Faier, Billy

Billy Faier of Woodstock, N.Y., taught himself to play the five-string banjo and was later involved in the folk music revival as a performer, songwriter, observer, writer, and radio disc jockey. Faier was a prominent member of New York City's Washington Square folk scene in the late 1940s and of the folk music scene on both coasts during the 1950s and 1960s.

Billy Faier was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on 21 December 1930. He moved to Woodstock, N.Y., with his family in 1944 at age thirteen. Faier had his first contact with folk music in Woodstock and taught himself to play the five-string banjo. Dropping out of high school to pursue his music, Faier traveled with Ramblin' Jack Elliott across the country and was a prominent member of New York City's Washington Square folk scene in the late 1940s. In 1957 and 1958, Faier recorded Art of the Five String Banjo and Travelin' Man for Riverside. Involved with the folk music revival scene on both coasts during the 1950s and 1960s, Billy Faier worked in night clubs, wrote songs, transcribed music for Pete Seeger, performed and taught banjo, performed as an on-stage musician in theater productions in New York City, hosted radio shows on Berkeley's KPFA and New York City's WBAI, and wrote for and eventually edited Caravan: Folk Music Magazine .

Despite time spent in New York and Berkeley, Faier's home base for a large part of his life has been the town of Woodstock and the surrounding area where he built his home in Lake Hill, N.Y., and became an active community member and renowned as a local street musician. From this home base, his music career experienced a revival in the 1980s with performances at folk music festivals; a self-produced recording, Banjos, Birdsongs, and Mother Earth ; and a self-produced re-release of his earlier albums on cassette.

Throughout his life, Faier has opted for a non-mainstream, alternative lifestyle. Besides song writing and playing banjo and guitar, Faier's eclectic interests include juggling, traveling, hitchhiking, Rubik's Cube, the game of Go, sailing, folklore, and writing.