Humble Soul 
John Fairhurst : Joys Of Spring (UK,2008)***°
While a fair part of John Fairhurst compositions and improvisations are more deeply rooted in American blues and slide guitar blues, for a large part of the album this dominates other ideas. Besides he can also not hide his British nature which makes a few compositions more melodically delicate. Another early influence was the appearance of sarod master K.Sridhar who stayed at his parent’s home, making his interests open to Indian classical music. When he himself went to South East Asia however, he played slide guitar in a Bankok blues bar.
A blues dominating track is the opener, “Obnox Stomp”, a picking blues track, with a wilder stomping slide part with hand percussion, washboard and mouth harmonica moving forwards like a train. “Yew Tree Blues” is a blues steel string improvisation, with a not too loudly recorded noisy outdoor public in the background, capturing an older simple blues spirit with it, not as something special, but as fine honest playing on a podium, or in the shade, a practice in this spirit, that in the long-term could turn into more ideas, but now keeps its place as a context on this album, as if the whole album wants to show a more complete picture as a collection of John Fairhurst backgrounds, ideas and evolutions. Also “Blues For Bill”’s guitar piece is referring to the real, raw and simple old blues, means nothing new, keeps it simple but still is effective.
Than we have two compositions with a more British melodic approach. “Passing Time” for instance clearly shows this post-Renaissance British tradition, while still flickering with a blues touch in the back of the mind, has an extra layer of harp with a Celtic flavour by Nancy Elisabeth. Also “At the River” is a more descriptive and thoughtful melodic composition. Also “Friends” is a more melodic tune, played by 2 acoustic guitars.
Different again is “Shivver”, a more experimental track exaggerating with slides, droning and vibrating heavily, with some loose stoned djembe in the background. For this approach I could refer to this remark of his on the label’s website : “only more recently I also like to plug my guitar into big loud amplifiers and make as much noise as I can.” This droning tuning seemed to have been the sonic drone introduction for the next track, “On The Run” which is an improvisation that is also based upon blues but with a more improvised stoned vibe to it, and some mouth harmonica too. This might have hints of the approach of Captain Beefheart’s “Mirror Man” which went weird with blues in a comparable way but it might also have been the interest in eastern approaches that got him into this more…
What really shows the interest in eastern music and a sarod influence, for the first time more clearly on the album, is “How Far How Fast”. Even when this is pretty raga-styled, bluegrass/slide blues will have had its share of influence. It is well played and has an original approach. The last two tracks are mood excursions holding a blend between earlier approaches. On “Dawn” we hear a cracking fire in the background ; the instrumental is like a mood serenade. “Joys of Spring” features birds in the background, is a raga-esque improvisation, with a heavier percussive part.
