John Fahey & Red Crayola Collaboration Album (lost unreleased collaboration album between John Fahey and the Red Crayola; 1967)
Red Crayola promotional image taken at the Berkeley Folk Festival, 1967.
Status: Lost
In late June to early July 1967, Houston experimental rock band, Red Crayola, assisted by their record company, traveled from Texas to California to perform at the Angry Arts and Berkeley Folk Music festivals during the Summer of Love. Footage of these performances are also lost media as KQED who recorded and broadcasted them at the time seem to have lost the tapes.[1] During a performance at the Berkeley Folk Festival, they were granted permission to meet up with American guitarist, John Fahey, who was also present at the event for a collaborative performance, which mixed Fahey's folk music with the band's noisy avant-garde drone improvisations. The performance was met with mixed reception.
Due to the band's avant-garde sound, the announcer for KQED mistook it for an equipment malfunction or simply the band tuning up. As a result, he spoke over the introduction to the performance, with the cameraman also failing to film the first 12 minutes of it.[2]
Initial Performance
Shortly after the Berkeley Folk Festival, Fahey enjoyed the time he spent with the Red Crayola and so they were invited to open for him at the New Orleans House on July 9th, 1967.
“...the New Orleans House got a hold of John and asked him to play. He said he would if his friends the Red Crayola could also.”
- Berkeley Barb, 1967.[3]
What ensued was the venue being emptied in less than 10 minutes and the Red Crayola being paid 10 dollars to stop playing.
“[Fahey] invited us to play, open for him at a club called the New Orleans House [...] We emptied the joint in ten minutes and they gave us ten dollars to stop, and we stopped. Then we decided we should try to record this nonsense for posterity. So we went to Sierra Sound […] spent one evening and did four master tapes [...]”
- Mayo Thompson, 2023 [Psychedelic Baby Magazine][4]
About the Lost Tape
The lost recording session took place at Sierra Sound Laboratories in July 1967 and was set up by Fahey and his then-manager Ed Denson, the album is reported to be 16 track reels worth and done on four master tapes. These tapes were then handed to International Artists after they threatened to abandon the group in Berkeley if they did not hand them over.[5]
Bassist Steve Cunningham details that Barry Melton from the popular psychedelic band Country Joe & the Fish was also present in the studio:
When we were in CA for the 1967 festival, Ed Denson who was Country Joe & The Fish's manager and also John Fahey's, set up a recording session for John and us at Ed's studio [...] a day or so before we were to leave town. I remember Barry Melton of the Fish being there too. A few hours of tape were rolled as the Crayola did free-form stuff and the others joined in with whatever struck their fancy (our standard modus operandi). After the session we told IA [International Artists] about it, but instead of being pleased they focused on the legalisms around our being under contract to IA. They demanded the tapes from Denson, who surrendered them as requested. The tapes have sat idle for decades.
[...] IA had already experienced a problem with the 13th Floor Elevators, who had previously recorded an entire album for another label, so when they heard about the new Red Crayola recordings they went ballistic... To avoid any possible legal implications Mayo was dispatched to collect the tapes and deliver them to IA. Despite searching through the stash of surviving IA tapes nothing remains of the Crayola/Fahey collaboration but hopefully someone has kept a safety copy which might surface one day.[6]
Potential Leads
A White Rose article from the early 2000s details that the tapes may have been owned by a Billie Joe Dillard who was reportedly one of the owners of the International Artists company. However, Dillard's whereabouts are unknown.[7]
Content
Mayo Thompson described in an interview that the album was not in Fahey's traditional style, and it was hard to distinguish who was doing what. Additionally, he wished that he had secretly made a copy of the tapes to give to IA, as he had managed to keep the recordings for the performances he did at the Berkeley Folk Festival which were then released in 1998 by Drag City.
[...] I was foolish. I should have just taken the four boxes [...] Now these tapes are gone. [A] guy who loves John Fahey [...] came to me one night at a gig in Massachusetts, "where are the Fahey tapes!?" Had to explain to him that, y'know, John was doing, quote unquote, "our thing". He was not fingerpicking, it was, y'know. I'm not sure if you would be able to know which bits of the noise were his if you were looking for authorship.[8]
Thompson has spent decades looking for the tapes and has mentioned in a Reddit AMA that anyone who comes across it would be "handsomely rewarded."[9]
Personnel
- Rick Barthelme
- Steve Cunningham
- Mayo Thompson
- John Fahey
- Barry Melton
References
- ↑ https://sites.northwestern.edu/bfmf/the-counterculture-years-1967-1970/
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/rainbowquestfolk00cohe/page/272/mode/1up
- ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28033132?seq=8
- ↑ https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2023/10/red-krayola-interview-mayo-thompson.html
- ↑ https://white-rose.net/mystere6.html
- ↑ God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It (Sonic Boom 2011 Remaster) Booklet
- ↑ https://white-rose.net/mystere6.html
- ↑ https://falloutpodcast3557.podbean.com/e/falloutpodcast-ep74-and-all-who-sail-in-her/
- ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/4v21u0/comment/d5us4vh/?context=3