Echoes Podcast: Robert Rich & A Produce

Robert Rich's Asian Journey and A Produce Remembered in Echoes Podcast Robert Rich is the 11th of 30 Icons of Echoes and has been a fixture on the show from the first day. He’s a polymath who is not only adept at many instruments but many other disciplines.  They include audio recording and mastering, wine making and dream theory. He writes poetry, seriously, and he creates beautifully abstract, often primal paintings that you can buy on his website. He’s an artist of questing intellectualism, which is what brought him to the poetry of Tu Fu from the Chinese Tang Dynasty. His Zen-like poems, translated by David Hinton, compelled Rich to create the sensual, ethereal moods of his album, Travelers’ Cloth. But there’s more than that, including Rich’s youthful hippie, techno-futurism, his current anti-humanism and rain drops falling on his head. We talk all about it on Echoes from PRX. Hear it on Echoes Online Right Now! Read John Diliberto’s CD of the Month review of Robert Rich’s Travelers’ Cloth Robert Rich’s Travelers’ Cloth was #1 on The Best of Echoes 2023, So Far. See the complete list. ROBERT RICH FEATURE PLAYLIST Robert Rich – Shadow Mist Beneath –Travelers’ Cloth Robert Rich – Loom of Origins – Travelers’ Cloth Robert Rich – Writing on Water – Travelers’ Cloth Robert Rich – High Mountain Shelter – Travelers’ Cloth Robert Rich – Gaps in the Roof Show Sky – Travelers’ Cloth Robert Rich – What Is Home” – Travelers’ Cloth Robert Rich – Memory Like Blowing Sand – Travelers’ Cloth Robert Rich – Surface – Rainforest Robert Rich – Footprints in the Rain – Travelers’ Cloth We look back at A Produce. That was the moniker of Barry Craig. Under the name of A Produce, he made  an ethereal brand of techno-tribal ambiences across the 90s and into the 2000s. He died young in 2011.Craigstarted out as a guitarist and even made records with a mid-80s new wave group called After Image. That music was far from the sounds he created a A Produce. And he looked different, completely hairless.  He cut a striking figure, but it wasn’t a fashion statement. He had Alopecia.   His music is being reissued so Echoes goes back to our 1996 interview with Craig. Hear it tonight on the air or at Echoes Online Right Now! Read John Diliberto’s updated obituary for A Produce.