If you're a solo acoustic guitarist you're going to be compared to John Fahey. You're going to hear that name a whole lot. From about 2005-08 I felt like if I didn't hear the name for the next ten years I'd be fine. There were a lot of solo guitarists around, and CDs being released, and the name on every reviewer's lips was John Fahey. I've listened to him, I've got some of his records (The Yellow Princess being my favorite) but I haven't studied him, or even learned any of his tunes or arrangements. My music's not much like his.
I remember meeting a guy at a show sometime last year -- a concert of three or four solo guitarists one after the other. He was a young player who had the competitive edginess you find in younger guys. It's something that goes away if they last, when it becomes clear that the real problems of music can't be touched by competition with other players or by sheer technique. The questions came. Who do you like? Do you know musician X? Had I learned any of James Blackshaw's records? He had -- lots. "Blackshaw's right hand is nuts, really advanced." And threaded throughout, the required oblation paid, like a cyclical mantra on a long tape loop, to... well, you can guess who.
I had copies of my album Java St. Bagatelles with me, and the kid wanted to buy one. I warned him that it's not like the regular guitar albums, but he said that he liked "different" stuff. The thing is, the playing on Java Street is not technical. It is anti-technical. (And it's not based on John Fahey.) He bought a copy. He was going to hate it.
I don't know if it's because Faheymania has faded, or because I'm not reading the same writers. Or maybe it's that there aren't as many guitar albums being released now, or my focus on being a "solo guitarist" has shifted. But my reaction to "John Fahey" has become pleasantly minimal. So much so that I can introduce this week's piece, "Goodmorning Junction", as the most John Fahey thing I've done.
Yeah, it's still not much like his stuff.
Fahey's pieces -- we have to set aside his late-period electric music, which is a very different animal -- are rigorously structured, and his playing is calibrated for dramatic impact. It is slow-building and sometimes relentlessly forward-plodding music. Mine's not.
The most special thing about John Fahey is that he plays the acoustic guitar as if it's an orchestra. His "E major" chords were full of oboes and strings and horns in his head. The insight of what he must have been hearing in his mind to play the way he did turned my ear a degree and influenced my hearing and appreciation of the world. Whether it was an accurate insight or not didn't matter.
Back to the track at hand. "Goodmorning Junction" was completely improvised, no preconceived material at all (though there is some post-composition through editing). It doesn't march single-mindedly like John's music might. It moves at a careful gait and seems to be of multiple minds about its progress, weighing and reconsidering rejected paths even as it tries to go ahead. I don't think there'll be any young players hunkering down to figure out the right-hand technique. But it's not really about that after all. --James Beaudreau
