Description
Label Review.
2017 album. Drag City.
Our Overview.
Kentuckian Mark Fosson grew up as a skinny kid in the 1960s. Too small to make his high school football team, he got a guitar instead. Years later, from 1971-1974, he honed his skills on the instrument while killing time in the Air Force, eventually making a demo. There was exactly one place at that time to send a vocal-less solo acoustic guitar tape: John Fahey's already legendary (and, by then, almost defunct) Takoma Records. His first album was recorded for John Fahey’s Takoma Records label in the late 1970s, but the label was sold before the album could be released (and it finally emerged courtesy of Drag City in 2006). Tompkins Square released ‘Digging In The Dust’ in 2012, the 1976 demo recordings that ultimately led to the ‘Takoma Sessions’.
He has been playing music for nearly 50 years now. ‘Solo Guitar’ is the 5th album released under his name in all that time, which gives an insight into the nature of his music; when it is time for Mark to commit to something underneath his fingers, regardless of whether that is after two years, ten or twenty, that's what's right.
‘Solo Guitar’ continues to use his chops and enthusiasm to wander musically, drawing up pieces of sparkling, nimble finger style with an eclectic vision. As the title implies, this time Mark is focused on the austerity of the guitar, plain and simple, to bring out the music. This is one of Mark's favourites of all that he's written, and it is clear why: the golden, eternal promise of the guitar is ebulliently, transcendentally delivered.
The title says it all: the sweetness of solo acoustic guitar (6- and 12-string) paired with the early flavour of a lifetime of moments, great and small. These are the sounds that could only come through the mind, hands and guitar of the master, Mark Fosson! ‘Solo Guitar’ is a masterful work, the kind it takes a lifetime to assemble.