“A Natural Genius”
Art Silverman, C.D. NPR, All Things Considered

“One of the great voices of this age“
Urgyen Tashi, Tibetan Monk

Richard Sales comes from a long line of backwoods sharecropping, drag racing, fist fighting yellow jackets dangerously below the Mason Dixon Line. Those who knew him in his youth might now spit, cuss and break things when his name comes up.
Word is some wild eyed angel fell out of the rafters of that old Baptist Church where the loud ones went to get their weekly dose of civilization and etiquette. Hard to say. One thing’s certain - he’s changed. He’s different.

“I’ll do anything for a copy of that song”
Robert Morton, Executive Producer / David Letterman after hearing one of Sales’ custom songs for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered

Sales was featured in the 2017 documentary Memphis 69 covering the legendary 1969 Memphis Country Blues Festival where his wild Jefferson Street Jug Band was a closing act. They were invited to play at the first Woodstock but didn’t. (A hilarious story.) He wrote many extremely well received custom songs for All Things Considered and other NPR shows. Since then his songs have moved into much deeper waters.

“Mind bending music that works at every level”
Linda Johnsen, Eckhart Tolle Editions

“Stunning, splendid. The Bard of music!”
Bob Hewitt, Guitar Magazine and Fender Films, N. Wales, UK.

Some adventures have included recording Miles Davis, sharing a beer with Charlie Mingus, an ice cream cone with delta blues god Bukka White, stages with The Ramones, Chuck Berry and The Grateful Dead. He toured with and produced the revered Hindu saint, Shree Maa. He produced his daughter Hayley Sales’ hit records for Universal Music. NY Times bestselling author Neil Douglas Klotz (Prayers of the Cosmos) said, “The world needs this music now.”

“We all come away changed, bigger somehow from having heard his words and melodies.”
Dr. Karen Morell, Prof. African Literature, University of Washington

Producing every genre of music all day every day since 1983 in his studio, in the evening he would settle in with a sizzling, white knuckle translation of Psalms or The Poetry of Ramprasad, solving the problems of the world, working on a Honky Tonk theory of everything.

“The poetry of a man who knows the language from vast critical and pleasurable reading.”
Daniel Mark Epstein, Poet/Author, ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ American
Academy of Arts & Letters, 2006, Guggenheim Fellowship

“An evocative expression of love, loss and the indomitable human spirit” Craig Warner, Line Producer, The Larry King Show
Sales’ music is driven by his love of the supernatural power of language. More similar to IQ enhancing drugs than entertainment, he believes music should be a stimulus to explore the deep end of your doghouse. In fact, he’s a walking deep end himself. People can feel that from the audience, even when he’s playing guitar in his daughter’s band:

“Whatever you do, don’t lose the old man in the hat”
Steve Herman, Live Nation

“Who is that guitar player? I couldn’t take my eyes off him”
Jason Jordan, A&R, Republic Records

But that feeling increases when he performs his own songs. Some believe it’s due to his time with Buddhist monks, Sanskrit scholars, his beloved of fifty years, Joanne, a Gnostic Sufi mystic, or simply the tan-line of eyeglasses from reading late into the night. Given the freedom, he still likes to rise at 3:30 a.m., as the Trappist Monks did at the Berryville Monastery in West Virginia.

“Watching a Richard Sales performance is like getting a taste of something and wishing you had the recipe”
Dianne Donnely, The Unicorn Times, Washington D.C.

“It’s more than music,“
Garret Brennan, Threepin Productions

Genre fanciers talk of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, John Lennon. He’s been written about in four books, one of which was dedicated to him. His Facebook posts have become life rafts of hope for his seven hundred friends in this ‘time of cholera.’

”You touch parts of my heart that have never been touched - or else it was so long ago that I don’t remember,” Christine Palmer Naval, famous as being the free spirit with no shirt on in the Woodstock 69 film.

The greatest accolade a songwriter can have is when literary nerds love your work.

“The directness and virility and splash-of-ice-water-on-the-face insight remind me at times of Walt Whitman. Line after line catches my breath. Great, great work!”
Linda Johnsen, Author & Scholar, Eckhart Tolle Editions

Thank you wholeheartedly for taking a moment out of your day to brighten mine with such kind and luminous poetry – what a gift!
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

And other artists:

“Wow! What a voice,” Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead

“The man can really play,” Chuck Berry