'Red Hash' Reborn...

Heartwarming story by Eric Danton in today's Courant about singer/songwriter Gary Higgins' album Red Hash, released in 1973 while he was in prison for a drug sting, and rediscovered/re-released on CD recently, selling over 10,000 copies.

....In October 1972, Higgins and a former high school classmate were charged with selling hashish, and Higgins faced time in prison. His impending sentence awakened in him a sense of now-or-never urgency to document his music. t seemed like it was time to get these songs down or they might never get down," Higgins says. His musical partners in Random Concept and Wooden Wheel helped flesh out his songs for "Red Hash," which they recorded in a mere 40 hours at a studio in Harwinton. "When Gary's bust came up, there was sort of an outpouring of support for him, like, let's get his stuff on an album, we don't know how long he's going to be away," says Terry Fenton, 64, who played keyboards with Random Concept and contributed to "Red Hash." ...Eventually, a burned-CD version of the album made its way to a publicist at Drag City Records, a hip independent label in Chicago. Intrigued by the sound of the long-lost recording, he tracked down Higgins with the intention of re-releasing the album. In June 2005, 32 years after its debut, Drag City issued "Red Hash" for the first time on CD, to glowing write-ups from Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times and Mojo magazine. - complete article -

On the ctnow.com article site you can also listen to three cuts from the album. All Music Guide gives Red Hash 4 stars, saying ".....there's a laid-back feel that seems two or three years out of time (or behind the times), like an exhausted hangover from the wilder peaks of the psychedelic era. Relative to this collector-oriented genre, however, the record's very much above average."

Tour dates:
Friday, January 19 New York, NY Mercury Lounge
Friday, January 26 New London, CT Oasis
Saturday, January 27 Providence, RI AS220