The album may have an awkward title, but the music it contains is both touching and generally quite graceful. It's an appropriate juxtaposition, since the album celebrates the life and music of guitarist
John Fahey, who was himself the same kind of walking contradiction: a notoriously difficult personality with a rare musical gift that expressed itself in guitar compositions and arrangements that drew on the
blues,
folk,
bluegrass, various
world music cultures, and Native American influences as well. You'd expect a tribute album like this to consist of interpretations of
Fahey compositions performed by admiring colleagues, but in fact it's something quite different: it consists mainly of compositions written in
Fahey's honor (sometimes, though not always, in a style that explicitly evokes his own playing) and performed by admirers both famous (pianist
George Winston, Canadian guitarist
Terry Robb, guitar duo
Stefan Grossman and
John Renbourn) and obscure. Two of the album's most lovely and affecting tracks are by a Vietnamese guitarist who goes only by the name
Tinh, and who was mentored by
Fahey early in his career. Fellow Oregonian
John Doan contributes a gorgeous adaptation of
Fahey's setting of the
hymn "In Christ There Is No East or West," and slide guitarist
Mark Lemhouse plays an original tune called
"How White's Restaurant Destroyed My Life." Winston contributes a piano arrangement of
"Steamboat Gwine 'Round de Bend" at the top of the program and then a version of the same tune on harmonica at the end, and
Paul Geremia gives a brilliant interpretation of an old
Charley Patton song (
Patton was the subject of
Fahey's thesis in college). This is a worthy tribute to an unjustly neglected giant of American music. ~ Rick Anderson
