Vashti Bunyan

Vashti Bunyan (born Jennifer Vashti Bunyan, 2 March 1945) is an English folk singer-songwriter born near Newcastle upon Tyne and raised in London^[1]. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford but was expelled in 1964 for devoting herself to guitar and songwriting instead of art^[1].

Inspired by Bob Dylan, she was signed by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and released a 1965 single of a Jagger and Richards song under the name Vashti, though her early records attracted little attention^[1].

In the late 1960s she left the pop world and travelled north with her partner Robert Lewis by horse and wagon, hoping to join an artists' community that Donovan had planned in the Hebrides^[1][2][3]. The community never came together, but she wrote the songs that became her debut on the road^[1].

During a winter break from the trek she travelled to the Netherlands to try to earn money singing in bars, where the American folk-blues musician Derroll Adams heard her and urged her not to hide her songs. She returned to England at once, and the title song "Diamond Day" came to her on the train from Belgium to London^[1]. Her first record deal for the project came through Joe Boyd, and the album was completed in about three days of sessions^[4].

Producer Joe Boyd recorded Just Another Diamond Day in December 1969, and it was released a year later to warm reviews but almost no sales^[1][4]. She left music in 1971 and spent about thirty years raising three children^[1].

A 2000 reissue turned the album into a cult classic. Devendra Banhart wrote to her in 2001, and she returned with Lookaftering (2005, produced by Max Richter) and Heartleap (2014)^[1]. She published the memoir Wayward: Just Another Life to Live in 2022 and received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2024^[1].