Billy
Faier
The Life and
Times of a
Folk Musician
by Billy Faier, with Chris Wand
I
was born on Dec. 21, 1930 at 7 p.m.
I lived in Brooklyn my first 14 years.
I hated every minute until we
moved to Woodstock, New York in
1945. At that time and in that place I
discovered that the world had good
stuff in it. It was there that I had my
first introduction to folk music. I had
been singing songs all my life, but I
didn’t know they were folksongs until
then. Many of the artists, writers and
musicians in Woodstock sang folk
music and played guitar. There was a
camaraderie among these folks that
was new to me. Not only did they seem
to like and understand each other, but
they included me in that communal
umbrella of friendly feeling, even
though I was new to them and a 14-
year-old kid.
In Brooklyn I had been patronized,
ignored or abused by most of my
schoolmates. The same was true at
Kingston High in Woodstock, but out-
side school there was a group of people
8
Cenizo
who accepted
me. These were
the artists of the
Woodstock art
colony.
They
had an intense
love of the place
where they lived,
both the commu-
nity
of
Woodstock and
the
Catskill
Billy Faier performing at Gerdes Folk City, Greenwich Village, New York City, January 3, 1961. Irwin Gooen, courtesy of Chris Wand.
Mountains. It
gave me, for the
well as adults, singing the songs we
ness to devote myself to music and
first time in my life, an intense feeling of
came to know as folk songs. It was a
women. For the next ten years I
BELONGING to something bigger
weekly gathering, outside in good
learned to play the banjo and guitar.
than myself. I spent the next three years
weather and moving indoors to Gabe
From the age of 17 to 21 I lived in a
enjoying and being encouraged by the
Katz’s place when it got cold. For me
cold water flat on East Fifth Street and
creative people and energy of that artis-
this was the beginning of the Urban
Avenue D on the lower East side, about
tic community.
Folk Revival and a second introduction
a mile walk to Greenwich Village. The
My real awakening to folk music
to the intense joy of group singing. I
rent was $17 a month. Beside the
happened in Washington Square Park,
started playing five-string banjo, a truly
people of the folk community, I
New York one Sunday afternoon in
American instrument. I gave up a
knew many young poets, painters,
October of 1947. It was there that I saw
promising career in the world of busi-
Anarchists,
Socialists
and
all sorts of people, kids like myself as
Second Quarter 2016