America

by John Fahey

Overview

Listen to John Fahey's America and hear an honest-to-goodness pioneer of solo acoustic steel-string guitar. With a truly distinctive approach, Fahey creates dusty, sweetly evocative worlds of American folk and blues that make the soul throb. His fingerpicking on alternating and drone bass lines, coupled with chorded melodies, continues to provide inspiration to acoustic players. America opens with the bittersweet "Jesus Is a Dying Bedmaker," a spirited folk painting of elation dressed in suffering. Fahey's halting articulation at the outset of the tune eventually gives way to an uptempo gust of glad resolve. Here and elsewhere lies Fahey's remarkable talent for squeezing a wondrous amount of expressiveness out of simple musical materials. Skip James' "Special Rider Blues" crawls along like a 12-string sloth, its call-and-response melodic lines full of languor and images of a breezeless afternoon in Mississippi. "Dvorak" is a sensitive arrangement of the third movement of Dvorak's eighth symphony, a perfect offering of classical composition with a natural folk sensibility. "Steel string wailing" spoken here. ~ Rovi Staff

Product Details

Release Date:	03/25/1998
Label:	Fantasy / Universal Music
UPC:	0025218890328
Rank:	73831

Tracks

1. Jesus Is a Dying Bedmaker
2. Amazing Grace
3. Song #3
4. Special Rider Blues
5. Dvor¿¿k
6. Jesus Is a Dying Bedmaker 2
7. Finale
8. America
9. Dalhart, Texas, 1967
10. Knoxville Blues
11. Mark 1:15
12. Voice of the Turtle
13. The Waltz That Carried Us Away and Then a Mosquito Came and Ate Up My Sweetheart

Album Credits

Performance Credits

John Fahey   Primary Artist,Guitar

Technical Credits

Dallas Jordan   Engineer
John Judnich   Engineer,Engineer
Skip James   Composer
John Newton   Composer
Bill Belmont   Producer,Reissue Producer
Joe Tarantino   Remastering
John Fahey   Arranger,Composer,Producer
Sam McGee   Composer
Public Domain   Composer
Charles M. Young   Liner Notes
Patrick Finnerty   Design,Art Direction
Fahey Finnerty   Drawing