'folk guitarist - an appellation that he found offensive'

the year begins well. a friend of howard has an internet radio show over in funky kingston (the comfort zone on green futures festival radio 8-11pm fridays) and he plays two tracks from the latest album - sand storm  and dark was the day. 

the DJ has a nice relaxed jonathan creek style thing going, he's just pootling about on air suiting himself, a joint  ex-presenter now lives down near weston-super-mare, he phones her up, she's in the bath, she's planning for happiness. he has some folk girl on streaming live, a really nice voice, banjo and guitar, it cuts through it's really clear, other than that there's loads of reggae, two tracks by culture and some kate bush (which also cuts through). there's a message board of fans somewhere.

the planning for happiness girl is a natural optimist finding the times hard, she's planning an exit strategy from the hard times with essential oils, sleep hygene and such like (see already horsemouth is hooked on the soap opera of it). 

still not bad for day one. opines horsemouth. but there's food for thought there. 

horsemouth listened to it on low volume in his room for fear of disturbing his parents. 

interesting choices. horsemouth would have gone with amarach, by far the strongest track on the record (in horsemouth's humble opinion) but perhaps a bit of a slow starter. dark was the day is decently immediate at least - the bells then the opening turn around lines. both are 'howard' tunes,  to sand storm horsemouth contributed the follow along guitar (and this the guitar exhaustion ending), to dark was the day he contributed the bassline (which goes for a bit of a pad at the end prog-rock style).  if there had been time (non-pandemic time) horsemouth would probably have added some big acoustic guitarchords. horsemouth thinks it and falling snow are too close together (like an attempt to express the same thing) in arrangement and sonics. but hey, the album is done and mixed, it cannot be redone and remixed to fit every situation, it has to make its own space in the world now.

last night horsemouth read about john fahey and joan didion. both people who came from away to california and found some kind of success and persona there. he should read some of joan's prose again. 

we are with fahey again. later years fahey. fahey the curmudgeon and his inventionof the term american primitive guitar.

'folk guitarist - an appellation that he found offensive'

'some of us were kinder than we might have been when reviewing the new CDs that fahey released during this time; the truth is, the music they contain is not a patch on his best work.'

on his way out the door howard remembered that it was new years day and that musicians of bremen had written a song on new years day so he played it.