The album, Celebrations for a Grey Day, was released in April of 1965. Surprisingly, almost half the songs on the album were instrumentals which showed off how he had advanced on his simple instrument and learned to weave it with Mimi’s supple guitar work with unique rhythms. Songs on the album include their most familiar tune, Pack Up Your Sorrows, the more complex Reno, Nevada, Richard’s ballad of Civil Rights martyrs Michael, Andrew, and James, and the title song.
Although folk music was being eclipsed on the radio and in many college dormitories by the British Invasion and rise of a new, sophisticated form of rock and roll, Celebrations for a Grey Day was a solid hit among folk fans. I owned a copy and it was among half a dozen albums that I nearly wore out.
Celebrations for a Grey Day stood out as a bold artistic move, at a time when the very notion of folk artists using electric instruments and bands was about to explode into a raging debate in the folk community. Mimi remains uncertain of how exactly those full-band arrangements came about, but acknowledges, “I hink Richard had a desire to move into the rock arena. The very first album we made, I think those musicians may have been chosen by Vanguard. There was RussSavakus; he was someone who just came in and picked up the music easily and was a nice guy, a pro, and sat in and backed us. That was sort of Vanguard-promoted. “I was not used to that kind of professionalism. I’ll never forget, when we finished our first session, and Russ Savakus wrapped up his bass, said goodnight, and left. And I thought, ‘Well! Where is he going? Aren’t we all gonna go hang out somewhere? Aren’t we gonna party now?’ But that’s how professional musicians behaved. He was a studio musician, he was probably on to another gig; I learned about that later. The other musicians, some kind of came with the company, were supplied for us, and others were friends that we had made along the way. Bruce was definitely a friend.”
Excerpt from Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers, by Richie Unterberger
“Reno Nevada,” its lyrics using the gambling town as a setting for a life in which there’s little left to lose. The grinding guitar riffs and Mimi’s winding, wordless backup vocal added to the majestically foreboding air of a song that might be Richard Farina’s best. Mimi reveals, surprisingly, that beloved jazz hipster Mose Allison “was gonna record that. I’m a Mose Allison fan, and so was Dick, but he never recorded it. I was so hopeful he would.”
Excerpt from Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers, by Richie Unterberger
No comments:
Post a Comment