Vashti Bunyan

Jennifer Vashti Bunyan (born 2 March 1945) 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, the album had acquired a cult following; it was re-released and Bunyan recorded more songs, beginning the second phase of her musical career after a gap of thirty years. 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 and Helen Webber. She was told that she was named after a boat that had belonged to her father. 'Vashti' was a nickname for her mother, inspired by the Biblical Persian queen Vashti. She has been said to be descended from John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, but she has denied this.

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, but was expelled in 1964 for focusing on learning guitar and writing songs instead of art.

Musical career 1960s At age 18, Bunyan visited New York City, discovered the music of Bob Dylan through his The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album, and decided that she wanted to be a musician. In London the following year, an actress friend of her mother's introduced her to the Rolling Stones' manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, who signed her up to fill the gap left by Marianne Faithfull, who had recently left the label, and gave her a Jagger–Richards song to record, "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind". This was released in June 1965 as Bunyan's first single under the name 'Vashti', and Lewis bought an old wagon and a horse from a Romany traveller and set off on a 650-mile trek to Skye from South London. During the trip, Bunyan began to write the songs that would appear on her first album, Just Another Diamond Day. She recalled later, "It was a way to escape, 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."

Disappointed, Bunyan left the music industry in 1971 and moved with Lewis for a few months to the Incredible String Band's Glen Row cottages in the Scottish Borders, then walked to the west coast of Ireland and returned to Scotland. In 2001, Banhart wrote to Bunyan asking for advice, which began 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. She subsequently appeared on Devendra Banhart's 2004 album Rejoicing in the Hands and provided vocals for Animal Collective's 2005 EP Prospect Hummer.

In 2005, encouraged by the positive reaction to the re-release of Just Another Diamond Day, Bunyan recorded and released a second album, Lookaftering, on Fat Cat Records, 35 years after the first. The album, produced by composer Max Richter, featured many of her contemporary followers including Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Adem Ilhan, Kevin Barker of Currituck Co, Otto Hauser of Espers and Adam Pierce of Mice Parade, and was well received.

In the autumn of 2006, Bunyan assembled an ad hoc band and embarked on a brief North American tour, with performances in Canada and the US. She performed songs from both of her solo albums and some of the rare material from the unreleased Oldham sessions.

In 2007, Bunyan collaborated with novelist Rodge Glass on a song entitled "The Fire" for a 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."

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. Train Song, from this compilation, was used as the theme for the Amazon Prime Video series Patriot (2015-18).

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."

In June 2008, Bunyan 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 Runner soundtrack, singing "Rachel's Song" as sung by Mary Hopkin on the original soundtrack. In October 2008 a feature documentary about her, Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before, directed by Kieran Evans, had its world premiere 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. As it had the first time, the album provided a soundtrack for the journey. In 2011, Bunyan's cover of John Martyn's "Head and Heart" appeared on the tribute album, Johnny Boy Would Love This...A Tribute to John Martyn.

In June 2014, Bunyan 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 6 October in the UK by FatCat Records and 7 October in the US by DiCristina. The cover artwork was created by Bunyan's daughter, Whyn Lewis, who also contributed the artwork for Lookaftering.

In 2022, Bunyan published a memoir, Wayward: Just Another Life to Live (White Rabbit Books).

In 2025, her second album, Lookaftering, was reissued by Fat Cat records, 20 years after its original release. It included nine previously unheard home demos from the 2005 sessions with producer Max Richter and a live recording from a 2006 concert in Los Angeles. In the new sleeve notes, Devendra Banhart described Lookaftering as "a quiet prayer for a world left behind, a remembrance of a world that could have been but never was". for her role in inspiring the "new generation of folk experimentalists including Devendra Banhart and Adem". Her music has been categorized as folk, psychedelic folk, or new folk.

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." 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".

Discography Studio albums Just Another Diamond Day (Philips, 1970) UK Record Store No. 29 2022 Lookaftering (Fat Cat Records, 2005) UK Indie No. 24 Heartleap (Fat Cat Records, 2014) UK Indie No. 35

Compilations Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind – Singles and Demos 1964 to 1967 (Fat Cat Records/Spinney Records, 2007) UK Indie No. 26

Singles "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind" / "I Want to Be Alone" (Decca, 1965) (as Vashti) "Train Song" / "Love Song" (Columbia, 1966) (as Vashti) "How Could You Let Me Go" (Light in the Attic, 2023)

Compilation appearances Tonite Lets All Make Love in London (1967) "Winter Is Blue" (as Vashti) "Winter Is Blue (Reprise)" (as Vashti) Circus Days – UK Psychedelic Obscurities 1966–70 Vol.1 (1990) "I'd Like to Walk Around in Your Mind" (as Vashti) A Pot by Any Other Name (2001) (compilation issued by Ptolemaic Terrascope magazine) "17 Pink Sugar Elephants" (rec. 1966) (early variation of "Train Song") Instant Karma (2002) "Winter Is Blue" (as Vashti) (combined version of song from Tonite Lets All Make Love in London) Folk Rock and Faithfull: Dream Babes Vol. 5 (2004) "Train Song" (rec. 1966) (as Vashti) "Love Song" (rec. 1966) (as Vashti) The Golden Apples of the Sun (2004) "Rejoicing in the Hands" (with Devendra Banhart) The Enlightened Family: A Collection Of Lost Songs (2005) "Song of a Wishwanderer" (rec. 1968) Not Alone (2006) "Same But Different" Ballads of the Book (2007) "The Fire" (lyrics by Rodge Glass) Gather in the Mushrooms – The British Acid-Folk Underground 1968 – 1974 (2004) "Winter Is Blue" Johnny Boy Would Love This...A Tribute to John Martyn (2011) "Head and Heart" Way to Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake (2013) "Which Will"

Guest appearances Twice as Much – That's All (1970) "Coldest Night of the Year" (rec. 1967) Piano Magic – Writers Without Homes (2002) "Crown of the Lost" Piano Magic – Saint Marie EP (2004) "Dark Ages" Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands (2004) "Rejoicing in the Hands" Animal Collective – Prospect Hummer (2005) "It's You" "Prospect Hummer" "I Remember Learning How to Dive" Vetiver – Thing of the Past (2008) "Sleep a Million Years" Dudley Benson – Forest: Songs by Hirini Melbourne (2010) "Tui" We/Or/Me – The Walking Hour (2013) "Time" Devendra Banhart - Ma (2019) "Will I See You Tonight?" The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You (2020) "Reflecting Light" Devendra Banhart (2023) "How Could You Let Me Go?" (From the compilation album "Light in the Attic and Friends") Sega Bodega - I Created the Universe so That Life Could Create a Language so Complex, Just to Say How Much I Love You (2025) "Pipe"