by Frank Matheis 2020
Way over in Torre Del Mar, Spain, an American expatriate carries on the acoustic blues in a serious and fiery fashion. Indeed, he’s an acoustic bluesman of the highest echelon, of vigorous expressionism, yet comfortable immediacy. Richard Ray Farrell is technically superb with deep and passionate delivery, a virtual tour-de-force of the traditional blues. His newest album Three Pints of Gin (self-produced 2020) proves that claim with a bold exclamation mark! Farrell can hold his own on acoustic guitar and rack harmonica against anyone, singing an ethereal, deep tenor. He is a superb singer/songwriter. His contribution to the genre stretches over many decades and it is no exaggeration to declare him as one of the swiftest practitioners of the acoustic blues today, not only for carrying on the musical legacy of the pre-WWII blues, but as a songwriter of fresh, new songs that are powerfully relatable with refined deep blues sensibility. It’s great to keep alive the obscure blues gems of the past, and even better to write blues standards his own.
Thecountryblues.com caught up with the musico in March 2020 by phone to tell his own story during the Covid-19 pandemic, as both the musician and the writer were sequestered at home:
RRF: “Music has always been my trade. I never expected to make a record and be a big rock star. It was always about getting better and better on my instrument and reaching people, learning from other players. For me music is not about what you can play, but how you play it. I played with a lot of these old blues guys that were technically not that great in some ways, but they just reached the people because they had such a strong vibe or such a strong feeling to their music. R.L. Burnside, for example. Burnside was an amazing guy. He learned how to play from Fred McDowell. I did a lot of tours with him between 1989 and 1994, but they were all tours in Europe. Then with Jack Johnson, Frank Frost, Louisiana Red. He was an amazing guy, and he was like an encyclopedia. I met him for the first time in 1987. His road manager invited me to his gig. I got there and we started talking and Red invited me up to play on the first song of the second set, and I ended up playing the whole rest of the night with him. Then we became friends. I did over the years a lot of gigs with him, and mostly in Switzerland, Holland and Germany. Once I played with Lazy Lester and also Big Boy Henry – he was kind of obscure, from North Carolina. That guy that recorded in the ‘30s and then came back in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Then I’ve met other musicians that were just incredible on their instruments but really didn’t say much or didn’t do much for me, because it was kind of like calisthenics: Who can play the fastest? Who can play the most intricate? It’s about also respecting the tradition of the music. I don’t really like much blues nowadays, especially the electric blues rock. The whole blues rock thing kind of bores me. It’s so much easier to play loud, than it is to play quiet.
Originally, I’m from Niagara Fall, New York. I grew up there, left there when I was 18. The last time I was in the States to play was in 2018. I had a little tour. And I did then play the Merle Fest in North Carolina– just a huge festival, a tribute to Merle Watson.
I’ve been here in Spain for six years, but I’ve been coming here since the mid ‘70s. I came here for the first time in 1974, and I’ve lived here on and off throughout the years. Right now, it’s kind of tough for live music everywhere, even though I’m much more experienced than I was 20 or 30 years ago. I’m doing okay. There’s some great festivals here and some great musicians too. I left for Europe right when I got out of high school and I didn’t move back until 2001. I was near the Philadelphia area for 14 years. When my wife retired we decided to move back to Europe. I just love it over here. The place where we live it’s like the California of Europe. The people are really nice and the climate, and just the way of life is great.
I didn’t really start playing until I was around 19 or 20. I had an older brother that played guitar and banjo and a sister that sang for 13 years in a jug band. My mother played piano. And I was the youngest. I was like the only one that didn’t play music, but I always liked it. I had a huge collection of records. I started collecting when I was a kid. The first record I bought was a Jimi Hendrix album when I was 12. My friend bought one and I bought one the same day. And we just played them all day every day.
My sister had a boyfriend who was a music major in college, and I was about 15. And he was the first person I saw playing bottleneck kind of acoustic guitar. He turned me on to blues. I heard Muddy Waters, BB King, Robert Johnson, all that. I just got rid of my rock records and started listening to only R&B and blues, and then jazz too.
When I was 19 or so, I made it to Paris, and saw these guys playing on the street, busking. I walked up to this one guy and I said, Hey, you know, is this just a hobby or whatever? They were from Singapore – Thailand or Singapore, doing Bob Dylan songs and they weren’t very good. They said, No, no – we make a living doing this. I thought, man, this is a way for me to be able to stay here. So, I started busking. I found this guy from Philadelphia who became my partner out on the street. He played guitar, I played harmonica. His name was Gregory Heller. He’s deceased now. He told me that in six months I learned how to play more than him in 10 years. I eventually got a guitar and stated picking up a little bit. He taught me open tuning and I learned a song playing slide on open tuning. Then basically I played one song but I just played it slow, fast, and then faster and changed the words. The one song became like three or four songs. So that was enough to keep playing in the subway. It just started from there. I stayed in Paris for two years in Paris, playing five, six, seven hours a day.
I was a busker then. I haven’t done that in over 30 years. Yeah. Now, I just play gigs. I have given lessons in the past, but I don’t really enjoy it that much unless it’s a really good student. I live basically from gigs almost everywhere in Europe. A couple countries I haven’t been to, but –Denmark, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, Czech Republic, Poland. Never played in Sweden or Norway, but I’ll get there.
I have also played everywhere in the States – most places.
I lived in Germany for 15 years and played everywhere in Germany. I had a band with the original drummer for the Mothers of Invention, Jimmy Carl Black. I did four CDs with little label from Ludwigsburg called Stormy Monday Records and two with Jimmy Carl Black. And we were really successful there and especially the mid – ‘90s. But it ran its course and I moved back to Spain and then eventually moved back to the States. Germany was really good to me.
Most of my CDs are songs that I wrote. I did a couple live – I have one CD from 2005 that’s all covers – old stuff from the ’30s and 40s’, ‘20s and ‘30s. Then I have another one with harmonica player Steve Guyger – that one was very successful too. I played with him for 13 years. He’s just an amazing player from Philadelphia. And that’s all old covers too.
My new album Three Pints of Gin is the first solo acoustic studio album that I’ve done since 2005. Lately, over the last couple of years, I’ve been playing a lot more just solo. I have a band over here and I’m doing these theater gigs. This one gig came up, and the drummer couldn’t make it and the bass player couldn’t make it. The guy who did the booking said, You know, why don’t you just play it alone? I played it alone and it was a huge success. Ever since that moment I’ve been playing a lot more on my own. So, I decided to put out this CD. There’s four covers and 12 originals. It kind of covers the spectrum of blues, including a few finger-picking tunes, a couple of slide tunes in open D, another one in open G, and another one that has a John Lee Hooker influence. I never really did any political songs, but the climate has been so weird in the past few years, that I did this anti-ICE song, which people seem to like. It’s a story about this guy from Mexico that moves to the States when he’s a small child and his parents never make him legal and he ends up getting thrown out, and all the things that happen to him and whatever. I play the harp on the rack. There’s a a Blind Boy Fuller tune and more.
The old blues is something that people have to appreciate and keep alive. There’s some new artists coming out that are really good and there’s a lot of obscure guys out there that have been doing this, like myself, their whole life. It’s a national treasure, this kind of music.”
