[2] Fahey spent many of his later years in poverty and poor health, but enjoyed a minor career resurgence in the late 1990s, with a turn towards the avant-garde.

On weekends, the family attended performances of the top country and bluegrass acts of the day, but it was hearing Bill Monroe's version of Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel No.

While his tastes ran mainly in the bluegrass and country vein, Fahey discovered his love of early blues upon hearing Blind Willie Johnson's "Praise God I'm Satisfied" on a record-collecting trip to Baltimore with his friend and mentor, the musicologist Richard K. Spottswood.

These recordings, individually pressed in very small runs, were reissued in 2011 as a box set under the title Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You: The Fonotone Years 1958–1965.

Having no idea how to approach professional record companies and being convinced they would be uninterested, Fahey decided to issue his first album himself, using some cash saved from his gas station attendant job at Martin's Esso and some borrowed from Donald W. Seaton, an Episcopal priest at St. Michaels and All Angels.

[9] On one side of the sleeve was the name "John Fahey"; on the other, "Blind Joe Death"—a humorous nickname given to him by his fellow blues fans.

He was equally unimpressed with Berkeley's post-Beat Generation, proto-hippie music scene, loathing in particular the Pete Seeger–inspired folk-music revivalists he found himself classed with.

Eventually, Fahey moved south to Los Angeles to join UCLA's folklore master's program at the invitation of department head D. K. Wilgus, and received an M.A.

[citation needed] In the later half of the 1960s, Fahey continued to issue material through Takoma as well as Vanguard Records, which had signed him along with similar instrumental folk guitarists Sandy Bull and Peter Walker.

Albums from this period, such as Days Have Gone By, The Voice of the Turtle, Requia, and The Yellow Princess, found Fahey making sound collages from such elements as gamelan music, Tibetan chanting, animal and bird cries and singing bridges.

During the spring of 1969, Fahey performed several East Coast shows, including several nights at the world renowned Cellar Door in Georgetown.

The best tranquilizing music I know, because instead of palming off a fantasy of sodden deliverance it seems to speak of real reserves of self-control inside the American psyche.

In addition to his own creative output, Fahey expanded the Takoma label, discovering fellow guitarists Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, Bola Sete[12] and Peter Lang, as well as an emerging pianist in George Winston.

Other artists with albums on the label included Mike Bloomfield, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Maria Muldaur, Michael Gulezian, and Canned Heat.

He soon met Portland guitarist Terry Robb who would serve as his producer, arranger and accompanist on several albums for Varrick, a subsidiary of Rounder Records.

A lengthy article in Spin magazine by Byron Coley, "The Persecutions and Resurrections of Blind Joe Death",[16] combined with a two-disc retrospective, The Return of the Repressed, revived Fahey's career.

That same year, Fahey recorded an album with Cul de Sac, The Epiphany of Glenn Jones, named for the band's lead guitarist.

[6] In 1997, Revenant issued its first crop of releases, including albums by the British guitarist Derek Bailey, the American pianist Cecil Taylor, Jim O'Rourke, bluegrass pioneers The Stanley Brothers, old-time banjo legend Dock Boggs, Rick Bishop of Sun City Girls, and the slide guitarist Jenks "Tex" Carman.

Fahey, for his part, won a Grammy in 1997 for his contributions to the liner notes of Revenant's Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol.

Many of these were exhibited from July 10 to September 12, 2010, at The East Village, New York, presented by John Andrew and Audio Visual Arts (AVA).

The same alluring, raw, roots, mysterious, power, grit, obscure, industrial, ambient, epic, and tranquilizing aesthetics that one finds in Faheys music and his writings are equally present in his paintings.

Collaborating with noise artists and improvisational performers of the alternative movement, Fahey began to channel a new outlet for experimentation which included his return to painting; a hobby he abandoned when he took up the guitar.

[citation needed]Karn said he received several paintings "directly from John in exchange for a large collection of Duke Ellington records which I had recently obtained.

[23] A feature-length documentary directed by James Cullingham, In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey, was released in 2013.