Today, Drag City announced the release of ‘Proofs & Refutations‘ (September 8th), a new John Fahey album featuring recordings from 1995/96. Prior to this period, Fahey, who passed away on February 22, 2001, had dropped out of music after battling with chronic fatigue syndrome, alcoholism and diabetes. American music critic Byron Coley then ran a profile piece on him for Spin magazine in 1994 that essentially relaunched his career.
On Dust-to-Digital’s excellent Fahey collection, ‘Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You – The Fonotone Years – 1958-65‘, there is an in-depth accompanying book that includes scholarly articles and Fahey interviews. Recalling this particular period of his life, Eddie Dean shares how during this final musical resurgence, rather than ‘latching onto the neo-folk revival he’d helped spark,’ he instead began opening for the likes of Sonic Youth, wielding an electric guitar, and ‘reveling in distortion and industrial clatter’ and refusing to play his early work.
According to those that knew him, his music and art were everything…he was described as ‘an essentialist’ and, in his final years, lived in boarding houses in Salem, Oregon, in relative isolation. His sparse lifestyle may surprise some…it’s easy to imagine him being surrounded by the old pre-war 78rpm records that so inspired him…maybe a smaller-scale version of the 78 collector Joe Bussard who was good friends with Fahey in the 50s/60s…both had shared the same view about those pre-war blues, jazz, hillbilly and bluegrass artists…that they had created the ‘most vital and enduring American music of the past century.’ The truth is that when Fahey died, he had no 78s in his possession…although these photos by Betty Herzner of Fahey and his motel room suggest he travelled with a fair number of CDs.
The announcement of this new release comes with an album taster, Evening, Not Night (Pt. 2); it’s a deep trip, a language grown out of years of discourse.
Drag City say in their press – The performances on Proofs and Refutations prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey’s final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat.
Right out of the gate, Fahey re-materializes before us, somewhere between Oracle of Delphi and Clown Prince at Olympus. Portions of this material appeared on obscure late ‘90s vinyl in the 7” or double-78 rpm format, but as a “session”, it has lain dormant for more than a quarter century now. Taken together, we can now see these tracks as secret blueprints to latter-day Fahey provocations, several years prior to records like 1997’s City of Refuge and Womblife.
Proofs and Refutations is cloaked in the language of dogma -– what is he proving? refuting? –- this is Fahey dancing a jig in the Duchampian gap, jester cap bells a-jingling. True believers? He’s got something for you: an uncompromising vision that you can sneer at or embrace as evidence of his genius. Sceptics? He’s there with you, too: sending up the fallacy of certitudes altogether. Institutions, systems, accepted wisdom. Heroes. Alternative facts, indeed.
Atop lost and found plucks and pickings from the final decade of Fahey’s legendary career sits “Evening, Not Night (Pt. 2)”– sounding as ruthlessly iconoclastic as ever. Here, he wrestles the ghost of Skip James, perhaps to finally force the “bitter, hateful old creep” (his words) back into the grave. He plays with a sense of freedom, aiming for the formative mists beyond the piece at hand, and finding them with ease, in an expansive, unhurried performance.
…and for those wondering about Fahey’s words describing Skip James…when Fahey did eventually meet Skip James, James was far from the charming person Fahey had hoped to meet. In Eddie Dean’s piece (In Memory of Blind Thomas of Old Takoma…), he adds: ‘Others would call this a harsh judgment, but most would agree that James was a major head case – just like Fahey.’
Proofs and Refutations will be available on LP/digitally on September 8th.
Pre Order – https://www.dragcity.com/products/proofs-refutations
