Reborn, Once More

A New Album Focuses Attention On Guitar Legend John Fahey

originally published February 22, 2006

Tribute albums are a precarious type. Their ubiquity, especially of those that seem merely moneymaking or promotional schemes, often neutralizes both the existence of and good intentions behind those albums actually attempting to honor an artist. 2003 alone, for instance, saw tributes to A.F.I., Three Doors Down, 50 Cent and P.O.D. How or why this happened is beyond me, but there’s no need to question the motivations behind Vanguard Records’ I Am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey, as the emergence of this tribute seems a case of being the right time and, well, the right time.

February 21 marked the fifth anniversary of John Fahey’s death. February 28 marks the 67th anniversary of his birth. Given the rise of various folk styles and bluegrass in the last few years, it’s high time a singular artist should be securely lodged into the musical vocabulary of contemporary listeners. John Fahey, whose inimitable, but seminal, style of finger-picking spawned the term “American primitivism,” could be regarded as the progenitor of those musical forms currently deemed freak folk, or new weird America. Fahey’s influence runs deep; locally, for instance, Flicker last April hosted a John Fahey tribute night, with musicians Don Chambers, Kyle Dawkins, Pat Hargon, Craig Lieske, Deb Marlow and Marshall Marrotte, among others, performing in recognition. Unfortunately, Fahey is far from a household name, and, while his reputation and recognition continue to grow, it may take this tribute album to really send people out to unearth the source material.

The lineup of artists paying tribute to Fahey on I Am the Resurrection more than exemplifies the scope of Fahey’s influence on contemporary music. The tribute was co-produced by Vanguard staff member Stephen Brower and musician M. Ward (whose own alter ego Vincent O’Brien and subsequent transfiguration is of direct lineage to Fahey’s pseudonym Blind Joe Death). These two managed to secure some of the most prominent and talented performers to emerge out of Fahey’s wake.

These covers are not imitations or reproductions of the originals, but interpretations or renditions of Fahey’s songs integrated into the artists’ own musical contexts. That the bands freely reinvent or envision new perspectives on his music is fitting, as Fahey himself continually reformed and strived to evolve all aspects of his art, from his musical philosophy, to his playing style, to the level of individual song.

Chicago’s The Fruit Bats open the album with “Death of the Clayton Peacock,” from The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death. While the track lacks the plaintive timing of Fahey’s slide guitar, the introduction of vocal harmonies, bass, drums and an accompanying banjo fleshes the original melody out delightfully, and sets the bar high in terms of unlocking the creative potential of the original material. Pelt follows with an intimate version of “Sunflower River Blues” that makes you feel as if you’ve snuck up on a congregation of Appalachian pickers in the middle of a private, family-only performance.

Sufjan Stevens discovered that Fahey had appropriated “Commemorative Transfiguration and Communion at Magruder Park” from a Christian hymn, so he restored the hymn’s original words of praise to produce a somber, beautiful track made beatific by Stevens’ own personal convictions. Calexico’s “Dance Of Death” lures out the mystery and dark wonderment inherent in much of Fahey’s work, while Grandaddy’s “Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Philip XIV Of Spain” layers a warm, dirty synthesizer on top of the original guitar line to sweetly juxtapose the organic with the inorganic in full Grandaddy fashion.

Lee Ranaldo relocates Fahey’s early musique concréte experiments from Memphis to Brooklyn with “The Singing Bridge Of Memphis, Brooklyn Bridge Version/ The Coelacanth.” Ranaldo’s version is composed of found sounds of traffic, guitar feedback and urban aural clutter taped at the Brooklyn Bridge. Beneath the collage, a voice speaks the word “coelacanth,” which is the name of a fish originally believed extinct, but later found swimming near Madagascar. The fish out of time was an object of fascination for Fahey that inspired a series of paintings and a few songs, and was an occasional topic of conversation between Fahey and Ranaldo.

M. Ward’s offering of “Bean Vine Blues” is a roots rocker banging out a familiar melody; Peter Case’s solo picking on “When The Catfish is in Bloom” most purely and masterfully channels Fahey’s sound; Giant Sand’s Howie Gelb closes the album with a playful piano rendition of “My Grandfather’s Clock.” The most notably absent presence on the album is Jim O’Rourke, as he had a good relationship with Fahey during Fahey’s last years and the two collaborated on 1997’s Womblife.

All the tracks on I Am the Resurrection interestingly reposition Fahey’s music to demonstrate just how emotionally and aesthetically dense it really is, especially since Fahey managed to get all this complexity out with just a guitar. And perhaps that’s the most respectful way artists can salute other artists: show that they have ingested their style, allowed it to inform their own voice, and can manifest something new and beautiful from it. Each artist’s veneration for Fahey resounds.

Nick Hasty

Nick Hasty