John Fahey - America

Though America was released in 1971 as a single LP, finger-style guitarist John Fahey conceived it as a double album. This CD finally allows Fahey's full vision to be heard (an additional nine tracks are included here for the first time). It's a true treat for Fahey lovers. The title track features the guitarist on the 12-string guitar, sounding more resonant than ever on the seven-minute composition. "Dvorak" is based on the composer's Eighth Symphony, which Fahey tackles in fine fashion. Fahey also performs a methodical rendition of "Amazing Grace" as well as covers of Sam McGee and Skip James tunes. But Fahey's original tunes--the soul-stirring, 15-minute-long "Mark 1:15," the playfully weird "The Waltz That Carried Us Away...," and the gorgeous melody of "Song #3"--are obvious highlights. The classical, gospel, folk, and blues influences that always permeate Fahey's playing abound on America and make it one of his great recordings. --Jason Verlinde Amazon.com

Pleasure for the Mind

When I read about John Fahey I thought his music would be detached, something to listen to one the backporch of an woods filled east texas home. I was kind of right. This album is a gem to listen to. Jesus is a Dying Bedmaker 1 and 2 is one of my favorites by him his a lifting and joyous with a little hint of blues. The cover of Amazing Grace is slow and not as up lifting but as in any Fahey song it features the octave bass line. Song #3is a medium tempo acostic blues number kind of rag-time feel going on. Special Rider Blues is a good song with a hypnotic rift simular to Nick Drake's Parasite. Dvorak is a beatiful waltz by the great polish composer. Finale is kind of a throwaway it doesn't have that spactacular ending sound. America is of the long epic series of songs with this one being probably Faheys only song to be played with a twelve string. Dalhart Texas by Sam Magee never heard of is a slow mendering song is D kind of ambient sounding but it picks up in the middle. Knoxvile Blues is a good piece not bad. The detatched Mark 1:15 dosent do much ethier but it has some beatiful appagiated lines worth hearing. Voice of the Turtle is like Dalhart Texas just to listen to while doing something else. This piece slowly changes with is interesnting too. The snappy echoish The Waltz That Carried Us Away is just a wierd piece, the middle is good with the sturm lines I just don't care for the opening part. I wrote most of the songs don't go know where but who cares it is great to listen to still and thats why it is a great album. August 3, 2005

Beautiful Album, Shoddy Reissue

From the liner notes: "This CD Contains 98.6 percent of the music recorded by John for America... Given the technical constraints of the Compact Disc medium... we were forced to edit two minutes from one track ("Mark 1:15")."

What isn't explicit in the comments above is that these two minutes were taken out of the most important cut on the original album. Of this cut, Fahey has said:

"Out of all the songs I ever wrote, I consider only two of them 'epic' or 'classic' or in the 'great' category and they are both on this record. It's taken me more than five years to complete these. Most of the melodic ideas existed a long time ago, i.e. the primary 'lyric' melody in 'Mark 1:15' is the same as 'When the Springtime Comes Again'..."

So, while this CD release may contain 98.6 percent of the music recorded by John for America, it only contains 95% of the original LP, with 13% (2 minutes from a 16 minute track) of the most important song omitted. This is simply inexcusable. This album should have been issued in a format similar to Rhino's expanded 2-CD version of Randy Newman's "Good Old Boys." The original LP should have been on one CD and the bonus material should have been on the other. This release reminds me of the original CD version of Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" where "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was butchered into a one-minute track.

The liner notes to "America" further state that "The only alternative [to this hatchet job] would have been to release a more expensive 2-CD set." Isn't it worth the extra 3 dollars to have this thing done properly? 2-CD sets simply do not cost that much more money.

John Fahey's "America" deserves a better treatment.
August 24, 2004

A Butchered Beauty

Nice to have this one at its full length, including material omitted from the LP release.

But -- and it's an enormous 'but' -- they've chopped, literally chopped, a big chunk out of 'Mark 1.15', my favourite piece on the album, a particularly beautiful number, completely ruining it, and knocking it down from a four- or even a five-star CD to a one-star one.

I would have happily paid some more for a double CD. Otherwise one of the short pieces which Fahey has also played on other CDs in a very similar manner could have been omitted. Instead, they made a right mess of it.

Shame on those responsible for this atrocity. March 20, 2003

Fahey's greatest journey

The late John Fahey said that he took up the guitar because of the instrument's potential to realize the orchestral scope of his ideas. True enough: no other solo acoustic guitar player has recorded music of such stylistic and formal diversity. On this album in particular, Fahey incorporated the whole of this country's roots music into an organic continuum as imaginative and as quintessentially American as "Leaves of Grass". Like Whitman's magnum opus, "America" is an epic, flowing expanse. Like "Leaves of Grass", and grass itself, this music is rhizomatic, both multiplicity and whole. Fahey's hypnotic, Indian raga influenced playing cycles through ideas, often maintaining a continuous basic underpinning from which a multitude of licks and flourishes spring forth and eddy, only to give way to further complex clusters of country/folk/blues. Each listen reveals new details and detours that always engage the heart, as well as the head. This is both melodic tour of our musical heritage and music as landscape. Some sections are bright clusters of fast-picking, with melodies piling up ever higher. Other parts are spare and contemplative, where notes hang in the big sky and slide chords carry you to the next horizon. John Fahey's America is the America of Emerson, Ives, and Thoreau; with the America of Bush, Ashcroft, and Enron nowhere in sight. For that alone, I tip my whiskey to the memory of an irascible, visionary soul as brilliantly restless as the cross-country wanderings of his music. December 27, 2002

Perfect title for a perfect album

"America" just about sums it up. Fahey manages to cover much of the history of popular song in America with just a guitar and his mindblowing skill with the instrument. This is great, engaging listening. you'll hear snatches of old-as-the-hills folk and gospel relics woven into the notes. The impact of this record is deep beyond words, it seems to speak to a deep, collective memory within us all--- a memory of a world before superhighways, strip malls and the internet. That is what this album evokes. It almost impossible for me to discuss it in a modular sense. The overall impact is what I come away with: the evocation of a primitive, simple place. It is at once merry and deeply sad, tinged with tones of loss and regret. One of the most powerful and important records of the last century. November 11, 2000

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