America

The America sessions produced more than 80 minutes of music, and the album was planned as a double LP. Fahey worried that a double would not sell, so almost half the material was cut and it came out as a single LP. The working title had been Ecology. The 1998 Takoma CD restored the unreleased tracks, and 4 Men With Beards issued the full set as a double vinyl album in 2009. The title song is an extended version of the piece on Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes and a rare example of Fahey playing 12-string guitar.

In 1972 Fahey said that only two of the songs he had written counted as epic or classic and that both were on this record, adding that they had taken more than five years to complete. One is Mark 1:15. Dvorak arranges the third movement of Dvorak's Symphony No. 8, and Jesus Is a Dying-Bed Maker is based on the gospel song In My Time of Dying. Richie Unterberger called the reissue Fahey at his most ambitious, and Matt Hanks of No Depression called it one of the most ambitious and epic records Fahey made.