Acoustic Disc

Looks like Grisman lost acousticdisc.com, despite the fact that there are still lots of links from http://www.dawgnet.com/. Odd.

Listening Notes around the material mistakenly traveling as OAITW 4/16/73 early show at the Boarding House

update 20240718: this material is not from 4/16/73. Nothing from that date currently circulates. I have not yet determined the correct date for this material.

/update

Updated LN jg1973-04-16.oaitw.a.fm-nfagdtrfb.100404.flac1644

Man, I have been busy.

Anyway, some time ago I did a half-assed "listening notes" on the circulating set (set I) of OAITW 4/16/73. This is one of the "Four Nights at the Boarding House" that seem so incredibly, richly evocative of what a relatively healthy, happy, loose and jamming Garcia wanted out of his side projects. It's an important moment, too, the first known recording with Richard Greene (unless I am right in my speculations, initial and more elaborate, about a 4/12/73 show in Santa Barbara). [update: yes, indeed!] As we have witnessed time and time again, Garcia liked to work in "new members" of his bands on off-nights and/or off-the-beaten path. I don't think the Boarding House qualifies in the latter sense, but this Monday show surely does in the former.

So, I have revisited the tape and I have a slightly more detailed set of notes. Still not super-detailed -- maybe I'll make a third post on it someday.

One other point: the chatter transcribed as note 2 really interests me. Rowan (I think) says Garcia should introduce the band, and Garcia pretty clearly doesn't want to. The Burden Of Being Jerry: Man can't go down to the club on a Monday night, pick some banjo without some kind of star trip imposing itself on him.

Old And In The Way
Boarding House
960 Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
April 16, 1973 (Monday) - A (set I or Early Show)
Rex reels > RE > WBAI-FM > DAT > flac1644 shnid-100404

--set I or early show (14 tracks, 49:35)--
a-t01. (1) [0:06] Goin' To The Races [2:24] [0:17]
a-t02. Tragic Romance [3:40] [0:12]
a-t03. Katie Hill [3:27] [0:09]
a-t04. The Willow Garden [4:57] [0:34]
a-t05. 'Til The End Of The World Rolls 'Round [2:25] [0:11]
a-t06. band introductions (2) [1:19]
a-t07. Pig In A Pen [2:36] [0:05]
a-t08. Panama Red [2:17] (3) [1:43]
a-t09. Lonesome L.A. Cowboy [4:25] [0:36]
a-t10. Hard Hearted [2:30] [0:51] (4)
a-t11. Wild Horses [4:37] [0:27]
a-t12. Lost [3:22] (5) [0:15]
a-t13. stage banter (6) -> Blue Mule false start [1:22]
a-t14. Blue Mule [4:36] (7) [0:12]

! ACT1: Old And In The Way
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - banjo, vocals;
! lineup: Richard Greene - fiddle.
! lineup: David Grisman - mandolin, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Peter Rowan - guitar, 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.

! TJS: http://www.thejerrysite.com/shows/show/931.

! JGC:

! map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=960+Bush+Street,+San+FRancisco,+CA&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x8085808d89ff49b9:0xebab856481e4d520,960+Bush+St,+San+Francisco,+CA+94109&gl=us&ei=f2SUTsn3I-zEsQLXpNDvAQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB0Q8gEwAA

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/boarding-house-960-bush-st-san.html

! db: shnid 18422 (runs slow, deprecated); shnid 100404 (this source).

! "Source: SBD > ? > WBAI-FM Broadcast > SAE-2 Receiver > Sony DTC-670."

! "Transfer: MFD > Sony D10P > Coax SPDIF > Audiophile 2496 > Wavelab > R8Brain > CD-Wave > TLH > FLAC 1644. Transfer by Andrew F. 08/2009"

! R: seeder Note: "The DAT was recorded from the WBAI Morning Dew radio program on 07/31/1999 during their JG birthday special. Pitch is correct on this recording (ID-18422 is approx 90 cents slow). There's some low end fuzziness, and other minor FM artifacts in the recording."

! R: I suspect that Rex recorded this, not Betty.

! Personnel: This is the earliest OAITW tape with Richard Greene. The Santa Barbara show on 4/12/73 was probably his debut. Otherwise, this is, since he is not present on 4/15/73.

! R: I love that you can hear the band talking things over between tunes, though wish we could hear just a little bit better!

! a-t01 (1) DG: "We're gonna go to the races, folks."

! a-t05 DG sings a few verses of Til the End of the World Rolls Around

! a-t06 (2) Richard Greene: "Thank you very much." Grisman: "I'm gonna introduce the members of the band." [cross-talk] Unknown speaker: "Jerry gets to do that." Grisman: "Uh, all right." RG: "Why don't you do it?" Grisman: "Why don't you do it?" Unknown speaker: "I don't know, man." Garcia: "Fuck you, man." Grisman: "Well, neither does he." [cross-talk] DG: "This here is Peter Rowan on the gi-tar. Over on the big fiddle, John Kahn. Fiddlin' Richard Greene. And on the five-string banjo, Jerry Garcia." Band cross-talk: "Jerry Garcia ... Jerry Garcia!" [NB JGMF] RG: "Who's on the mandolin there?" Garcia: "That's Dave Grisman playin' the mandolin."

! a-t08 JG is singing echo refrain of "Panama Red" during chorus ... I don't remember hearing this.

! a-t08 (3) DG: "That was one of Peter's songs, and here's another one." Crowd gives a cheer. DG: "You folks sound like you're havin' a good time tonight."

! a-t08 During this tuning after Panama Red there's a lot of stage talk, but it's inaudible to me. Note also the room size here: it doesn't sound tiny.

! a-t09 JG's solo @ 2:15 of Lonesome LA Cowboy is just not very good.

! a-t10 (4) DG: "Here's a tune that may be familiar to most of you."

! a-t11 P: This is a pretty nice workup of Wild Horses.

! a-t12 (5) stage stalk, JG: "Maybe we should just play a long set." RG: "Or take a break."

! a-t13 (6) DG: "We're gonna have a big gospel portion on our second set. That's what we're deciding right now. So stick around and get your r'l'gion. ... We're gonna take a short leave of absence ... right after this next song."

! a-t13 Blue Mule false start is funny. They are off-key. Lady in the crowd says "Do it again!" and they do.

! a-t14 (7) PR: "Thank you." RG: "Thank you, we'll be back."

Venues

Oh my goodness. Check out this masterpiece of a blog!

Jerry's Brokendown Palaces

Wow.

Between this and Rock Archaeology, I think I know where to go to learn about venues.

Thanks to all of my colleagues doing hard work in and around this area of scholarship. It's a pleasure.

Recently added to TJS, Saunders images

I am sure everyone who reads here knows one can follow changes at The Jerry Site (there's also an RSS feed). TJS admin slip_not has been adding some nice data from poster and handbill images shared at the Merl Saunders Facebook page.

Since these photos are shared intentionally downloadable from Facebook, and acting on the We Are All The Vault principle of crowdsource redundant storage, I'll repost here. Thanks to Merl Saunders, Jr. for sharing the pics and to slip_not for gathering 'em up and adding them to The List. I may have renamed them according to my own organizational schema. This post will just summarize some of this great stuff and elaborate as I can.

1.     JGMS: January 23-24-25 (Tuesday-Thursday), Boarding House, 960 Bush Street, San Francisco, CA, 94109

What a find!

Handbill for the Boarding House, January 16-28, 1973. Scan courtesy of Merl Saunders Facebook page.

“Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders & Tom Fogerty” are billed at the Boarding House on a “special engagement: 3 nights: tue-wed-thu”, following the Herbie Hancock Septet (maybe working on some of the extremely heavy Sextant material?) and preceding Harry Chapin, every night’s menu featuring some kind of meat. Mmmm, yeah.

There are a few other bits and pieces in the evidentiary record around these gigs.

First, at least 1/23 and 1/24 were listed in the Berkeley Barb’s “Scenedrome” calendar (January 19-25, 1973, p. 28). Also, and I think somewhat unusually, there was a line ad in the San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner Datebook (January 21, 1973, p. 25). I don’t think it was that common for such ads to appear, but maybe I am wrong about that. I suspect that this “special engagement” was expected to generate some big nights (at least for midweek) for the Boarding House. I’ll ask again: does anyone know anyone who was involved with running the Boarding House during this time period? Or even know who it was?

Ad for Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Boarding House, 960 Bush Street, San Francisco, CA, 94109, Tues-Thurs January 23-25, 1973. Source: San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner Datebook, January 21, 1973, p. 25.

 There are also Betty Cantor-Jackson tapes known to exist and/or in circulation from this January 23-25 run at the Boarding House. All three dates were transferred by Rob Eaton from the “third batch” of Betty tapes which came to light in late 1995. Update: I think 1/23/73 actually came to RE from the Garcia Vault, via Dick L. The other two shows were definitely Betty tapes. At least one track from 1/23/73 has been officially released (“It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry,” track 1 of Jerry Garcia—Garcia Plays Dylan [Rhino R2 73263, 2005]). Material from the 24^th (shnid 4492, “early show” | shnid 9783, “late show” | shnid 100216, early and late) and 25^th (shnid 7670, “early” and “late” shows) circulated very early among collectors. They appear to have traveled several paths to the lossless era. Some of them are from DAT copies given by Eaton to Ryan Shriver, many of which were converted to CD and thence to .shn by D. Metz (e.g., shnid 4492). Others alleged to have PCM gens or cassette gens or whatever. A little hard to piece together all of it. The tapes are special because they are among the few that capture the mysterious Sarah Fulcher, singing her heart out.

The Jerry Site notes that Tom Fogerty was not present for the shows on the 24^th and 25^th, and he is not credited on the one released track from 1/23/73. I need to revisit the tapes, but I am pretty sure they’ll show that there’s no rhythm guitarist. SteveSw has written nice reviews of the 1/24/73 and 1/25/73 tapes at Workingman's Tracker. 

Anyway, this wonderful new-to-me handbill leads me to make a few points about the associated and related Listings.

First, unless it was understood that there were two shows nightly at the Boarding House, I don’t see any evidence in advertisements and such for early and late show designations. My assumption is that this makes it less likely that there were actually two (separately-ticketed) shows, but I am prepared to be set straight. Betty’s tapes said early and late, but maybe those temporal terms modified “set” rather than “show”? I don’t know. Anyway, I have been contemplating whether the early-late show listings should be merged on my lists … thoughts?

Second, there have long been tapes in circulation as “Boarding House, 1/26/73”, but all copies I have seen turn out to be the same as 1/24/73, which of course has more credible provenance. Anyway, again, I am preparing to consider 1/26/73 a spurious listing, but I’d like some feedback. (I am also thinking that 1/16/73 is spurious.)

2.     JGMS: May 4-5, 1973 (Friday-Saturday), Homer’s Warehouse, 79 Homer Lane, Palo Alto, CA

Handbill for Homer's Warehouse, early May 1973. Photo courtesy of Merl Saunders Facebook page.

We knew about these shows from inter alia amazing tapes, but this handbill is a great artifact. Nice little sketch of Jerry and Merl, representing a “moment” that only one who had watched them having one could capture.

Just a few small notes. First, probably doesn’t matter, but I am always interested when I see Merl’s name first-billed. A nice project would be to go back and measure the frequency with which one or the other was listed first. I’d bet it was at least 80-20 Jerry, for the obvious reasons. Second, the address given on the handbill, 79 Homer Avenue, is incorrect: according to Corry, it’s 79 Homer Lane. Note to Corry: Google Earth returns a search on “79 Homer Lane, Palo Alto, CA” with “79 Homer Lane, Menlo Park, CA, 94025”). Is that the same place on earth as where Homer’s Warehouse stood?

Note that these shows have been discussed a fair amount at Workingman's Tracker (that was 5/4; see also 5/5/73, and that it appears George Tickner is the second guitarist present.

3.     JGMS: October 20, 1973, Fieldhouse, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (UPDATE: DID NOT HAPPEN)

Poster for Merl Saunders, Bill Kreutzmann, Jerry Garcia gig at University of Iowa Fieldhouse, Iowa City, IA, October 20, 1973. Photo courtesy of Merl Saunders Facebook page.

What the fuck?

Wow.

OK. Here’s a poster that bills “Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann”, plus Mike Bloomfield and Band and Stoneground, at the University of Iowa Fieldhouse on October 20, 1973. The Grateful Dead had played Oklahoma City on 10/19 and would be in Omaha on 10/21, so Iowa City is only 250 miles out of the way. But, wow.

I notice the sketches of Jerry and especially Merl are nearly identical to the Homer’s Warehouse handbill sketches. Anyone know who drew these? Otherwise, is there any chance this is a forgery?

If not, we have here a real revelation. This would be only the third JGMS show outside of the state of California, after the September 5-6, 1973 gigs out east. And it’s pretty darn random, I have to say, though of course stranger things could certainly have happened. An off-night in a just-starting GD tour, you head out to Iowa City, Iowa for a gig in the college fieldhouse? Looks a little like the structure of the 11/18/73 San Diego show, I guess … could there possibly be others like this? Again: thoughts?

Update 20111119: thanks to intrepid research by Corry, we now know the story behind the poster: Liza Minelli left U of I out to dry three weeks before homecoming, Roberta Flack and Van Morrison couldn't be arranged to sub, and it sounds like the effort to get JGMS was extremely last minute. Most interesting is the argument in the relevant article from the student paper (Hawkins, Chuck, and George Shirk. 1973. Problems plague major concert bids. Daily Iowan, October 30, 1973, p. 3) that it was the Grateful Dead who nixed this particular Garcia side trip.

4.     JGMS: October 13, 1974, Santa Barbara County Bowl, Santa Barbara, CA

From L: Merl Saunders (keyboards), Paul Humphrey (drums), Jerry Garcia (electric guitar), John Kahn (electric bass), Martin Fierro (saxophone), Santa Barbara County Bowl, Sunday, October 13, 1974. Photo courtesy of Merl Saunders Facebook page.

Ain't life grand? We were just discussing Paul Humphrey at Hooterollin' Around, and up pops the only known-to-me live image of the Garcia-Saunders-Humphrey-Kahn-Fierro quintet. (update: here's another, showing Paul Humphrey!!) This is a known show Sunday, October 13, 1974 at the beautiful Santa Barbara County Bowl in Santa Barbara, CA. I can't tell if it's overcast, but I am imagining a sunny fall day. And if you ever spent a sunny fall day in Santa Barbara in roughly that that spot in roughly the frame of mind that might have been generated by this particular concert, you know what I mean to say: A glimpse of life's deepest beauties for five bucks.

This gig has been known back to the time of the McNally-Arnold JG List, the oldest continuous piece of The JG List in the manuscript tradition (Yeah, lots of grandiosity there, I know. But I have to say it and I'll get to it.) That list's entry was dated 10/13/74 and had the personnel correctly listed, but the venue was given as Santa Barbara County Fairgrounds. I see that this misstatement continued through to Deadbase IX (not surprising, since it was based on Corry's copy of the McNally-Arnold JG List). This continued into The Jerry Site's entry, which was corrected in 2008 by the great Ryan Shriver.

I am presuming this long entry derived from the following backstage pass, which is generously hosted at psilo.net:

Backstage pass for “Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders and friends” with the Sons of Champlin and Etta James, Sunday, October 13, 1974, Santa Barbara Count Bowl, Santa Barbara, CA. Image courtesy of psilo.net.

There has never been a tape of the show, billed as “Their First Southern California Solo Appearance, Direct From San Francisco and the Grateful Dead”. I don’t actually think that’s true. They (JGMS) had played the Ash Grove in LA on May 29-30, 1973. (A planned show at San Diego State University on November 18, 1973 was rained out.) But, I queeble. They weren’t getting out on the road much in those days, and it orta’h’ve been a fun old time. And, what a great picture!

Summary

Thanks to the proprietors of the Merl Saunders Facebook page, and to slip_not of The Jerry Site, for bringing these wonderful historical materials forward. Here’s hoping there’s lots more where that came from!

REFERENCE:

(1) Scott, John W., Mike Dolgushkin, and Stu Nixon. 1995. Deadbase IX: The Complete Guide to Grateful Dead Songlists.

GSCBF12: Ralph Stanley & His Clinch Mountain Boys: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 21:15

Part of a series of back-of-the-napkin thoughts about the Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival (GSCBF), held in San Rafael, CA from Friday, April 26th through Sunday, April 28, 1974. Click the link to see the posts in this series.

Now I see why I only had a draft of this post for a long time. I didn't ever finish my notes. I guess I'll update this at some point. Consider these some raw notes for now.


Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival
Marin County Veterans' Auditorium Building and Grounds
San Rafael, CA

<--John Hartford precedes-->

Ralph Stanley & His Clinch Mountain Boys
Sunday, April 28, 1974 ca. 21:15

Source: "Debbie reel 4/27/74" CD 4 of 4
Provenance: unknown sbd recording (?maybe MSC > C?) > reel
Transfer: AKAI GX 636 playback > Apogee mini ME @ 24/96 > Apogee Mini DAC (monitoring/mastering) > lynx one soundcard > wavelab 5.0 > CD, by Matt Smith.
Lossless encoding: EAC > CDWave > TLH (FLAC level 8).
Tagging: Foobar 2000.

(8 tracks, 16:40)
GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t01. % Cacklin' Hen -1:38
GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t02. Maple on the Hill -4:18 -4:23
GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t03. talk (1), band intros [2:27]
GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t04. Hemlocks and Primroses -5:21 -5:24
GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t05. Stone Walls and Steel Bars 1:50 -2:04 w/ mandolin
GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t06. Bill Cheetham -2:07 -2:19
GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t07. Nobody's Love is Like Mine 2:31 -2:40
GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t08. unknown_Stanley_19740428// [fragment] [0:05] %

Lineup:
Ricky Lee - guitar, bass vocals;
Cheryl White - bass;
Ralph Stanley - banjo, tenor vocals;
Curly Ray Cline - fiddle;
Roy Lee Centers - vocals.

Notes:
! % = tape discontinuity; # = truncated timing; // = cut song
! Recording is overloaded for the first few minutes
! Roy Lee Centers would pass away a week or so later, on May 5, 1974. The usual bass player, Jack Cooke, was unable to attend.
! not sure who plays mandolin
! GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t03 (1) last appearance on the festival this weekend
! GSCBF-1974-04-28-2115-Stanley-t08 fragmentary start of song
! It is not known how long this set lasted - the tape here runs out, and no Ralph Stanley material appears on any of the other sources for the Festival that I know of. This set was scheduled at a half-hour, so barring any other information let's assume that that's right, and that this is missing about 15 minutes of music.

<--Nitty Gritty Dirt Band follows-->

Jerry Garcia's Middle Finger
http://jgmf.blogspot.com/search/label/GSCBF

August 9, 1974 is probably August 10, 1974: a fine show either way

LN jg1974-08-09.jgms.s1s2p.aud-falanga.8073.shnf

More listening around August 1974, as with 8/11/74 and a mention of 8/15/74.

I have some doubts about the date. The always-excellent "Rock Talk by KG" column (by Kathie Staska and George Mangrum) in the Hayward Daily Review (August 9, 1974, p. 40), says "Clifton Chenier does Keystone Berkeley tonight and Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders with Paul Pena play the same place Aug. 10-11". update 20110906: Man oh man, I am dumb as a bag of rocks. The setlist for this show is identical, with one exception, to the setlist for August 10, 1974, Keystone, Berkeley. That setlist comes from Rob Eaton, who transferred the master reels of this show from the "third batch" of Betty Cantor-Jackson tapes. Rob was forensic in his listening and in his tapebox notations. (Parenthetically, if those tapes reveal a three-song second set, we can of course eliminate the speculation that what's represented on the Falanga-Menke tape is incomplete.)

The only difference in the setlists of "8/9/74" and 8/10/74 is the placement of Think. Yet since it's surrounded by tape discontinuities on the Falanga tapes, it's just as plausible to think it was the first song, but somehow ended up out of place. (This would, in turn raise some lineage questions ... how could a master tape have the second song first? Sigh.)

Anyway, I am arguing here that the Staska-Mangrum mention, on the very day of the show, in addition to the (correlated) calendar listing in the Hayward Daily Review, and the identical setlists attributed to "8/9" and 8/10, the latter of which has a full setlist of impeccable provenance, all outweigh a tape label. We should eliminate the spurious Listing for August 9, 1974, and merge our data from that show with the show from August 10, 1974.

Listening notes follow. 

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Keystone
2119 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
August 9 [sic: 10], 1974 (Friday [sic: Saturday])
Falanga MAC shnid-8073

--set I (7 tracks, 86:41)
s1t01. tuning [1:14]
s1t02. Expressway (To Your Heart) [22:42] [0:08] % [1:06]
s1t03. [0:05] //Think [#7:54] [0:19]
s1t04. % [0:03] Are You Lonely for Me [25:06] [0:11] %
s1t05. tuning [1:49]
s1t06. Soul Roach [9:13] [0:34]
s1t07. I Second That Emotion [15:55] (1) [0:25]

--set II (3 tracks, 53:55, ?incomplete?)--
s2t01. [0:18] Mystery Train [17:54] [0:15]
s2t02. Lonely / Avenue [27:#08] ->
s2t03. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:12] (2) [0:07]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals.
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Martin Fierro - horns;
! lineup: Bill Kreutzmann - drums.

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/19740809-01 [presumed spurious]; https://jerrybase.com/events/19740810-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/8073 (this source).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/LDc43

! JGBP: https://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/02/keystone-2119-university-avenue.html

! metadata: First, as my title here indicates, the circulating tape puts this as August 9th (*shiver*), but there is no other evidence for that data and loads of evidence that it's actually 8/10. I am well into the p < .05 range on dating this as 8/10. Second, I used to have question marks around BK just out of an abundance of caution, but I am not at least as certain that this is him as I am about the dating. Third, I used to wonder if the second set was incomplete. I now think they were probably just running up against closing time, though I reserve the right to update on that question.

! P: This show is excellent. There's more deliberateness than fire here, to my ears. So we have three exceptionally long (22-27 minute) numbers which actually stay pretty close to their constitutive themes for a very long time if not throughout. There's lots of elaboration and less exploration, maybe. Interesting. Jerry was in a mood to play and sing some old R&B this night, and that's what we have. "A Mission Street R & B guy," as I think he once described himself. Nice.

! R: field recordist: Louis Falanga;

! R: field Recording equipment: 1x Sony ECM-270 + 1x Sony ECM-250 > Sony TC-152 cassette deck

! R: field recording location: microphones on-stage at Garcia's feet (stage ?right xxx left?), one directed toward Garcia's monitor and the other pointed to center stage.

! R: lineage: unknown MAC transfer to DAT by Bob Menke; DAT > CD transfer ?ca. 2001? ?by Menke?; CD copy made for Jim Powell ca. 2001; CD copy made for Jack Warner ca. 2001; CD copy made for jjoops ca. 2001; extraction [EAC], re-joining [WavMerge], re-tracking [CDWave] and shn encoding [mkwACT] by jjoops, 8/14/2001. Subsequent circulation via vines and tol.etree.org; shnid 8073. JGMF shn2flac conversion, file renaming (by sets), tagging (foobar2000) 7/20/2011.

! R: What an amazing recording. Everything is right where you want it. Thank you Louis Falanga, Bob Menke and everyone else.

! s1t02 ETMH Martin quoting "Red Clay" from 7:40 for quite awhile, even still in the 16:30 range.

! R: s1t03 beginning of Think is mangled.

! s1t07 (1) @ 16:06 JG: "We're gonna take a break for a little while, be back in a little bit."

! s2t02 Lonely Avenue @ 5:57 Martin almost hits an "Ain't No Sunshine" riff.

! R: s2t02 Lonely Avenue gap @ 11:14-11:18

! P: the transition from Lonely Avenue to HSII is pretty smooth. Nice job!

! P: s2t03 this HSII reminds us of what a great bass player John Kahn was, when he was. Listen to him in the first 5 minutes of this. He is locked in.

! s2t03 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. We'll see you all later."

Ain't No Woman (Like The One I've Got)

LN jg1974-08-11.jgms.all.aud-falanga.6382.shnf

I wanted to listen around August 1974 a bit more, to see if there was anything else like the mystery trumpet player on "8/15/74". So I checked out 8/11. This strikes me as one of the weaker shows of this great month, though it's been so long since I listened to most of them that I can't be sure. "Ain't No Woman (Like The One I've Got)" is the very interesting setlist rarity here.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Keystone
2119 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA, 94109
August 11, 1974 (Sunday)
Falanga-Menke shnid-6382 shn2flac

--set I (5 tracks, 58:18-0:18)--
s1t01. ambience [0:11]
s1t02. That's What Love Will Make You Do [12:52] (1) [1:49]
s1t03. La-La [16:49] [1:29]
s1t04. It Ain't No Use [10:36] [0:17] % [0:20]
s1t05. Mystery Train [13:24] (2) [0:11] % pre-set II tuning [0:18]

--set II (5 tracks, 0:18+64:41)--
s2t01. The Harder They Come [18:59] [2:58]
s2t02. Ain't No Woman (Like The One I've Got) [16:38] [0:10] % [0:33]
s2t03. It's Too Late [8:48] [0:13] %
s2t04. (I'm A) Road Runner [9:53] [0:02] % [0:25]
s2t05. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [6:00]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! personnel: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! personnel: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! personnel: John Kahn - el-bass;
! personnel: Martin Fierro - saxophone, flute;
! personnel: Bill Kreutzmann - drums.

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.

! JGC: jerrygarcia.com/show/1974-08-11.

! JB: https://jerrybase.com/events/19740811-01

! db: shnid 6382 (this fileset).

! official: Garcia Live volume 9  

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/LDc43

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/02/keystone-2119-university-avenue.html.

! venue: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/12/2119-university-avenue-berkeley-ca.html.

! venue: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/01/jerry-garcia-and-keystone-shows.html.

! historical: A Sunday night in Berkeley in August 1974, two days after Nixon resigned. Paul Pena opened. The "It's Too Late" and TNTDODD from this gig were released on "9/1/74". Old Kingbee list showed reels dated 8/10/74, 2x 10" Scotch 207 @ 7.5ips to a Revox master. In Kingbee-speak, "4.8, 119min, Sbd, A0D1, Reel M->Dat 1, 44k". I presume that that was a copy of vault reels transcribed by Latvala, but I don't know that. To be officially released, I presume from vault reels, 7/28/2017.

! ad: Oakland Tribune, August 4, 1974, p. 3-RAP.

! JGMF: "The real dates of the 'September 1, 1974' material," http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-real-dates-of-september-1-1974.html.

! mention: Kathie Staska and George Mangrum, "Topnotch Stanford show by Loggins and Messina," Hayward Daily Review, August 9, 1974, p. 40.

! mention: "Happenings for South County Teens," Hayward Daily Review, August 10, 1974, p. 5.

! listing: Hayward Daily Review, August 9, 1974, p. 40;

! listing: "Scaggs, Smothers and Sete, Too," San Francisco Chronicle, August 9, 1974, p. 47.

! mention: "Docker Hill Boys Set Stand at Lion's Share"" [image Merl Saunders caption 'Merle [sic] Saunders With Jerry Garcia'], Independent-Journal [San Rafael, CA], August 9, 1974, p. 20.

! R: Given lineage: "AUDMC (Bob Menke and Louis Falanga's Sony ECM-270 + Sony ECM-250 [onstage, one mic directly in front of Jerry's amp, the other pointed stage center to catch the rest of the band]  > Sony TC-152) > DATx1 > CD > EAC > CD > EAC > SHN; via Jack Warner. Extraction and compression via EAC and mkwACT by jupillej@mediaone.net." It's not clear whether both Menke and Falanga were there, nor whether this is the correct gear.

! setlist: Disc/set one and the first three songs of disc/set two derive from a cassette master that was labeled 8/10/74. However, the music is identical to that found on an alternate source of 8/11/74, and the vault research as reported at the Jerry Site would seem to confirm 8/11/74 as the true date. The alternate source (AUDMC [unknown gear] > 1R > 1D > 2CD > EAC >  SHN) supplies the last two songs of disc/set two.  It is inferior sounding and may need speed-correction.

! R: seeder note: No flaws noted.

! R: A pretty stunning audience recording. Puts you there, for sure.

! R: set II sounds nicer?

! P: s1t02 TWLWMYD messed up start, but settles in.

! s1t02 (1) @ 13:00, Jerry: "Thank you."

! s1t03 La-La, song proper, ends around 15:52, then drops off into some real drippy, creepy space.

! setlist: until ca. mid-2011, s1t04 was known in Garcia/GD circles as "It's No Use". But the title used here appears to be correct, based on research by Eric Levy. See Alex Allan's entry for more information.

! s1t05 (2) JG: "We're gonna take a break for a little while. We'll be back a little bit later. Thank you."

! s2t01 @ 20:15 JG strums Ain't No Woman. @ 20:23 he asks something like "Wanna do that one?" and mentions "Ain't No Woman".

! s2 guess I don't have much more to say about this set. Ain't No Woman is a special setlist rarity, and I like it a lot.

The Group with George Tickner: Keystone, March 7, 1973

LN jg1973-03-07.jgms.s2p-48mins.sbd-alligator.31501.flac1644

Update 4/22/2012: The second guitarist is George Tickner.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Keystone
2119 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA
March 7, 1973 (Wednesday)

--Set II (3 tracks, 48:42, partial set)--
t01. untitled 19730307 [19:59] [0:08] % [0:06]
t02. Merl's Tune [14:18] ->
t03. Georgia On My Mind [13:44] (1) [0:27]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: George Tickner - el-g;
! lineup: Bill Vitt - drums;
! lineup: Sarah Fulcher - 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/19730307-01

! db: shnid 31501 (this source). This is one of the mostly-uncirculated "third batch" of Betty Cantor-Jackson's tapes, which came to light around late 1995. Rob Eaton professionally preserved the tapes, many of which were seemingly-irredeemably water-damaged and filth-encrusted. Thank goodness he did. Tapes like this show us stuff that otherwise would be completely unknown. Eaton supplied DATs of these tapes to Latvala and/or the Garcia vault. It would seem that Lossless Legs user 'alligator', who shared these with the world, was indeed very well-connected.

! Given lineage: "MSR > DAT3x > Delta Dio 2496 > Soundforge > WAV > FLAC1644"; seeded to Lossless Legs by alligator.

! Seeder note: "There are some low volume digital pops that can heard during the quieter parts of the performance. They did not detract from me thoroughly enjoying this show."

! personnel: Garcia, Saunders and Fulcher are easy, and the little bass solo in Georgia On My Mind is almost certainly (p <. 05) by John Kahn. We can assume it's Vitt drumming, I guess. The historcal assumption was that the second guitarist was Tom Fogerty, but it turns out to be George Ticker. GT has better lead guitar chops than Tom, who actually is never known to have played with JGMS in 1973 despite having been billed in the early part of the year.

! setlist: t01 is almost certainly a song with a name. This is the one with Jerry and Sarah singing, duet-style, as if to each other, "ba ba, ba ba, da dah". It's really nice. The vocals start up around 3:20 in.

! P: t02 Tickner makes himself heard at  @ 1:02, then plays a hot solo from 1:15-2:35. He is good, and it strikes me unusual for someone other than Jerry or Merl to take the first solo. This guy is tearing it up.

! P: t02 Merl's Tune is in a really nice jam space in the 4-min mark, with Merl moaning, groaning, howling, burning. Very nice. Garcia tries to double-time it around 5:09, Merl swirling around, Jerry's saying at 5:20 that he has an idea and runs with it for a bit. There's a deep, screaming space in the 11-minute mark. Tickner is also then wailing around 11:20 for awhile.

! P: t02 I think this version of Merl's Tune is fantastic.

! P: t03 Garcia is the one who drops them into Georgia On My Mind. Subtle, delicate, beautiful. John Kahn plays a beautiful bass solo in the 10-minute mark of GOMM. Right on, man! Great American Songbook, baby.

! t03 (1) @ 13:55 JG "Well the light is on, as you all know. So ... we have to call a close to the evening's festivities." The crowd calls for more, or one more, and Garcia says "I know they're not gonna dig it" as he appears to call for "How Sweet It Is" with his guitar. I'd bet dollars to donuts they closed the show with HSII.

Reading Notes: Tolces, Todd. 1973. Jerry’s Bluegrass Boys. Melody Maker 48 (April 28): 35.

Tolces, Todd. 1973. Jerry’s Bluegrass Boys. Melody Maker 48 (April 28): 35.

A FEW POINTS TO EXTRACT:

First, I believe the interview material and show observations are from March 13, 1973 at the Keystone in Berkeley. He only mentions it as a quartet, so I doubt there was a fiddle player there. Here are setlist bits we get for this date:

• Orange Blossom Special
• Jambalaya
• Panama Red ("halfway through set"; with Chris Rowan and Lorin Rowan on harmony vocals)
• How Mountain Girls Can Love

Since we don't have any setlist information for this show at TJS, this should probably be added.

Second, we learn from Peter Rowan that the OAITW studio album was already in the can by ca. March 13, 1973. The idea that it was recorded by mid-March just blows my mind. Jackson (1999, p. 241) says OAITW "even cut an album at Mickey Hart's studio, though it was never released. 'We weren't too happy with it,' Grisman said. 'It was kind of rushed. It didn't seem to equal what we were doing live.'" (We then get the "one of the best-selling bluegrass albums of all time" quote about the eventual live OAITW record.) Not much to say except that these two observations (album cut by March, and "kind of rushed") would seem to fit well together. Let me here just reiterate my plea for any and all information/thoughts about the OAITW studio album. Let me also just note how contemporaneous this is with the whole Muleskinner project. Not sure what to make of that, just putting it out there.

Third, they were planning on doing "a few bluegrass festivals", but I have just reconsulted McNally (pp. 548-550, 554), and it looks like they just played the one (6/8/73 Whippoorwill festival in Warrenton, VA), according to him. That's where I am on the issue of OAITW at the summer 1973 bluegrass festivals, too. My question is, why didn't they play more than one, as Pete seems to have expected and as ads imply they were planning to some degree?

Fourth, tiny I know, we learn that Garcia was carrying his banjo around on the GD tour. Maybe we already knew that, but it's fun for me to think on.

Fifth, here their "theme song" is said to be a Monroe tune, "How Mountain Girls Can Love". Maybe this is some inside joke about Garcia's S.O. Mountain Girl (Carolyn Adams). No idea.

Anyway, reading notes after the jump.

Another Mystery Trumpeter: JGMS, August 14, 1974

There's a trumpeter playing on "Roadrunner", the last song of set I of the show previously known as "August 15, 1974, Great American Music Hall", now corrected as 8/14/74. Listen to the first five minutes of the Falanga-Menke tape. Guy (presumably) is pretty good.

Fishing Journal: 20110822 Cache la Poudre River

Had a great day fishing the Poudre on Monday. The water was nice, the holes were attractive, weather was spectacular, natch.

Can't say the fishing was easy, however. Probably caught 5-6 fish, a couple of browns and a few wild rainbows. Morning found us down low, not far from the entrance to the canyon, nymphing. I have never really done this much. Three wet flies, basically getting smaller as you get to the end of the line, where there was a caddis nymph that was exactly like the nymphs clinging to the bottom of the rocks. Tense-line casting was new to me as a concept. I was casting OK. Caught one brown in this area while buddy caught three fish in a nice little channel opposite bank from the access. (The wading was do-able, but it wasn't trivial to get across.) My first guided trip. Guide said the fish were hammering these same flies the day before (don't they always go crazy the day before you're out there?) So patience was a virtue. I would have switched flies a lot more frequently, and I also would have tried some dries, but the guide had the flies and the putative knowledge and who am I to raise questions?

We drove up maybe 10-15 miles to a nice stretch by some picnic tables. We switched to hopper-dropper with some ugly-ass hopper up top and the same caddis nymph down low. I think I caught one or two up top and one or two below here. First one was a nice 10" brown, just beautiful.

Third spot was really, really promising water, but boy the fishing was a lot like work. This was maybe another 20 miles up the canyon, ca. 36-40 miles from Fort Collins. Caught a little 'bow on my first cast, the kiss of death for future catching. Went to a nice fat 90-degree bend in the river which should have bringing lots of food into some nice deep pools. I missed a strike on my dry fly, though it looked like fishy changed his/her mind at the last minute. That's consistent with the refusals that I proceeded to get. Fish in a nice deep pool, right in the edge where they should be, lazily inspecting my junk and deciding they didn't like what I was offering (less likely: how I was offering it). So we switched the bottom fly to a little PMD emerger, I think it was. Worked hard a hundred yards or so, tried to reach a nice looking pool opposite bank that I just couldn't hit. Working hard, working hard. Caught my last fish of the day, another brown, just before 3 pm, which was my pre-designated finishing time. As ever, I was tempted by another few casts on another few pools that were better than the 5,000 I had just fished, surely with hungrier and fatter fish just waiting for a nice bug to float by. Temptation. But I packed up and got on the road.

The entire ca. 40-mile stretch of the Poudre to where I got, probably around 9,000 foot elevation, looks like fisherman's paradise. It's a beautiful river and I hope to spend more time there, though I'd ask for just a bit more enthusiasm from my piscine friends!

Legion of Mary: earliest mention?

**update: March 1, 1975 was probably the formal Bay Area debut of the name. In addition to the materials here, Todd Tolces had a piece in the 3/1/75 Melody Maker talking about the new name. It is now my estimation that the name Legion of Mary, with Ron Tutt drumming, dates to December 6, 1974. But I have still found no public usage of the name before this article.
 
In my post on the Merl Saunders and Friends gig at the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati on May 31 - June 1, 1974, it came up that the Heider's session dated 5/31/74 may be the first known face-to-face meeting between Garcia and the great Ron Tutt, who would hold the beat for Garcia basically from sometime late 1974 / early 1975 until August 1977. In comments, Corry confirmed Tutt's availability based on known Elvis chronologies, and asked when was the "next first-known" Garcia-Tutt meeting. I cited the 12/15/74 show at EMU Ballroom, University of Oregon, Eugene, an attendee of which confirms that Tutt was drumming.

A few quickies. First, there's a review of the 12/15/74 gig in the campus newspaper, the Daily Emerald (Lee 1974), and it sheds no light on Tutt while referring to the band as "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders and Friends". Doggy no barky.

Second, the blurb above, from the Oakland Tribune on 1/12/75, represents the earliest reference of which I know to the change of the Garcia/Saunders band (JGMS) into Legion of Mary (LOM), referencing upcoming shows on March 1-2, 1975. The same person who attended the Oregon show remembers these shows as the first to use the LOM name, though I can't remember if I contaminated the informant by putting the data above in front of him/her.

Anyway, I'd love to find an earlier reference to Legion of Mary (outside its catholic church context, of course), but I'd be surprised if there was one. The little blurb above has all the hallmarks of a fresh announcement of a new band, name and all.

Aunt Monk: June 1, 1975, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

May 1975 Inn of the Beginning calendar, courtesy Mark Braunstein

What a great piece of art, first of all. I am afraid I neglected to note the name of the artist/artists on the IOTB fliers. Mea culpa!

Anyway, bottom right tells me that on Sunday, June 1, 1975, Jerry Garcia played with Aunt Monk (comprising inter alia Merl Saunders on keyboards and Martin Fierro on saxophone/flute) at the Inn of the Beginning, 8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA 94931. This is the May 1975 IOTB calendar, and the names are handwritten in, with the standard Sunday evening free folk crossed out. The provenance makes it pretty certain that Garcia was there.

This is the last of the new-to-me Garcia dates to come out of these IOTB materials. To rehash, here’s the list:

1. NRPS 8/20/71: new-to-me
2. NRPS 8/21/71: new-to-me
3. JGMS 9/20/71: new-to-me
4. JGMS 1/14/73: new-to-me
5. OAITW 3/5/73 8 pm: new-to-me
6. OAITW 3/5/73 11 pm: new-to-me
7. OAITW 4/24/73: new-to-me
8. OAITW 7/18/73: confirmation
9. Merl Saunders and Friends 5/31/74: new-to-me
10. Merl Saunders and Friends 6/1/74: new to me
11. Aunt Monk 6/1/75: new-to-me [this post]

Basically ten “new-to-me”, new to The List shows. That’s pretty awesome. I have a few more Garcia-related tidbits from these materials, but they are generally more speculative and/or less consequential than these. Thanks again to Mark Braunstein for sharing this wonderful trove of information.

So, who knows the ca. 1971-1975 proprietors of the Orphanage, the Boarding House, the Record Plant or the Longbranch Saloon? :)

Anyway, I won’t elaborate much on Aunt Monk’s 6/1/75 show, since I have already talked around many of the same issues on my post on the Merl Saunders andFriends shows on May 31-June 1, 1974. Just a few points.

First, I expect this’d be Tony Saunders on bass. He was pretty regularly listed in Merl’s bands from 1974 forward.

Second, I suspect the material we are able to hear from the Generosity on 2/14/75 and 5/9/75, thanks to amazing taper Robert Castelli and the crew at Mouth of the Beast who helped preserve and document his tapes, probably closely resembles the material that might have been played in Cotati on the night in question. Lots of jazz, funk, soul, R&B and Saunders originals, maybe even all instrumentals, though by this time Merl might have started singing a song or two, as he had in Legion of Mary and as he would eventually do in most all of his bands.

Third, Jerry and Merl would take a 3-plus year hiatus within six weeks of this sit-in. While Legion of Mary would sputter on through July 6^th before ending mysteriously, the little one-offs seem to end. The next time Garcia would sit-in with Merl would be October 2-3, 1978 at the Shady Grove in San Francisco, according to TJS. (The older McNally-Arnold JG List only lists October 3, 1978, from which there is tape [shnid 20027 | shnid 97200]. TJS says these were benefits to keep Shady Grove open, but I don’t know the basis for either the Oct. 2 listing or that characterization. I don’t doubt it, but I just don’t know.) That little sit-in would seem to relate to their shared involvement in John Kahn’s 1979 band Reconstruction, which would be the last sustained live Jerry-Merl collaboration.

In a way, this sort of completes the skimming of the cream from these beautiful Inn of the Beginning documents. Ross has kindly entered lots of dates and (eventually) images from this IOTB research over at the Chicken, so that it’s preserved for posterity. Thanks again to Mark Braunstein for sharing thoughts, memories and filing cabinets!

another Natalie Merchant: "River"

From the great, great album Tigerlily:

Wales/Hooteroll influence on GD?

All Hooteroll All The Time (AHATT) is an interesting idea that could be elevable to a core principle, i.e., to the effect that Hooteroll is "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last" (Revelations 22:13, King James Bible version). :) I won't go into that here.

I will just reproduce what I just came across in a late 1972 discussion of the Grateful Dead, probably by a college undergraduate music major, who had seen all of two Dead shows. I post it on AHATT principles.

Perhaps the best recorded example of what may yet be another turn in style, and one which was embryonically apparent in at least two of the Dead's latest concerts (Philedelphia [9/21/72] and Washington [9/20/72]) can be found in a largely undiscovered album Garcia recorded with Howard Wales called Hooteroll?. Without a doubt, Garcia's collaboration with the superb blues/jazz organist, Wales, will continue to produce dramatically important results.

To a large extent, the Dead's recent dream-like style of playing, characterized by slowly evolving, minutely subtle melodies which at times are intentionally shattered ... by powerfully syncopated chords and notes, by Lesh's imitation and by a general accelerando, can be attributed to Garcia's experiences with Wales on Hooteroll? It seems likely, too that the increased influence and often outright performance of jazz preeiminently displayed throughout much of their latter concerts can be developmentally traced to Hooteroll? as well.

Now, this guy could just happen to have listened to Hooteroll? in writing up his review (or preparing for the show, or whatever) and could be following the law of the hammer. He might not know what he is talking about. Maybe Jerry had an underlying interest in jazz which led him to play it with the GD and Howard (spurious correlation, plausible). Maybe Jerry's jazzy work with the Dead influenced his style with Howard (reverse causation, highly doubtful). I don't endorse Rob Pritchard's sentiment. Because I find GD-GOTS crossovers to be really useful to parameterize, I merely note it with interest and pass it along.

AHATT.

REFERENCE:
Pritchard, Rob. 1972. Grateful Dead Resurrect Country, Blues, Jazz. Cavalier Daily (University of Virginia), October 6, 1972, p. 2. Accessed via Google New, though I can no longer find it there. The Cavalier Daily appears to be archived on line, if incompletely. A google search turns up this issue, but I can't seem to access the content.

Where I Go

Fishing Journal: 20110728: Arkansas River above Buena Vista

Man oh man, what a great day of fishing. I have never done well on the Arkansas. I had assumed that the flows would be too high to do well this time. Boy was I wrong.

The river was totally manageable. My sense, and this is as likely wrong as right, is that the river is maybe two weeks "behind" this year in terms of flow levels. So July 28th has flows more like a normal July 14th, or something like that.

Anyway, ArkAnglers in BV had said that yellow and green foam-body caddis were doing well. We went to the first decent-sized pullout north of town. Not sure how far. Anyway, the water right below the pullout is really attractive, but my sense is that those fish see a lot of odd patterns with clumsy presentations, because they don't play there. A few hundred yards upriver, though, is a really nice stretch. And I started doing really well (for me, on the Arkansas) with a yellow-bodied caddis (though not foam). Was able to wade into the middle of the river and get a beautiful brown off the edge of the main channel. Moving up and casting maybe 15 feet in from the banks, I started hitting a sweet spot where I caught another 8-9 fish, including on four casts in a row.

These were mostly really nice browns. I just took out the tape measure to check against my hands, and I agree with the claim that fisherman grossly overestimate the size of their fish. I know I have been doing so. The biggest fish I caught this day was a solid 13". That seemed really sizeable to me, and indeed may be the biggest one I have caught. I would have guessed 16" if you had asked me. Anyway, just a gorgeous, gorgeous bunch of fish on a gorgeous, gorgeous day on the Arkansas.

Next day I went up to Brown's Canyon for about two hours. For the first time, I went upstream from Hecla Junction.

There's lots of deep, slow, beautiful water right by the campground (and with corresponding pressure and wary fish), but 100 yards up from there things develop nicely. This is steep canyon wall, more so than downstream, and with reasonably high water there was a lot of ascending and descending of scrambly rocks to make way upstream. I only caught three smallish fish (two rainbows and a brown) in about 2 hours fishing. I also spent another 30 minutes hunkered down over the perfectly overhanging wall to keep me dry during a torrential thunderstorm. Not sure how the rafters are safe still being on the water, but this was one hell of a Rocky Mountain storm. I can't believe I had such a perfect spot, but I was able to eat, drink, relax, play with my line and my flies, wave to the rafters, and most importantly stay dry.

I want to keep going upstream. I wonder if the best way isn't to ascend right away and try to make river-distance by walking along the top ridge? It's terrifyingly steep in places and neither going down nor coming up is much fun. But there sure does look to be some pretty water up there. Chances are, next time I go there I'll go downstream and see if the new understanding between the Arkansas and me, whereby I do well, applies to that part of the river which has so thoroughly shut me down.

Anyway, the 28th north of BV was phenomenal. Thank you, fishing god.

Merl Saunders and Friends: May 31 – June 1, 1974, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati

Here is one of the tantalizing little performances that you come across and really, really want to know more about, while understanding how miraculous it is that you are able to know anything about it at all.

The Inn of theBeginning in Cotati hosted Merl Saunders and Friends, including Jerry Garcia, with Paul Pena opening, on Friday, May 31, 1974 and Saturday, June 1, 1974.

The May 1974 IOTB calendar had listed Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1 as TBA, supported by local folk artist Cris Williamson. The May ledger leaves the top of the bill a bit unclear, but the June calendar and ledger fill in the blanks. First, the calendar. It lists “Merl Saunders and Friends” for the weekend, with Paul Pena opening the evenings’ proceedings.

Inn of the Beginning calendar, June 1974. Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

Paul Pena

Pena’s story seems an interesting one, just entering the GOTS narrative enough to warrant attention, but obscure enough to motivate some digging. I have talked about him a little in my 2/16/74 post.

A Boston native, blind from birth, the first trace of Paul Pena I can find in the Garcia nexus is as opener for the Grateful Dead at the Electric Factory in Philly on February 14-15, 1969. I’d guess he settles into the Bay Area around July 1973, since that’s when he starts showing up as the opener for Garcia/Saunders. He may even have been the single most frequent opener for these guys from 1973-1975, most often at the Keystone. On this evidence, we’d conclude that Keystone proprietor Freddie Herrera, Jerry and/or Merl liked him and/or his music enough to make him the “regular” opener where the three of them interfaced. Merl and Jerry also laid down some tracks for Pena’s New Train on October 4, 1973, though the album was not released, on CD, until 2000. It is most relevant here for Garcia’s pedal steel credits on “Venutian Lady” and “New Train”, tracks on which Merl is also credited. More broadly it’s just a pretty nice album (I like “Gotta Move”) and is noteworthy for Pena’s version of his “Jet Airliner”, later famously covered by a certain non-playin' motherfucker.

The IOTB materials, as rich as they have proven, again have interest, though I am not sure if this answers the question of how Pena came to be connected to these guys. On the back of the April 1974 ledger there’s a note to reach Pena through Annette [presumably Annette Flowers] at the GD offices. So, somehow, Paul Pena seems to have been in the GD orbit. Yet he was either also, or eventually became, close to Merl, for whom he’d continue to open shows at least into January 1976 (i.e., during the Merl-Jerry live performance interregnum beginning in ca. July 1975).

Anyway, the June 1974 calendar gives us a listing of Merl Saunders and Friends with Paul Pena opening for this weekend. The Inn of the Beginning Flyer gives its usual nice, informative, locally-contextualized blurb, which I reproduce with its surrounding nice, informative, locally-contextualized materials from the Flyer.

June 1974 Inn of the Beginning Flyer, first page. Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

Jerry Garcia in the IOTB Ledger

As has been the case so often with these Inn of the Beginning materials, the ledger sheds new light, in this case about a heretofore unknown GOTS performance:

Excerpt of Inn of the Beginning June 1974 ledger. Courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

As I have elaborated over and over, I find these ledgers to be incredibly robust forms of evidence. The man who kept them kept (and retains) extremely accurate records, on my impression. So, to my satisfaction, this establishes that Jerry played on these nights.

So, eventually, The Jerry Site and anyone’s respective Garcia lists should be updated to reflect these dates:

• Merl Saunders and Friends (with Jerry Garcia), Friday, May 31, 1974, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA
• Merl Saunders and Friends (with Jerry Garcia), Saturday, June 1, 1974, Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

update: now at Jerrybase: May 31, 1974 | June 1, 1974

Some speculative and overdone reconstruction of these newly-discovered dates

How do I imagine this coming about? Clearly going too deeply into something that’s probably really simple, let me say a few things.

In my mind’s eye, this is Merl calling for a gig (or Mark Braunstein checking in with him), “I’ve got a bunch of guys together and am free that weekend”, kind of thing. The May-June gigs were booked late, since they didn’t make the May calendar, but the “TBA” listing suggests to me that the Inn was holding that weekend for something special. They usually had things fully calendared in time to go to print. My hunch is that Merl was trying to get Jerry to come up to Cotati on this free weekend and that this accounts both for the delay and for the slightly more tantalizing “and Friends’ formulation. Merl: “Hey Jerry, wanna come up to Cotati and jam this particular weekend?” Garcia: “Yeah, man. I gotta check.” Merl, next phone call: “Hey Mark, can you hold that weekend for me? I might be able to get Jerry.” Mark: “Hell yeah.”

It probably takes a while to get Garcia to (be able to) commit, what with Jerry being Jerry (overcommitted somewhere, on something). Indeed, the record shows that Garcia was at Heider’s on May 31^st. Shenk and Silberman (1) report that the “The Vault” (as of the mid-1990s, so presumably containing GD and JG material) holds some Garcia studio work such as “Some Enchanted Evening” (yes, the Rodgers and Hammerstein showtune from South Pacific) and “Cardiac Arrest”. This latter, a little jam really, was released as an outtake to Compliments on the All Good Things box set, and I presume that the released version is from this date. It may also shed some light. According to deaddisc, the players are Garcia, Michael Omartian on the piano, Merl Saunders on organ, John Kahn on bass, and Ronnie Tutt on drums. (I thought I heard some rhythm guitar, but what do I know?). So maybe Merl and Jer drove up to Cotati together, after playing around at Heider’s?

Win-win-win. The Inn is guaranteed a sellout at its standard mid-1974, strong-act-on-a-weekend-night rate of $2. Stuffing 250 people in, they gross $500 in tickets and pay out $400 to the talent (70% of the door for the band, blowing through the $150 guarantee, and $50 for Paul Pena), clear a C-note and then have a nice haul on beer and soda. Merl gets to keep playing with Jerry, which he obviously loves and which, crassly, is always in his pocketbook interest to keep doing. (Man was a cash cow, I tell ya.) Jerry, Being the May-June 1974 Vintage Jerry, The Youngish, Healthy-ish, I-Gotta-Jam-Somewhere-With-Someone Jerry, gets to play. Oh, and he leaves with $80 bucks in his pocket, which oughta keep him in smokes for a few days. Multiply all of this by two for the whole weekend, and we get these gigs.

What “Band” Played?

What should we call this collectivity that performed in Cotati? The listing itself –Merl Saunders and Friends—is interesting, insofar as I care about the formalities of band names, billings, and so on. And I care deeply about those things. When Merl played the Inn on Friday-Saturday April 5-6, 1974, he as just billed as Merl Saunders (note that Paul Pena opened). The “and Friends” formulation in May-June is probably not just an elaborated version of the same thing: it signals something that might interest the cognoscenti, i.e., that Jerry might be there. Just the name and the "and Friends" formulations suggest something looser and more ad hoc than a “band”. Merl Saunders and Friends is probably the best we can do. I would not call it a “band” at this point, just a picked-up group (though possibly with ideas about institutionalization, moving forward, at least on Merl’s part).

To get a sense of how fluid the billings were around Merl’s non-Garcia-related “bands”, I have just poked through some of my notes and listings for Merl’s bands without Jerry in the 1971-1975 period. Here are just some of the “bands” that I have seen mentioned or listed:

• Heavy Turbulence. A six-piece band which  released the single “Little Bit of Righteousness”, with “Iron Horse” on the B-side in ca. late November 1970 (2). I don’t know who the players were. Not Garcia. But maybe Kahn, Vitt, Fogerty. Matt Scofield’s Merl Saunders discography lists the band as Merl Saunders and Heavy Turbulence, with a catalog number Galaxy 776 (1970), but no players are listed. (As an aside, Heavy Turbulence was also the name of a Saunders record, probably released around mid-March 1972 (3). That album, of course, featured Garcia, Tom Fogerty, John Kahn and Bill Vitt.
• Merl Saunders Quartet. This was the listing at the Inn on December 14-15, 1973 at the Inn, with John Kahn apparently on bass.
• Merl Saunders Band. The Oakland Tribune published a piece on Martin in July 1974 using this name (4; see also my posts on July ’74 shows at Keystone and the Sand Dunes). In late August 1974 (5), the Trib reported that “The Merl Saunders Band, which featured Jerry Garcia on guitar and Martin Fierro on sax on alternating weeks at the Sand Dunes in San Francisco, has changed its name to” …
• … Aunt Monk. So we should date this from around late August 1974. The next usage of this name, which is seems to refer to a bona fide “band” (a name, a relatively fixed membership, a perceived “going concern”, an album) enters my data in September 1974 and continues sporadically for several years.
• Merl Saunders and Martin Fierro. What interests me about the previous little hints of institutionalization (for a “band” to change its “name” it had to be a band with a name in the first place, if you follow me) is that on the same date as the Fierro article (5) the Trib referred to the folks playing at the Sand Dunes as Merl Saunders and Martin Fierro, not Merl Saunders Band (6). No biggie, but just weird. Maybe they needed the extra letters for the type to set properly right-justified, who knows.
• plus lots of ad hoc listings of names, lots of interchange of nouns (band, group, aggregation), and every possible permutation of Merl/Merle [sic]/Mel [sic] Saunders/Sanders [sic]’s name.

It doesn’t really matter, of course. But I like that, in parallel with the Garcia/Saunders group itself, which didn’t have a name –about which I’ll have too much to say, at some point—things were just really, really fluid around all of this. Jerry and Merl would settle in with Legion of Mary for the first-half of 1975, and then, for Garcia, comes the crucial, fateful fall 1975 choice to put his name (and himself) out front in the Jerry Garcia Band, which would be the name of his “main” side band until his death twenty years later (except January-September 1979, with Reconstruction). It’s a terribly important inflection point. Putting his name on it, commodifying his name, professionalizing the band, institutionalizing it, all hearken to the end of a kind of dream of being able to jam anonymously, to play music without all the bullshit that attached to being Jerry Garcia Of The Grateful Dead. I suspect that Jerry would lament, in later years, his increasing inability (or unwillingness, or whatever) to just sit in anonymously in some small club with a band with no name, play some funk.

Who was in the What?

Who played? Well, we know Merl and Jerry played. Let’s assume there’s also bass, drums, and another instrument. We just really, really don’t know.

update 20210713: we pretty much do know. Tony Saunders has posted a pic of what he has said was one of his first gigs with Merl and Jer, from the Inn. Jerry is beardless and may even be wearing that black turtleneck he favored at this time. Tony identifies the players as Jerry, Merl, himself, Tom Donlinger on drums, Martin Fierro on sax, and Peter Welker on trumpet. And I am about 99% sure that the pic relates to these gigs.

What I had written is now greyed out some - I want the words to still be there, but they of course give way to the more solid information that has since arisen. Thanks to David Kramer-Smyth for the tip in comments.

Regarding bass, the December 1973 IOTB Flyer tells us that the Merl Saunders Quartet of December 14-15, 1973 featured John Kahn. By 1974 Merl’s son Tony Saunders, who would turn 18 in that year and who is a monster funky bassist, appeared more and more frequently and effectively supplanted John (insofar as John was ever implanted at all). But since John would appear to have been at Heider’s with these guys earlier in the day on May 31st, Occam’s Razor probably points to him, at least for that date. The truth is we just can’t know.

I would also suppose that Martin Fierro was there. He had been playing with Merl and Jerry pretty steadily for something like ten months by this time. We know from the band discussion above that he was playing in the Merl Saunders Band at the Sand Dunes in ca. the first half of 1974, apparently alternating Monday nights with Garcia. Of course, that’s right in this time period.  We don’t know he was there, but there are all kinds of reasons to think that he probably was.

There was also presumably a drummer. Bill Vitt thinks he was out of the Saunders/Garcia scene by mid-1974, so we should probably rule him out. Bill Kreutzmann is possible, but we just can’t know. It seems unlikely to me, since Merl’s “friends” could easily have included some other drummer. My bet, based on a thin scrap of evidence (his credited presence on the 5/31/74 “Cardiac Arrest” jam) would be Ronnie Tutt. This is presently the earliest direct Garcia-Tutt connection known to me, and given that he’d be around from 1975-1977, a live gig this early would be of particular historical note. But, as with all of this, I am speculating. It could just as well have been that guy from Cotati. You know—that guy. Whatshisname.

What did the Who/What Play?

In terms of the repertoire (i.e., the what that the What and Whom played), again, no specific idea. I imagine that these kinds of gigs, where it’s really Jerry sitting in with Merl, are the ones that turned out to be all-instrumental, such as the “7/21/74” or "7/22/74" Keystone stuff, which is actually 1/21/75 and 1/22/75 (for analysis, see nick, or me, or me again), or the 2/14/75 and 5/9/75 (May 9^th) gigs from The Generosity in San Francisco. (As an aside, Merl Jr.’s first reaction to the 2/14/75 Generosity gig is that it would have been Aunt Monk, with Tony Saunders on bass.) I thus imagine “When I Die”, “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got)”, “Little Bit Of Righteousness”, “Valdez In The Country”, etc. Maybe a Stevie Wonder number. I doubt they even had a vocal mic set up. Anyway, that’s all speculation. We just don’t know.

Summary

So, my initial goal was just to establish the evidentiary basis for adding these two gigs to our Garcia lists (i.e., The Garcia List). But the post turned into a little discussion of Paul Pena and some broader historical context, including Merl’s (Jerryless) bands around this time and some possible players and songs. Lots of wild speculation, once I left the fact of the gigs themselves, but fun stuff to think about. May-June in Sonoma, jamming with friends (or strangers). Not too bad.

REFERENCES

(1)  Shenk, David, and Steve Silberman. 1994. Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads, s.v. “The Vault”, p. 301. New York: Doubleday.
(2)  Gene Robertson, “On the Beam,” Sun Reporter (San Francisco), November 28, 1970, p. 29.
(3)  Dennis Hunt, “Playing Small Rock Clubs is a ‘Release From the Dead’.” San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, April 9, 1972, p. 8, notes that HT was “released a few weeks ago”.
(4)  R.B. Ragg, “Life Out on the Side,” Oakland Tribune, July 21, 1974, p. 3-RAP.

(5)  "Rap-Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, August 25, 1974, p. 2-RAP. 

(6)  "Rap-Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, July 21, 1974, p. 2-RAP.