Found long-lost Gary Higgin a pile under the desk

This record Red Hash was lost for, oh, maybe 30 years...a whispered-about folk classic recorded just before Gary Higgins was hauled off to jail. Ben Chasny dug up the songwriter (and the music, subsequently released on Chasny's label Drag City) and now Higgins sometimes even plays live (I saw him at SXSW once, and gotta say, if he takes that long to tune, it's no wonder he's only cut three albums in 40 years). So yeah, I didn't lose the album for that long. It's probably only been on my floor for 3-4 years, but it's good to have it back.



In other good news, I figured out Skype (I'm not expecting a prize for over-50 use of technology or anything, just saying), and had a video chat with my son last weekend, an unexpected joy. The big storms had just cleared over Chicago, and Sean had, being my son, just gotten back from a run through the apocalypse (and almost, per facebook, got himself blown off Navy Pier). The other cool thing (besides going for a jog through the tornado watch) that my son did this weekend was try out for the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival. He did something from Romeo and Juliet and his Trinculo monologue ("man or fish") from the Tempest and sang something by Scott Allen. It was for the regular company, not an internship, so it would be surprising if anything came of it, but how great that he tried. I should mention, maybe, that he did not get an audition slot when he applied, but went anyway on Saturday to see if they had walk-ins and they did. That kind of thing will pay off someday I think, and I am prouder of his grit than his talent (and, as you probably can surmise, I am plenty proud of his talent).

So onward and upward. Maybe I'll get paid for something this week.

Three noise bands and Gary Higgins walk into the Flywheel...

My review of last week's show Man Forever show at the Flywheel is up now at Blurt:

I'm driving to Indiana tomorrow and will be online intermittently at best.

Man Forever Live

So I went last night down to the Flywheel in Easthampton to see Man Forever and Gary Higgins and a couple of other bands.  Man Forever, you might have heard, is John Colpitts' mostly drumming project (he's also Kid Millions in Oneida), while Gary Higgins is the man behind lovely, shadowy, long-lost Red Hash, one of the great unjustly buried folk rock albums from the early 1970s.  You might not think they have much in common, but actually I think they're from the same town in Connecticut.  Anyway, I'm writing about this for Blurt, so I don't want to shoot my whole wad here, but it was a very interesting night. 

I have not written anything about Man Forever (yet, working on it), but I interviewed Gary Higgins for Splendid when Drag City finally located him and reissued Red Hash a few years ago.  Here's the piece, if you want to read it. 

Also on the bill a kind of cool saxiophone/feedback/tape fuckery/film imagery project from a guy named Benjamin Miller and a local improv/experimental outfit (with Chris Cooper, who has been in a million bands and is also the fire marshall at the Flywheel, apparently) called Barn Owl.  This is not the drony, hazy Barn Owl now on Thrill Jockey, but another thing entirely.  There, I'm going to go write something intelligble about this whole evening now...just wanted to put the photos up. 

Am I shallow enough to care about this? You bet.

Grayson Currin quotes an old interview I did with Gary Higgins in his not-very-favorable review of the songwriter’s first album of new material in 40-some years. I am oddly touched that anyone still reads anything from Splendid, which, in retrospect, was the best music-writing gig I ever had. (It was unpaid and an unending amount of work, but I could interview anyone I wanted to and it would run within a month, sometimes within days.)

Here’s the Pitchfork review (a 3.2, ouch!).


And here’s my interview with Gary.