IN SEARCH OF BLIND JOE DEATH : THE JOHN FAHEY STORY at the GLAD CAFE

The Glad Cafe is a unique and highly valued venue on the south side of Glasgow , a hub for poets,philosophers and musicians.A superb modern venue that will go a long way to providing space and state of the art equipment and performance spaces to a new aspiring generation of local and national artists.According to its website:

 The Glad Cafe is a cafe/venue in the southside of Glasgow, the heart of Scotland’s most ethnically diverse community. We provide a warm hub where freshly prepared seasonal food is created by our chefs during the day, a variety of sharing plates are available in the evening, and delicious home baking can be consumed at all times!

We have a well equipped venue which is home for creative music of many kinds – indie, electronic, traditional, world... We aim to provide a showcase space for up and coming musicians as well as for more established acts. Our cafe and venue space will also be used for a variety of different arts based events – exhibitions, film, poetry readings...

The Glad Cafe is a social enterprise with the legal structure of Community Interest Company. As a social enterprise we have a social purpose to eventually plough profits, (once loans have been repaid), into affordable music lessons for local people.

John Fahey is a respected and honoured figure in the guitar playing and appreciation world.He is also an inspirational figure for many generations of musicians from the 50s to the present day , if anything his influence should grow bigger as his , arguably , later work in the 90s with electric guitar becomes an inspiration for what hopefully will be a renaissance of musical poetry in the audio form , a language instantly intelligible and universally understood in our cross-cultural communication age.As with most music of our times Fahey hunted down the great tunes and artists of the Southern Blues , Delta Blues , New Orleans Jazz and Bluegrass , fused in into his own subsuming language of wooded glades and flowing streams and brought the whole into the mainstream conciousness , and them developed and innovated it for the rest of his career upto the 90s.

In the website in tribute to his memory we have the following statement.

"Fahey is known as "the father of American Primitive Guitar." Some think of him as a foundational figure in American folk music. Fahey himself, however, insisted "I am not a volk, how can I be a volk? I'm from the suburbs." All jesting aside, Fahey, as both musician and musicologist, made a fundamental contribution to the global understanding of classical American musics such as Delta blues, Appalachian bluegrass and New Orleans jazz.

Fahey's own music stretches the boundaries of past musical traditions, creating a complex musical dialogue primarily with his steel stringed solo guitar. Fahey transcended his essential Delta influences combining bluegrass, Brazilian, classical, Indian, New Orleans, musique concrète, and gothic industrial ambience."

 The website also charts his considerable written work and his nature loving outlook which is close to the relationship with land and place that the native american indians would have expoused only a few generations before him.

Funding for the project did not come easy , the director and producer James Cullingham deserves great credit for the sterling work and thoughtful dedication to the project , amply demonstrated with him coming to the festival screening to give an introduction and Q&A  after the showing.

 In the end the money was mainly raised by a host of individuals giving generous small donations so that a fitting document of this talent could be saved for future audience.In this link we learn more about the director and his valuable work in restoring the places of neglected musicians and vital missing-links in the sounds we enjoy today

Here is a full concert from the time ( late 90s) that Fahey was producing the best intense guitar work that appeals to me.Notice the deep south delta feel to the melodies.



The most invigorating evening was rounded of with a beautifully touching ,haunting and intimate set from Alasdair Roberts , which including the this lovely melodic piece.