After more than 30 years of self-imposed reclusion following the commercial failure of her 1970 debut, Just Another Diamond Day, the English singer/songwriter Vashti Bunyan is riding a wave of critical success to her first ever performance in the United States. Only a few years since living in musical obscurity, she has released a second album, Lookaftering, gained distinction as matriarch of the current batch of experimental folk musicians and, in the process, amassed a fan base spanning generations. Her tour across North America culminates in Los Angeles for another milestone: the birth of her first grandchild. It’s a story that even a modern-day bard couldn’t dream up.
Speaking from her home in Edinburgh, Scotland, Bunyan assumes an unfalteringly pleasant and buoyant tone, even when detailing her decade-long retreat from music.
“I left it all behind me very firmly when I felt I was a terrible failure. The only thing I could do was forget all about the dream and put it away.” In so doing, she moved to “the middle of nowhere” (first rural Scotland and then Ireland), where she supported her three children by making and selling crafts and furniture from old wood.
Throughout the intervening years, she remained unaware that her debut had garnered a substantial following and was a prized jewel among collectors. A CD re-issue came with the new millennium, which brought a whole new generation of listeners that related to her playful folk lullabies. She became a cornerstone for an entirely new breed of earthy folk artists, like Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective, who are commonly herded under the “Freak Folk” umbrella and all collaborated with Bunyan on recent recordings. She humbly sidesteps her influence upon them, saying, “They've made a collective consciousness for me and my old music to fit into. I don’t think my music lead to their music; I think their music made a place for me.”
She eventually reconciled the demons of her former career and focused on new material. Her true liberation, however, came from an unlikely source when T-Mobile asked to use the title track off JADD for a UK commercial. She jumped at the opportunity, and the ad ran for four months.
“I’ve come into a bit of flak for that mobile phone advert,” she admits, showing no sign of regret. “What I really wanted when I was very young was commercial success. That’s what I yearned for and never found, and that’s why I left everything behind. So now, it’s very fitting to have my song used as a commercial.”
The financial benefits also beat selling handicrafts in the British countryside. “Hopefully, it will get my son through college,” she says with trademark optimism. “That would be wonderful.”
September 14. Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie Sts.), 212-533-2111; 8, $20/$25.
