Q: Where was Jerry on June 24, 1981? A: Breaking in new singers at the Keystone Palo Alto

update:  I have found a listing for JGB playing Keystone Palo Alto this Wednesday night, 6/24/81. It makes sense - first night out for Liz Stires and Essra Mohawk, and they usually played gigs on off-nights and/or off-the-beaten path when breaking in new members. That seems especially pertinent when the first two gigs are going to be higher profile, and this band's were with the GD-centric advertising (Phil on bass) and, especially for the Warfield, a larger room than was common in the home market during this period.

So, in short: 1) June 24, 1981 has JGB at Keystone Palo Alto; 2) there may still have been a hidden gig in Salinas around this time.

So, the rest of this post speculates on a JGB gig in Salinas on 6/24/81, based on clear eyewitness memory of a Salinas gig in this timeframe (and *not* the August one). So I am still looking for that one. Feel free to read the post to get a sense of the process that goes in to trying to pin some of this fun stuff down.

/update

old title: JG19810624: Wednesday, June 24, 1981, Sherwood Hall, Salinas, CA (UNCERTAIN)

We have the great good fortune of working some pretty data-rich terrain. It varies from place to place, period to period, but partly as a result of the work of folks who might read this blog (semper fi!), a lot of Garcia's performing life is pinned down pretty well in terms of its basic architectures. Not so much that it's not interesting, mind you --we all like a challenge, right? The thrill of hunting down a fact or flashing on an observation?-- but enough to sink your teeth into. Indeed, and probably like the world at large, there's a lot more evidence than insight to go around.

That's nice for other reasons, too. For the scientifically-inclined, we can expect not only logical argumentation, but also empirical support, for a big chunk of what we are examining. I love that and think it's really important to be conservative in changing the status quo designations, assignations, etc. But it also means that we are almost certainly committing lots of type II errors (false negatives). Of course we miss the stuff that has left no trace. But we also miss the stuff that's floating out in the ether somewhere, that snatch of memory or that rumor or whatever.

Here I think I have a case of a snatch of memory that we should commit to the record. I am going to argue --based wholly on the testimony of one person, and on my own additional conjecture on top of that-- that the Jerry Garcia Band (Garcia, Shaw, Seals, Warren, and guest bassist Phil Lesh) played Sherwood Hall, 940 North Main Street, Salinas, CA, 93906-3913, on Wednesday, June 24, 1981.

update: this is incorrect. JGB was listed in the Chronicle as playing Keystone Palo Alto on 6/24/81.

Correspondent Charles C. Peterson relayed the following, and very graciously allowed me to reference him. Thank you, Charles!

I am 100% certain that I saw the JGB in Salinas CA, with Phil Lesh on bass, in late June 1981. I was in Pacific Grove for a summer invertebrate zoology course, the show was my first date with my lab partner (whom I later married) (and divorced), and by August the class was over, I was back in Michigan and she was back in Palo Alto ... given the combination of (subjectively) clear memories and the time-stamps provided by known circumstances, there is simply no way I could be wrong about this.

He elaborates as follows:

I was taking a class at the biological field station in Pacific Grove and my guess is I heard about the show from a poster in a record store there or in Monterey. I asked my lab partner to go with me (as I knew nobody else in town and liked her) and we [drove] over the mountains to Salinas. Neither of us had ever been there before, but we'd both been reading Steinbeck and we talked about that.

Regarding the venue, Charles recounts the following:

I remember the hall as a cheesy VFW-type place with no seats and maybe an eye-level stage. No ... theater curtain or anything; I got the impression it was a hall-for-rent more than a concert venue. We were pretty close without trying very hard; it wasn't packed.

Sherwood Hall was like a community center or something; no seats, just a big flat gym-like floor and a 5-6-foot stage at one end. I seem to recall low-ish ceilings. Not a large place; I am notoriously shitty at estimating crowd numbers but it seems to memory like less than a thousand of us were there; there was plenty of floor-room at the setbreak.

Regarding Lesh:

The band came out and after things quieted down somebody yelled "Good to see you Phil!" and he smiled and waved. I remember what me and my date were wearing but not Garcia. During the setbreak everybody sat down on the concrete floor and hung out.

Charles is sure the show is not the one that gook place on August 6, 1981 at the same venue:

I'm ... sure it was earlier than August ... I took the June half of a June/July class (and then hung around for July) and I'm sure it was in June. I'd bet money it was a day or 2 before the Santa Cruz and Warfield shows.

Recall that he has specific professional and major life markers to pinpoint the date. I find all of this totally credible.

Now, Charles doesn't say Wednesday, June 24. So I am speculating/extrapolating here even beyond what Charles has supplied. But I think it's a pretty safe exrapolation. Why? Here are some points, in no particular order.

1. I asked Charles if he recalls it being a weeknight or a weekend. His reply: "It was a low-key enough deal that it must have been a weeknight; also I seem to remember having had class that day." Now, this is far from 100%, but it's suggestive.
2. Charles recalls that "it was a day or 2 before the Santa Cruz and Warfield shows", i.e., a day or two before June 25 and June 26, 1981.
3. Charles notes that there was "a Santana tour in 1979 that also went Salinas -> Santa Cruz -> SF" and wonders whether it might have been the same promoter. I have just found an article in Billboard (fn1) that confirms that Bill Graham was promoting shows at precisely these three venues: Sherwood Hall in Salinas, the Civic Auditorium in Santa Cruz, and the Fox-Warfield Theatre in San Francisco.
4. Charles has the concrete memory of Phil Lesh being there, specifically welcomed by name by the crowd, and we know that Lesh was not present on the August 6 show (I have listened to it, and it's John Kahn). I am also 100% sure that that August show is correctly dated, given the posters and ads, the tape, the friend-of-taper's recollections and the "Happy Birthday Jerry" chant on the tape.
5. We know that the Garcia Band liked to woodshed guests, new band members, etc. in out-of-the-way places before taking them to the usual haunts in the core Bay Area. With Nicky Hopkins in the Fall of '75, they started off at Sophie's in Palo Alto, far-away Sacramento, and tiny and local Fairfax. In early '81, the Garcia-Kahn-Seals-Warren-Shaw quintet debuted at the Keystone Palo Alto. The fall 1982 return of Greg Errico to the drummer's seat took place at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. Etc. Given that the next two shows to be played in June 1981 were higher-profile shows (in the sense of larger, Bill Graham-run rooms), and that Phil Lesh was subbing for Kahn during this period, it makes sense that they'd want to work out the kinks in front of a less seasoned crowd. I have to think that the Salinas locals would have fit the bill.

When I look at that pattern of facts, I become persuaded that this was a night or two before the Santa Cruz show, and that the most likely date for this event is Wednesday, June 24, 1981. I acknowledge that there's uncertainty around this estimate. It could have been the 23rd or the 22nd, but why would it have been? update: well, it wasn't 6/24. So if the memories are correct, it would have had to have been Monday 6/22 or Tuesday 6/23.

Regarding other personnel, I asked if there were backing vocals, and also asked if there was any chance it was Merl playing keyboards, since he showed up on June 25th in Santa Cruz. His replies:

Gut feeling: no backing vocals, but I’m not at all sure.
I don't think Merl Saunders was on keys; I think I would have known him by then from the Keystone records. Not 100% sure.

Analysis

I am generally skeptical of memory as an exclusive basis on which to add a Garcia date. But I find this too persuasive to ignore. I am entering this gig into my own list.

I do have a few questions/bigger points.

First, where the heck was John Kahn? If this gig happened, there would now be four dates (6/24-26/81 and 8/22/81) in a two-month period when John is not there. It would happen a few more times in March of '82, I think. This is truly exceptional. In the twenty-plus years from when they started playing together, there are only a tiny handful Garcia On The Side shows without John Kahn on bass. It's weird. update: we know John was in Europe with his mother.

Second, the fact that these appear to have been Bill Graham Joints is noteworthy. Garcia had a long partnership with Freddie Herrera, which Corry has documented so beautifully in terms of the professional relationship and in terms of the basic data. It was only in 1987 that Garcia finally stopped playing Herrera venues and switched over to Bill Graham in the Bay Area. (I imagine that was a devastating loss for Freddie and probably personally painful for Jerry as well. After the GD and John Kahn, Freddie Herrera was probably third in the Garcia loyalty sweepstakes, even before his wives and kids. But I digress.) Was Graham courting Garcia, trying to take him from Freddie? One would have to think so. Did this June run discussed here and the odd little "1st Northern California Tour" of August 6-7-8, 1981 have anything to do with this putative inter-promoter competition?

update: That whole paragraph is a neat idea, but it rests on a faulty premise. The 1st Northern California tour was produced by the Keystone Family.

Third, I note Charles Peterson's uncertainty about backup singers. He could only report a gut feeling. Unless another attendee, or a participant, or some other data materialize, we won't know whether there were backup singers at this show. My own gut tells me that Essra Mohawk and Liz Stires probably sang, even if only on a few numbers. I can't imagine they wouldn't have wanted to debut at Sherwood Hall in Salinas, get their live performing sea legs under themselves there, rather than at the larger Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium the next night. It would be more consistent with the broader pattern for them to have been there. Again, though, we just cannot know.

If anyone knows anyone in Salinas, can you please send them down to the local library (assuming they still have those in cash-strapped California) to spin some microfilm from late June 1981 in search of ads, calendar listings, show reviews, or anything else? Much obliged.

REFERENCE

fn1. Jack McDonough, "New Venues Blossoming Throughout the Bay Area," Billboard, April 14, 1979, pp. 41-42, accessed via Google Books.

JGB "1st Northern California Tour": August 6-8, 1981

One of the oddest little jaunts you'll find the in Garcia On The Side histories is one billed as the "1st Northern California Tour", comprising the following three off-the-beaten-path gigs:

• Wednesday, August 6, 1981, Sherwood Hall, 940 North Main Street, Salinas, CA
• Thursday, August 7, 1981, Freeborn Hall, UC Davis, Davis, CA
• Friday, August 8, 1981, Fox Theatre, 216 E. Main Street, Stockton, CA

I have just posted listening notes for the only recordings known to me of the August 6-7 shows (follow the links above), though the latter might well be from the 8th. If there are other recordings out there, even really nasty old cassettes, I'd love to be able to give them a listen.

Here I just want to reflect a little bit on this mini tour. Let me start with the ad that ran in BAM magazine. I first reproduce the full page in bad quality (including the TOC for the 7/31/81 issue of BAM, which is still an unindexed goldmine of late 70s-1980s Bay Area music information), and then a clearer but less complete scan focusing on the Garcia ad.

The tour is interesting for a few reasons. First, it occurs during a particularly fluid time in terms of membership of the Jerry Garcia Band. So I'll cover personnel issues first. Second, it's just a weird little tour. So I'll say maybe a thing or two about the tour overall, maybe a sort of business/economic aspect. Third, I'll just open up a slightly broader context to the rest of 1981.

First, personnel was extremely fluid around this time.

a. Keyboards. At the start of the year, Melvin Seals had come in on the Hammond B-3 organ, and after a few gigs Jimmy Warren was also brought on as keyboardist on his electric piano (I think it was a Fender Rhodes, but I am not sure). So, here we have Melvin and Jimmy Warren on keys, which is confirmed by the two tapes.

b. Drums. Historically, TJS did not show a drummer between 6/1 and 12/17, when Kreutzmann is said to come in. We know from our various discussions here and elsewhere, ultimately reflected in and derived from Corry Arnold's contemporaneous lists, that Bill Kreutzmann came in on drums for the Concord Pavilion show on September 7, 1981. I think he was also drumming in the Bay Area on December 17-18-19, while Ron Tutt had apparently taken the October-November 1981 national tour, as well as the other September '81 Bay Area shows. Anyway, Corry reckons that Daoud Shaw was around until Concord, i.e., through 8/23. That makes a lot of sense. Shaw and Essra Mohawk were an item, and both disappear from September 7 forward. So, here we presumably have Daoud Shaw drumming (though there are no guarantees of this).

c. Backing vocals. This is understood to be the short-lived Liz Stires-Essra Mohawk tandem on backing vocals. They debuted June 25, 1981 at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, their first, the first Garcia Band show with backing vocalists since the Donna Jean Godchaux-Maria Muldaur arrangement vanished in late 1978. Essra appears to be gone by 9/7/81, replaced by Julie Stafford, so apparently our "School House Rock" heroine only sang a dozen or so times with the JGB.) (For more on backing vocalists, see here for early 80s, here for mid-1982 and here for late 1983.)

(One further note here, on Concord 9/7/81, JGBP says "Actually GD Archives source mentions Liz's sister. It's handwritten. [MS 332 Ser. 3, Box 1:2, GDR: Show Files: GD Concert Dates-Tour Schedule, Grateful Dead Archives, Special Collections, McHenry Library, UC Santa Cruz, CA].)

d. Bass. This is usually a non-issue: it was John Kahn. But recall that on 6/25/81 (Santa Cruz), 6/26/81 (Fox Warfield Theatre, San Francisco) and 8/22/81 (Fairfax Pavilion!) Phil Lesh played bass with the JGB, and Kahn was not present. I don't know anything about why this was the case, nor why John would miss a few more shows in March 1982, when David Torbert filled in. No point in me speculating about it, I just don't know. Anyway, based on a review of the two tapes of this mini-tour that I have heard, The Mule is in the house.

e. Summarizing, here's my best guess as to the personnel of the Jerry Garcia Band for the August 6-8, 1981 "1st Northern California Tour":

• Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
• John Kahn - el-bass;
• Melvin Seals - keyboards (Hammond B3 organ);
• Jimmy Warren - keyboards (Fender Rhodes electric piano);
• Daoud Shaw - drums;
• Essra Mohawk - backing vocals;
• Liz Stires - backing vocals.

Second point for this post, what an odd little tour.

a) It was organized as a set, it was advertised in BAM, there were posters made, etc. There's a promoter behind this. Yet I don't see that kind of information in the materials. Doesn't seem like Graham, both because his name isn't on the materials and because it's just too obscure. He seemed to let littler, further downmarket, and/or farther flung places be by this time. Since most of them seemed to pose little meaningful competition (and many seemed to come and go, change names, and generally struggle), he didn't really need to compete on that margin. UPDATE: This is a Keystone Family joint.

b) The itinerary is pretty unlikely. San Rafael to Salinas to Davis to Stockton to San Rafael? Now Salinas has the whiff of Steinbeck and is close to Monterey. Davis is a really nice college town. Even Stockton, not generally considered a desirable place to be, brings some California Delta charm, where the Gold Rush meets the Central Valley, all of which one can appreciate in an anthropological sort of way. But not in August. We're talking easy triple digits in all three of these places, but especially Stockton. August 8th in Stockton ... oof. I start sweating just thinking of it.  I'll reserve judgment on the halls; a Fox Theatre can, of course, be a magnificent thing. So I am not knocking any of this, just suggesting that it's a bit odd.

c) Putting these together, it's the juxtaposition of utterly implausible levels of organization with utterly implausible itinerary that really strikes me. There are few other tours that look quite like this that I can think of. There were lots of obscure gigs in lots of obscure places beyond the core Bay Area over the years, of course. But most didn't have the faintest whiff of business professionalism about them, with the exception of the Freddie Herrera clubs (in which Ol' Jer played a ton, 'a'course). The only other tours were typically larger scale (N > 3 shows), usually further away (e.g., midwest <--> east coast). The SoCal tours bear the closest resemblance, such as the couple-day jaunts by Legion of Mary in March (7-9) 1975, Reconstruction in July 1979 and JGB in May (17-20) 1984. But SoCal is a plane ride, and anyway with all of John's people and places down there it's probably very comfortable. These places 100 miles from SF are actually less convenient in lots of ways.

Third, just a note about the rest of the year, especially re recordings. The Garcia shows that follow this one are pretty well represented. August 20-21-22-23 are ca. 70% in circulation (missing most of two of eight sets, less a little) and represent the last Phil Lesh guest slot (8/22) and the apparent end of Daoud Shaw and Essra Mohawk's time with the JGB. There are a number of dates from after that not in circulation that I know of (scanning TJS 1981, 9/20/81, 10/25/81, 10/27/81, etc.), but there's enough sprinkled through that we can interpolate across most of them.

Before this minitour is a different deal. Going back three months (to May), I see these dates unrepresented (back of the napkin only!): 5/20/81, 5/23/81, 5/24/81, 5/27/81, most of 5/28/81, 5/30/81s1 [now see shnid-116252], 5/31/81, 6/1/81, and 7/23/81 and 7/24/81 [now see shnid-132091]. Only 5.5 of the 18 JGB shows in this period currently circulate in the digital realm, to my knowledge. And the May shows might be interesting. Melvin and Jimmy and Daoud had been around since January so they were broken in, yet the evidence of what would come -- the recruitment of the backing vocalists from 6/25/81-- suggests that Garcia (and/or Kahn) was/were not satisfied with what the band was doing. As Kahn would tell Blair Jackson, "it wasn't one of our better bands" (Jackson 1999, p. 321), though it's not clear if he meant before the vocalists came, after they arrived, or both. We get the strong sense from this same material that Garcia's heroin use is escalated at this time. In any case, having almost an entire month of gigs missing here is a drag. If anyone knows of any of these tapes, please contact me, as I'd like to study them!

Anyway, mostly I just liked the artwork and wanted to shout out for BAM, and the rest of this is just an excuse to post those scans. ;-)

REFERENCE:
Jackson, Blair. 1999. Garcia: An American Life. New York: Penguin Books.

! see also: JGMF, "JG19810624: Wednesday, June 24, 1981, Sherwood Hall, Salinas, CA (UNCERTAIN)," http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/04/jg19810624-wednesday-june-24-1981.html.

"We Hardly Know Each Other": JGB at Sherwood Hall, Salinas, CA, August 6, 1981

LN jg1981-08-06.jgb.all.aud-unk-russjcan.110492.flac1644

JGB's "1st Northern California Tour", as the Keystoners had it.

In response to a really intriguing email about possible late June 1981 JGB show in Salinas, about which I have posted separately, and with the generous help of folks over at Lossless Legs, I was able to get my ears around the only circulating tape of JGB on Thursday, August 6, 1981 at Sherwood Hall, 940 North Main Street, Salinas, CA. This is an odd little tour about which I have posted separately.

Anyway, here are a few bottom lines from this listen.

1) This seems to be correctly dated. If indeed there had been a Salinas JGB show in late June '81, it was the first of two. The key evidence here is not only the seeder's personal attendance (augmented by the only tape I know for this date), but a "Happy Birthday Jerry" from the crowd, much more sensible for August 6th then for late June (given Jerry's August 1st birthday).

2) This seems to be John Kahn playing bass. If indeed there had been a Salinas JGB show in late June '81 with Phil Lesh playing (which is my correspondent's recollection), then Kahn's presence here reinforces the case for two separate shows.

3) After Midnight [JB | Allan] is the most interesting song here. Highly imperfect, but worth a listen.

Anyway, notes below.

Jerry Garcia Band
Sherwood Hall

940 North Main Street
Salinas, CA 93906-3913
August 6, 1981 (Thursday)

--set I (5 tracks, 44:41)--
s1t01. How Sweet It Is [7:37] [0:13] % [0:31] {08:21}
s1t02. Catfish John [10:04] [0:03] % {10:07}
s1t03. After Midnight [8:22] [0:05] % {08:27}
s1t04. Sittin' in Limbo/ [9:01] % {09:01}
s1t05. //Tangled Up In // Blue [#8:#36] [0:05] % {08:41}

--set II (5 tracks, 42:03)--
s2t01. crowd (1) [0:52] {00:52}
s2t02. I'll Take a Melody [11:30] [0:02] % [[0:17] {11:49}
s2t03. The Harder They Come [10:43] [0:02] % [0:06] {10:51}
s2t04. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [8:21] -> {08:21}
s2t05. Dear Prudence [10:03] -> Midnight Moonlight// [0:01] [0:02] % {10:06}

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #13b

! lineup: Jerry Garcia: el-g, vocals;

! lineup: John Kahn: el-bass;

! lineup: Melvin Seals: keyboards (Hammond B3);

! lineup: Jimmy Warren: keyboards

! lineup: Daoud Shaw - drums;

! lineup: Liz Stires - backing vocals;

! lineup: Essra Mohawk - backing vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = 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 [m:ss] 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/19810806-01. 

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/110492/ (this recording)

! map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=940+North+Main+Street,+Salinas,+CA&aq=&sll=39.933312,-105.154375&sspn=0.011485,0.01929&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=940+N+Main+St,+Salinas,+Monterey,+California+93906&z=16

! JGBP: https://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/sherwood-hall-940-north-main-street.html

! band: JGB #13b (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html). Sounds like Kahn on bass, not a foregone conclusion during the summer of '81 (see 6/25, 6/26 and 8/22, all of which had Phil Lesh playing bass). The two keyboardists and two backing vocalists are all here. The names here are based on ongoing analysis at JGMF, LLD, and elsewhere and reflect the state of my understanding as of March 15, 2011.

! R: source: Unknown gen audience recording > NakCR-3A > AudigySE > Audacity > CDWave > TLH, transfer by Russ Cansler.

! R: seeder notes: unknown low gen source. Pauses between songs. Tape flip at 7:39 in d1t05. FOB indicated by weak vocals and upfront guitar from amp instead of house sound.  Jerry speaks off mike at the beginning of set 2 when tapers ask him to introduce the band. We weren't allowed in the balcony seats because we were deadheads and might try to smoke or something so everyone was on the floor. Drummer was late resulting in at least an hour between opening act and Jerry. Jerry site lists source as cutting Dear Prudence but this source has Dear Prudence intact and first second of Midnight Moonlight.

! R: TJS used to lists a 90 minute aud tape that "cuts in Dear Prudence and is missing the rest of the show." The seeder for this fileset infers that this is a different recording, but of course it's possible that Ryan's reference tape cut at the very end of DP and dropped the 1-second tease of Midnight Moonlight, so I am not sure that issue is settled. For now, I am working on the assumption that the recording I note here is the only one to have made it out of Sherwood Hall that night, but I have often been pleasantly wrong about such things.

! R: running fast. The bass is overloaded and boomy. Seeder is right, this definitely has that FOB feel - the guitar is off the monitors and is quite forward. (Not such a bad thing, after all.)

! s1t01 crowd starts up a Happy Birthday for Jerry, good provenance for the date.

! R: Nice tape, nice recording underneath it all. The master is probably a nice listen.

! P: s1t03 After Midnight is extremely coke-fueled. Jerry's switches a tone @ 1:59 for his solo, things start coming in @ about 2:12, and then he is tearing off a raunchy freaking run, foul, foul stuff. He goes around the bases again in the 3-min  mark, switches into the rhythm, turning it over to Jimmy Warren, @ 3:26. Warren's solo is anemic, Melvin steps in for one @ 4:36, is shredding reasonably well for 45 seconds or so, then Jerry jumps over the top for a couple of measures to set up the vocals.

! R: s1t05 TUIB cuts in with massively overblown levels - watch your speakers.

! P: Set I definitely has more of a coke vibe than a heroin vibe.

! R: s1t05 TUIB harsh splice @ 7:39, SQ much brighter afterwards.  Different source?

! R: s2t01 enters harshly, watch your ears.

! s2t01 @ 0:11 taper talk (1): "Will somebody please introduce the band?" Off-mic, Garcia replies "We hardly know each other," gets a good chuckle. It would become --really, already was-- exceptionally rare for Garcia to engage fans in this way.

! R: set II sounds brighter and hissier, more like the source for the end of TUIB than for the rest of set I.

! P: s2t05 JK sounds good @ start of DP

! R: s2t05 Midnight Moonlight is just the first note before the cassette seems to run out.

! What was the name of the opening band?