Wayward: Just Another Life to Live

"Magical and transporting... Wayward proves that Bunyan has lived the best possible life, on her own idiosyncratic terms," notes Maggie O'Farrell. Sinéad Gleeson calls it "A gorgeous account of outsiderness and survival: a map of how to live outside the boundaries and and striving for an authentic artistic life. A quietly defiant and moving work." Benjamin Myers adds, "An epic in miniature... I loved - and lived - every sentence."

In 1968, Vashti Bunyan abandoned everything and everyone she knew in London to embark on a journey with a horse, wagon, dog, guitar, and her then-partner. They undertook the lengthy trip to the Outer Hebrides in an odyssey of discovery and heartache, filled with the elation of freedom and the grind of everyday reality, sleeping in woods and battling freezing winters and homelessness. Along the way, Vashti composed the songs that would lead to the recording of her 1970 album, Just Another Diamond Day. Its lilting lyrics and guitar work conveyed an innocent wonder at the world around her, while subtly concealing a deeper turmoil beneath the surface.

From an unconventional childhood in post-war London to a nascent career in mid-sixties pop — which included recording a single penned by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — to the despair of failing to gain traction with her own songs, she ultimately rejected the music world entirely and left it behind. After receding into musical obscurity for thirty years, the rediscovery of her recordings in 2000 offered Vashti a second chance to write, record, and perform once more. Wayward, Just Another Life to Live, one of the great hippie myths of the 1960s, reworks the narrative of a barefoot girl on the road, detailing a life lived at full throttle from the very beginning, revealing what it means to alter one's course and her emotional struggle to regain control of her own life.