I was just revisiting a little item in Todd Tolces's early 1970s column in the Berkeley Daily Gazette. From May 3, 1973:
Picking a very nicely at at banjo all weekend was Jerry Garcia with his new bluegrass group, Old and in Way.
The acoustic quintet played through two nights at the Keystone to a very crowded house each time. The word got out. Either that or everybody beard them on KSAN's 'live'' weekend where Old and in the Way did a smashing one-hour set from the Record Plant in Sausalito.
Also on hand that day and the Friday and Saturday nights at the Keystone was Richard Greene, Seatrain's former fiddler. Greene's presence makes two refugees from Seatrain. The other is Peter Rowan, their lead singer and guitarist.
Greene's presence may finally fill Garcia's desire to ''find a fiddle player and play the bluegrass festivals this summer." However because of the Greatful Dead's heavy work schedule he may not be able to. Let's wait and see.
So, a few things.
First, Tolces somehow got the idea that Greene was there to stay. But as far as I know he'd play the Pacific Northwest shows May 8 in Eugene and May 9 in Portland, and that would be all she wrote.Second, Corry gets some nice capillary-level confirmation. He had said in re the 4/21/73 KSAN broadcast "Any doubts about Old And In The Way's strategy to popularize themselves like the Stanley Brothers are erased by this broadcast." And here we are the next weekend, packed house through buzz from the broadcast.
re your fifth point: maybe this is hindsight, but it seems hard to believe that anyone involved with OAITW was under the impression that Garcia's primary focus was now bluegrass, although I'm sure that nobody was saying this out loud, exactly. The caveat that the Grateful Dead came first must have always been there, even if it was just the elephant in the room. Do you think that's accurate? Another thing is that John Kahn was also in this band, and he must have learned that fact by now -- so even if Garcia didn't explicitly say it to Grisman or Rowan, Kahn could have. But Tolces's March piece both firmly asserts that OAITW is an Established Band, while hinting that Garcia was already stretched thin:
ReplyDelete"Old And In The Way is a stable band. Even though Jerry Garcia will still continue to perform with the Grateful Dead, Merl Saunders and Tom Fogerty, and just about everybody in the studio, including the likes of anybody from Papa John Creach to the New Riders, he’ll stick to his first love, bluegrass, as will the rest of the band."
https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/09/reading-notes-tolces-todd-1973-jerrys_04.html
So maybe Tolces's festival comment in his April column was just stating the obvious: playing local club gigs is one thing, but planning an OAITW tour meant waiting for the GD schedule to be established (also consider that they likely would have been using some of the same crew?). Maybe Tolces asked what OAITW's future plans were and was told offhandedly "yeah, we'll play some festivals, but first we gotta see what the GD are doing." Maybe Rowan said it (he's the one who says it in the March piece, not Garcia), maybe with a slight roll of the eyes (total conjecture, of course, I'm just having fun here). Or also consider that Vassar Clements joined the band after Tolces's pieces were published, and he could have had some prior commitment that kiboshed an extensive June-July festival circuit tour?
But I also wouldn't be surprised if Garcia might have promised more than he could deliver, either unthinkingly, or out of a desire to keep this new band together. Garcia could very well have said "yeah Pete, let's do all the summer festivals, that would be the hippest" without thinking through the logistics. But he could also have understood what Rowan and Grisman needed to hear: they weren't stars, but they also weren't expendable (right? how many comparable bluegrass musicians were readily available to Garcia in 1973?) and maybe Garcia maybe didn't want to risk losing them if he didn't offer some degree of commitment? Again, this is conjecture, but to me it makes more sense than someone from the GD org using a newspaper columnist to show Rowan & Grisman their place in the pecking order.
One last thing: I notice that Seatrain is namechecked here. My Jerrycentric blinders cause me to assume that Jerry was the only draw for most people to come out and see OAITW, but I wonder how much draw Seatrain had? eg "hey, didja hear some of the guys from Seatrain are in this little band with Jerry Garcia?"
^^ this is Nick btw. dunno why blogger won't let me sign in.
DeleteWise comments. I agree that everyone in OAITW knew from the start that their shows would be based around the Dead's tour schedule, and there probably wasn't even much discussion of that. (What, Garcia's going to drop some Dead arena shows to play at the Keystone?) So it's not like anyone needed reminders from a newspaper column.
DeleteThe thing that intrigues me is the mention of the Dead's "heavy work schedule." Now, we know the Dead hardly had a busy schedule in May-August 1973 - they only played one short tour and a few weekends! But, practically speaking, this left just a few weekends free in which OAITW could have popped into some bluegrass festivals. (And Garcia might not have been sure yet when studio sessions for the next Dead album would be.)
I also wonder if the guys in OAITW thought Richard Greene would stick around, or if it was known from the start that he was just available for the time being. But, as this post says, Loggins & Messina made Greene a better offer than Garcia's occasional sideband could:
http://hooterollin.blogspot.com/2013/10/richard-greene-violin-career-snapshot.html
Re: blogger sign-ins - I've had some trouble with that lately; I had to switch to Edge (a browser I didn't otherwise use) to keep making blogger comments.
I don't disagree with any of this necessarily, but I do think we should be wary of post hoc reasoning. We know the Dead were huge in 1973, and we know what they became. But it's also worth bearing in mind that in 8/74 Jerry forced the Dead off the road for 18 months. Grisman was a very ambitious guy, and Rowan had plans as well. So I don't think we can rule out that they had reasonable hope he'd create more space for OAITW.
DeleteWhat? I'd rule that out! No sane member of OAITW could hope that Garcia would back away from the Dead and give "more space" to his bluegrass band. On the contrary, I'd suggest they probably expected that OAITW was going to be as short-lived or occasional as many bluegrass groups, and that it wasn't going to be the home for anyone's ambitions (except maybe Garcia's).
Deletewelll, JGMF does make a fair point about post hoc reasoning. Who knows what Grisman or Rowan was thinking about the lifespan of the GD or the possibility of Garcia seeing the light and devoting his life to bluegrass music, and I can well see why either of them would have wanted to maintain their connection to Garcia indefinitely given what a draw he was. @LIA, re the "heavy work schedule" of the Dead in May-June: jerrybase does list a number of cancellations/postponements, so maybe the work schedule in March was looking heavier than it panned out to be. Also a lot of the heavy work wasn't being done by Garcia, but by the crew and office staff, which might have made the logistics of arranging an OAITW east coast tour around the Dead's shows much less palatable to the folks behind the scenes?
DeleteMaybe Grisman & Rowan thought it would be a swell idea to hitch their wagons to Garcia's in spring '73, although "indefinitely" might be putting it strongly since OAITW was effectively finished seven months later. The Dead didn't tour at all from Jan-April 1974; but by that time it was already too late for OAITW.
DeleteSome things to consider:
- OAITW had started as a lark; they'd been playing at Garcia's house, he said "let's play some gigs!" and things snowballed from there. It's hard to say how serious their plans were at this point in spring '73. Garcia wasn't even sure if they could play any bluegrass festivals in the summer, let alone do a whole tour. If he wasn't sure how things would look in three months, would the other guys be making long-range plans for the band?
- OAITW broke up because of the split between Grisman & Rowan, not so much because of Garcia being burdened with the Dead. (At least that's my take.) Rowan remembered Garcia saying, "If these guys can't keep it together, I'm not going to keep it together... David doesn't want to do it anymore, but I do." (Dark Star p.157) OAITW was in effect doomed to a short lifespan whatever Garcia did.
- I disagree about OAITW imposing "heavy work" on the crew & staff. In the first place, if Garcia wanted to do something, they'd do it. Also, Richard Loren's account: "It was just the band and me. There was no road crew. Bear took care of the equipment and recorded them. I was road managing and booking, there were the five musicians, and that was it. It was unencumbering. It was just a lot of fun." (Dark Star p.154)
LIA you sound way too certain in the "What?!?" comment for me. I agree it's unlikely. But one never knows. At the very least, perhaps they thought Jerry could invest some time with them and get them launched like the New Riders. It's really hard to say without smuggling in what we know actually unfolded.
DeleteIn particular, this: "I'd suggest they probably expected that OAITW was going to be as short-lived or occasional as many bluegrass groups, and that it wasn't going to be the home for anyone's ambitions (except maybe Garcia's)."
I just don't see it that way. I think Rowan and Grisman had big ambitions for OAITW. As you point out in a later comment, it was the incompatibility of their ambitions that brought the band to an end. It's not at all clear to me that they didn't have grand ambitions when they started. Maybe not well-founded, but I can't rule it out. I have never heard either Rowan or Grisman say that they knew when it started that it would be ad hoc, short-lived.
NRPS also started on a lark, and Jerry stuck with those guys for 2+ years.
I think any expectations around Old & In the Way is that it was going to be an ultra-fluid situation, surely part of the appeal of playing bluegrass for Garcia. And at least through Clarence White's death in July '73, surely Muleskinner was part of Grisman/Rowan's conception of the near-future (maybe Kahn's, too).
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