Red Krayola
Red Krayola at Somerset house in London, July 2008
Background information
Also known as	The Red Crayola
Origin	Houston, Texas, United States
Genres	Experimental rock psychedelia post-punk[1]
Years active	1966–present
Labels	International Artists Rough Trade Recommended Celluloid Leiterwagen Records Radar Sordide Sentimental Drag City
Members	Mayo Thompson Albert Oehlen
Past members	Bonnie Emerson Danny Schacht Frederick Barthelme Steve Cunningham Tommy Smith Jesse Chamberlain Lora Logic Allen Ravenstine David Thomas Markus Oehlen Tom Watson Epic Soundtracks Gina Birch David Grubbs John McEntire Jim O'Rourke Stephen Prina George Hurley Elisa Randazzo Sandy Yang Christopher Williams Lynn Johnston Mary Lass Stewart Werner Büttner Hei Han Khiang Bobby Henschen Michael Baldwin Tony Maimone Tom Herman Scott Kraus Ben Annesley Chris Taylor Chris White Andreas Dorau Rüdiger Carl Alex Dower Tom Rogerson Charlie Abel Noel Kupersmith Dick Cuthell

Red Krayola (originally Red Crayola) is an American avant rock band from Houston, Texas formed in 1966 by the trio of singer/guitarist Mayo Thompson, drummer Frederick Barthelme, and bassist Steve Cunningham.^[2]

The group were part of the 1960s Texas psychedelic music scene and were signed to independent record label International Artists, subsequently becoming labelmates with the 13th Floor Elevators.^[3][1] Their confrontational, experimental approach employed noise and free improvisation.^[1] The group disbanded in the late 1960s, but were resurrected in the late 1970s when Thompson moved to England and found favor in the post-punk scene.^[1]

Thompson has continued using the name, in its legally altered spelling for performances or releases in the US, for his musical projects since. The group has released recordings on European labels such as Rough Trade and Recommended.^[1] In the mid-1990s, Thompson returned to the United States, signing with Drag City and releasing further albums.^[1] The Red Krayola have influenced a number of seminal alternative rock artists such as MGMT,^[4] Osees,^[5] Ty Segall,^[6] Primal Scream,^[7] and Animal Collective.^[8] Galaxie 500, Spacemen 3 and the Cramps covered their songs.^[9]

History

1960s

The Red Crayola was formed in Houston, Texas by Mayo Thompson and Frederick Barthelme at the University of St. Thomas in mid-July 1966.^[10][11] Barthelme said Red Crayola was "a name we took as a sort of parody of the clever California band names of that moment, a name that had come to us while trailing down Main Street in my roofless (courtesy of the sculptor Jim Love) blue Fiat" the name was also a homage to Thompson's mother Hazel's career as an art teacher.^[12] After going through an array of players, the band settled on Steve Cunningham (who previously collaborated with Malachi on the 'Holy Music' album) as their bassist who in September 1966 joined the band alongside his friend Bonnie Emerson and then later Danny Schact. For a while this was the original lineup of the band: at that point Red Crayola was a cover band playing songs such as "Louie Louie", "The House of the Rising Sun", "Eight Miles High" and a fast version of "Hey Joe". Later, the band got a gig (with the help of Luana Anderson) at Mark Froman's club called Love, their main place to perform. They later garnered notoriety from clubs and venues as they were never booked twice.^[13]

Later, the band went from a five piece to a trio, and formed a secondary group of shifting membership of about 50 people called "the Familiar Ugly", which consisted of active fans who performed with the band on or near the stage, using unconventional techniques and instruments.^[14]

The band recorded The Parable of Arable Land which sold around 50,000 copies when it was first released.^[13] Pitchfork noted "listeners weren't sure whether the racket was the result of sharp intellectualism, sheer incompetence, or buzzed-out substance abuse."^[15] A retrospective review branded the Crayola's "stripped down simplicity and caustic lyrics" as a rarely acknowledged precursor to punk.^[16]

After the original pressing for The Parable of Arable Land sold out, promoters were attracted to the band and they were invited to perform in the Berkeley Folk Music Festival where instead of playing songs that they had written before, they generated feedback and drones via a guitar amp. The noise was so severe that band was accused of killing a dog due to sheer volume.^[17][18]

In a 1978 interview, producer Lelan Rogers mentions that the reason the band never released a single was due in part to the controversy surrounding the sentimental lyrics in "War Sucks". Because of this, the album received little to no airplay as most radio stations refused to play the record. In the 2007 book "Eye Mind: Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators" author Paul Drummond mentions that the Red Crayola had recorded a session in February 1967 for "Dairymaid's Lament" backed with "Free Piece" to be released as a single, they were both songs that would later appear on their sophomore album, the session was produced by Bob Steffek who had a hit on Shazam Records with "Wild Woody"; however, the single was never released.^[19][20][21]

The album Coconut Hotel was recorded in 1967 but rejected by International Artists for its lack of commercial potential. It departed completely from the full-sounding guitar/bass/drums/vocals rock sound of Red Crayola's first album. The album did not see release until 1995. During this period, the band performed concerts in Berkeley, California, and Los Angeles where their music resembled that of Coconut Hotel more than any of their other albums. These performances are captured on Live 1967. Red Crayola also performed with guitarist John Fahey and recorded a studio album of music in collaboration with him, but International Artists demanded possession of the tapes, they were then subsequently lost.

The band's second album to see release was 1968's God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It which employed new drummer Tommy Smith. Around this time, the band received a cease and desist letter from Binney & Smith, the company which manufactured Crayola crayons, which resulted in the band changing the spelling of their name to Red Krayola.^[2] The album was not as well received as the band's first release as it sold only around 6,000 copies and was dismissed by most critics, so the group later disbanded.^[22] Studio demos by the original Red Crayola were released on the 1980 compilation of International Artists rarities: Epitaph for a Legend. Mark Deming of AllMusic wrote that the album "bears precious little resemblance to anything else that appeared at the time; it would take a few decades of post-punk experimentalism before Mayo Thompson's vision would have a truly suitable context".^[23] The album garnered a few fans such as Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis^[24] and Joseph Byrd^[25] of the United States of America.^[26]

Barthelme later said, "In short, the Red Crayola was both a mockery of the California bands and the hippie culture, and an alternative to it, though of course, being as the audience was made up of hippies, nobody really noticed, and that was okay, too, because all we wanted to do was play the crack-ball stuff, be heard, attack whatever conventions were around, and have a good time doing it."^[27]

1970s–1980s

In 1970, Thompson and Barthelme formed a short-lived Houston band called Saddlesore with Cassell Webb; the trio released one single on the short-lived label Texas Revolution with "Old Tom Clark" on the A-side and "Pig Ankle Strut" on the B-side. (These songs would later be included on a Red Krayola compilation album released in 2004). Shortly after, the band split up and Thompson left the music business and pursued other projects until 1973 when he moved to England and joined conceptual art collective Art & Language.^[28] Upon their return in the late 70s, English post-punk group Gang of Four invited the Crayola to open for them due to the band liking their music as well as their shared left-wing political beliefs.^[29]

Thompson continued to make music, both under his own name and as the Red Crayola (reverting to the original spelling in Europe). The next incarnation of the group was a duo: Thompson and American drummer Jesse Chamberlain. The two recorded the single "Wives in Orbit" and the album Soldier Talk, with the latter featuring cameos by Lora Logic and members of Pere Ubu,^[30] both of which could be seen as musical responses to punk rock.^[2] Radar Records reissued Parable of Arable Land in 1978 in the UK, accompanied by a flexi-disc, on which was an up-tempo version of Hurricane Fighter Plane recorded in July 1978, with an apparent punk rock influence as well.^[31] His collaborations in the 1970s and 1980s read like a roll-call of the avant-garde and experimental artists and musicians of the era. Red Crayola teamed up with Art & Language in 1973,^[32] who Thompson described as "the baddest bastards on the block",^[33] for three LPs: 1976's Corrected Slogans, 1981's Kangaroo? (also featuring the Raincoats' Gina Birch, Lora Logic of Essential Logic and Swell Maps' Epic Soundtracks) and 1983's Black Snakes.^[2] Thompson joined Pere Ubu for a period in the early 1980s, performing on their albums The Art of Walking and Song of the Bailing Man, and provided soundtrack music for Derek Jarman. Throughout this time he worked with Geoff Travis, the founder of Rough Trade Records, as a producer for many other seminal experimental and alternative rock acts, including the Fall (1980's Grotesque (After the Gramme)), the Raincoats, Scritti Politti, Blue Orchids, Cabaret Voltaire, Stiff Little Fingers, Kleenex/LiLiPUT, the Chills, the Monochrome Set and Primal Scream.

1990s–present

The 1990s found Red Krayola with a new audience, who came to the group via musicians associated with Chicago's post-rock scene and in particular the Drag City label, who had joined the band's ever-shifting line-up for a number of releases including the LPs The Red Krayola (1994), Hazel (1996), and Fingerpainting (1999). These were, among others, Jim O'Rourke and David Grubbs of Gastr del Sol, the post-conceptual visual artist Stephen Prina, German painter Albert Oehlen, George Hurley (formerly of Minutemen and Firehose), Tom Watson of Slovenly, Sandy Yang, Elisa Randazzo and John McEntire of Tortoise. In 2006, the group issued an album, Introduction, and an EP, Red Gold.

In 1995, Drag City re-released 1967's Coconut Hotel, and in 1998 issued The Red Krayola Live 1967 with material from the Angry Arts Festival and Berkeley Folk Music Festival including their live collaboration with John Fahey.

In 2007, Drag City released Sighs Trapped by Liars, another collaboration of Red Krayola with Art & Language, followed in 2010 with another, Five American Portraits, which consists of musical portraits of Wile E. Coyote, President George W Bush, President Jimmy Carter, John Wayne, and Ad Reinhardt, with vocals by Gina Birch. In 2016 came Baby and Child Care, recorded in 1984.

Discography