Thursday, December 29, 2016

NGC: Van Morrison and Toulouse Ta Truck

Via the Facebook page of the amazing Jake Feinberg, which is a treasure trove of text snippets from Jake's radio show, which you should listen to and support.
Too Loose to Truck, By Steve Mitchell
I was playing with a piano player 4 nights a week at a club called "Shipwreck Pete's." It was John Allair and myself, we were playing duo gigs. John sang and played piano and a B-3 organ at the same time.
We're playing one night and this fella comes in with his saxophone and he's dressed all in black and he's got a black hat on and nobody knows who he is and he's standing there in the middle of the dance floor getting knocked around and he could play pretty good - it turned out to be Van Morrison.
Van liked what we were doing so he played with us. He came to our gigs and played with us cause he enjoyed playing and he wanted to develop his saxophone chops.
I had run into Phil Lesh at one of Mickey Hart's gatherings and we talked and he said he wanted to be able to play when the Dead weren't on the road.
It was all the Marin County guys, John Allair, Terry Haggerty from the Sons of Champlin and Van and Phil Lesh. There was a revolving door of people who were in and out of the band. Most of the time it was Phil, Allair, Haggerty and myself.
https://www.facebook.com/jake.feinbergshow/posts/1199080536835142
I don't think I ever knew of a Van Morrison connection in Toulouse Ta Truck (aka Too Loose To Truck, etc.). Did you?

5 comments:

  1. Steve Brown says of the ca. early 1975 BFA work at Ace's: "Van Morrison came up and hung out a few times; that was neat." No mention whether Van and Jerry picked together at all.

    ! ref: Jackson and Gans 2015, 241.

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  2. I've wondered about this verse from "Hard Nose The Highway" by VM:

    I was tore down at the dead's place
    Shaved head at the organ
    But that wasn't half as bad as it was oh no
    Belfast and Boston

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  3. I love it! Not being a Van guy, I have no idea. I wish there were more cross-fertilization across these areas.

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  4. I think he means "Shipwreck Pete's" just north of Novato on the 101. Played there myself.

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