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Sing Out! Fall 2006 GvonT When Fahey passed away in 2001, he left behind a startling legacy of haunting, transporting guitar styles, roots music innovations and beacon-like songs rooted in his singularly innovative and ever-evolving steel-string finger-picking approach that has influenced and informed a variety of genres - from blues and folk to alternative and bluegrass. You could always expect the unexpected whenever he released a new album and this panegyric project is no exception. The Friends of Fahey release even boasts a long lost guitar solo (the moody "Why Haven't I Heard From You?") from Fahey's final acoustic recording session. New Age pianist pioneer George Winston was a fan as well. He opens "Friends" with a brooding, meandering keyboard arrangement of "Steamboat Gwine 'Round De Bend" and closes affairs with a pastoral harmonica version of the same song. Other friends and admirers who join in include the team of Stefan Grossman and John Renbourn (on their noirish original ";Under The Volcano"), Tinh, Woody Mann, Mark Lemhouse, Peter Lang (with an extended, dynamic homage titled "Witness To The Messenger"), the duo of Mitch Greenhill and Mayne Smith (on their folk steeped "Evolution Of Blind John Turtle"), and Paul Geremia, who eerily recreates blues icon Charlie Patton's slide guitar transfused "When Your Way Gets Dark." Illuminating music all, paying deserved fidelity to the iconoclastic Fahey, once quite accurately referred to as a combination of Django Reinhardt and William Blake. Dirty Linen Aug. / Sept. 2006 Jim Lee While it might be a bit of a stretch to title this "John Fahey & Friends," as Fahey contributed only one track, its heart is in the right place. Assembled by Vietnamese guitarist Tinh, who studied with Fahey before he died, the recording features tracks by friends, students, and those influenced by his stye, with the proceeds goint to benefit the Village School Foundation. The recording opens and closes with George Winston's take on Fahey's "Steamboat Gwine 'Round De Bend," one version on piano and the other on harmonica. In between, guitarists such as John Doan, Woody Mann, Mark Lemhouse and Terry Robb perform their tributes to Fahey, some with cover versions of Fahey pieces, some with original ones that were inspired by him. Especially nice are the two tracks by Peter Lang, who was discovered by Fahey back in the 60s, and the two by Tinh, who credits Fahey with inspiring him to become a better guitarist. With the exception of the Stefan Grossman and John Renbourn track, "Under the Volcano," all these tracks were recorded specially for this collection. The only misstep is the inclusion of Paul Geremia's cover of Charlie Patton's "When Your Ways Get Dark," not because it's a bad track, but because it's the only vocal selection and upsets the flow of the rest of the recording. The one Fahey track, the previously unreleased "Why Haven't I Heard From You," was taken from his last set of acoustic sessions. This was a labor of love by Tinh, and it shows in the details, with touching liner notes about his experiences with Fahey and how Fahey helped his career, and in the notes from the performers on how Fahey influenced each of them. Fahey might be gone, but his influence is still wide reaching, as this colection shows. Recommended. Blues Revue June / July 2006 Bill Wasserzieher With Hollywood having a thing about artists who walk the thin line between genius and insanity, the life of guitarist John Fahey seems ripe for a biopic. By most accounts he could be as inspired (and as around-the-bend) as Vincent Van Gogh and Ed Wood on a double date. But if Fahey was an odd one, the musical spheres that directed his life often aligned in remarkable ways. With his albums equal parts eccentric and brilliant, no wonder he's the spiritual godfather of several generations of maverick guitarists. Some of Fahey's old gang, including guitarists Woody Mann, Stefan Grossman, Peter Lang, and pianist George Winston (whose first album Fahey co-produced) have come together for Friends of Fahey Tribute. The guiding force behind this 15-track, 67-minute disc is Tinh Mahoney, a fingerstyle guitarist who came under Fahey's influence when they lived blocks apart in Salem, Ore. The performances here are of almost exclusively original songs in the style of Fahey, done as solo instrumentals. Guitarist John Doan, for example, offers a take on Fahey's "In Christ There Is No East Or West" retitled "In John Fahey There Is No East Or West," and Tinh combines an original "Home" with "Auld Lang Syne," the traditional holiday melody Fahey included on his The New Possibility disc. Lang, who began his career as Fahey's understudy on the Takoma label, performs the appropriately titled "Witness To The Messenger" and "Poor Boy," while Grossman and John Renbourn combine on "Under The Volcano," a song no doubt meant to connect Fahey's famously self-destructive behavior with that of novelist Malcolm Lowry, whose masterpiece carries that title. Less weighted with meaning are performances by Paul Geremia and Mark Lemhouse, who praise Fahey's influence on them as a blues musicologist, and Mann's old-world tinged "Spanish Nights." Mann says in the liner notes, "Playing with John was a journey of musical surprises - we'd play a blues, a Buddhist chant and then into a Tin Pan Alley tune. It was all simply guitar music." There's plenty of that on this collection. Rambles.net Friends of Fahey Tribute celebrates the late John Fahey (d. 2001), creator of what he called "American primitive guitar." A project initiated by a Vietnamese-American who goes by the single name Tinh, it brings together guitarists who count Fahey as an influence or at least a particularly admired colleague. (Well, it's not quite all guitarists; George Winston opens the disc with a piano reading of Fahey's "Steamboat Gwine 'Round de Bend" and concludes it with a harmonica version of same.) Inspired by hymns and early blues, Fahey's compositions have a stately, deliberate aura encompassing a sense of American time, affording one the impression that Fahey was hearing something just out of listening range of his fellow citizens. The music is -- no other word will do -- beautiful. Though evoking a lost past, it is, however, never sentimental, cloying or nostalgic. There is one vocal, "When Your Way Gets Dark," Paula Geremia's reading of a song recorded in 1929 by Fahey's idol Charlie Patton, arguably the greatest Mississippi bluesman of them all. I happen to have been there when it was recorded -- in the basement studio of Dakota Dave Hull's Minneapolis home -- but that is not the reason I think this is Geremia's most stunningly realized recording ever. Minor 7th May / June, 2006 Kirk Albrecht What can you say about the late John Fahey? That he was as responsible as anyone in America for the surge of interest in acoustic guitar music? That he was a mentor and inspiration to countless hundreds of players? That the early recordings of Leo Kottke - which propelled him to guitar-god status - were equally the product of Kottke's chops and Fahey's genius and ability to cultivate musicians, and have them deliver the goods time and again? A quirky, intense man, Fahey left us in 2001, and this CD is a tribute produced by his student and friend Tinh in honor of the man who never seemed far from a guitar. Mark Lemhouse serves up some Delta blues in "How White's Restaurant Destroyed My Life," conjuring both Fahey and Bukka White, an early inspiration for Fahey (complete with sounds from the restaurant). George Winston uses piano and harmonica in two different recreations of Fahey's "Steamboat Gwine 'Round de Band". Joan Doan uses his harp guitar to remind us of John's famous version of "In Christ There is No East or West," by serenading the listener with "In John Fahey There is No East or West." All the players here - including Woody Mann, Paul Geremia, Terry Robb, Peter Lang, John Renbourn, and Stefan Grossman due justice to the musical legacy of a man who still lives through the music he gave life to.
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