My favourite 'new' artist is 75 years old
The first I ever heard of Bill Fay was early last year when his song 'Shame' was song 59 of the very excellent 1,000 Days, 1,000 Songs playlist, which evolved out of the smaller, more optimistic, 30 Days, 30 Songs. That project started out as a collection of songs to get listeners of a certain political or, frankly, humanitarian persuasion through the final 30 days of the last, wretched US Presidential Election. The idea was that at the end of the 30 days there'd be a happy (or at least not catastrophically damaging) outcome. after which we could all get on with our lives. Of course, it didn't turn out that way and the playlist is now intending to last the first 1,000 days of the current administration. Let's all pray that we never have to witness the dawn of 2,000 Days, 2,000 Songs.
Anyway, 'Shame' was a particularly memorable addition to the playlist, a poignant meditation (it says here) on shame, an emotion many Americans have felt (or should have felt) in the wake of Trump's election. It's right up my street - a mid-tempo piano-led ballad with mild undertones of solo Lennon, earlyish Wilco and maybe a touch of E Street towards the end too. I loved the song when I first heard it and it instantly went my Harmonics Distortion playlist for 2017. And yet, it never crossed my mind to listen to anything else he's done. Let's be honest, there are more songs than there are hours in the day and you can't expect me to get around to everything! So Bill Fay just lived on a single playlist with the likes of Dead Man Winter, Jenny O, Basia Bulat, Benjo Hughes and many more whose songs caught my attention enough to land in a playlist but not enough for me to investigate further. I'll get to them eventually. Maybe.
Last week, 'Shame' came on in the car and, for reasons unknown, I decided I wanted to know more about Bill Fay. It's ok - I wasn't driving. Imagine my surprise when I learnt that far from being some 30-something Americana guitar-slinger, Bill Fay's first recordings were released in 1967 and he's somewhere in his mid-70s now. Not only that but between about 1971 and 2012 he didn't release any new music at all. He was out of the business doing who knows what. Of course, as is the way with 'lost' talents like that, there's always some young (or youngish) gun who claims to have been influenced big-time by our forgotten genius. In this case, it was Wilco's Jeff Tweedy who's performed Bill Fay's music onstage for years and was instrumental, along with producer Joshua Henry, in getting Fay back in the studio 5 or 6 years ago. The result 'Life is People, released in 2012 (with a Tweedy contribution and including two Wilco covers) is on Spotify, as is his more recent record 'Who Is the Sender?
So, once I had a quiet moment (in work last Monday, actually!) I fired them up. They are, quite simply, extraordinary records. Both tender and poignant, pretty much all of the original songs can be traced back to 'Shame'. The lyrical content is pretty straightforward - you know, your basic old-hippy perspective: war is bad, corporations aren't our friends, love is important and inner peace essential – and what's so funny about that? Songs like 'There is a Valley', 'Be at Peace With Yourself', 'War Machine', and 'Who is the Sender' lodged themselves instantly into my blown mind. If you're looking for comparisons, I'd say that parts of what of the records remind be of bits of the following - late 90s Van Morrison, mid-70s Pink Floyd, Lambchop, Richard Hawley's 'Lady's Bridge', the more restrained, reflective parts of Springsteen's last decade, Wilco (of course) and Heartbreaker Benmont Tench's solo album 'You Should Be So Lucky'. To name a few. But it's not derivative - despite all those references, it doesn't really sound like anyone else at all. Most of the songs barely get out of second gear. Only one of them – 'This World', a duet with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy – could be described as up-tempo and, even then, it's not exactly going to lift the roof of anything. No, for the most part, it's restrained instrumentation (organ, drums, guitars) flowing beneath Fay's earnest voice. Stop me if I'm overselling it!
I've listened to the two albums back to back all week and don't really want to listen to anything else. I was walking to work in the snow last week while listening to 'The Healing Day' and felt a sense of peace that I don't normally experience on the morning commute. The absence of cars, buses and people might have helped! Maybe it's the snow this week or the times we're living through but Fay's beautiful melancholy world-view has found a home in my head and heart.
There's not much about him online - a few recentish interviews (in which he goes to great lengths to give as much credit to Joshua Henry and engineer Guy Massey for his beautiful new music) and a single performance on Jools Holland in 2012. There's also a lyric video for 'War Machine' which will at least give you an idea of what he looks like! But for the most part he seems to want to hang out in the background, avoiding the limelight as much as he can. Something he's clearly done very well for 40 years or so!
This isn't music for the discotheque and you and you won't get far putting it on when you've got friends around for dinner but, when the time's right, it's a very comforting and calming way to spend an hour or two. Try it - I think you'd like it. And if not, well, I think he's probably used to being ignored at this stage.
