s neurosis to imitate note-for-note one man’s artistic vision? Nah. It has never been about wanting to be like Fahey, or trying to outplay anyone, or to prove anything. It was and remains to be about the joy in the artistry of the music itself. Fahey himself imitated musicians who came before him such as Skip James, Sam McGee and Sylvester Weaver. But then he transformed those imitations into something new and timeless, as he once put it, into consciously artful pieces that are made to sound easy. Similarly, my CD Xanthe Terra was a deliberate effort to demonstrate that I could do my own thing, and create my own art.

So why should anyone care about playing like Fahey? Well, an audience does not begrudge a symphony orchestra conductor who has followed an original score. Chopin’s stunning 24 Preludes Op. 28 is not improved by improvisation. Charles Ives’ Unanswered Question doesn’t get better with added percussion. Nobody complains when the conductor follows the score. Rather, a conductor may try to emphasize a nuance or quality through his orchestra that is already inherent in the composition. That’s what I try to do with my Fahey renderings; to find the essential spirit and celebrate it, to state it again and again, immune to the passing fashions of the day, as if it were an old familiar friend. I choose to follow the Fahey “score” as a conductor might, albeit more as an advanced amateur than a trained pro. If that makes a song into a museum piece, so be it; it’s a museum I want to visit. It shouldn’t be a curse for a song to belong to a canon of classical works, whatever that may be. A song would not be canonical in the first place if it weren’t for its distinctive identity. So by the same token, a guitarist should be free to recreate Fahey songs with impunity, as I do. Granted, as long as John was alive, it seemed a bit pointless to “play Fahey.” But now that John and his musical genius have been gone for ten years, I’m more inclined than before to share my experience with others. Our host Scott is posting a few of my Fahey renderings this week right here at Delta Slider. Additional renderings at my YouTube channel may be of interest, among dozens of others who have posted on YouTube and been in some way inspired by Fahey’s music.

Now, for those of you who already know, the most interesting part of my story was the day Fahey asked me to recreate his recordings as him.

It is not without a little irony that Fahey – who was known to encourage artists not to copy him but to create their own songs – would nevertheless find in me an appropriately obscure guitarist who could convincingly imitate him. It would satisfy his need to pull the wool over our eyes, to sow confusion, blur attribution, defy our expectations. It was a mark of his humility, self-deprecation, and even recklessness to allow me to ghost his interpretations. Yes, he had heard me play his songs, but only a few bars here and there, just in passing. (I achieved this by volunteering to change his strings between sets when he was in town, while he schmoozed with fans or took long cigarette breaks.) And so it was, in March of 1993, that he took me at my word, paid my recording costs and set me loose in the studio as the “Fahey Doppelganger,” remarking that I would make an “excellent impostor” for a project he was doing with Shanachie Records, a label that had planned to reissue re-recordings of some of Fahey’s earliest and best work. In exchange, I got a vote of confidence from my mentor I could never have anticipated. I proceeded to record a new Death Chants, Break Downs, and Military Waltzes, and sent Fahey the DAT masters. I also included some bonus tracks of my own compositions, including one we named The Hyattsville Anti-Inertia Dance. Fahey was impressed, but nothing came of my recordings (or so I thought) and the subject was dropped. Then the tapes sat, for a decade, until something completely unexpected happened in 2004, three years after Fahey had died. Read about it in this profile from the Chicago Reader.

I devote my free tutorials of When the Catfish Is In Bloom to the memory of John A. Fahey, the messenger, born 2/28/39; died 2/22/01.

You can watch a 3-part tutorial by Charlie of  “When The Catfish Is In Bloom,” here is part 1. Parts 2 and 3 will be presented in the following days.  NOTE: Tuning is CGCGCC