Eric von Schmidt: Eric Sings von Schmidt. (1964) Prestige 7384Richard wrote a short poem for each of the songs on this album. All songs are by Von Schmidt, and they all have lyrics, but where you would expect the printed lyrics on the back, you find instead poems by Fariña (although the relation between the song and the poem is not always clear). Thus, this was, like the proposed illustrated novel, another innovative Fariña/von Schmidt collaboration fusing two genres--but this one was actually completed. There is also a poem called, "SOME NOTES, A LONG TIME COMING: for Kay," that doesn't go with any of the songs. The liner notes are dated Dec. 1964. The album had two different covers, both illustrated by von Schmidt.
Apparently there was also a Japanese CD: P-VIN, 1999 (UPC: 4995879053058)
Richard Lockmiller and Jim Connor recorded their first album on Folklore Records in London, and Fariña met them through Tom Costner, who produced both the Richard & Jim album as well as Dick Fariña & Eric Von Schmidt. Through this connection, Fariña wrote the liner notes for Richard and Jim's second album, pictured here. Fariña's notes consist of a brief biography of Richard and Jim told in a southern style, along with a few comments on some of the songs. Fariña mentions that Richard and Jim "headed West just in time to make a wedding on the coast and give the guests a chance to hear what they were up to. They'd carried an old wrought iron kettle all the way from Alabama. They gave it to the bride and groom, said so long and sang their way right into the Capitol recording studio." This curiously irrelevant wedding tangent evidently refers to Dick and Mimi's own wedding in California.
Because this album is somewhat rare, I've include a bigger picture of the cover. Click here for more details.
Richard & Mimi Fariña: Reflections in a Crystal Wind
Fariña of course wrote the liner notes of the two albums he recorded with Mimi.
Fariña wrote a nice poem for the back cover of this album. It was not included in Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone, although I think it's one of his better poems. It is included on the CD reissue.
For this album Fariña wrote a longish essay on the evolution of poetry into folk music as experienced by his generation. He showed a McLuhanesque awareness of the power of the new electronic media, similar to Peter Stampfel's comments in the liner notes to the Holy Modal Rounders' first album. The Singer Songwriter Project essay was reprinted in Crawdaddy magazine (vol. 1, no. 3, March 28, 1966) under the title, "Your Very Own Name," and fortunately it was also included in the CD re-issue.
(Reissued by Collector's Choice in 2006)
Mark Spoelstra was an old friend of Joan Baez; they dated in high school. Fariña met Spoelstra at the Big Sur Folk Festival where Richard & Mimi performed their first professional gig in June of 1964. In these liner notes Fariña recalls his meeting with Spoelstra at a "seminar on the how-comes of New Folk Music" that attended the Festival, and he praises Spoelstra's political and musical integrity. Cover photo by William S. Harvey.
Fariña wrote biographical notes as well as a poem for Paul Arnoldi's album. Paul has graciously allowed me to reprint the poem here, and he even sent me a copy of the manuscript!
Click here to see the manuscript of this poem.
Click here to see the back cover and a detail of
the front cover.
Note: Fariña was also a Pisces (born March 8th, 1937), which he called the "smiling sign" in the last line of the original version.
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Paul Arnoldi is a Pisces. When the signs of Saturn, Mercury, and maybe Mars are in his fish's favor, and the night is swimming rings around an easy earth, you can find him eating violets in the darkness, even leaping in a loincloth, dancing on the cobbles of another's mind, singing songs of childhood, blue balloons, cars that grin like cheshire cats, and marble moons, and things that go unseen to colder eyes. He knows a dog that flies; and when he cries, the tears are crystal stars-- which unlike ours fall out and up instead of foolish down.
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He wanders like a clown who lost his carnival among the suburbs of some western town, but doesn't care who finds it there. He has a house called Daydream, a piglet for a friend, a phoenix on his arm, a flower in his shoe, some heather in his hair, a hobbit who's not there, an owl that fails to stare, a most peculiar bat who whispers where it's at when salesmen come to call and linger in the hall before they ring the bell that makes no sound at all. At all at all at all. --Richard Fariña
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