So about that long-awaited John Fahey box set: It will finally be released on October 11.

Last year, we reported that Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965) would possibly be released in August 2010.

Dust-to-Digital is now taking pre-orders for the box set, which contains very early Fahey recordings and a book of essays about the influential guitarist and composer. Here’s what you get for $80:

The five CDs feature 115 tracks, most of which are available on CD for the first time. The audio was remastered from Joe Bussard’s reel-to-reel tapes to achieve pristine sound quality. As for the accompanying book, the list of scholars who contributed essays includes Eddie Dean, Claudio Guerrieri, Glenn Jones, Malcolm Kirton, John’s collaborator Mike Stewart and John’s childhood friend R. Anthony Lee. Byron Coley contributed a poem about John, and Douglas Blazek’s 1967 interview with Fahey is published here for the first time.

Fahey was born in D.C. in 1939 and died in 2001 in Salem, Ore., after undergoing sextuple-bypass surgery.