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Bill Fay was one of the most interesting and literate folk-rockers to emerge in England on the cusp of the 70s. He made two superb albums for the Decca subsidiary Deram—1970’s Bill Fay and 1971’s Time of the Last Persecution, both reissued last year by Eclectic Discs. He was backed by some of the country’s most progressive jazz musicians of the time, players who were conversant in myriad styles and shared a sophisticated improvisational and harmonic language. Bill Fay featured nearly 30 musicians, organized by arranger Mike Gibbs; among them were saxophonist John Surman, Soft Machine drummer John Marshall, and guitarist Ray Russell—a titanic talent who bridged the gap between free jazz and psychedelic rock like no one else. (A new Russell album, Goodbye Svengali, was released on Cuneiform earlier this year). The follow-up was much darker and stripped-down, with Russell’s searing leads emerging as a key lyric feature.
Drag City released Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow on vinyl in late July, and it’s shown similar good taste in the case of fingerstyle guitarist Mark Fosson. A few years back, while asking her mother is she had any John Fahey records, singer Tiffany Anders (daughter of filmmaker Allison Anders) discovered that her cousin had once played with the legendary guitarist. In her charming liner notes to The Lost Takoma Sessions she explains that Fosson had sent an unsolicited demo to Fahey, who was thrilled with the music–a photo of the tape package features Fahey’s scrawled note reading, “best demo tape I’ve heard since Kottke”–and asked the Kentucky native come to LA and play some gigs with him. He left for LA in January of 1977 and recorded an album for Fahey’s Takoma imprint the following month. Unfortunately, by then the label was in deep financial trouble, and before Fosson’s record was ever released Fahey was forced to sell Takoma to Chrysalis Records. Fahey returned the master recordings to Fosson, who tried in vain to find another label to release the music. It was soon relegated to his garage until Anders’s curiosity led to him digging it out, which eventually led to Drag City getting hold of it and releasing it late last month.
