Even in these days of always on social media it is possible for an artist to slip through the cracks. Frank Richard falls firmly into that category. Reading his bio your first thought is “make a film.” Born in Texas, he has drifted between New York, California, and New Orleans all his life. The formative musical experience however was guitar lessons from Tim Hardin. The ghost of the Woodstock music scene seeps through ‘Rough Enough.’ The second song of the album ‘Dead End’ has a definite Hardin influence, Richard’s Harmonica playing is very much in the Dylan style, and there are echoes of Greenwich Village, Haight Ashbury, and Woodstock all through the album.
With only four of the songs here Richard originals the folk tradition, or blues process, however you want to describe it has played a big part of in the choice of songs here. He fully acknowledges that; “I’ve played fast and loose with some of the lyrics,” adding lines to John Prine’s ‘Some Humans Ain’t Human’ and whole verses to ‘Knocking On Heavens’s Door.’ Two of the best songs on the album ‘1 900 Mary’ and ‘Mills of Lawrence’, are by writers local to his current in home in Massachusetts. The latter, a reflection on Vietnam, is as relevant to more recent conflicts as to that war. Richard’s aim in changing words here and there is to make them “more relevant, I hope, for these times”. The final song here is the traditional ‘Red River’, which Richard says he learnt from the Mance Lipscomb version, through a friendship with Peter Coyote, who also contributed ‘Dead End’ and taught Richard ‘All These Blues’ which opens the album.
His voice is best described as “lived in” and is often supported by singers, Tracy Grammar and Chris Orlen, sometimes barely audible in the mix but present adding weight to Richard’s fragile but affecting singing. Even where the song demands more of his voice than it can offer, ‘Knocking On Heavens’s Door’ and Renewable Resource’ the brittleness of his singing adds gravitas to the delivery of the lyrics, especially those with an environmental message. His new verse in the Dylan song, pleads that “We gotta leave the carbon in the ground. We can’t burn it like before. That huge hot cloud, the whole Earth ’round. Christ, it feels like knocking on hell’s own door”.
Despite sitting firmly within the American folk tradition musically, Frank Richard has much in common with the Country Bluesmen who were rediscovered by the Folk singers of the sixties. His occasionally frail voice reflects singers like Son House or R.L. Burnside. The music embraces tradition without sounding dated, thanks to producer and guitarist Jim Henry. The album has been out since September 2021, but if it passed you by, as it did me, you won’t regret catching up with an album that may be one of the last great sixties folk records.
you can buy it, of course, at Bandcamp.
