Donny's Debut: JGB at the Warfield, February 4, 1994

LN jg1994-02-04.jgb.all.aud-vasseur.146010.flac1644

Friday, February 4, 1994 through Sunday, February 6, 1994 are super interesting, for reasons that may not be independent. The amazing drummer David Kemper was let go at some point between the end of the fall '93 tour and the first night of this run, for reasons that seem unclear even to him. After over ten years in the chair, they didn't give him so much as an explanation. It is well established from the historical record, and has been repeatedly stated by those who knew him best -- I am not going to cite chapter and verse here, so if you want to imagine I am going beyond my paygrade, sure, fine, whatever -- that Garcia's greatest personal failing involved an unwillingness to tell (former) lovers and (former) bandmates that they were out. He seemed more inclined to have Big Steve deliver hard news. So, first, this inaugural set of 1994 shows featured the debut of Donny Baldwin, from the Starship orbit and also a veteran of the Elvin Bishop Group. I imagine, but don't have it pinned down, that this latter connection between Donny and Melvin facilitated the drummer's entry into the Garcia Band. Second, as astute student of the music Nick has framed it, the run provides "one last flash of greatness" for Jerry and friends. This is most obvious in the 2/6/94 "Don't Let Go", which my memory tells me is a true monster that stands up to any versions that Jerry ever played. I have found a lot to love in '94 and '95 Jerry Band over the last few years, but I agree that he never again played anything so great as that "Don't Let Go".

Indeed, I have often held February 14, 1994, eight days after that show, to augur Garcia's irreversible (though not monotonic) physical decline. The game of trying to pin such things too precisely doesn't get us very far. I might point to GD keyboardist Brent Mydland's passing on July 26, 1990 as signaling Garcia giving up the emotional ghost, and impresario Bill Graham's death on October 25, 1991, as removing all doubt. (See how this game works?) We can point to plenty of pictures from before Valentine's Day '94, the day on which Jerry married Deborah Koons, showing him looking haggard. But, after that day, he never looked anything but like a man shambling toward death's door. Deadheads held no love for Garcia's "Black Widow", who certainly treated the legendary Mountain Girl and all of the other women in Jerry's life very badly during the probate and other proceedings that followed his death, whose taste in music (no "Reuben And Cherise"??) and cover art (Shining Star - what in the almighty fuck?!??) affronted fan sensibilities, who allegedly either passively accepted or actively abetted Garcia's hard drug use, and whose love of tasteless licensing and merchandising strikes us, from the vantage of 2021, as decidedly Trumpian. Be all of that as it may, the observation I just cannot shake is that Garcia's decline accelerated markedly after those nuptials.

All of which makes the triumph of the February 4-6, 1994 shows so remarkable. Nick speculates that the band actually, y'know, rehearsed some with the new guy. The older pattern would have been to break him in on an off-night, off-the-beaten path, or both. Just about every new addition to the Garcia Band prior to Donny was afforded this possibility. So, they may or may not have gotten any rehearsal time, but they did get a gig. But, by 1994, as Bob Barsotti reported a few years later, "the only place [Garcia] could get it together physically to play with the Jerry Garcia Band was by getting in his car and driving for a half an hour to the Warfield" (Greenfield1996, 300, cited in context on my post on 3/4/95). So we might imagine that there were some rehearsals, and, indeed, as Nick points out, Jerry sounds generally together and the band sounds quite tight, consistent with some rehearsal. I have no data to that effect, but it seems likely.

So, onto my sense of Donny's Debut, 2/4/94. He's good, and it's good. Jerry sounds especially together in the first set, sprightly for the very common --indeed, statistically modal-- How Sweet -> Stop That Train opener, and working some great strong grunge into "Lay Down Sally". Nick elaborates:

The one major [2/4/94] high point is a steaming Lay Down Sally jam: Garcia's chugging along, sounding fine, and then decides to hit his distortion pedal and something clicks into place.  The audience feels it, Garcia responds, and you get one of those brief moments of aud-tape perfection as everything clicks into place.  Nice work, old man!

Jerry fades pretty hard at the end of set I (Deal) and through much of set II, sundowning especially noticeably in "The Maker", where I swear he departs from the lyrics and sings @ 1:40 "cannot see for the pain in my life". "Don't Let Go" is the other relative highlight of the show. It's a compact version, 12 minutes, and you'd think they might have held off on it to let the new guy get up to speed. But Donny plays very strongly. True, Jerry does no vocal-instrumental doubling on either the front or the back end of the song, which could often provide him a rare opportunity to engage in true vocal improvisation. But, even listening for limitations, I find a lot to like in this version, and a foreshadowing of the monster that'd spring forth two nights later, before the tune mostly faded into a shadow of its former self in its remaining fourteen months.

All in all, then, a nice show from a characteristically gorgeous Janet and Chuck Vasseur aud pull with the vintage Neumanns. Check it out if you can. If you are feeling impatient, go straight to 2/6/94 - do not pass Go, do no collect $200. If it's as good as I remember it being, and as (more reliably) Nick says it us, you can thank us later.

Oh yeah, one more thing: Melvin Seals sounds awesome this night, all big loud joyful swirly energy.

Listening notes follow.

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
February 4, 1994 (Friday)
Vasseur shnid-146010

--set I (7 tracks, 53:29)--
s1t01. [0:05] How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [6:00] [1:04]
s1t02. Stop That Train [7:11] [1:16]
s1t03. You Never Can Tell [6:41] [0:08]
s1t04. Lay Down Sally [10:01] (1) [1:39]
s1t05. Struggling Man [6:25] [0:42]
s1t06. My Sisters And Brothers [3:56] ->
s1t07. Deal [8:11] (2) [0:09]

--set II (7 tracks, 61:16)--
s2t01. Shining Star [15:24] [0:13]
s2t02. Money Honey [6:31] [0:13]
s2t03. Wonderful World [4:29] [0:15]
s2t04. The Maker [7:10] [0:11]
s2t05. Don't Let Go [11:45] [0:15]
s2t06. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [8:41] ->
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight [6:04] (2) [0:07]

! ACT1: JGB #23
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, v;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Donny Baldwin - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19940204-01

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/15602; https://etreedb.org/shn/94747; https://etreedb.org/shn/95234; https://etreedb.org/shn/146010 (this fileset). Every one of these derives from the Vasseur master.

! band: JGB #23 (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/warfield-982-market-street-san.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/ZW52vfHTbjs

! ref: Nick, "Feb 94 JGB: one last flash of greatness", URL https://deadthinking.blogspot.com/2017/11/feb-94-jgb.html.

! personnel: Donny Baldwin's first show in the drum chair, succeeding the impossible-to-replace David Kemper. I am typing this listening to Don't Let Go - you have to give the guy his due, because this cannot have been easy.

! R: field recordist: Janet and Chuck Vasseur

! R: field recording gear: 2x Neumann KM54 > DAT

! R: transfer: DAT Master > CDR (Kyle Porter); extract: CDR clone > EAC > WAV > FLAC16 (Bill Shaw aka Shark)

! R: Source Notes: Sometime in the early 2000's, Chuck loaned Kyle all of his 92-95 JGB masters to transfer to CDR. Kyle "mastered" the DATs to CDR, fading in/out as needed, adjusting levels (as needed) and tracking. Kyle then gave Chuck his masters back, with nice CDR copies of all of it. Chuck offered to clone the entire set for me, so I gave him a spool of 100 blank MITSUI CDRs and the next time I saw him, he gave them back to me, filled with his JGB recordings. Many of the Chuck V. JGB recordings do circulate already, but probably not all of them, and those that do may not be the Kyle Porter transfers. So, Here they are! --Shark

! P: s1t01 HSII Jerry sounds stoked. Melvin swirls up huge peaky feature late 3.

! P: s1t01 STT everyone sounds good. Donny hits nicely. Jerry bending some pitch.

! P: s1t03 YNCT Melvin, 3:30 I am typing, is on fire this night. He really sounds enthusiastic.

! P: s1t04 LDS oh man, what a killer grungy tone on LDS in the 7 range. A little modal, very firey. Nick: "The one major high point is a steaming Lay Down Sally jam:  Garcia's chugging along, sounding fine, and then decides to hit his distortion pedal and something clicks into place.  The audience feels it, Garcia responds, and you get one of those brief moments of aud-tape perfection as everything clicks into place.  Nice work, old man!"

! s1t04 (1) JG: "The new guy is, uhh, Donnie Baldwin. Playin' drums."

! P: s1t05 Struggling Man is done peppy - very good. Late 1 it slows down a little bit.

! P: s1t07 Deal a number of lyrical miscues. He is sounding a little tired.

! s1t07 (2) JG: "... take a break for a little bit ..."

! P: s2t04 The Maker he sounds pretty wobbly on the lyrics. @ 1:25 trying to get to second verse, mumbles. @ 1:40 sounds like he says "cannot see for the pain in my life". Goes across the great divide to Jean-Baptiste here early on. @ 2:09 "Body | is bent and broken". Donny nicely triggers Garcia's feature at 3ff.

! P: s2t05 DLG he doesn't do any vocal doubling at all. So by 3:15 he has already stepped back and away from the mic. But I confess that this is just perfectly good Jerry Garcia guitar work happening, e.g., around 6:30, when it has a real edge. I think I came into this listen of this wanting to hear its limitations. They're there, because this is not Eden. And I keep looking at the clock realizing that this is only going to run 12 minutes. But the quality is high. He strums it without quite such thick effects, Melvin swirly, Donny nicely picks up the pace. 8:15 Jerry definitely signals a connection to the tune. 9:20 assertively back to the tune, Donny be damned. Fully back to tun 10:12, no doubling.

! s2t14 (2) JG: "See y'all later."