Fay Jacons

In his extensive liner notes to this double-disc, Bill Fay claims that only David Tibet would have released Still Some Light, a collection of demos from 1970 and 1971 gathered from various sources, and a disc of new songs…

Fay Claassen - With a Song in My Heart
Label: Challenge Records | MP3 320 kbps | Total Time: 01:04:51 | 148 MB
Genre: Vocal/Jazz

"Studio performance is always different than live. The music you play is a statement in time. One hopes to present the music as you know and love it. A genuin simplicity within the complex context and possibilities of this music has always been my goal. Up until now I have always been a guest-player in other bands; most recently with The Amsterdam Jazz Quintet and Tony Overwaters group. Now that Jazz Impuls offered me this opportunity I decided to form my own band. Since this is my first own record I thought long and hard about the form. My first dilemma was if I should use my own compositions and lyrics.
Being familiar with the beauty and quality of standards I have decided to use them mostly, knowing that my own material will come in due time. The works of Bert Joris I performed with The Amsterdam Jazz Quintet are close to standards. Since his writing apppeals to me so much, I have chosen to use a new composition of his for this CD. In addition you will find pieces by Sting and Hermeto Pascoal. Sting's lyrics are poetic, often creating a world of myth as a way of expressing himself, the latter because of his intriguing harmonic vocabulary. Unexpected melodic and harmonic movements are an incredible source of inspiration. Those musicians who perform on this level appeal to me and I to them. I am very happy that the musicians I invited were all willing to play in my band."

Fay Claassen.

Bill Fay returns with the third album in the celebrated second phase of his recording career. A prime Fay song is a deceptively simple thing which carries more emotional weight than its concision and brevity might imply. There are ten of these musical haikus on Countless Branches, as pointed and as poignant as anything he’s ever recorded. For decades now - it’s almost 50 years since he cut his classic albums “Bill Fay” and “Time of the Last Persecution” - songs like these have been Fay’s ambassadors helping rave reviews and endorsements from the likes of Jim O’Rourke (Tortoise) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) which led to a huge revival of interest in his music. He had continued to make music almost every day in the intervening decades. For Countless Branches he’s completed new toplines over some of his cache of backing tracks, most of them 20 to 40 years old.

In his extensive liner notes to this double-disc, Bill Fay claims that only David Tibet would have released Still Some Light, a collection of demos from 1970 and 1971 gathered from various sources, and a disc of new songs. So it is Tibet we must thank as well. Fay is the British singer/songwriter whose first two albums - Bill Fay and Time of the Last Persecution - were issued by Decca in the early '70s to favorable reviews and poor sales. They disappeared until the 21st century, where they have been rightfully regarded as lost classics. The first disc in this collection features demos that Fay and his bandmates had lying about for decades. The fact that these relationships continued after the music stopped says a lot about all of the respect and trust for one another these men have. Fay plays piano, organ, acoustic guitar, and sings, while Alan Rushton is on drums, Daryl Runswick on bass, and Ray Russell on electric guitar…