John Fahey was clearly one of the most important American musicians of the past hundred years. The "important" thing is so ambivalent, though. What does it matter if an artist influenced his peers? What does it matter if he inspired people with his adventurousness, his feeling, his chops? For me, listening at home, what matters is if he was good. Was John Fahey good? Yes, John Fahey was good. He was damn good. If Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and the British folkies could be said to have resurrected a pastoral spirit, something English-Scottish and green, then over the ocean John Fahey was starting something: he was pulling mud and weeds and inventing an America that feels obvious to me now. A mythic blues-and-folk-reared place that I can only really conceive of thanks to the compositions of Fahey, the Old, Weird sounds, his music's soulful dusty riverbed spirit.

When asked, Fahey would readily admit that he repeated things. His compositions are series of knots, themes untangled one after another. There's something cathartic in that sequence of unknotting. And there's something magic in it too. Each time you hear one of those same knots untangled, glinting with sun- or moonlight, the threads seem to come apart in a different way. Like John Fahey's fingers are finding strings where there oughtn't be any. Like that.

In February, Vanguard Records releases I Am The Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey. The calibre of artists they recruited is a testament to Fahey's talent: Pelt, Currituck County, (inevitably) M Ward, Calexico, Grandaddy, Cul de Sac, Howe Gelb, Devendra Banhart, and many more.

These are a couple of songs from I Am The Resurrection. And I'm including the Fahey originals, too, because they're even better.

John Fahey - "Commemorative Transfiguration & Communion At Magruder Park".

Sufjan Stevens - "Variation On 'Commemorative Transfiguration & Communion At Magruder Park'".

Sufjan's "Variation" more than anything recalls his Hark Christmas records that have been popping up over the web - not just because of the reverent prayer that he sings at the end of the piece, but also in the song's sleigh-ride spirit, the wintry snowtracks of percussion, flute and oboe. If Fahey's original is a back-porch affirmation, a solitary coming-to-grips with epiphany, for Sufjan the song is a communal affair: it's a gazebo full of friends, a church choir with a Charlie Brown conductor. And yet Surfin' Stevens doesn't get carried away. This never gets too showy or dazzling. Fahey's modesty remains intact, there amid Stevens' glad frankincense and myrrh.

John Fahey - "When The Catfish Is In Bloom".

Peter Case - "When The Catfish Is In Bloom".

Peter Case is a name I didn't know, but his track is by far the best thing on all of I Am The Resurrection. Funny that it's also the closest to the original in sound. (When I got the CD in the mail I thought "Oh god - thirteen artists trying to outplay Fahey.") What's different between the two? Case's is warmer, softer, it's less fierce. Case is playing something about dusk or dawn, while Fahey plays about night. Case loves the song more than Fahey does - he's tenderer with it, more attentively examining the curve of its hip. Fahey's hungry and Case is content; Case plays from memory and Fahey plays from instinct; Fahey's dead and Case is alive.

[Hear more at the I Am The Resurrection MySpace page]
John Fahey: [buy Requia or The Yellow Princess]

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Haiku Contest results tomorrow, probably (and Destroyer, too): so many fantastic submissions.