John Fahey - Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You: The Fonotone Years 1958-1965 (2011)

115 tracks on 5 CDs 88 page Hardback Book Extensive Notes and Essays Never-before-seen Photographs A co-release between Dust-to-Digital and Revenant. Oversized, hardback book with Gatefold Portfolio housing 5 CDs inside Slipcase. More than 10 years in the making, this box set features the earliest recordings and the first book ever written about one of the most influential guitarists from the 1960s and 70s, John Fahey. The five CDs feature 115 tracks, most of which are available on CD for the first time. The audio was remastered from Joe Bussard s reel-to-reel tapes to achieve pristine sound quality. As for the accompanying book, the list of scholars who contributed essays includes Eddie Dean, Claudio Guerrierri, Glenn Jones, Malcolm Kirton, Mike Stewart and John s childhood friend R. Anthony Lee. Byron Coley contributed a poem about John, and Douglas Blazek s 1967 interview with Fahey is published for the first time. Released 10 years after John Fahey s death, this set puts one of the final puzzle pieces of Fahey s career in place. Everyone can now hear where this guitar legend got his start a smoky basement in Frederick, Maryland. Co-produced by Dean Blackwood of Revenant, Glenn Jones, and Lance Ledbetter of Dust-to-Digital, this set is released with the support of Joe Bussard and the John Fahey Estate. The set is dedicated to John s mother, Jane C. Hayes and the late musician Jack Rose.

If you are of the opinion that such distinctions are completely arbitrary and that all the year s releases should be judged against each other, then if you combine the votes cast, and points applied, in both the Main and Archive charts to get 2011 s Ultimate Releases of the Year according to The Wire, you would get a top ten that looked like this: 1. John Fahey Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You: The Fontone Years (1958-1965) 2. Albert Ayler Stockholm, Berlin 1966 3. James Ferraro Far Side Virtual 4. Bill Dixon Intents And Purposes 5. Rustie Glass Swords 6. Theo Parrish Ugly Edits 7. Eliane Radigue Transamorem Transmortem 8. Hype Williams One Nation 9. The Beach Boys The SMILE Sessions 10. Michael Chapman The Resurrection And Revenge Of The Clayton Peacock --The Wire, Tony Herrington, Dec. 09, 2011

Best New Reissue, 9.5/10: The liner notes for Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You-- the complete recordings guitarist John Fahey made for the tiny but crucial Fonotone label between 1958 and 1965-- comprise an 88-page book, bound in beautifully toned, dense cardboard. These 88 pages brim with an obsessive sort of information about Fahey: his slapdash drawings of important people and places in his life, the first known photograph of him with a Gibson F-hole guitar, the receipt for his Holzapfel 12-string, his Boy Scouts photo, and even a personal letter to Fonotone owner Joe Bussard where he begs for recordings of a few old blues heroes. There's a revealing and hitherto unpublished interview, remembrances from past collaborators, and Italian researcher Claudio Guerrieri's guide to the various hand-written labels Bussard affixed to the center of each record he hand-cut on order. This set is not just for Fahey zealots. It's for anyone interested in the story of American music, from its Appalachian string bands and mean-moaning Delta blues singers to the hymns sung from its church pews and the country-rock anthems soon enough crafted by its hippies... A must-have collection of lore, music, and history, it's a unified, brilliant, and often very challenging archive. --Pitchfork, Grayson Currin, Oct. 27, 2011

Grade A: A rich exploration of Appalachian roots, Delta blues, and country, this isn't just a celebration of the grandfather of steel-string guitar fingerpicking, it's a history of American music. --Entertainment Weekly, Melissa Maerz, Nov. 25, 2011

Disc One: 1958
1. Interview with John Fahey on Fonotone Records and Joe Bussard
2. Franklin Blues
3. Smoketown Strut
4. Steel Guitar Rag
5. Takoma Park Pool Hall Blues
6. Buck Dancer’s Choice
7. Medley: Pretty Polly / Shortnin’ Bread
8. Barbara Namkin Blues
9. In Christ There Is No East or West
10. Stak 'o Lee Blues [Louis Collins]
11. The Transcendental Waterfall
12. John Henry
13. Over The Hill Blues
14. St. Louis Blues
15. On Doing an Evil Deed Blues
16. Reinumeration Blues
17. The Transcendental Waterfall
18. Mississippi Boweavil Blues
19. Green River Blues
20. Over the Hill Blues
21. Libba’s Rag
22. Chris’s Rag

Disc Two: 1958-1960
1. St. Louis Tickle
2. Pat Sullivan’s Blues
3. Blind Blues [Martin’s Esso Blues]
4. Poor Boy Blues
5. Long Time Town Blues
6. Gulf Port Island Blues
7. Blind Thomas Blues Part 1
8. Blind Thomas Blues Part 2
9. New Newport News Blues #2
10. Wanda Russell’s Blues
11. Going Away to Leave You Blues
12. Lay My Burden Down
13. Hill High Blues
14. John Henry
15. Paint Brush Blues
16. Blind Thomas Blues Part 3
17. Blind Thomas Blues Part 4
18. You Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond
19. Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin’ Bed
20. Banty Rooster Blues
21. Tom Rushen Blues

Disc Three: 1960-1961
1. Yallaboosha River Blues
2. You Gonna Miss Me
3. Wissenschaftlich River Blues Part 1
4. Wissenschaftlich River Blues Part 2
5. Zekiah Swamp Blues
6. Nobody’s Business
7. Going Crabbing Talking Blues Part 1
8. Going Crabbing Talking Blues Part 2
9. You Better Get Right So God Can Use You
10. Weissman Blues
11. Dasein River Blues
12. Racemic Tartrate River Blues Part 1
13. Racemic Tartrate River Blues Part 2
14. Smoky Ordinary Blues [Dance of the Inhabitants]
15. I Shall Not Be Moved
16. Old Country Rock
17. Little Hat Blues
18. Guitar Solo Title Unknown [Revelation on the Banks of the Pawtuxent]
19. Guitar Solo Title Unknown [Night Train to Valhalla]
20. Some Summer Day
21. The Langley Two-Step
22. Dream of the Origin of the French Broad River

Disc Four: 1962
1. Saint John’s Hornpipe
2. Sail Away Ladies
3. Dreaming Under the B & O Trestle
4. 900 Miles
5. Prince George’s Dance
6. Improvisation for Flute and Guitar
7. Dorothy / Calvert Street Blues [Brenda’s Blues]
8. Brenda’s Blues
9. Buck Dancer’s Choice
10. Night Train to Valhalla
11. In the Pines
12. Pretty Polly
13. Take This Hammer
14. Yazoo Basin Blues
15. Stomping Tonight on the (Old) Pennsylvania / Alabama Border
16. Smoky Ordinary Blues [Dance of the Inhabitants]
17. Revelation on the Banks of the Pawtuxent
18. Bean Vine Blues [Pea Vine Blues]
19. Green Blues
20. Stone Pony

Disc Five: 1962-1965
1. Dorothy / Calvert Street Blues [Brenda’s Blues]
2. Days Have Gone By
3. Some Summer Day
4. Texas & Pacific Blues [My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It]
5. John Henry Blues
6. Brenda’s Blues
7. St. Patrick’s Hymn
8. Bicycle Built for Two
9. The Blues You Saved For Me
10. House Carpenter
11. How Long
12. The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith, California
13. You Take The E Train [The Last Steam Engine Train]
14. I Sing a Song of the Saints of God
15. How Long
16. O Jesus I Have Promised
17. Untitled
18. Medley: Untitled / O Jesus I Have Promised
19. I Am a Rake and Rambling Boy
20. Medley: Goodbye Old Paint / Whoopee Ti-Yi-Yo, Git Along Little Doggies
21. Goodbye Old Paint
22. Simple Gifts
23. Untitled
24. Bury Me Not On the Lone Prairie
25. Goodbye Old Paint
26. Western Medley
27. Durgan Park
28. The Bitter Lemon
29. Old Southern Medley (Fragment)
30. Bottleneck Blues