The Old Folkie Gets a Second Chance

Gary Higgins is grateful. His only album, the 1973 psychedelicfolk record "Red Hash," which for more than three decades was often spoken of but rarely heard due to small pressing and nonexistent distribution, was reissued on CD by the Chicago-based label Drag City in 2005. Now he's planning another album and playing gigs.

"Red Hash" lived up to its legend upon reissue, and the attention Higgins has since received has been unlike anything he and his friends imagined when they hastily recorded the 13 songs over two days in the fall of 1972, finishing just before Higgins entered prison to serve a 13-month sentence for selling marijuana. Now Higgins is about to retire as a nurse at a Connecticut hospital so he can focus solely on his music — something he hasn't done in more than 30 years.

For the record release party in New York in 2005, Higgins assembled as many of the musicians from the "Red Hash" session as he could find. It was this group of musicians' first New York City show since they frequented the Greenwich Village scene in the late 1960s as Random Concept and, later, as Wooden Wheel in the early '70s. After an arduous search, Higgins found cellist Maureen Welsh living just 30 miles from him in Canaan, Conn.; he'd never lost touch with guitarist Dave Beaujon; and Terry Fenton, the keyboardist, was also brought back, as was the guitarist David Vandebogart. But the group needed a drummer, so Higgins turned to his 26-year-old son, Graham.

Speaking by telephone from his home, Higgins explained the decision to enlist his son.

"I needed somebody who was willing to learn the [drum] parts as I played them, and that's not easy to find. He's a good guitar player, and he's got to do what I say because he's my son. He's added a whole other avenue to the group and some youth."

In fact, Higgins never wanted his son to play music, and considering his own path in the industry, it's no surprise why. "It's a tough business and it's a lonely business, and you get your hope up about a lot of things. I wanted him to go in another direction, but he didn't."

Higgins had himself all but abandoned music in the decades following his release from prison, taking regular jobs and recording on the side in his small home studio. He was not aware that "Red Hash" was steadily growing in reputation and collectibility, even though original pressings were going for as much as $200 on the Internet in the 1990s. Now, he can't wait to get plugged back in.

"My personal goal is to get another CD out pretty quick," Higgins said. "I've got a ton of stuff I'm dying to get out there." In fact, he is most enjoying advances in recording technology at the moment. "Sometimes I go overboard now. But having lack of control and all that [with analog equipment], there were some things on ["Red Hash"] I would have done differently but couldn't. But now you can easily change a tune and do it over."

"Red Hash" is unique for the quality of its recording, and Higgins appreciates that without the limitations of the equipment that he used then, the recording session might not have been completed in time.

At his show tonight at the Mercury Lounge, Higgins will divide the song lineup equally between "Red Hash" favorites, such as the lovely "I Pick Notes From the Sky" and "Thicker Than a Smokey," and new music. "New" is not exactly correct, however; while Higgins will play these songs for an audience for the first time, he has been playing some of them for decades. Higgins never stopped writing music, he says, though for a time he turned away from the psychedelic-folk sound of his youth. "I have a very strong rock 'n' roll side, and I love to play drums. For several years I had a bass but I didn't have an acoustic guitar. I'm kind of disappointed that I gave up on myself. But others didn't."

Now, he admits, it "turned out to be a good thing. I'm hoping to find an avenue for all of it."

Higgins will play tonight at the Mercury Lounge (217 E. Houston St. at Avenue A, 212-260-4700).