Campfire Stories - Frank Fairfield

For a local artist, Frank Fairfield did a fine job playing hard to get. There he was, the opening act for the now-legendary two-night Fleet Foxes residence at the Echo before their popularity really kicked in. Fairfield was just walking off the stage when I walked in the door (okay, I was late). And there he was again, packing up his gear at the 2008 F-Yeah Music Fest, surely the only act to bicycle away from the show with a guitar, a fiddle, and an antique wooden chair strapped to his back (okay, so I’m always late).

When I finally did catch Fairfield, opening once again for the Fleet Foxes on the L.A. leg of their victory tour at the El Rey last year, he looked straight from Walden Pond. On any other musician, the garb of a 1920s Dust Bowl farmer would have rung false. Hell, in this town of musical opportunists, playing a banjo sometimes seems like more of a gimmick than a lifelong passion, but, here again, Fairfield is different.

To begin, his voice: Fairfield sounds like Skip James—as if he’s singing with a knife sticking out of his back. He cries blues songs with train-wreck tears. He’s authentic.

Fairfield's latest local appearance, a free concert on the back patio of Stories bookstore in Echo Park last weekend, was similarly down-to-earth. In the darkness of the evening, the graffiti that frames Stories' backyard softened, noise from eastbound traffic on Sunset faded, and when the 30-or-so people in attendance concentrated long enough on Fairfield and his opening act, Triple Chicken Foot, the patio began to resemble, as advertised, a campfire. That is, until a Quinceañera, complete with what looked like a bouncy castle, thundered up across the municipal parking lot. Fairfield took the stage with Afrika Bambaataa's “Planet Rock” thumping away, looking like a visitor in a foreign land. But with just one flash of his wrist, Fairfield's fiddle silenced the distractions and recaptured the mood. After that moment of initial uncertainty, the crowd was rapt, whooping and hollering with each humble showing of skill. At one point, Fairfield even seemed to hold a quiet control over the party down the street, their low baseline matching the steady tap of his foot, the crowd looking at one another in half-belief, all knowing they were witnessing something special.

Two hours after the show had ended, long after the loud party had shut down, I passed Stories again on my way to get a slice of pizza. From the patio came that unmistakable voice. It couldn't be, I thought, but there he was, Frank Fairfield, sitting in his wooden chair with the members of Triple Chicken Foot surrounding him, a bottle of Jack Daniels at his feet, still singing the blues.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog.aspx?dt=06/16/2009