Jennifer Vashti Bunyan (born March 2, 1945)[2][3] is an English singer-songwriter. She began her career in the mid-1960s and released a debut album, Just Another Diamond Day, in 1970. The album sold very few copies and Bunyan, discouraged, abandoned her musical career. By 2000, her album had acquired a cult following; it was re-released and Bunyan recorded more songs, initiating the second phase of her musical career after a gap of thirty years.[4] She released two more albums, Lookaftering in 2005, and Heartleap in 2014.
Early life and education
Bunyan was born in South Tyneside in 1945, the youngest of three children of John Bunyan, a dentist, and Helen Webber.[5] She was told that she was named after a boat that had belonged to her father. 'Vashti' was also a nickname for her mother, inspired by the Old Testament queen Vashti. She recalls watching her mother secretly dancing and singing when she was a child.[6] She has been said to be descended from John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress,[7] but she has denied this.[8]
The family moved to London when she was six months old. In the early 1960s, she studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, where she befriended Michael Palin and Terry Jones,[6] but was expelled for focusing on music instead of art.[9]
At age 18, Bunyan travelled to New York and discovered the music of Bob Dylan through his The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album and decided to become a full-time musician.[10] Returning to London, she was introduced to The Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham by an agent. In June 1965, under his direction, she released her first single under the name Vashti: "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind", written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards,[6] on which Jimmy Page played guitar. Her own composition, "I Want to Be Alone", which she had wanted to be the A-side, was on the B-side.[6] She released a follow-up, "Train Song", produced by Canadian Peter Snell and released on Columbia in May 1966. Both singles received little attention.[11]
Her distinctive vocal appeared on "The Coldest Night of the Year" by Twice as Much on their second and final LP, That's All, released by Oldham's Immediate Records in 1968. She recorded more (unreleased) songs for Immediate Records, and made a brief appearance in the 1967 documentary Tonite Let's All Make Love in London with her song "Winter Is Blue". She says she enjoyed performing on TV pop shows, but felt as if she was "watching it from the outside".[6]
She reconnected with Robert Lewis, a rebellious art student she had met the previous year, with whom she was to have three children, and they briefly lived in a field. Then she heard from a friend, fellow singer-songwriter Donovan, that he was planning to set up a commune on Skye.[6] They bought an old wagon and a horse and set off on a journey from south London, "initially to Skye, but we carried on to the Outer Hebrides.[12]. She began the journey shoeless, wearing only her late aunt’s 1930s nightdress.[6] During the trip she began to write the songs that would appear on her first album, Just Another Diamond Day.[13] "It was a way to escape. It felt ephemeral, but with a purpose: we didn’t know where we were going to be tomorrow, but it’d be somewhere down the road. What saved me was that I didn’t have to think too hard about anything except wood for the fire, water for the horse. Immediate things.”[6]
She says she and Lewis had wanted to re-shape their lives, and reject the world in which they felt they were not wanted. On their journey they learned to be self-sufficient and discovered the kindness of strangers. When they finally reached Skye, they found there was no room at the commune for them or their horse. They settled instead on the island of Berneray.[6]
At Christmas 1968, during a break from her trip, a friend introduced her to producer Joe Boyd, who offered to record an album of her travelling songs for his company, Witchseason Productions.[14] A year later, Bunyan returned to London and recorded her first LP, with assistance from Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick of Fairport Convention, Robin Williamson of The Incredible String Band and string arranger Robert Kirby. The album appeared on Philips Records in December 1970 to warm reviews, but struggled to find an audience.[14]
Disappointed, she left the music industry and moved to The Incredible String Band's Glen Row cottages, then to Ireland, and back to Scotland. She spent much of the ensuing thirty years raising her three children.[11] During this time, unknown to her, the original album slowly became one of the most sought-after records of its time. Copies have sold online on Discogs for as much as US$3,946.[15]
Bunyan has said that she lost confidence in herself and her abilities and retired completely from music in her mid-twenties when, for the first time, in a television show, she saw and heard Joni Mitchell sing. "I thought, 'I can never do that'. It had a huge effect on me. From that moment on I never believed in myself. For about 30 years I gave up on music altogether ... I didn't even sing to my children. I don't like to admit it, but that's what happened."[16]
2000 to present
In 2000, Just Another Diamond Day was re-released on CD with bonus tracks, exposing Bunyan's music to a new generation of folk artists such as Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom.[17] In 2001, Banhart wrote to her asking for advice, beginning her connection with many of the contemporary performers who cite her work. In 2002 she was invited by Piano Magic musician Glen Johnson to sing guest vocals on his song "Crown of the Lost", her first recording in over thirty years.[18] Since then, she has appeared on releases by Devendra Banhart and Animal Collective.
In 2005, she recorded and released her second album, Lookaftering on Fat Cat Records, some 35 years after her first.[19] The album was produced by composer Max Richter and featured many of her contemporary followers, including Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Adem, Kevin Barker of Currituck Co, Otto Hauser of Espers and Adam Pierce of Mice Parade, and was well received.[citation needed]
In the autumn of 2006, Bunyan assembled an ad hoc band and embarked on a brief North American tour, with performances in both Canada and the US. She performed songs from both of her solo albums, as well as some of the rare material from the unreleased Oldham sessions.[citation needed]
Her music reached a much wider audience when "Just Another Diamond Day" was covered and used in a TV advert for T-Mobile. "Train Song" brought her further attention when it was used in 2008 by Reebok for an ad for the NFL,[20] in 2014 as part of the soundtrack for the TV series True Detective, and in 2015 as the opening credits song for the Amazon Original Series Patriot.
In 2007, she collaborated with novelist Rodge Glass on the song "The Fire" for the compilation album Ballads of the Book, which was devised to combine Scottish writers with Scottish singers (Bunyan lives in Edinburgh).
She also provided vocals on three songs for the debut solo album of former Jack frontman Anthony Reynolds, British Ballads. Bunyan sang with Reynolds on "Country Girl", "Just So You Know" and "Song of Leaving".[citation needed]
In October 2007, a compilation album was released of her mid-1960s singles and unreleased demos, entitled Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind - Singles and Demos 1964 to 1967.[21][22] In January 2008, Bunyan said she was in the process of recording a new album. "I'm supposed to be writing just now. I have one complete song and a whole lot of fragments. I'm supposed to have them finished by May, and there's no way."[23]
In June 2008, she appeared at London's Royal Festival Hall with The Heritage Orchestra as part of Massive Attack's Meltdown, in a live performance of Vangelis' Blade Runnersoundtrack, singing "Rachel's Song" as sung by Mary Hopkin on the original recorded soundtrack.[24] In October 2008, a feature documentary about her, Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before, directed by Kieran Evans, had its world premieres at the Times BFI London Film Festival. The documentary retraced Bunyan's journey across the UK and Ireland against the backdrop of her first high-profile London concert, using her trip through the UK and Ireland as its narrative structure. The album provided the soundtrack to the journey, as it had the first time. In 2011, Bunyan's cover of the late John Martyn's "Head and Heart" appeared on the tribute album, Johnny Boy Would Love This...A Tribute to John Martyn.[25]
In June 2014, she announced her third and final album, Heartleap. She wrote, "The whole point of the album was finally to learn a way that would enable me to record the music that is in my head, by myself. I neither read nor write music, nor can I play piano with more than one hand at a time, but I have loved being able to work it all out for myself and make it sound the way I wanted. I've built these songs over years. The album wouldn't have happened any other way." Heartleap was released on 7 October in the US by DiCristina and 6 October in the UK by FatCat Records.[26] The cover artwork was created by Bunyan's daughter, Whyn Lewis, who also contributed the artwork for Lookaftering.[27]
In 2022 Bunyan published a memoir Wayward: Just Another Life to Live (White Rabbit Books).[28]
In 2023, Bunyan was invited by singer-songwriter Lail Arad to perform alongside Emeli Sande, Sam Amidon, Eska and This Is The Kit in a tribute concert to celebrate Joni Mitchell's 80th year, at London's Roundhouse in April 2024. Bunyan said she was honoured to have been asked.[29]
Despite this, she has often said that she is not a folk singer: "... I find it quite hard to read myself described as a folk singer, because I'm not."[33][34] Her former producer Joe Boyd said in the 2008 Kieran Evans film From Here to Before, that he never considered Bunyan to be "... much of a folkie".[35]
Bunyan's voice was heard on Saint Etienne Presents Finisterre (2005), a documentary about London featuring the music of the band Saint Etienne.
Friend, fellow folk singer and longtime fan Devendra Banhart reportedly writes her name on his arm before some concerts.
Lush covered her song "I'd Like To Walk Around in Your Mind". They got to know it from the Circus Days compilation.
A cover of "Train Song" performed by Ben Gibbard and Feist appeared on Dark Was The Night, a charity compilation benefiting HIV/AIDS awareness and the Red Hot Organization. It was released by 4AD on 17 February 2009.
"Diamond Day" was featured in the popular UK teen comedy/drama Skins on the third series (2009), episode six entitled "Naomi".
Her song "Here Before" was covered by the Swedish artist Fever Ray, released as the B-side of the 2009 single "Stranger Than Kindness".
"Here Before" also featured in the soundtrack for the 2008 BBC production Heist, about a medieval burglary.
Bunyan's important link to the back-to-the-land counterculture of the 1970s and the insightful expressions of 'nature' in her work have been discussed in an academic paper in 2009 by geographer Keith Halfacree ('"Glow worms show the path we have to tread": the counterurbanisation of Vashti Bunyan', Social and Cultural Geography 10: 771–789).
"Train Song" was selected as the background music for Samsung's 2011 SMART TV commercial.
"Train Song" was also featured in the 2014 HBO television show True Detective.
"Train Song" was used in the ad for Reebok 'Join The Migration' in 2014
"Train Song" was used in the opening credits of the 2017 Amazon Original Series Patriot.
"Diamond Day" was featured in the Australian film Babyteeth in 2019.
"I'd Like to Walk Around in Your Mind" is featured at the beginning of the 2017 Turkish film "Kedi".
Several verses of the song "Diamond Day" are sung by a character in the 2023 drama film Fremont, The song is also played over the ending credits.
^GRO birth indexes, England & Wales: BUNYAN, Jennifer V, mother's name WEBBER, registered in district of Newcastle upon Tyne, Jan-Mar quarter 1945, 10b 220.
