Diverse Americana – a photo journey with Jeff Fasano
What it takes: Quit your job, chronicle truth, and learn to let go of the reins

Jeff Fasano, 2023
I became acquainted with photographer Jeff Fasano on Facebook during 2020’s COVID pandemic lockdown as we huddled around Dan Navarro’s almost daily live streams. I followed his participation in Real Men Talk Live. That Facebook page is labeled a mental health service, and I would agree. These men talked refreshingly real.
I can’t tell you all the friends he’s made through his lens, but I’ll drop a name: James Earl Jones, for example. There’s a great shot in his book, Americana Portrait Sessions, of Jeff with Joan Osborne, and one with Kris Kristofferson. I think he’s allowed backstage literally anywhere. When I get a backstage, I’ll let him know where to show up.
Jeff Fasano works not only at music venues, but movie sets and theater as well. From his website:
On my path I have had the great fortune to meet, photograph and build relationships with notable artists from around the world. Many who you can see on this site. Through the love of my craft doors have opened and I have connected with so many interesting people who are creating their life, their creative expression, and expressing it to the world. I get the chance with my talents and gifts as a photographer to support them in doing this.
Recently, Jeff and I were at the same house concert: at the home of Alexandra Boos and John Undeland, the 5th anniversary of their first house concert, at which I saw Dan Navarro play for the first time. John and Alex are wonderful hosts and amazing humans. At last year’s house concert, Alex showed us her copy of Americana Portrait Sessions. It is what it says: portraits. It is a beautiful book: 171 portraits Jeff Fasano took, from Wilco to Rhiannon Giddens to Kiefer Sutherland to Steven Van Zandt. So much in between, even our buddy Dan Navarro.
I was excited to talk with Jeff about the layout process: How much did the author have to do with book design when it’s all pictures and no words? How did you land at Vanderbilt? No, let’s talk more about that beautiful layout.
me: Okay, take it. So you were all set up to self-publish and decided to contact Vanderbilt University?
JF: Well, we started putting it together in 2020. I decided to do it. And then my friend Merlin David in LA, who has a magazine called M Music and Musician—he’s good friends with Dan too—so Merlin and I just started doing it, and it was probably the project that I did during Covid.
me: Yeah, I get that.*

Kris Kristofferson and Jeff Fasano
JF: We started with 750 images. Got it down to 171 images that are portraits of mine. But there’s a whole bunch of other images of me and Joan Osborne, me and Kris Kristofferson…So we did that in 2020. And then in ’21, we kept it going. And then in ’22, I started a Kickstarter campaign to self-publish the book.
And then one Sunday, me and a bunch of friends went to the Frist for the Cuban exhibit. And then I went into the gift shop and saw Marty Stuart’s book, American Ballads. And I brought it home. I was looking at it, and I called Vanderbilt University Press on that Monday. I called them and they called me back and said, “Can you tell us more?”
Mary Gauthier had already written the forward. Edd Hurt wrote the beautiful essay that’s in it. My story’s in it. Everything was all ready to go.
And then a gentleman from Vanderbilt called me back that Thursday, said, “Hey, could we get together?” And we got together. At that meeting he said, “We want to publish your book with Vanderbilt.”
me: But at some point they’d asked you, “What’s different about your book?”
JF: So back when I lived in New York City I was working with a gentleman by the name of Robert Baker. Robert was my mentor, healer, and good friend. He would always say this: “Anything that we do in life has got to have an intention. Nothing should ever really be arbitrary. Why am I doing this? What is your intention behind everything?”
And then before that, in the late ’80s, I studied at Parsons with Mario Cabrera, who I dedicated my book to. Mario would always ask, “Fasano, what are you saying with your work?”
So when I was doing this book, Merlin and I said, “What does it say?” We know how the Americana world is all-inclusive, diverse, gender-diverse. It’s just an incredibly diverse world of music.
So, where does Americana begin, and what intricate combination of sensibilities does it represent, at a remove of twenty years from when it took its present form? – Edd Hurt
So when I presented all of that to Vanderbilt, that’s why they wanted to publish the book. The book was saying something. And then when it came out, my cousin got it. And she goes, “Okay, I got your book, and I’ll call you in a week and give you my critique.”
me: How long did it take her?
JF: A couple of days. She calls me back and she goes, “It’s beautiful. I got the book and I opened it up, and the first thing I did was look at your photos, and they’re beautiful. Then I read it. After I read everything, that put the photos in context.”
When you grow up as an outsider, you become an observer. Jeff and I are both observers. Him with his camera, me with my songs. We document and chronicle what we see.
Empathy comes from being a skilled observer.
The magic in Fasano’s photos?
Empathy. – Mary Gauthier

Final image from Americana Portrait Sessions
JF: My cousin goes, “Now I understand. Your photos are an illustration of what’s written in the book: the woman who wrote the Foreword, but the essay and also your story.” The images in my book are incredibly diverse. And then also—I quit my corporate job to do this at 40—the images are a testament to what you can do if you want to follow your dream.
I’m not quite sure Vanderbilt would’ve published the book, if it was just about my photos.
me: You said there was a good deal of back and forth between you and their team, their design team.
JF: It was a great experience. I learned so much in that experience. What I learned was when I do a photo shoot and I ask people to trust me, I learned to trust the people who know what they’re doing.

Jeff Fasano shooting the brothers Robinson
me: So you learned the other side of it, of the lens, so to speak.
JF: There were images I wanted bigger, and then I said, “I think this should be over here,” But there are a lot of emails they never answered.
Especially when they said, “We’re going to do a 10×10 book. And I called Merlin, I go, “They want to do a 10×10 book!” He goes, “No, it’s got to be bigger!” I said, it’s got to be bigger. And they never answered that email. Well, you’ve seen my book. It is perfect.
me: It is perfect.
JF: Vanderbilt’s designer laid out the book perfectly. The only thing I said to them was: Under no circumstances can you crop any image.
me: Okay, I was wondering about that.
JF: Because cropping is part of the image.
me: That’s your message, the picture. Light and dark are basically a vocabulary, to me.

Marcus King, from Americana Portrait Sessions
JF: For example, there’s an image of Marcus King. I made it square. When you look at it, it doesn’t work any other way than it being a square image. Vanderbilt wound up actually using that image for their Spring/Summer catalog of 2023. My book.
me: I could see that. It’s that beautiful, your book. It really is. There were a couple of layouts of pictures that surprised and impressed me…like The Flatlanders…
JF: I never expected them to do double-page spreads.
me: yeah, that was the thing—it was double-page, but off-center and just perfectly, really well done. That was the kind of stuff that caught my eye.
JF: They sent me a box of books. My demo book was the very first book I opened. When I was looking at it with my friend Bill, I had tears in my eyes. For a whole bunch of reasons. The next morning, I connected with the folks at Vanderbilt to tell them, “Thank you. This is gorgeous.” And they asked me to come in. So I went to visit them.
Gianna Mosser, the director, came out. I hadn’t met her before, but she was on every email. So I said, “Hey, I got to ask you a question. Did you not answer my emails on purpose?”
She goes, “I’m the person here who saves the author from themselves.”
me (laughing): Yeah, my boss-person at Igneus is that person. I can’t be in charge of that job.
JF: But I caught on. I said, there’s a reason why they’re not answering my emails. And I was so grateful for what they did. I couldn’t have been happier.
Gianna Mosser had this to say:
Because of the magnitude of Jeff’s portraiture, because it had so many different generations of musicians represented, we wanted a design approach that could give us flexibility and allow us to play with portrait size and manage the dark/light spectrum of the images on offer.
I believe Alissa and I tossed out 10 x 10 as an option early and then things came together as she started to approach the layout. We liked the depth and majesty that it brought to the pictures.
me: I wonder if you have anything else you could say about being on the other side of the dynamic—being the author like being the subject of the photo shoot as opposed to being the one taking the pictures. How much did it dawn on you that you were in that position, immediately, throughout the process, or more in retrospect?
JF: No, it was throughout the process. I mean, it is such a long process. At the very beginning, I had this big contract that I had to go through and all that good stuff. And then after that process happened, they gave me a whole marketing questionnaire.
Merlin and I went through it; it took me about two weeks. I mean, it was a lot of questions and stuff like that, marketing wise. And then they asked me, “Could we have an order for the images?”
So another friend of mine and I made an order and we gave it to them, but I said, “Do whatever you need to do. But I want Wilco to be the first image, what started it all, and I want the last image to be Steven Van Zandt.”
They kind of held to some of the order, but there were a lot of things that went on that…then Merlin said to me, “I think it’s time to give up trying to control this whole thing.” I go, Merlin, I think you’re right. I don’t know where we were in the process, but eventually it was like, you know what? I’ve got to let this go and let them do what they do.
me: So what are you doing now?

Playbill from A Streetcar Named Desire – photo by Jeff Fasano
JF: I got a lot of things hanging out there. I might be working on a movie, which I’m so excited about doing. I want to get back to Broadway with a certain play that’s opening up in Pennsylvania at the end of February. I made a proposal to them—we’ll see what happens with that. I might go to New York. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at my website, but I do more than music. As a matter of fact, I did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway in 2008 and A Streetcar Named Desire in 2012.
I love working with actors.
me: Do you have anything else you need to say?
The most important thing about this book is what it says. Americana includes so much; you gotta read Edd Hurt’s essay, the way he laid it all out, because he talks about Folk, R&B, Blues, Rock&Roll, Country, Bluegrass. Americana includes all of the genres, but it also includes all different races.
And it includes story: quitting my job at 40. This book is a testament. This is what you can do when you follow your dreams.
me: Those are two really crucial messages, especially right now.
Pick up your beautiful copy of Americana Portrait Sessions at Vanderbilt University Press. Make sure and stroll through – they have a wonderful and diverse collection of books.
*my Covid 2020 project was a poetry chapbook called mycelium. I guess we all had something.
debora Ewing writes, paints, and screams at the stars because the world is still screwed up. She improves what she can with music collaboration, peer-review at Consilience Poetry Journal, or designing books for Igneus Press. Follow @DebsValidation on X and Instagram. Read her self-distractions at FolkWorks.org and JerryJazzMusician.com.
Diverse Americana – a photo journey with Jeff Fasano
What it takes: Quit your job, chronicle truth, and learn to let go of the reins