LN jg1993-11-12.jgb.s2.aud-gastwirt.139507.flac1648
The man had conceived the band bearing his name as a way to
scratch some musical itches, play some mostly consonant music with
mostly-simpatico (or at least deferential) people, and make a little bit of
walking around money. The Jerry Garcia Band provided its namesake with a
comfortable and, eventually, highly lucrative musical diversion which allowed
him to be himself, do most of the soloing, not have to figure out where Mickey
Hart put the one, and maybe share some laughs (among other things that release
endorphins, kill pain, and produce euphoria [Dunbar et al. 2012])
with his ol' buddy John Kahn.
Yet, Jerry was Jerry, with all that implied. Like Midas,
everything he touched turned to gold, and that included his bar band, half of
whose members played for free in Oakland churches on Sundays. By contrast, on Friday, November 12, 1993, this
group sold out Madison Square Garden, grossing almost half a million as part of
its twenty night, fifteen gig swing through the eastern time zone, its last
real tour. Unlike a decade earlier, a relatively punishing bus tour with Garcia deep in heroin haze, this one was first class all the way, with the band
staying in New York City and flying in and out of Teterboro, while battalions of squeaks (sound techs) and squints (light techs) did the heavy lifting. It seems
like only half the gigs sold out, but these were mostly good-sized rinks and
arenas with five-figure capacities, the kinds of places the Dead had been
playing only a few years earlier.
The Garcia band's cozy sociality also meant that guest
shots became scarce once the years' third digits turned to nines. The E Street
Band's good-time "Big Man" Clarence Clemons sat in once in 1990,
reprising his steady gigging with the JGB from late 1989, and banjo wiz Béla
Fleck joined in on a couple of numbers at the Greek Theater in Berkeley two
months later, in the dark early weeks following Brent Mydland's passing. As
good as Fleck is, he played in a decidedly consonant mode, picking some pretty
accompaniment to Pete Rowan's "Midnight Moonlight" and, doubly improbably,
some mandolinish lead reggae banjo on "Harder They Come". The next fall, while still a member of the Dead, the great Bruce
Hornsby sat in with Jerry in Hampton, Virginia, on the decade's other east coast
swing, in November of 1991.
Hornsby certainly had the chops and the chutzpah to
challenge Garcia, and he did so regularly in the Dead before stepping back off
the scene to pursue his own extremely successful career, and perhaps to ward
off the curse of the Dead's keyboard players. The one guy to really push Jerry
around on his own stage was hotshot jazz saxophonist David Murray, who showed
up two years after Hornsby's visit, and six weeks after sitting in with the
Dead, at the aforementioned Madison Square Garden gig. The man BLEW, which is
to have been expected. As Dead family insider Gary Lambert put it, "expecting
a force of nature like David to function as a 'sideman' for the JGB (or any
band) is kind of like saying to Jackson Pollock, 'Gee, I really admire your
work. Now, could you paint me a nice Andrew Wyeth?'"
The reedman put some air into a number of very sharp notes,
with a Garcia Band that was mostly soft, cottony round edges by this point in
time. Garcia appears to have taken notice. Attendee Eric Pooley recalls that
"Murray was in Garcia's face a little more than Garcia would have liked: [he]
attacked, and Garcia retreated into shoetop space", chin on chest. Jim
Powell observed that "Murray cut Jerry to shreds at that MSG Jerry Band
show - maybe the only time old gunslinger Garcia ever came out on the short
end." But the evidence of the night's "Lay Down Sally", normally
a smooth, easy, good-time roller hewing closely to Clapton's original, belies
this perspective, with all due respect to the poet and Macarthur Genius grantee who proffered it.
Segueing out of the churchy "My Sisters And
Brothers", Garcia displayed little Christian charity in first feinting at
the Stones' "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love", then shifting
into "Lay Down Sally", taking a couple of extra measures at the
start to let Murray his footing and thus making it, if not quite a fair fight,
at least an honorable one. Typically, in the Garcia Band, Jerry gets the first
solo (and usually the second, third and fourth). Here, Murray challenges the
old fella in the light purple shirt right out of the gate, and they step on
each other for a minute or two before Jerry lets him have his say, comprised of
some sharp, loud bursts that might have blown back his shock-white mane. After
that, still only fifty-one despite the white hair and haggard mien, the gunslinger
drops the hammer, pursuing a million aggressive leads, syncopating some minor
chords, and generally, all due apologies, not taking "no" for Sally's
answer. Clocking in at over sixteen minutes, and finishing with an emphatic
strum over the setbreak announcement, the "Lay Down Sally" from
November 12, 1993 provides one of the finest musical displays of Garcia's late
solo career, proving that he could still rise to a challenge when the occasion
called for it.
I picked and chose from the two filesets named at the top, so some sketchy listening notes follow the fold. "Shining Star" also illustrates the reedman and the gunslinger trading blows, and both "The Maker" and "Don't Let Go" from the 86-minute second set are outstanding and worth your time.
