Finding Bill Fay.

Bill Fay in 1970.

It is Sunday afternoon in early February. It is warm for the time of year, but I won’t be venturing out today. I have been listening to a CD that arrived a couple of days ago. It is simply called Bill Fay. It was first released in 1970 and it has taken me fifty years to discover it.  It was just over a week ago that somebody put a link on Facebook to an article in the New York Times. It was about an American songwriter called Joshua Henry who had set out in 2010 to find a long forgotten English singer who had made an album that he and his father loved. This singer was Bill Fay and nothing had been heard of him since 1971 when he had been dropped by his record label.  Since Joshua Henry tracked down Bill Fay and persuaded him to return to the recording studio he has made three albums. The latest called Countless Branches was only released in the last two weeks. Since his re-emergence from obscurity Bill Fay’s songs have been championed by such people as Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilko. Bill has even been persuaded to join Wilko on stage for a song and has made an appearance on BBC’s Later With Jools Holland. He has no intentions of touring to promote his latest work though. It seems that Bill didn’t mind the decades of obscurity because he was content to write songs and record them at home purely for the love of making music.

All this aroused my interest, because as you know I love finding long forgotten great music. I looked on YouTube and I liked the first song I heard called Be Not So Fearful which was included on his very first album. (I have shared that song to blogger if you want to hear it) I decided to see if this album was still available, looked on eBay and there it was. It had been re-released in 2008 on the Esoteric Label. Two days later it popped through my letterbox. Van Morrison fans might like to know that it was an ex-member of Van’s group Them Called Terry Noon who discovered Bill in the mid 60's. He had moved from being a musician to management, spotted Bill and brought him to Decca. One of Decca’s labels was Deram who had a subsidiary label for ‘progressive’ music called Nova and it was on this label that Bill Fay was released in 1970.

There are thirteen songs plus two bonus tracks from an earlier single release. I won’t go through the whole album song by song, because I won’t be able to think of anything to say about some of them. The opening track is called Garden Song and is like an ode to the joys of gardening with such lines as ‘I’ll wait for the rain to anoint my face’. It starts quietly but builds to a crescendo of instruments. It sounds like a whole orchestra was used on this recording. The Sun Is Bored also has huge swirls of orchestration which was quite the fashion of that era. At times I was reminded of an album called A Salty Dog by Procol Harum or McArthur Park or Scott Walker. Sing Us One Of Your Songs May has a military style drum beat intro before a deadpan spoken delivery of a melancholic anti-war song. Gentle Willie is also a song with a pacifist sentiment. Methane River is a great song, but the vocals are almost drowned out in places by a cacophony of trumpets. It’s a shame because there are some nice woodwind sounds during the quieter passages. The Room, Goodnight Stan, Cannons Plain and Down to The Bridge are all excellent songs. One of the bonus tracks Screams In The Ears is an account of going to a horrible party. Some Good Advice had echoes possibly of Nick Drake.

Bill Fay now.

I enjoyed the album very much indeed. My only complaint is that I think it is over-produced on some songs. Less is more.  Bill and just his piano would have been sufficient for some of the tracks. I think if it was recorded these days it would have a more stripped-back sound. Apparently, it was the follow-up album called Time Of The Last Persecution that led Joshua Henry to track down Bill Fay. Maybe that’s the album I should have ordered. There is no doubt though that Bill Fay is a very talented singer-songwriter and I am pleased that at the age of 76 he is finally getting the recognition he deserves.