Album with John Fahey

A lost 1967 recording session with The Red Crayola and John Fahey.

Background

• In late June 1967, the Red Crayola traveled from Texas to California to perform at the Angry Arts and Berkeley Folk Music festivals
• John Fahey performed with the Red Crayola at the Berkeley Folk Festival on July 3, 1967
• Additionally, The Red Crayola opened for John Fahey on July 9, 1967
• The session took place at Sierra Sound Laboratories in July 1967

Retrospectives

Mayo Thompson, 2023

[John 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 where John knew people that recorded and worked and we record. Spent one evening and did four master tapes [...]

Steve Cunningham, 2011

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.

Mayo Thompson, 1996

We played the Berkeley Folk Festival in '67, and we recorded some material with John Fahey. And our record company went through the ceiling over this. They threatened not to bring us back from California, even though they had used our publishing royalties to fly us out here in the first place, which is illegal, I have subsequently found out. But they threatened not to bring us back. So Rick and Steve said, "You go to Frisco and get the tapes, and we're going back to Texas." So it became my job to do this, because I had started the band. So I came back up here and picked up the tapes, which were reluctantly handed over. We intended to try to do something with them. And then I had to take these tapes back to Texas, give them to the record company, and then bust up, that was the end of that.

Ben Graham, 2015

[...] The Red Crayola had fully intended to release an album from the sessions, but the recordings went into the IA vaults and like many of the labels' master tapes effectively disappeared for good. These recordings have never surfaced even on bootlegs, a huge loss to any enthusiast or student of 20th Century experimental music.

Mayo Thompson, 2016

Anyone knowing the whereabouts of the tape would be handsomely rewarded. And, yes, we would put it out. As for the recording session, we had a ball all night long. The label were against it because they were afraid of losing us. They threatened to suspend our contract and wouldn't fly us home unless I brought the tapes back. Bear in mind that Parable had just sold 50,000 copies with no advertising, just word of mouth. They weren't going to let us go just like that.

Mayo Thompson, 2023

[...] 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.

[...] I've also claimed that it would be very easy to fake these things. Y'know, Cunningham [and I] have discussed it a number of times, just for a joke, say, that we would get together and make some crazy noise and take John Fahey stuff and mix it in and [...] who would know? [...] Because it was not miraculous, it was fun to do. [...] He was looking for trouble, so were we.

Personnel

Speculated personnel:

• Frederick Barthelme
• Steve Cunningham
• Mayo Thompson
• John Fahey