Billy Faier - The Five String Banjo

I was born in Brooklyn New York on Dec. 21, 1930. I hated every minute of it until we moved to Woodstock, New York in 1945 at which time and place I discovered that the world had good stuff in it too. It was there I had my first intro to folk music, except for the folk songs I had been singing all my life and didn’t know that’s what they were. Many of the artists, writers and musicians, in Woodstock, sang folk stuff and played the guitar. But my real awakening to folk happened in Washington Square one Sunday afternoon in October of 1947. There I saw all sorts of people, kids like myself and adults, all singing the songs we came to know as folk songs. It was a weekly gathering which moved indoors to Gabe Katz’s place when it got cold. This, for me, was the beginning of the so-called Urban Folk Revival. I started playing five string banjo at that time and gave up a promising career in the world of business to devote myself to banjo and women. For the next ten years I did little but play the banjo and guitar. In the late fifties and most of the sixties I was a full time professional. I recorded for Riverside Records in 1957 and 1958, producing two albums for which I am mostly known, though I have done better work. They are The Art of the Five String Banjo and Travelin' Man.

I think the best music I have played on record is the album Banjo which I did for Takoma in 1973. That LP consisted of nine original compositions, no folk stuff. And I have produced an album of my own songs, The Beast of Billy Faier. That was in 1964. there were only two numbers with banjo on the Beast because I wanted the messages of the songs to be most important. I did more folk and original music on Banjos, Birdsong, and Mother Earth, a cassette, with John Sebastian and Gilles Malkine in the eighties. And I have recorded and performed with many other folk singers though my main act was always as a solo. I have traveled all over the Western Hemisphere of the Earth with my banjo on all levels from professional concertizer to itinerant street musician. I live today in Marathon, Texas where I run my website, billyfaier.com, and play banjo and piano.

To those of you who have purchased my CDs, my heartfelt thanks. But now I have decided to make all my music free and available to everyone. You can listen to it right here or download it by clicking on the album names above or the album images below. Your donations are welcome and should be sent to:

Billy Faier
PO Box 343
Marathon, Texas 79842
You can email me, billyfaier@sbcglobal.net or call (432) 386 4739 (Cell 432 386 5721)