John Fahey plays Conley’s Nostalgia - A Fan Reminisces

It's always nice to hear from fans during Fahey Week, below is a memory and some great ticket stubs from a Fahey show right in my home town of Denver. I missed this show, I wasn't too hip to Fahey in 1986, too bad. I can sure appreciate saving the ticket stubs all these years, I have a collection of all mine. This show is listed in The John Fahey Handbook, Volume 2— on page 418, Appendix C. The year was 1986. What follows is Helen's recollection of that show.

I had not heard of John Fahey before I saw him play at Conley’s Nostalgia on this night in 1986. My friend and I sat right smack in front of the small platform that served as a stage, roughly four feet from John.
I never experienced live music in such a personal way before and I remember distinctly getting chills as he played In Christ There Is No East Or West and Sunflower River Blues.

There were only about 30 people in attendance that night. After the show, we went over to tell John how much we loved the show. I was so star struck that all I could manage to say was, “Wow that was really good!” as he shook my hand. He spoke with us for about 20 minutes or so…wish I could remember more of what we talked about.

I’ve always been a bit of an autograph hound so I was digging around in my purse for something for him to write on. The only thing I could come up with were the tickets from the show which you see here, and a business card from a barbeque place in Denver. He was such a good sport and signed all three for me, one after the other, as we spoke…he was so personable and charming. Another thing that impressed me is that he gave people his full attention when speaking with him.  John had a big energy…there was a presence about him…something I haven’t felt from many people. I count this night as one of the pinnacle experiences of my life. Let the music set you free.

   

The Interpretation of Blind Joe Death

Well here we are at the end of the week and it's Fahey's b-day and you get the gifts.  Hope you all liked the TAB book, quite hard to come by I believe.
And today I'm very fortunate to be able to make a few songs available for download.  Fahey songs by the faithful followers of the Takoma school of pickin' and grinin'.
I call it The Interpretation of BJD.  The following people contributed to this effort, please visit their sites and give them a listen.  The d/l link for this is at the bottom.

Jim Wilson plays fiddle and banjo with a southend-on-sea based band called The Lucky Strikes. Jim was more than happy to contribute an effort to the tribute, he lays down multiple instruments here on When the Catfish is in Bloom.


Pat O’Connell’s contribution is called America Medley.
Pat says: I decided to record a medley of tunes from my favorite Fahey album, America. One of the things I love about America is the consistent tone and mood throughout the entire work. It's almost as if it was all recorded in one sitting (maybe it was?) Like America the country, this album is a melting pot of influences from Country Blues to Classical to Appalachian Folk all tied together with one unified voice. The notes ring out with expansiveness reminiscent of the American landscape.
Fahey explores the classic open G tuning (DGDGBD) to the max on this album. I strung together all the pieces in this tuning and was surprised at how well they all seemed to complement one another, despite their different origins and time signatures.
Starting with the Classical-influenced "Dvorak".
Then into the spiritual blues "Jesus is a Dying Bedmaker" (yes that's spelled Bedmaker. Who better to make a pallet than Christ himself?)
Then into "Special Rider Blues".
Then into "Finale".
Then "Amazing Grace".
And finally, the upbeat "Song #3", which ends with the final chord from "Special Rider" (had to sneak that in!)
I've never played these tunes as a medley before. This was something I came up with just for Fahey Week.

Ragtime Ralph did a great version of Poor Boy Long Ways From Home that I just had to put on here.  This is from The Backporch Drifters release.

J Scott Moore – That’s me. Here’s a version of Sunflower River Blues.

John Amidei’s myspace page is full of Fahey tunes that he very graciously sent to me for this tribute.
About John- I grew up in the mountains around Durango and Silverton, here in Colorado. In my early years I attended many Ute and Navajo Pow-Wows and dance events and love the music of the deserts- the music of winds and strings make me feel at home. I studied Music Composition and conducting in Denver at Metro State College but I settled on Bluegrass Music for my social music, African, Indian, and Indonesian music for inspiration, the intricate Fingerstylings of the Blues- (John Fahey and others) for my personal meditations and health.
I have been a professional Interior Space Designer for many years but recently threw my past away to experience my life in a completely new profession as an entrepreneur. I guess, after all, I work for the same reason that I play--To communicate, to learn more about myself and others, and to grow more involved with people and more in love with life every day.


Thanks to ALL who helped out this week! Hope you all enjoyed it.

So d/l this thing and give it a listen!
 

John Fahey Guitar Tab

Today I've got a guest post from Dale Cotton of Ontario, Canada.  Dale is often found on the Yahoo! Fahey forum.  

New Era Guitars

Here is a tab I made decades ago and have recently worked on some more. I realize there are already tabs for this piece available, but hopefully having a different read on the same piece will be of use to somebody out there. In particular I've made more of an attempt to visually indicate rhythm/duration than is usually provided. The main thing, of course, with double-thumbing is that the base line falls on the beat and the notes in the melody line either fall on the beat as well (pinch) or between beats (roll). Since we have recordings to imitate, we don't really need to have any more than that in the notation. For me, it's just easier to read music without losing my place when I can see markings that group notes together by beat. The exact nature of the markings isn't all that important.

Joe Kirby Blues

BTW: I've noticed that many people these days seem to scorn tab, if anything even more than they scorn sheet music, especially in the realm of folk and blues. The case seems to be that it's more authentic to learn by imitating a live performance, and if that's not available, to imitate a recording. No argument from me ... so far as it goes. But allow me to gently point out that tablature precedes even what we now call "standard" or sheet music notation by centuries. Tab was written and widely circulated in Europe from the medieval era, through the renaissance, and well into the baroque, especially for plucked string instruments like the lute and guitar. If tablatures had not been written down back then, there are hundreds of popular songs and instrumental compositions that would long since have vanished from the face of the planet. And many of these are much closer in spirit to what we now call finger picking than anything from the intervening centuries.

The very fact that John Fahey didn't have to (re-)invent open tunings seems to be due to the spread of two remarkable guitar compositions we still know today, and both of which John Fahey recorded: Spanish Fandango and Sebastopol. These were written in the mid-1800s in open tuning and were known throughout North America, not via recordings or live concerts, but via sheet music. These two compositions were used over and over again in the instruction books that went hand in hand with the sale of the wildly popular parlour guitar of that era. John was a student of blues history; he would have known this to be true.

A century later, I like many thousands of others were able to learn acoustic guitar after being seduced by Blind Joe Death and company, not via tracking down John Fahey, then somehow getting him to teach us how to play. Instead, we bought books of tablature by Happy Traum, Stefan Grossman, and others. An entire generation of amateur guitarists who can read tablature as easily as you can read this page was born. Yes, folks: somehow we made do without YouTube in that unimaginably primitive era. ;)

And just to complete the circle: it's not inconceivable that John Fahey's compositions will be rediscovered a thousand years from now, not via recordings on obsolete media whose every bit has long since been scrambled, but via yellowed and tattered paper tablatures uncovered in some archeological dig. I've read that JF carried a book of lute tablature in his guitar case when he traveled - and while my suspicion was that he thought it might prove useful for impressing impressionable young ladies ;) - I also suspect he had heard lute recordings that struck a chord and fully intended to have a go at the material. So the tablature connection with even as inveterately an ear player as JF was may not be *quite* as remote as we might otherwise believe.

Thanks to Dale for taking the time to work on a classic Fahey tune.  

I also wish to present to you some tabs sent to me by Paul...
 

Is there anything better than this?  No.  So I suggest that if you haven't already, you sit right down and learn this.  Oh, and here is a tab of it!

John Fahey - Red Pony tab

And here's some more Fahey tab.  I think all of this is already out there but I also think it's good to get different interpretations of them out there so you might want to check these out even if you recognize that they are already tabbed out some where on the web.

John Fahey - Brenda's Blues

John Fahey & his Orchestra - I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free

Thanks to Paul for sending these to me.  He's been working hard lately tabbing and there is some more I'll be posting for him soon.  Some nice surprises for sure!!!

    

I've got some minor news regarding Fahey tabs.  I have it on good authority that Stropes is considering a re-issue of the long out-of-print Fahey Xmas tab book.  Some errors would be fixed and possibly even some songs would be added.  It is not currently a work in progress, I'm told, but the idea is there.  

   

John Fahey - Blind Joe Death Unreissued 1959 Versions

On Doing an Evil Deed Blues
In Christ There Is No East or West
The Transcendental Waterfall
Desperate Man Blues
West Coast Blues.

Here are some notes on these titles from JohnFahey.com
Rather than simply repressing the original "gas station" edition of the album, Fahey felt his playing had improved enough to warrant recording anew several tracks he was no longer satisfied with, which he did in April of 1964. Though the cover of the reissue would declare that Fahey had newly recorded five songs for the second edition ("On Doing an Evil Deed Blues," "In Christ There Is No East or West," "The Transcendental Waterfall," "Desperate Man Blues," and "Uncloudy Day"), a comparison of the tracks made in '59 and '64 reveals that "Uncloudy Day" is the same recording. "St. Louis Blues" was slightly edited from the 1959 original, eliminating the song's opening verse. Dropped altogether was Fahey's version of Blind Blake's "West Coast Blues." (John was never pleased with his recordings of the song. He later claimed he couldn't use the original version because the only surviving copy of the album had a bullet hole through the track!) To compensate for the missing song Fahey recorded a nearly 11-minute take of "The Transcendental Waterfall," expanding the length of the original version by some four minutes. This song is important as an early example of Fahey's stretching of musical form and harmony. His experimentation with noise and meaningful dissonance was still coming into focus. "'...Waterfall' was premature," notes John; "only now can I play that kind of stuff."

Download
 
Once again Damian has sent these files my way, thanks!!!
 

Ralph Johnston - Worried Blues

Ralph playing John Fahey's version of Worried Blues by Frank Hutchison

John Fahey - New Sounds on WNYC 1991

     by Tyler Wilcox
Dig into an hour's worth of music and chat with John Fahey, broadcast in the early 1990s on John Schaefer's New Sounds program on WNYC. This period is a bit of a "lost" era for Fahey, as he battled Epstein-Barr virus and various psychological traumas. Typically, John is very candid in recounting these troubles during the interview segments -- Schaefer seems a bit taken aback by some of the guitarist's casual revelations. But Fahey sounds in good spirits, despite some dark turns, discussing the early Takoma Records days and fellow players like Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho ("I never liked him," Fahey says of the latter), and even apologizing profusely for coming up with the term "American Primitive." And the playing is sharp and enjoyable, including some choice selections from the then-new Old Girlfriends & Other Horrible Memories, as well as a nice rendition of Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen" (which Fahey would record with Cul de Sac a few years later).

Download it HERE

 

John Fahey - Live at Stoneybrook 1972

John Fahey - Live at Stoneybrook 1972
01 Medley - Sunflower River Blue - Revolt of the Dyke Brigade - Requiem for John Hurt
02 Steamboat Gwine 'Round de Bend
03 The Death of the Clayton Peacock
04 Fare Forward Voyagers
05 On the Sunny Side of the Ocean - Spanish Two Step
06 Lion
07 The Dance of the Inhabitants of the Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain
08 In Christ There is no East of West Fantasy

Download  Stoneybrook 

Another one from Damian!!  Thanks!!
 

Ralph Johnston - Delta Slider Blues

Now seriously, who gets a song dedicated to their blog?...I do! Ha! It's really an honor to have Ralph do this song and name it Delta Slider Blues. So cool. The tuning is EBBEBD

Thanks Ralph!

John Fahey - The Jabberwocky Nightclub 1972 live bootleg

This has been posted before but Damian has sent me a better sound quality version with some editing.  Oh, and this time the titles are correct!

July/15/1972
The Jabberwocky Nightclub
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY

01 Medley_ Stomping Tonight Fantasy _ In Christ There Is No East Or West _ Beverly
02 The Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Philip XIV Of Spain
03 Fare Forward Voyagers
04 Medley_ Some Summer Day _ Brenda's Blues _ When You Wore A Tulip (& I Wore A Big Red Rose)

Get it here: Jabberwocky

 

John Fahey live Sept,1999 in Dublin

Embed from Getty Images

John Fahey live Sept,1999 in Dublin


Dublin