John Fahey came to me by way of a mix CD from our own Matt Lachowski. Hopefully I can get Matt to write something a bit more focused on the music itself. He’s a fantastic guitar player himself and has been listening to Fahey much longer. In the meantime, you’ll have to settle for my uneducated opinions.

Let’s start by counting the number of things I know about guitar:

They sound pretty cool sometimes. (1)

They’ve got strings. (2)

Okay, I’m spent. Anyhow, I know when guitar sounds impressive and when musically inclined friends confirm my suspicions I feel secure making statements about a guitar player’s ability. I previously heard Fahey via Matt as I mentioned. That lead me to seek out some of his other work. I first turned to his live stuff. Then I looked to the rest of his catalog. It turns out the guy has 30+ albums (that’s just counting the studio full-lengths), but somehow I landed on America which is nothing short of phenomenal. It’s not a concept album, but the tracks flow together perfectly. I have the 4 Men With Beards reissue which collects 9 other tracks that were left off the original, so I’m not sure how much of the credit goes to them for the layout of this songs, but seriously, check out the whole thing. If you don’t have the time or will to do that, then give this song a shot. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, but I think this one is a good representation of the album as a whole.