Everyone loves a good comeback story, and the return of Gary Higgins has been one most dramatic and unlikely in recent memory. In 1973, Higgins released his debut album Red Hash, and then, following a stint in prison on drug charges, disappeared entirely from the public eye. Over the intervening years, a small but fervent group of fans came to consider Red Hash a lost psych-folk classic. Following a great deal of detective work, Drag City reissued the album in 2005 and Higgins returned to play some well-received live shows. In 2009, Drag City then released Seconds, Higgins first album of new material in more than three decades.
The only snag in the resurrection of Higgins' music career was that on Seconds, the backstory largely overshadowed the actual music. Time had been surprisingly kind to Higgins' gentle voice, but Seconds failed to recapture the magic glow of Red Hash, with stiff songwriting that too often settled into coffeehouse folk-rock clichés. So it seems a good decision that for the next stage of Higgins' musical rejuvenation Drag City has gone back to the beginning with A Dream a While Back, a short collection of songs recorded by Higgins back in 1970-71. And though these solo works are not as fleshed out nor quite as transporting as the highlights of Red Hash, they provide a fascinating document of a young songwriter finding his voice, and leave behind lingering questions about what might have been.
Oftentimes when an obscure album comes to be considered a cult classic, it can be easy to hear why it failed to find a larger audience in its own time-- it's too out-of-step, too innovative or forward-thinking, or just simply too personal and strange. But to me that has never seemed the case with Red Hash, an album that sounds resolutely of its time, and nearly as accessible as the folk-rock of Neil Young, Bert Jansch, or Paul Simon of the same era. And it certainly doesn't sound that foreign to modern ears familiar with the work of Elliott Smith or Ben Chasny, who memorably covered Red Hash's "Thicker Than a Smokey" on Six Organs of Admittance's School of the Flower.
Many of Higgins' songs on Red Hash concentrated on that slender line that exists between peaceful solitude and melancholic loneliness. These mixed emotions about being left alone with oneself are further heightened on A Dream a While Back. Whereas Red Hash was recorded with members of Higgins' backing band Wooden Wheel, on these six tracks his voice is accompanied almost solely by his own acoustic guitar. Recorded at The Old Chestnut Inn in Kent, CT-- a location, incidentally, that will soon be used as a drug rehab facility-- these songs have an intimate, fragile quality that encourages its listeners to draw their chairs in a little closer.
With archival material like this, it is always tempting to examine the songs for hints of foreshadowing, and it's easy to have a little shiver when Higgins sings such fatalistic lines as "Ragged edges will cut your hands, do you in and change your plans" on the opening "Stormy Weather". On the lovely "Waiting for You", Higgins raises his voice to a slightly higher register, his near-falsetto adding to the delicacy of his lonesome chorus. It should also be mentioned that by the time of these recordings he was already a very agile guitarist and, given the lo-fi nature of the production, the casual sophistication of his playing on tracks like "Laugh a Little" or "Oxygen" can catch the listener off guard.
All of the songs included here feature memorable if not exactly bold melodies, sounding in general like pieces that Higgins intended to come back to later and build upon with a full band. That he never quite got the opportunity to do so at the time feels like a raw deal for him and for us. Listening to this collection, I can't help but think there could be some killer cover versions to be made of these songs, either by younger musicians looking for top-shelf material or by Higgins himself, returned at last to the spotlight.
