John Fahey - Yes! Jesus Loves Me

Great Koonaklaster’s great tidings on seasonal instrumentals

Ever since 1969’s Volume Two, John Fahey closed his LPs with a hymn. It’s no surprise, then, that the man for whom even the word “traditional” had no limitations released a few Christmas albums along the way. In his sleevenotes, RC’s Kris Needs tells us that 1968’s The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Album was the biggest selling album of Fahey’s career. Why Yes! Jesus Loves Me should become his worst-selling on the Takoma label is anyone’s guess. Twenty-seven years on from its original 1980 release, it’s a concise, stately piece of work, Fahey tapping into blues, classical and even bordering on ragtime guitar. As Fahey’s gift allows, it transcends time and spans ages, one moment the accompaniment to a Victorian family banding together to dress the Christmas tree, the next enveloping a reflective walk down snowy Kris Kringle Avenue. Remarkably, this is just one man (though it sounds like many) and an acoustic guitar: noble, grand and full enough to fill the deepest chamber and the grandest dining room, yet intimate enough for a fireside sherry when the kids have gone to bed. If you can’t be touched by this, you can’t be touched by anything.

Takoma | CDTAK 7085

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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