“I haven't been to Europe in a while and I miss being there. I feel a connection, I feel comfortable there and I like the way there.”In 1988 and 1990, Mimi Fariña came to Germany for two club tours, accompanied by rock veteran Lowell Levinger aka "Banana". A live recording of the first trip has been released as a benefit CD for "Bread And Roses". What you can hear on it is a still natural and untrained folk voice. The album title: "Live in Germany".
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| February 1988 | touring with Banana in Germany, 1988 |
Banana: "I'm not quite the wise ass I once was thanks to her," he says. "She taught me a lot about being patient, polite and despite whatever might be going on, to be gracious about it. And she had a vivacious sense of humor. There's no human being on the planet I've giggled with more than I did with Mimi Fariña".
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Banana (Levinger Lowell) met Mimi around the Cambridge, Massachussetts folk scene in the early '60s when he was a member of the Youngbloods, the band that had a 1967 hit with the hippie anthem "Get Together" before leaving the East Coast and putting down roots in West Marin.
"I knew Mimi back in the day, but not really well," he says, explaining that they became friends and musical partners in 1973 after Janice La Beaux, manager of the Marshall Tavern, a rustic former venue on the North Marin coast, suggested that they try performing as a duo.
"She kept bugging us until we did, and, sure enough, we hit if off great," Levinger remembers. "All our licks went together nicely. She liked what I played and I liked her songs. It turned out we could sing really well in harmony and got along really well. It was amaizing."
Their first gig turned out to be a show for Mimi's newly founded Bread&Roses.
Banana: "I might be the oldest living Bread&Roses performer. That's something I'm very proud of - my ongoing association with the organization. I've never stopping doig gigs for them."
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| Mimi Fariña & Banana aka Lowell Levinger during a tour in Germany in 1988 Photo by film-maker Michael Kleff |
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| Mimi Fariña in Germany | Photos by Claude Marchand | Source |
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| February 9th, 1988 | Source prismafolkpforzheim |
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| February 9th 1988 | Source prismafolkpforzheim |
February 1988
2 February 1988 - Begininf of the Germany tour with Banana - Eppisburg, Eulenspiegel
3 February 1988 - Villingen, Volkshaus
4 February 1988 - Tübingen Deutsch-Amererikanischer-Jugendclub
5 February 1988 - Pepper's Cafe, Lindz/Rhein
7 February 1988 - Bochum, Museum
8 February 1988 - Köln, Liberales Zentrum
9 February 1988 - Pforzheim, Prisma Bottich
10 February 1988 - Gefängnis (prison)
11 February 1988 - Schwäbich-Gemünd, Kaffee Spielplatz
12 February 1988 - Geislingen, Rätselmühle
13 February 1988 - Göttingen, Nörgelbuff
Source: Douglas Cooke website - no longer online
The CD Mimi Fariña with Lowell Levinger (Banana from the Youngbloods) Live in Germany
Between the mid-1970s and her death in 2001, Mimi Fariña sang at numerous protests, worked tirelessly at Bread and Roses, played folk festivals, and released her last studio album in 1986, Mimi Fariña Solo. In 1988, she and her long-time friend Lowell (Banana) Levinger performed several shows at small clubs and in at least one prison in Germany at the invitation of producer and radio broadcaster Michael Kleff, who first met Fariña when he interviewed her at the 1985 Newport Folk Festival for his radio show on WDR/West German Broadcasting Corporation. When Kleff commented that she should come to Europe for a tour, Fariña said she would love to do so; two years later, Kleff organized such a tour for her and Levinger, and the duo played a successful thirteen dates over a two-week period in February 1988. On the night of February 7, 1988, Kleff recorded the WDR radio performance at the Landesmuseum in Bochum.
After a friend of Kleff's recent uneathed the tape of that show, it was digitized and sent to Levinger at his home in Inverness. After listening to the high quality of the recording, he began the process of turning it into a live album - Mimi Fariña with Lowell Levinger (Banana from The Youngbloods) - which was released in 2018.
"I thought this would be a great way to benefit Bread&Roses", he says.
Kleff sent him photos from the tour for the liner notes. Annie Potts of Swamp Street Design did the graphics and Ethan Turner mastered the CD's 15 tracks at Owl Mountain Studios in Inverness.
"This new album shows her incredible personality and talent, her grace and wit and intellect," Levinger says. "She's so gentle and generous and humorous and simpatico. And it just shines through."
The album is a perfect tribute to Fariña and her enduring contributions as a songwriter and singer, and the 15 songs on the album—most of them Fariña originals, but with some covers of songs by Jesse Winchester, Hoyt Axton, and David Olney, among others—convey the ringing clarity and richness of her voice, as well as her remarkable ability to deliver performances that reach deep into our hearts as she sings of loss and despair, joy and hope, grace and love.
The album opens with “Best of Friends,” a spare song whose cascading piano notes float beneath Fariña’s lilting vocals; there’s a resonant purity in the song that echoes down through the ages in its paean to a friendship that lasts through the exhilarating highs and sometimes bitter lows of life. In some ways, this one song flawlessly captures the intimacy of folk songs at their best. She introduces her performance of Richard’s classic “Children of Darkness” by saying “it’s still relevant 20 years later.” Her alto vocals carry this ballad, which resembles a Scottish folk ballad, higher and higher as she conveys darkness and pleads for love in the verses of the song. Fariña radiates brightness as she spryly skates through Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now,” while the folk jazz of “Dandelion” bears a resemblance to Laura Nyro’s late songs.
In her introduction to “Old Women,” Fariña provides the story of Bread and Roses before she launches into a portrait of a care-worn woman in whose life drift “happiness and despair.” “Come Get Me Shoes” sparkles with Levinger’s Flamenco guitar as it dances through a tango between lover and beloved, while her take on Hoyt Axton’s “Less Than the Song” jauntily rides along Levinger’s silvery banjo.
She introduces “Sad Cities” by saying she wrote after she had been in New York City a little too long—“about one week”—but the bright song finds the joy in the loneliness of the city, while her spiraling take on David Olney’s “If My Eyes Were Blind” climbs steadily out of the darkness into the fervid atmosphere that celebrates what’s left behind after loss and our ability to see beyond the veil.
The album closes with a singalong on Jesse Winchester’s “Defying Gravity.”
Mimi Fariña with Lowell Levinger (Banana from The Youngbloods) Live in Germany conveys the intimacy of Fariña’s and Levinger’s performance from that night in 1988, and we can be grateful to Kleff and Levinger for capturing it on tape and releasing it. The album is a gift to us of Mimi Fariña’s presence and helps us celebrate her beautiful legacy and life.
Mimi Fariña with Lowell Levinger (Banana from The Youngbloods) Live in Germany conveys the intimacy of Fariña’s and Levinger’s performance from that night in 1988, and we can be grateful to Kleff and Levinger for capturing it on tape and releasing it. The album is a gift to us of Mimi Fariña’s presence and helps us celebrate her beautiful legacy and life.
"I had known Mimi and Dick a little back in Cambridge in the early sixties, but in 1973 a mutual friend, Janice Laboe, suggested that Mimi and I get together musically. We did and it worked. Bread & Roses was just starting up and we did lots of Bread & Roses gigs. Mimi was a fantastic guitar player and arranger of guitar accompaniments. She was self-sufficient and really didn't "need" me. Her solo performance could stand quite nicely on its own. But I added variety and spontaneity and new ideas, and we co-wrote some tunes and certainly co-arranged all the tunes. And it's more fun and more comforting to have a compadre on the road rather than toughing it out alone.
Mimi always placed Bread & Roses ahead of her performing career, so we didn't work a whole lot, but we managed to play the Northeast and Rockies and Midwest and Northwest and Southern and Northern California and Alaska and Hawaii and a few other places. Plus, we went to Germany twice, playing folk clubs, town halls, a prison, radio shows, concerts, etc. We played a lot of gigs over a fifteen to twenty year period. I played guitar, piano and banjo and sang harmonies. The Bread & Roses Festivals at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley were exemplary of the class act way to do it and I was lucky enough to be in the house band for many of them. Anything Mimi conceived was undertaken with class and dignity and humor and fun. And... success!! Maybe not monetarily every time but in the more important ways, where it really counts: SUCCESS !!
I learned a lot from Mimi about manners and grace and when to rebel and when to behave. She taught by example and sometimes by admonition. We encountered frustrating travel conditions and also encountered wonderful people and experiences. We always seemed to eat very well. And there always seemed to be plenty of laughter and a fair amount of giggling as well."
Source: Douglas Cook's website
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