Scott Fagan

Scott Fagan at St Matthias Church (Stoke Newington)

Baba Yaga's Hut presents:

Scott Fagan - Playing the songs of Soon and South Atlantic Blues at St Matthias Church - April 17th

This will be Scott's first show in London in many years and will be a special night. He will be performing songs from his classic album South Atlantic Blues and his new album Soon.

Soon has been a long time coming. The new album from Scott Fagan has been some 55 years in the making. Its songs, all drawn from the 1971 Broadway rock opera of the same name that Fagan conceived and wrote with songwriting partner Joe Kookoolis, were originally intended as the follow-up to his classic 1968 debut, South Atlantic Blues, but fate intervened.

A radical call-to-arms against the complacency of the modern world, and a tone poem about art, radicalism, commerce, and corruption, the rock opera told an age-old story, of an artist forced to make a devil’s bargain between their principles and success. It drew on Fagan’s own experiences in the music industry, and featured him in the lead role, alongside Richard Gere, Barry Bostwick (later the lead in Grease and The Rocky Horror Show), Joe Butler (of Lovin’Spoonful), Vicki Sue Robinson, and Peter Allen.

The original Broadway production, subject to creative meddling that compromised its creators’vision, closed the day after its opening. A year later, it was restaged in Los Angeles for a brief two-week run. Then Fagan’s opus was lost to time. The album was shelved, never to be recorded or heard. Until now.

Recorded over seven days in July 2025 at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, a hallowed studio that has hosted Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Alex Chilton, and The Cramps among others, the sessions found the now 80-year-old singer-songwriter working with a crack Memphis rhythm section—drummer Terence Clark (Brandi Carlisle, Keith Urban), guitarist Steve Selvidge (The Hold Steady, North Mississippi All Stars) and keyboardist Rick Steff (Cat Power, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Lucero).

The thirteen songs on So