Tone Glow 211: Gary Higgins
An interview with the folk singer-songwriter about his 1973 LP 'Red Hash', smoking pot at Jewish summer camp, and his upcoming show at Chicago's Psych Fest
Gary Higgins
Gary Higgins (b.1948) is a folk singer-songwriter born in Sharon, Connecticut. Early on, Higgins played in a rock band called The Random Concept, which initially featured Simeon Coxe of Silver Apples before the group went through various lineup changes. Higgins is largely known for his 1973 private-press LP Red Hash, a lustrous psych-folk album that was largely unknown until Drag City reissued it in 2005. Higgins’ debut was the product of a pot bust—he knew he’d serve time in person, and consequently recorded songs in a quick 40 hours with an understanding that he might never have another chance. In the years following the reissue, Higgins has played various shows—both solo and with The Random Concept—and will play at the Chicago Psych Fest this weekend. Drag City has also released an album of newer material called Seconds (2009) and an EP of older, unfinished songs called A Dream A While Back (2011). Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Higgins on the phone on February 11th, 2026 to discuss his childhood, the guitarists who influenced his fingerpicking style, and the pop stars he once backed.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Can you tell me about your childhood? What was it like?
Gary Higgins: I originally lived in Salisbury, Connecticut in a place called Mount Riga. My grandfather managed a knife-handle and axe-handle company up there. I was too young to have cared about any of that, but I went to the space often because it was an easy walking distance from our house. I remember a lot of walks and things like that, but for most of my childhood, I was in Lime Rock, and it was very rural—it couldn’t have been much rural-er (laughter). There weren’t too many families, but fortunately there were some kids my age and my siblings’ age. I don’t have any bad memories of it at all.
What’s something that city folk would not expect or know about living in a super rural area?
In the city, you get out in the street and you can go anywhere and within 20 feet you can find a couple places to eat and shop, whereas where I lived, we had a general store for a little while but it was tiny. If you wanted to do any grocery shopping, it was a half-hour ride. It was mostly trees and grass and lawns and spattered homes. If I lived in the city, I don’t think I would be as laid-back as I tend to be. Where I’m living right now is about five miles from where my parents grew up. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else at this point, and it’s still a pain to go to places because anywhere that has any city life is at least an hour away, but I’m used to that.
Did you spend a lot of time in nature?
I don’t think I appreciated it but I was certainly involved in it constantly (laughter). I got hit by a car when I was on my bicycle in third grade—that was my stupidity. This was by my parents’ house. I can remember my next-door neighbor had a daughter and she was about the same age as me. We used to climb trees all the time, and we climbed a fairly large pine tree once in the back of her parents’ house. We decided it was a bright move to use the branches to cross from one tree to the next, but we got stuck. We couldn’t really go anywhere and we had to call for help. Her father had to climb up the tree and he managed to grab me but the branch that his daughter was on broke and—honest to God—he caught her by the hair. At the time, it felt like we were up above 50 feet, but it was probably about 20. So there were lots of crazy adventures and doing things because of the area—rock climbing, tree climbing, all this was second nature. I didn’t appreciate any of this back then, but I think that changed in my 20s when I realized how good I had it.
Given that you’re living in the same area where you grew up, what sort of things have changed? Are there certain things you miss?
The onset of supermarkets and malls really did away with a lot of the small-town businesses. This town I lived in was small but used to have two thriving grocery stores, and they went out of business 30 years ago because they couldn’t compete. These small-town stores and mom-and-pop businesses are all gone. This area is now almost entirely a suburb—people moved out of New York and bought a lot of the properties. Two of my neighbors are like that. They’re all really nice people, but it’s not exactly the same; this is a second or third home for them. That happened to this whole area because it’s not that far from New York City—about an hour and a half—and there’s trains and stuff. So it’s changed quite a bit in terms of who lives there, but not so much physically. A lot of the young people had to move out because there were no jobs for them and they couldn’t afford the properties; it’s more of an older area than what it used to be.
What was the general sentiment of those around you when these supermarkets and malls came in?
I think in general people were very happy that they had a choice; they gravitated towards those places. Instead of having only one type of bread, there were multiple (laughter). That was really exciting for people. But it escalated—it went from supermarkets to malls and that really wiped down the small-town businesses.
Was there a point at which you decided to start playing music?
I started out playing the French horn, and this was in the school orchestra. I never got very good at that, but nobody was any good (laughter). There were only about 12 to 15 students and we were awful. That instrument was not for me, and it’s really difficult to practice by yourself—I mostly enjoyed the group aspect of playing. So it wasn’t all that interesting to do and I left that fairly quickly, but I knew there was some spark inside of me for music. In the early to mid-60s, the folk music scene really jumped out at everyone. Rock and roll was what it was, but the “cooler” people gravitated towards folk music. And when that took place, it became a really big thing for me. That’s when I got a guitar. I saw, relatively quickly, that I had an affinity for it and I just wanted to have more. Early in my music career, I was in a band called The Random Concept with Simeon Coxe [of Silver Apples]. He came from New York City with his wife at the time, and we worked at a Jewish camp not too far from where I live. That’s where I met him—I worked there for a while.
Do you remember the first folk musicians who really wowed you?
Doc Watson’s guitar playing was important, Dave Van Ronk was a big influence. Those two were the biggest for me because the fingerpicking style was really interesting to me, but there was even The Kingston Trio, and Odetta, too. Doc Watson is an incredible player and I was fortunate to see him play once. He played live with his son in Great Barrington, Massachusetts at a theater like 25 or 30 years ago. My son went with me. Doc Watson could still play his ass off, it was unbelievable—he must’ve been in his early 80s.
Do you remember the first concerts you went to?
There was a place up in Massachusetts where they’d have some concerts. I saw Jim Kweskin Jug Band up there, and I saw John Hammond up there too, but I wasn’t a kid—I was in my late teens or early 20s. It was really electrifying to see these people I listened to on records in real life. I remember seeing The Band play, and I always liked them, but I was really impressed by how powerful they were. Their records didn’t come off as having much power—they came off as being well-crafted—and I was blown away by how different and great it was. It only made me like them more. With the early concerts, I don’t remember a lot about the performances per se, probably because I was so overwhelmed about being able to see these shows at all. I was younger than most people, and I think my brother took me. I have two older brothers and a younger brother and sister. My oldest brother—he’s 6 years older than me—is responsible for my exposure to just about everything. I remember when he got a stereo and it was an unbelievable piece of equipment—a stereo phonograph and stereophonic records! It was amazing.
You mentioned that cool people were into folk music, I’m assuming your brother fell into this camp?
Not that oldest brother, he was more straight. The brother in between my oldest brother and me, who’s 3 years older than me, was more on the cool side. At the time, denim jackets were unusual but the cool thing to wear if you were into the folk scene. You’d smoke a little bit of pot, too. He exposed me to a lot of music, and he worked at Camp Freedmen, where me and Simeon worked. There was a lot of folk music there—I was exposed to a lot.
Can you tell me more about this camp?
The camp was basically a getaway for the Jewish people in New York. It was a camp, so there was a place to stay for the weekend, and there were events—talent shows and whatnot. I met people, got exposed to others, people who played guitar showed me chords and how to do other things—it was great. I worked there whenever they came up, and it was a weekend thing from Friday to Sunday. I can’t say how frequent it was, but it was probably two or three times a month. I was a dishwasher, mainly. I started playing guitar in 1962 or 1963, so I was working there around then.
Do you remember the first song you played on guitar?
Probably the fingerpicking song “Freight Train.” I was really interested in fingerpicking; just strumming chords is nice and it has its place, but fingerpicking always grabbed my attention and I always wanted to learn more. That song was a fairly easy one to learn, and there was also “Cocaine” by Dave Van Ronk.
When was the first time you smoked pot?
It was definitely at that camp, and I think I was a sophomore in high school. It was definitely a no-no, but that made it even more exciting. Simeon was probably the main influence, but it was him and his wife and both my older brothers and a whole bunch of other people who were there. That was quite a popular thing to do there: smoking pot and drinking Ballantine Ale (laughter). I didn’t really care about the communal aspect of smoking, but I really liked how I felt while I played guitar, I really liked eating food—the munchies—and I liked the laughter. It was really exciting to play while high; it was like changing from one dimension to five. Like, oh, that’s what that chord sounds like. It really opened up doors for me, and that’s what mattered—it was important for me creatively.
When did you start writing your own songs?
I didn’t start until two or three years later, probably around ’64 or ’65. I might’ve dabbled before that but I don’t think anything got completed.
That’s quite some time until your debut album, Red Hash (1973). What was going on in the interim?
I was playing in a couple bands, and The Random Concept was one of them. That actually took me away from folk and into rock and roll. That took up a lot of that space and time; we moved to New York and played there and it was very exciting. And while folk music was on the back burner, it was always part of who I was. I played in that band and then around 1970, we did an offshoot—a couple us from that band and then a couple other people who ended up on Red Hash—did an acoustic band called Wooden Wheel. It was all acoustic music with a couple guitars, cello, flute, and mandolin.
It’s kind of a funny story, when we first formed The Random Concept, we were three guitar players. Nobody could play anything else. We divvied up the responsibilities and I liked the bass guitar, so I played that. Dave Beaujon ended up playing rhythm guitar, Jake Bell ended up playing lead, we had Simeon, and then we got a drummer. At that point, I didn’t totally give up acoustic music, but I hardly played any. Rock and roll was just way more exciting, and people wanted to come hear it—people got moved by it easier—so it was more fun to play.
What did The Random Concept sound like back then?
Most of it was cover music. We did The Rolling Stones, Blues Magoos, and we did some of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s songs—we ended up living in the same hotel as they did, is why. We started writing songs around then, but just as we started doing that, the whole thing fell apart; me and Jake and Dave ended up moving back here, getting a different drummer, and we started a whole different thing.
Why did it fall apart? Was it because of relationships between band members?
It actually was. We all sang and played and we had a lead singer who was Simeon. We all wanted to sing as well, and I love the guy to this day—he did a lot for us—but vocally, he wasn’t the greatest. We had great voices, and we all wanted to sing. Also, the drummer we had was absolutely talented but he was a maniac—lots of drugs, lots of drinkin’, and we got tired of him showing up drunk to gigs. We mostly got tired of that. And we loved him too, and the parting was friendly, but we wanted more. Simeon went on to form Silver Apples and Ronnie [Bailey] played with a couple successful soul bands in New York for a while, but then I don’t know what happened to him. I know he did a lot of time in prison for armed robbery or something—he was a nice guy, but he had a rough life.
So this was around ’67 or ’68, and with this new iteration of The Random Concept, the whole music scene had really blossomed and there were a lot of venues within driving distance. We would work on original stuff every weekend. We’d have these compositions, but we would have these long jams that would take off in the middle of a song, and we’d come back by the end of them. Everything we wanted to do seemed possible—whether it was good or not is a different story (laughter), but it was possible. We had a really big following, and the response to what we did was really good, which made things more fun. It went well.
The Random Concept still plays, though not as much. Terry [Fenton] lives in Boston and he comes up here, but not very often. And none of us are getting any younger—I just turned 78. Over time, we got a lot better at recording, especially at mixing down, but all of us had families and children, so we had to balance everything pretty carefully to keep food in everyone’s stomach. We all managed, though.
I wanted to talk about Red Hash (1973). I know the story behind it, where you recorded it shortly before you had to go to prison for weed. You have a song like “I Can’t Sleep At Night,” and the opening lines are pretty brutal: “I can’t sleep at all/You know why?/’Cause underneath it all/I could die.” Were you having existential crises? What was going on then?
That came out of a breakup I had with a woman. That got written the evening I was in the middle of all that. I like the song a lot, and while the words didn’t come out so positive, I was never like that—and I hope never get like that. I was just having a bad time, and I was broken.
Were a lot of the songs on the album about this breakup?
No. A lot of the songs were written before that, maybe even a couple years. The idea behind the album was that I knew that I better get these songs recorded because I didn’t know if I’d have another chance to record them again. I was getting the tunes together that were “good enough” to do, and recording them all at one time meant that they didn’t come from one particular period. Most of the songs were written between 1970 and 1972.
Can you talk about the opening track, “Thicker Than a Smokey”? You’re talking about traveling and trying to find yourself.
A lot of the songs kind of just happened. The words that fit with them, that came through… well, I don’t remember what I was thinking about at the time. It wasn’t like I was longing to take a trip to Mexico or anything; they were just words.
So these were just stories you were telling.
Yes, they were stories that self-developed.
This includes “Unable to Fly” then, where you’re talking about your brother and mother?
Yup.
And you never worked on a farm, as mentioned on “Down On the Farm”?
Well, I actually did work on a farm (laughter). One of my best friends at the time had a farm and I worked there a couple of summers. I learned how to run all the equipment—tractors, hay balers, stuff like that. This was a guy who owned the farm and he came from a New England family—this was generations of farmers. He had this one type of tractor that was really old—it had these huge wheels on the back with metal cleats on them. We had to crank the thing up to start it, and it took all your strength to do that. That was the coolest equipment I could recall; when you drove down the road, it left cleat marks in the asphalt. It’s funny—my sister and her husband ended up buying that farm, and they converted it into a nice home.
You’re talking about farming, and I wanted to ask about your relationship with the guitar. Do you view it as a tool that you have to get a better handle on, like a craftsman would?
I was always trying to find ways to make new sounds with it and not just play it. When the Red Hash reissue came out, it was so many years since I’d owned a guitar. I had to go to New York—it was exciting, the Drag City thing. Ben Chasny [of Six Organs of Admittance] had a concert somewhere in New York and they wanted me to sit in, which was really fun. I literally had to relearn how to play the songs on that album; I had no idea what the chord positions or tunings were. I know them now like the back of my hand, but it was so long since I last played them. At one point, I was very proficient at the guitar and with fingerpicking, and while I do a little bit of it now, it’s mostly chords and tuning progressions—that’s what I’m into these days; my relationship with the guitar turned more into tunings and strange chords and seeing how they interacted with one another.
What guitarists got you interested in exploring different tunings?
Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash. It was pretty common—these odd tunings. I have three or four now that are my go-to. Joni Mitchell is the queen—well, the queen and the king—of guitar tunings. It’s amazing. Somebody gave me a book years ago that had all her tunings in it and I was blown away that she used so many different ones. I liked a lot of her songs, but I love Blue (1971), and Court and Spark (1974) is my favorite.
Did you already know what all the arrangements were gonna be like for Red Hash when you went to record the songs?
One of the more amazing things about it is that we recorded the whole thing in 40 hours. The only regret I have is that it was only four tracks and I couldn’t easily mix them. I wanted to remix the album when Drag City reissued the album, but they didn’t want to. I wasn’t involved for the original mixing—I was off in prison when the mixing took place—and while they did a good job, there are some things I would’ve done differently.
What’s something you would change?
People don’t know this, but there’s quite a bit of my drum parts on the album. And part of that is the limitation of 4-track machinery and mixing ability. That’s not something that would take place today. John Colpitts [of Oneida] interviewed me back in 2005 and he told me he didn’t know there were any drums on those songs (laughter). So that’s one small thing. I have no regrets, but I still would like to mix them again—I still have the master tapes. After years, I thought I didn’t have them, but I eventually found out I did. With what I just described to you, they were smaller reels because it was only four channels, and then they were mixed down to two. They’re all over the place. I had to send a master of Red Hash to Chicago for the reissue and they barely survived the ordeal.
Do you mind talking with me about prison?
I was sentenced for two years and nine months, but I had a very good lawyer and I did a habeas corpus and got one of the chargers knocked back, so I got out of there in a year and nine months or something. It wasn’t fun. They had programs there where you could earn what they called “good time” per month so you could get out early. If you joined a drug program, you got seven days knocked off per month instead of five. I didn’t like a lot about the drug program, but I liked that it was isolated from the rest of the population. The first week or so there, though, was scary. They had this thing, and I don’t know if they do it anymore, but it was called “concept.” There was a hierarchy of people, and you had to listen to what they said. If you didn’t, they’d literally scream at you at the top of their lungs right at your face. We’d get woken up at 3 o’clock in the morning and move furniture around, and then mop the floor with shoelaces.
What? With shoelaces?
Correct. It never ended up that you finished the whole thing, but you would do it and they’d eventually say, “That’s enough, back to bed.” That was weird. The idea was that it was supposed to make you more self-aware. And, well, it made me more self-aware of how quickly I wanted to get out of there (laughter). The other guy I got busted with was also in the program with me, so it wasn’t all bad all the time, but there were odd things like that. You’d work your way up the hierarchy and you’d eventually get your own room, which I did. I got my guitar brought in too, and I would play it. It was a pretty organized program, so people had specific jobs and that helped make the days go by.
What was the first thing you did when you got out of prison?
I think we went to a restaurant and I had a nice meal. I wasn’t allowed to be in establishments that had liquor, so I couldn’t go to bars for a while. Things have changed so much, and that’s one of the most frustrating things about it—within a 20-mile radius of my house, there are seven or eight cannabis stores. It’s ridiculous.
Do you still smoke?
I do not. Going to prison took all the joy out of it. Instead of enjoying it, I only got paranoid and fearful. And then I got married and had a child and needed to keep a job. The biggest promise I made to myself was to never go back to an environment like that again—I never wanted to do anything that would jeopardize my freedom. I don’t have anything morally against pot, and I’m curious about the strength of the new stuff, but yeah. I’ve never been to a dispensary either, and I’d like to go in just to see what it’s like, but I’ve just never gone in. I could go in there and tell them my story, but they probably wouldn’t care (laughter).
Fifteen years ago, Drag City released Dream a While Back (2011), which had some of the other songs you wrote in the early 1970s.
Those songs never got fully developed for one reason or another, so they were kind of like outtakes. I thought “Song to Springtime” was one of the better songs I’d ever written—it’s a raw recording, and that’s the only one there is, but it just never got fully developed. All the songs were like that. My friend Bill Lockwood recorded those songs, as well as the ones on Red Hash, and most of them were done at a place called The Old Chestnut Inn. It had cabins that people rented, and the reason I was there was that my girlfriend’s mother owned it. It was like anybody’s house, really, but it had a small pond and some cabins in the back—made of chestnut!
You also had Seconds (2009), which featured newer material. What was the impetus for recording again after all these years?
I had evolved from the Red Hash days and I had new material that I considered really good. I wanted to get that out there. There are parts of me that are nothing like the music on Red Hash. Having that reissued and getting all the publicity was a wonderful thing—do not get me wrong—but that was me in 1972, and it was 2005 when it got reissued. I had done a lot, musically, in between. I listened to Seconds recently and I think we did a great job on it, and I’m a little surprised it didn’t get more love. I don’t know why—maybe because people who like Red Hash didn’t think it sounded like that—but I’m not disappointed with the album.
The “5 A.M. Trilogy” was basically three songs that ran into each other, and we probably shouldn’t have done it like that (laughter). And the reason is that people have a hard time getting past three or four minutes of anything. You have to commit yourself to 13 minutes and I think most of the listening public would prefer to listen to more than one song in that time. Maybe I’m wrong, though. I think that’s something we should’ve done, and I also think we should’ve chosen a different cover for it. I like it—it’s a picture of a photograph—but Red Hash was colorful and lively while this one was dark. Maybe if we had a more inviting cover it could’ve helped, but who knows—it is what it is, and I’m still happy with how it came out.
You mentioned that you didn’t play guitar for a couple decades when the Red Hash reissue happened. Were you playing other instruments?
I kind of skipped over this, but I was the bass player for the second coming of The Random Concept, and soon thereafter I became the drummer. The drums were my major instrument for 20+ years. I still have my Ludwigs from 1966. When you play the drums, it’s a lot more physical, and you’re not having to worry about specific notes, so playing it was freeing in some ways. When we moved back to Connecticut from New York, and this was when we were trying to get away from that drummer, the band needed to find a new one and I said I’d do it. I played my first professional gig only two months after I started, and the funny thing is that I played drums for Len Barry—he had hits in the early ’60s. He was doing tours in secondary clubs, and our band ended up backing him for one gig, and that was only after two months of playing! I can’t imagine I was very good, but he never complained. It was really fun. He was a well-known guy, the place was packed, and the hits he had I liked very much. I was very familiar with his music. Before that, I played bass for Gary U.S. Bonds. This was the same club and the same sort of situation. And Dee Dee Sharp, too. These big-time people who couldn’t play auditoriums anymore were doing what they could, and they were still bigger than local bands so they still drew a big crowd.
You have your show coming up for the Chicago Psych Fest. Do you have anything in particular planned for that?
There’ll be a lot of songs off the Red Hash album, and then there are two or three new ones that nobody has heard aside from a few people around here. We’re looking forward to it a lot. I played The Hideout years ago, and I opened for Baby Dee, who’s another Drag City artist.
I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
At this point in time? I thank God I can still think, I can still walk, I can still talk, I can still play. I hope that never goes away.
Gary Higgins’ music can be found at Bandcamp and the Drag City website. He plays the Chicago Psych Fest this weekend. Details can be found here.
Thank you for reading the 211th issue of Tone Glow. Still.
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so happy gary is still kickin it