JGB Spring '93 SoCal

Preface: JGB in SoCal

Little springtime SoCal jaunts became a regular thing for JGB starting in 1983. (OK, that was very late winter, but March is generally pretty springy down there.) Some were one- or two-offs, others were a little more elaborate. Here's a sketch.

1983: 3/11a and 3/11b in Santa Barbara; 3/12a and 3/12b, 3/13 in Beverly Hills

1984: 5/17 Beverly Hills, 5/18 Irvine, 5/19 Santa Barbara, 5/20 Reseda

1985: Garcia-Kahn 5/31a and 5/31b in Beverly Hills

1986: 5/23 in San Diego, 5/24 in LA

1987: 3/13 and 3/14 in LA

1988: no SoCal

1989: 5/19 Irvine, 5/20 San Diego, 5/22 LA

1990: LA in November

1991: no SoCal

1992: summer dates

1993: 4/16 and 4/17 at UCLA, 4/18 in San Diego

1994: 5/13 San Bernardino, 5/14 Ventura, 5/15 Irvine, 5/17 and 5/18 San Diego + 5/19 Phoenix

So much to say, but so little time. Let me just foreshadow some of what might get some write up in Fate Music.

'83: Hell's Angel George Christie, Jr., a rather remarkable dude, promoting in Santa Barbara (again in '84). I have some super-sweet material here about how much better it was for Jerry working for an outlaw than it was for some of the "straight" promoters in the area.

'84: not sure yet, but definitely mention the killer music and DeeDee Dickerson's swan song.

'85: "Bullshit! Bullshit!" and all that

'86: Wolfgang trying to product-differentiate the "Band Electric" 10 months before the birth of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. And one of the great sardonic review headlines of all time: "Band Electric Plays at Pace Languid".

'93: maybe some stuff based on this post

'94: "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!!"

Among the themes that will pop up are NorCal vs. SoCal, maybe some nods toward playing on John Kahn's home turf, and definitely the evolution of the SoCal jaunt as a commercial proposition: 1) from local promoters (with John Scher's help) to conceding Bill Graham the west coast monopoly he so badly wanted. (He wanted it all, but John Scher was simply too great to work with to give him up.) And 2) obvs., the switch from clubs and theaters to amphitheaters and basketball arenas. Of course, too, some great music.

JGB SoCal Spring 1993

So much for the long windup. I really just wanted to plop down some notes around a listen a month or two ago to the April 16-17, 1993 gigs in Pauley Pavilion and the 18th in the San Diego Sports Arena. I have listening-noted the Warfield 4/23/93 show on these pages, and found it somewhat low energy, though I abso-fucking-lutely love its version of "Señor" (released on Garcia Plays Dylan) and "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game" (released on Shining Star). It seems like I haven't listened to the 4/24 or 4/25 Warfield shows, which I guess I will need to do at some point.

These three SoCal shows from the week before strike me as overall better than 4/23, generally strong, rarely really bad and occasionally fantastic. If forced to rank these three, I'd say 4/18 > 4/17 > 4/16. I note that The Powers That Were released 1 tune each from the 18th and 17th, but none from the 16th. That seems about right to me, and I have to say that they made fantastic choices. Despite its execrable cover art and (not unrelated) the fact that it was released under the reign of She Who Shall Not Be Named (whom I nevertheless name below), the Shining Star release contains some outstanding music, and the selections from this run of shows are top-shelf.

From the 17th, they selected "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love", which the Stones had covered soon after Solomon Burke's original 1964 version on Atlantic, and which was most successfully covered by Wilson Pickett. This Garcia Band version is absolutely killer, a truly fine late era performance ranging across some stanky pedal effects to some very spare sections, sung together and tenderly by Jerry and the ladies, but also across some growly exclamatory "I need it! I need it!" from ol 'Jer. More detailed notes, probably not all that illuminating, below.

From the 18th, they selected Dylan's "Positively 4th Street". (Happy belated 82nd birthday to Mr. Dylan, BTW!) What can I say about Garcia and 4th Street? Of all the Dylans he did, I think this one was the most special. It was almost never not amazing. It is one of those tunes that I still haven't found quite the right word for, which appeared across the decades, but typically in short spurts, which I think have a particular quality of Jerry loving them but finding them either challenging to do or too special to wear out. This is speculation, of course, but it's what my gut says. And none of these tunes --also including "Tough Mama", "Like A Road", a few others-- better captures that profile for me than "4th Street".

The great David Gans and Blair Jackson asked Garcia about the tune in a 1981 interview.

Q: Do you have any trouble singing a song as bitter as "Positively 4th Street"?

Garcia: Not at all. It's easy for me to cop that asshole space. I was that guy, too. For me, it occupies the same space as 'Ballad of a Thin Man'. It tells that person who's lame that they're lame, and why they're lame, which is a very satisfying thing to do. 'Positively 4th Street' has this way of doing it where it's beautiful, too. And 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' is basically a put-down, too. It's one of those things like, 'You're losing bad - dig yourself.' It was the beautiful sound of 'Positively 4th Street' that got to me, more than the bitterness of the lyric. The combination of the beauty and the bitterness, to me, is wonderful. ... That's something that only Dylan has been able to pull off in terms of modern songwriting, I think (Jackson and Gans 19810911, 29).

Jerry played it somewhat regularly with the Garcia-Saunders aggregation in 1973 (as represented, e.g., on the original Saunders-Garcia-Kahn-Vitt Live at Keystone, and re-released by Fantasy endlessly since then). He picked it back up for a month in 1975 in the first JGB with Nicky, then dropped it again until Ozzie Ahlers came on board in 1979 (check out the 12/21/79 version, one of the greatest single-song performances of Garcia's playing career). He dropped it again in the middle of the February 1980 tour for more than ten years, bringing it out staccato in the 90s. Here are the all of the post-1980 versions. Because I think the song held special meaning for Jerry, I offer up some conjecture as to what I think might have motivated the revival.

3/1/91, which I have called "Certainly One of the Best and Most Interesting Shows of the 90s" (which may be damning it with faint praise): I note that 4th Street is "just about perfect - I think he gets all of the lyrics, and he does it with the right degree of bitterness." What might have led Garcia to dust this gem off after 11 years, obviously rehearse it with the band, play it for this "just for this one moment", and drop it for two years again? Well, first we know that he was using again, and not just chipping but to the point that the GD would stage another intervention four months later, whereupon Jerry went onto a methadone program. (It didn't stick.) Second, we know from his September '91 interviews that he was wildly burned out on the Dead, and he explicitly said that it was during the spring that he was asking the band about chilling out for six months, only to be told that the show had to go on. *cough* Phillesh *cough* So, in this case, I blame the Grateful Dead. Does any of this have anything to do with why he played 4th Street? Neither you nor I has any idea. But, while it may  not have been carefully planned out, I think something definitely caused its appearance. What do you think?

4/18/93 (this version) and 4/23/93 (on Shining Star): Here, I primarily blame woman troubles (Jerry's, not necessarily the women's). Humiliatingly, San Francisco institution Herb Caen led a January 1993 column asking "would the beloved Jerry Garcia dump his longtime ladyfriend, Manasha (the mother of his 3-yr-old daughter), and take off for Hawaii with a new inamorata?" (Caen 19930112). I can't recall where this occured, but when People wrote about his personal life in 1976 Garcia lost his shit, and I can't imagine the isolated and private 1993 version of himself would have been happy about having his love-life laundry aired in public. The new inamorata in January was the sweet and lovely Brigid Meier, but he had already left her in March after a) running back into Deborah Koons (also involved the 1976 complications) in Mill Valley and b) Brigid finding out he was using and asking him to get clean (McNally 2002, 603). Her recollections of that encounter supply some of the darkest images we have of the man in the grip of his addiction. Maybe he had her in mind when singing about "what a drag it is to see you" and all that. After a little fling with one Shannon Jeske (ibid), it seems like by April he would have been back with Deborah. Indeed, having heard some of the inside skinny about how She worked, the fact that She and Jerry were back together right around this time may have motivated the selection of material from these very shows.

There were other things going on in this window, of course. The last time he had played the Warfield, in late February, there was a "mini riot" outside the venue, involving 20 cops, rock-and-bottle throwing, and a dozen arrests ("12 arrests at Garcia concert," Argus-Courier [Petaluma, CA], March 2, 1993, p. "Deadheads blame riot on S.F. Police," San Francisco Examiner, March 1, 1993, p. A-13). So, to whom, or about whom or what, would he be venting his spleen in April 1993, by again dusting off, rehearsing, performing, and again dropping 4th Street? I have no idea. But I will say that, as on 3/1/91, on 4/18/93 he dusted the tune off and played it nearly perfectly, as close to perfectly as he ever did any song. I think he nailed every single lyric. And, heart? What heart! My only note about the song is this: "this is stunningly good".

There is lots of other really nice stuff in these shows, as my notes below narrate. The "Don't Let Go"s are too brief for my taste. But even tunes I don't generally love --I am looking at you, "Dixie Down"-- have a little extra something, again more on the 18th than the 17th and more on either of those than the first night. The Garcia Band at this point was running like a pretty well-oiled machine, putting plenty of bread in the breadbox --around $225,000 for these three nights!-- punching in solid 60-minute sets, and delivering good stuff to the faithful. They hold up well after 30 years, and I can recommend them to you --especially the 18th-- if you are searching for something to spin.

Oh yeah, what about the 1995 versions of 4th Street? On 1/13/95, he botches the words ("Jerry can't sing 4th Street if he can't remember the lyrics", I snipped). But I also note that he manages to remember more of them than I would, and as far as I know I am not on death's door. On 3/4/95 he says "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes" no fewer than four times - so he does the "I could be you" and "what a drag it is to see you" responses twice. Not lyrically correct, I don't think (?), but could be (over-) interpreted as really feeling true to the man in that moment. By 4/15/95 he is running on fumes, though the version certainly makes up in feeling what it lacks in power. If my whole reasoning about the song's appearance reflecting a particularly embittered mindset is right, it certainly makes sense that it was around for these three months. He had crashed his car in January, canceled shows in February, and, not least, he was dying. So 4th Street certainly fit the Zeitgeist.

Listening Notes for April 16-18, 1993 below the fold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listening notes follow.

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

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

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

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

JGMF:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

! R: field recordist: Janet and Chuck Vasseur

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JGB in Chumash Country: Campbell Hall, UCSB, February 5, 1977

In my writeup of the Garcia Band's 11/20/76 gigs at the Pismo Theatre, I noted that Jerry urged the crowd to come see ol' Hoyt Axton in a couple of weeks. "He'll be down here doin' a benefit for Redwind, which is just a good scene, about forty miles from here, a lot of good people workin' real hard."

I elaborated:

The RedWind Medicine Camp was a Native American community, chiefed by the last full-blooded Chumash, Semu Huaute, located in rugged San Luis Obispo County. In correspondence, Bob Sewana Saenz explains: "Jerry visited me in SLO after a show at the Pismo Beach Theater in late 1976. I drove him and a few band members to Semu Huaute's (Chumash) Red Wind Medicine Camp. I showed him a school project that we were in need of funds to develop for the many children there." I presume they went up on Saturday, and came back down in time for Jerry to play his shows. He must have been moved, because he speaks. Even more importantly, he puts his money where his mouth is, headlining a benefit for the RedWind Foundation at UCSB on February 5, 1977 - but I'll get to that later.

Later is now. On 1/19/77, the UCSB Leg. Board approved the benefit gig, to be put on by Bob Sewana Saenz's Band Aid in support of Red Wind. The pre-show publicity doesn't mention this - nothin' in re benefit status of this event. But the documents are clear that the Garcia Band not only played the gig, but lent the promoter $1,000 to help put it on, a pretty righteous thing to do and part of a small inflection in benefits Garcia played in '77 (see also 6/23/77 for the Forest People of Camp Meeker and 8/12/77 for Greenpeace).

The shows don't move me all that much, though the late show "Don't Let Go" has some interesting passages. I find the sociometry more interesting, on three fronts.

First, there is a second guitar player present, playing country style backing licks. As noted on the 11/20/76 post, I know who this is but am holding it back for the book (major scoop! - not really). But, this player was present on nearly every known show from the first half of 1977, raising the question of whether this was a distinct band configuration as opposed to just a guest shot. These are academic questions also impossible to answer, but it's nevertheless interesting that a heretofore unknown aggregation appeared regularly as late as 1977.

Second, Chris Sobik drew my attention to a second female vocalist, and indeed we find Maria Muldaur providing backing vocals for both shows. This is the earliest Maria engagement with the JGB. update: that lasted for almost a day.  I have now heard her on 9/12/76. She had sat in with Jerry and Merl several times in '74 (and one night, 10/12/74, the Garcia-Saunders-Fierro-Kahn-Humphrey aggregation backed her for a whole set), and at least once with the Legion of Mary in '75. (This post seems to cover the bases.) But, while Corry has JGB #4, with Maria a full member, emerging on 11/15/77, she had already joined the band onstage at least 9/12/76, this night (February 5th), July 2-3 (without Donna Jean), August 7, August 12 (Greenpeace benefit), and maybe others from this slow period for the JGB.

Oh yeah, one last thing: Deborah Koons made this trip with Jerry. FYI.

Listening notes after the jump.

Jerry Has Fallen, and He Can't Get Up

OK, maybe I am feeling a little bit cranky. I have been doing some late era listening, and it's not always easy.

Wednesday, April 20, 1994 at the Warfield, for example, has a "Don't Let Go" - which is good! - but it falls into quite a remarkable rut. From 3:22-6:03 of this lovely Vasseur tape, he sings "Hold me tight and don't let go" no fewer than thirty times, by my count. Now, if he were embellishing more, if he were varying his vocal attack, if he were pairing it with guitar expressions, I would, in principle, be fine with that. He'd be feeling it. But, in this case, he seems to be feeling a little lost, a little stuck. There is a bit of variation in how he sings the line, but not much. There's almost no interplay between the voice and guitar, which could make "Don't Let Go" from any era pretty compelling, since it's not something he did much of on any other song. It's like he's trying to remember how he exits into the jam part of the song, but can't bring it forth.

The show's not as bad as 8/14/94. Married about nine weeks to Deborah Koons, he played "Get Out Of My Life Woman" with some nice burn and real conviction. But the penultimate "Señor" suffers for lack of steady drumming, and in any case the "tail of the dragon" is smelling dangerously strong at this point, so perhaps best to put it to bed. The closing "Midnight Moonlight", I note, "is a little hard to hear."

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
April 20, 1994 (Wednesday)
Vasseur shnid-141480

--set I (7 tracks, 65:07)--
s1t01. [0:14] I'll Take A Melody [10:59] [0:54]
s1t02. Get Out Of My Life Woman [9:23] [1:41]
s1t03. Forever Young [10:50] [0:23]
s1t04. Run For The Roses [5:50] [0:15]
s1t05. Ain't No Bread In The Breadbox [10:22] [0:04]
s1t06. My Sisters And Brothers [3:58] ->
s1t07. Deal [9:56] (1) [0:09]

--set II (6 tracks, 74:36)--
s2t08. Shining Star [21:31] [0:23]
s2t09. Think [8:09] ]0:10]
s2t10. Señor [7:34] ->
s2t11. Don't Let Go [14:49] [0:39]
s2t12. Mississippi Moon [8:35] ->
s2t13. Tangled Up In Blue [12:40] (2) [0:06]

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

JGMF:

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

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19940420-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/21299 (Vasseur shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/141480 (this fileset).

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html

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

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

! R: field recordist: Chuck Vasseur

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

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

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

! R: tape sounds so great

! R: s1t01 ITAM splice 0:32-0:43, repeated section, a bit missing. Lame.

! P: s1t01 ITAM 3 range he is just making sounds, having forgotten the words.

! P: s1t02 GOOMLW the vocals are low but the guitar is nice and grungy, e.g., in the 4-minute range. Nice playing. Crowd stoked 5:40ff, and for good reason - good stuff. Melvin feature 6:35ff.

! P: s1t03 FY he puts the pitch-bender to work 7:49ff. DB doesn't really know how to end it, but they get there.

! P: s1t04 RFTR sounds half-speed

! s1t07 (1) JG: "Back in a little while."

! P: s2t10 Señor Donnie doesn't seem to know how to drum for this. Nothing much happens in this version.

! song: Señor (s2t10) penultimate version of this song (4/25/94).

! P: s2t11 DLG he doesn't really know the words. In 4 he's just repeating "hold me tight and don't let go" without much interesting vocal variation or guitar accompaniment, so it just feels a little stuck. I count thirty iterations between 3:22-6:03, which would be fine if he were embellishing, mixing it up. He is a little bit, on the margins. But mostly it just feels like he's fallen into this rut, and he can't get up.

! P: s2t12 Miss Moon is a little hard to hear.

! s2t13 (2) JG: "See ya later."

The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game

My first working title for Fate Music was The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game. The THGCBTG framing, as I lovingly acronymized it, reflected a slightly darker view of Garcia's side trips than I presently hold, one in which his damned Midas Touch tainted even his silly bar band, which eventually had to play boomy Madison Square Garden in front of 15,000 whippeted, "Jerrrrrryyyyy!!!!!!"-screaming fans.

As of now, I hold a less tragic view of the whole arc. Yes, even the JGB came to carry Jerry's Burden, but to such a lesser extent that, relative to the GD, it formed a relative oasis where our hero could drink of some cool American (and other) musical water without too much hassle. He probably even took some pride in bringing Melvin, David and the ladies to the Garden, staying at the Ritz and playing the rest of the east coast gigs via day trips on private jets out of Teterboro, nothing but the best under the expert management of John Scher, all under his own name.

It's still a good theme, though. And what a song!

Everyday things change
And the world puts on a new face
Certain things re-arrange
And this old world seems like a new place

Secretly I've been trailing you
Like the fox that preys on the rabbit
I had to get you and so I knew
I had to learn your ways and habits

Ooh, you were the catch that I was after
But I looked up and I was in your arms
And I, I had been captured

What's this old world coming to
Things just ain't the same
Any time the hunter gets captured by the game

I had laid such a tender trap
Hoping that you might fall into it
Your love hit me like a sudden snap
One kiss and then I knew it

Ooh, my plan didn't work out
Like I thought
'Cause I had laid my trap for you
But it seems that I got caught

What's this old world coming to
Things just ain't the same
Any time the hunter gets captured by the game

If you aren't in love with Wanda Young after hearing this, you aren't paying attention. So, for me, the song speaks both to Garcia's love life and his musical life. Let's take a closer look.

THGCBTG first entered the observable Garciaverse in 1974, appearing on Jerry's second eponymous album, which we know as Compliments (Round Records RX 102). I don't know when/where the track was laid down, though, regarding the when, March 4, 1974 seems possible. The following are credited:

• Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals
• Larry Carlton - guitar
• Michael Omartian - piano
• Merl Saunders - organ
• John Kahn - bass
• Ron Tutt - drums
• Bobbye Hall - congas 

John Kahn selected the material for Compliments, and his love of Motown, and not least the Funk Brothers' instrumentation, knew few bounds, so choosing this Smokey Robinson tune (one of many) made perfect sense. Compliments first brought Ronnie Tutt into Jerry's orbit, as he has recently noted, and they'd gig steadily together from December 6, 1974 through August 12, 1977. Among these hundreds of gigs, two from the winter of 1975 are known to have included THGCBTG:

Table xxx. Known live Jerry Garcia performances of "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game"

The song is one of those handful of songs that Jerry seems to have picked up at occasionally long intervals. I have always interpreted songs with this pattern, such as Tough Mama, Like A Road, Let's Spend The Night Together, some others, as songs that he really liked. I don't have any basis for that, in particular, except that, especially from the turn of 1976 and the predominance of comfort over challenge in his side bands (Reconstruction being a notable exception), there just weren't that many setlist variations, not least because there wasn't always a lot of rehearsing. For a song to keep coming back, especially with different bands and their different players (and their different repertoires) suggests to me that they exercised a certain pull on our hero (and his musical director, John Kahn).

One of Jerry's sweeties told me she called this out at Keystone one time in the mid-70s to let him know she was in the room, and of course it's a song not about the pursuit of music without bullshit, but of a lover. The 2/27/75 version doesn't circulate and, AFAIK, is unheard outside the Garcia Vault. The 3/7 version does, and I am listening to it now. It's very, very nice, with a lot more development than the later versions.

Of these, I have also just revisited 4/23/93 (officially released on Shining Star), and raggedy old Jerry gives it a shopworn world weariness which suits it well. The 4/23/93 date, and the inclusion of this version on Shining Star, are both redolent of Deborah Koons, who would "officially" have become Jerry's main squeeze around this time, for the second time, apparently after some years of chasing. Shining Star, with its execrable cover art done by a friend of hers, was a DK joint all the way, so maybe she found special resonance with this tune, the flipside of her rumored aversion to "Reuben And Cherise".

So if the early and late versions may speak to romantic pursuits, for me the Reconstruction versions speak more to the theme of Jerry's Burden. He wanted to hide in Reconstruction, way back in the shadows just playing whatever weird stuff that band was putting out. It seems that he really didn't want to front that band, as evidenced by insisting on being listed as a "special guest" in the publicity. While I doubt it's true, and certainly doubt that it represented a conscious choice, for him to sing THGCBTG with Reconstruction expresses the impossibility of truly hiding; he's after a good time, playing music with good players and for an audience, with a minimum of hassle, but he finds himself straining for those high notes. "It seems like I got caught", indeed.

update: turns out this is my second post under this title.

Il lui manque du souffle

LN jg1995-04-15.jgb.all.aud-vasseur.94692.flac1644

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
April 15, 1995 (Saturday)
Vasseur flac1644 shnid-94692

--set I (5 tracks, 47:32)--
s1t01. Cats Under The Stars
s1t02. And It Stoned Me
s1t03. He Ain't Give You None
s1t04. Dear Prudence
s1t05. My Sisters And Brothers

--set II (7 tracks, 68:03)--
s2t01. The Way You Do The Things You Do
s2t02. You Never Can Tell (C'est La Vie)
s2t03. [0:09] Rubin And Cherise [:10-
s2t04. What A Wonderful World
s2t05. Don't Let Go
s2t06. Positively 4th Street [7:59] ->
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight

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

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [x:xx] = 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/19950415-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1995-04-15

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

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

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/21825 (same source tape, shnf, deprecated); http://etreedb.org/shn/94692 (this fileset).

! band: URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html

! R: field recordists: Chuck Vasseur and Janet Vasseur

! R: field recording gear: 2x Neumann KM54 > Casio DA-7?

! R: lineage: DAT MASTER > DAT; Sony DTC-A7 > Sony TCD-D10PROII, Tascam DA-30MKII > Sound Devices 702 > Soundforge 9 (Fades, Sample Rate Conversion) > CDWAV > FLAC.

! P: s1t01 CUTS muffs first verse, confused all throughout the start, solidifies after a bit.

! P: s2t03 RAC everyone but Deborah Koons loves this tune, but it's striking out of the gate how slow this is. Never heard it like this. Vocals are *brutal*, he can't get anything out. Croaking "painted mandolin" isn't working. Croaking. Extremely repetitive, over long without much new happening.

! P: s2t05 DLG lyrics are a little nonsensical, but he just goes with it.

! P: s2t06 4th St flubs first verse. He just has no oomph to his singing. Here in a long central piece he is doing very well with the lyrics, making up in relative clarity what he lacks in aspiration. Whatever verses he meant to deliver late 5 early 6 didn't come through. "Stand inside my shoes" is well delivered ... "and for just that one moment, I could be you" ... sounds wistful. Nice energy, warts and all.

Harrington $treet

On  January 19, 1994 Hal Kant, under Legally Dead cover, sent Jerry executed copies of the contract for what would become Harrington Street. Kant had negotiated a $550,000 advance for the volume, enough to net Jerry a cool half-million after the lawyer's 9% came off the top. Kant told Jerry he'd put the money in a separate trust, providing him with a "much-needed rainy day fund", and urged him to feel "relieved of any undue pressure" to complete the book, since he could just return the money to Dell if he changed his mind.

Source: a copy of Kant's letter is in the Jerry Garcia Estate probate files at the Marin County Recorder's office in San Rafael. I did not note the folder, alas.

Deborah Koons Garcia managed to put enough material together from snippety "auto-apocrypha, mistruths - half lies" that Jerry left behind to cash in, here as in so many other instance, the book's November 1995 release copyrighted to the Estate of Jerome J. Garcia.

Jerry's January 1976

(formatting will almost certainly be a mess - I blame Blogger)

I.                    Preface

My band is in a state of flux right now. John Kahn and Ron Tutt and I are the main … are the nucleus of it, such as it is. We’re hoping to have a four-piece band that we all like, sometime. So far, the combinations that we’ve tried have been interesting, but not exactly where we’re trying to go musically. And so that’s, we’re waiting – we’re more or less auditioning keyboard players, playing with different people. – Jerry Garcia to velvet-voiced KSAN-FM DJ Bonnie Simmons, live in studio the afternoon of January 23, 1976, via GDAO

The demise of 1975 marks the end of the challenge-seeking phase of Garcia's Side Trips, and 1976 marks the start of a comfort-seeking phase. The transition was abrupt, but it was not instantaneous; it most directly took place over the month of January 1976. Armed with some fresh data from the GD Archives, I annotate a chronology of this liminal month.

II.                  The Pivot of 1975-1976

Time powerfully constructs the human experience. Just think of the importance of the concept of a week, in our everyday lives, for a demonstration. Years, with their added relationship to the physical universe, do so even more so.. Ever the dilettante, I get my general sense of this from Boorstin (1985), but here's what some recent science (Tu and Soman 2014) tells us (Korkki 2015).

In one study, conducted in 2010, the researchers asked two groups of farmers in India to set up a bank account and accumulate a certain amount of money by a deadline, offering extra money as an incentive. One group was approached in June, with a deadline of December that year. The second group was approached in July with a deadline of January the next year. The farmers in the first group were more likely to set up an account immediately, even though both groups had the same amount of time. That’s because the deadline was in the same year as the assignment and therefore seemed more like the present.

The turn of the year is the big one. At the level of the day, shit happens on New Year's Eve; legion is the New Year's Day on which we wake to find that "new shit has come to light". Variance is probably higher across that pair of consecutive days than any other in the calendar.

1975-1976 is to years as 12/31-1/1 is to days. No two consecutive years in Garcia's life outside the Grateful Dead differ more resolutely than this mismatched pair. His personal life sees a sharp break, as he leaves Sans Souci (and Mountain Girl and their girls) right around Christmas 1975 and moves in with Deborah Koons right around the start of the year. (It's no coincidence that relationships end and begin with particular frequency in liminal times – again, that's probably the time structuring us, and not the reverse.) Pharmacologically, and though the precise dates are not known, by many timelines, including my own, late 1975 marks the entrance of Persian as a regular part of Garcia's life. If 1975 is the year he gets hooked, 1976 is his first year as an addict to the ultimate comfort drug, the poppy. Socio- and musico-metrically, Merl Saunders and the jazz-funk parts of the JGMS/Legion repertoire exit stage right, and David Grisman leaves the Garciaverse for the next fifteen or so years. Nicky Hopkins (three-plus months) and James Booker (three-plus days) fugue through, and we land on Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux and their slower, swampier, gospel sensibilities.

It's the musical break that really interests me. The demise of 1975 marks the end of the challenge-seeking phase of Garcia's Side Trips, and 1976 marks the start of a comfort-seeking phase. Thereafter, challenge and comfort ebb and flow together, and this is how I mark the course of the Side Trips ("Musical Challenge in the 1970s"). Local peak in 1979 ("Risky Reconstruction"), way too much comfort until the next great breakpoint ("1986, Coma and Recovery", xxx-WIP), a little rise thereafter ("Great Late Jerry", xxx-WIP) and then the roll downstream, the final Grisman re-engagement a rare distillation, longer on both dimensions, deeper in amplitude. In the end, of course, there's quiet.

All is not sharp lines. The human quest for novelty (i.e., Challenge!) drives up from way deep down, from primal places, and at least, because of the Booker experiment, it went out with a creative bang, ten days into the new year. Time undertakes fine needlework across our phony seams. Knowing that this is not a 12/31-is-black-and-1/1-is-white state-change invites me to get up a little closer to inspect the stitching. Hearing Garcia confirm "my band is in a state of flux right now", plus a productive research trip to the Grateful Dead Archives, supplies some concrete motivation and raw material. Accordingly, let's drill down to the literal meso-level, the month, for a granular look at a critical juncture.

III.                January 1976 and Its Legacy

In the challenge-comfort transition of 1975-1976, January 1976 is liminal, embodying massive challenge-seeking (hello, James Booker) and massive comfort-accepting (hello, Keith and Donna Jean). Within the span of a month, Side Trips Jerry of the 1968-1975 flavor (tastes like acid) gave way to a very different model, tasting more like cough syrup and one which, all cards on the table, I find rather less compelling than its predecessor. Don't get me wrong, Garcia was still doing amazing things, and working maniacally, on a day-in and day-out basis. But, as far as his musical life outside the Grateful Dead, his Side Trips, go, I will argue strongly that he "settled" when the Godchaux Era JGB was allowed to form. (Note the passive voice.) I don't know that the alternatives really were – laying at least some of them out will be a chunk of what I will do below. But the (non-) decision was not, to my taste, musically salubrious, the band trying to lumber through and around its members' various and sundry heavy loads. Though it has its moments, it took 18 months, the advent of great new material for Jerry's first Arista record (eventually, Cats Under The Stars) and the departure of stalwart Ronnie Tutt for the band to shake loose of its general torpor and find its groove, which it would then have about a year to really enjoy.

A.      Background: End of the Hopkins Era

Jerry Garcia's only New Year's Eve JGB show, beginning 12/31/75 and ending in the wee hours of 1/1/76, brought an appropriately shambolic curtain down on the Nicky Hopkins Era (ca. 9/1/75-12/31/75). We don't have a very precise operational understanding of how this went down – did Richard Loren call Nicky on the phone and tell him he was out? Did Big Steve Parish pay him a visit? We also don't know the precise timeline, except that Nicky played final notes as a member of the band early on the 1^st, on January 2^nd-3^rd he is billed as a featured player, with his buddy the great John Cipollina, with Terry and the Pirates at the Longbranch Saloon in Berkeley.

Most importantly, at least in terms of our innate desire not just to see variation (see above), but to account for it, we don't really know why it happened. The standard account has it that Nicky was just too out-of-control and had to go. Because I am not a big fan of the show, I have harbored the idea that 12/31/75 was just the straw that broke the camel's back. But I now believe that Nicky's tenure with the JGB, despite the existence of a formal business partnership (Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, Ron Tutt, Nicky Hopkins dba Jerry Garcia Band), was always probationary, at best, and perhaps even foreseen as temporary. I am elaborating the evidence in work in progress.

This preliminary view sheds new light, in my eyes, on the dawn of January 1976. If I am right, the unpleasantness of ending things is already at least several weeks back in the past; a reasonably fresh start is possible. Let's see how it went down. (I will be trying on some weird interweaving of headings and such here, not sure how success it will be.)

B.      Chronology

1. Welcome to 1976, the Bicentennial.

January 1, 1976 (Thursday)

Good morning, Belvedere! (Garcia has moved out of the Stinson place he shared with Mountain Girl and moved in with Debrorah Koons, apparently in Belvedere. And, no, I don't actually know where he woke up on 1/1/76, but if you do I certainly invite you to email me! ;-))

January 2-5, 1976 (Thursday-Monday)

No sign of our hero this weekend. Good – young man, not that young now at 34, is working very hard; he really has earned a break. I hope he took one.

2. Junco Partners

January 6, 1976 (Tuesday)

James Booker flies in on Delta 928, according to Steve Brown's notes.[1] I am not sure who paid for the ticket. Kahn:

He came to my house in Mill Valley a couple of days before the gigs. First he didn't show up until 5 in the morning. Me and Jerry were there and we're getting calls from his grandmother and his priest — Booker had gotten lost en route somehow; they'd lost track of him. Finally I got a call and it was Booker himself. He was calling from Dan's Greenhouse, a liquor store. He was in front of there at 5 in the morning with an overcoat and no socks and a hat bag; that was it — no clothes. He had about 30 eye patches and eight or nine wigs.

I am not 100% sure how to piece the airline info together with a) what we are told about Booker's arrival and b) the fact that during the 1/7/76 rehearsal Booker refers to stuff they worked up last night", i.e., January 6.[2] This could indicate that the 1/7/76 material is mis-dated, and is really, say, 1/8/76 (see below), or that Kahn is mis-remembering something.

January 7-8, 1976 (Wednesday-Thursday)

Rehearsals with James Booker.[3] shnid-28366 delivers 90 minutes of tape from a rehearsal, said to be at 20 Front Street ("Club Front") on January 7, 1976, of Garcia, Kahn, a drummer (presumably Tutt) and the great James Booker working up some material.[4] Corry is skeptical and thinks they might have taken place in John Kahn's living room, but I note that Steve Brown's papers locate 1/24-25 rehearsals at "Front Street" (see entry below), making it more likely that these were there, too. These rehearsals are well worth a listen (see my listening notes). Booker's mad brilliance, which I have parsed a little in "James Booker, Classified", fully displays itself; this is a great piece of tape in the too-sparse Booker record, to say nothing of the Garciaverse.

The following tunes appear:

Tico Tico

Don't Try To Be Your Brother's Keeper

Something You've Got

Just a Closer Walk With Thee

Goodnight Irene

United Our Thing Will Stand

Classified ->

Right Place, Wrong Time

Slowly But Surely

The Booker originals are pretty stunning (I especially love "United Our Thing Will Stand", "Classified", and "Slowly But Surely"), but the whole set is all Booker: his material, his direction, his hilarious banter. If I can sometimes hear the sounds of Garcia smiling behind his beard, maybe scratching his head, through his guitar playing, I definitely get that here. Fascinating. And not to be gainsaid, either – part of the "Burden of Being Jerry" (Gans and Greenfield 1996) -- is that, after about this time, he could no longer just be a guy in the band even as, in Reconstruction a few years later, he might have tried. Here he gets to back one of the true greats ever to grace a bench – the Bayou Maharajah, James fucking Booker.

January 8, 1976 is the contract date for the weekend's gigs, though the copy I saw was not signed.

January 9-10, 1976 (Friday-Saturday)

Newly rehearsed, the band plays weekend gigs at Sophie's, 260 S. California Avenue in Palo Alto (94306). The contract with impresario Ken Rominger (who also ran the Bodega at 30 South Central in Campbell) is $500 guaranteed against 90% of the gross total receipts. (Is that ticket sales only, or would it include bar?) I don't have ticket prices for the night, but they might have been $4.50 or 5 bucks. I have the room capacity at 420 as Keystone Palo Alto from 1977, though there's a sense it might have held fewer in this earlier incarnation. If we call it 400 and we assume they shows sold out (?), that would have been $4,000 gross for the weekend, so $3,600 for JGB.

Note that the paperwork shows Nicky Hopkins in the Garcia Band, which puzzles me a little bit, given that the paperwork is dated January 8^th. I presume there were no real plans that he should be there, that his name was there as a placeholder and/or boilerplate, but I don't quite know.

Kahn described the weekend's gigs to Blair Jackson:

The shows were really cool. But he wouldn't learn any of our songs. We tried to teach him songs and he refused. He was a little crazed, so we ended up doing mostly his songs. He did half a set of solo piano and it was great; you could hear a pin drop. And he played things like the "Minute Waltz"; it was incredible. He could still play great. He could switch between piano and organ really easily and it would sound amazing. But he was out of his mind. He was watching cars go by and was checking out license plates and talking about the CIA. He saw a Louisiana license plate and then John Kennedy's name somewhere and that freaked him out. He saw bad omens everywhere and he was getting really weird. I didn't know he was that crazy, so I might have had delusions that we'd stay together longer.

Cryptdev attended on Friday the 9^th and offers a convergent narrative:

It was one of the wildest and weirdest Garcia shows I ever saw. Basically Booker took over and the rest of the band was doing their best to keep up with whatever poured out of his keyboard. Booker was clearly very lubricated with something(s) and spent the break at the bar imbibing prodigiously. Jerry did get in a few tunes from his usual repertoire at the time, but clearly with some difficulty.

The first night circulates from soundboard tape derived from copies long in private hands in the East Bay (shnid-8386), as I understand things. Highlights for me include Garcia navigating some relatively unfamiliar classical and operatic terrain, as snippets of "Für Elise" and "Flight Of The Bumblebee" tumble from Booker's fingers and, especially, a nice wide version of his original "Classified", which finds some nice space and signposts what might have been, musically.

The second night circulates from an audience tape (shnid-8077 | listening notes), which includes more evocative nuggets of musical Americana (trifectal "Junco Partner" is in the road-, drug-, and prison-song halls of fame) than transcendent musical moments.

If you want to hear Garcia play New Orleans style, if you want to hear every note you can of the great James Booker on the keyboards, check them both out. They're a mess, but then again, aren't lots of the interesting things?

Corry sums: "The two-date James Booker experiment remains as a curiously forgotten fork in the Jerry Garcia Band, a final ride down the Genius Highway before a U-Turn back towards more conventional territory". The End Of A Very Brief Era.

3. Interregnum

January 11, 1976 (Sunday)

Grateful Dead band meeting.[5] Yes, they had those. Regularly.

January 13-14, 1976 (Tuesday-Wednesday)

Work at the "film house" (230 Eldridge Avenue, Mill Valley, CA, 94941) on what would materialize, 18 months later, as The Grateful Dead Movie.[6]

January 14, 1976

Noting they'd already spent $100,000 and needed $400,000 more, Ron Rakow sends a letter to United Artists asking the firm to back the film project.[7]

January 19, 1976

At 9 PM, Garcia goes to KPIX TV studios in San Francisco and sits down to chat with Father Miles Riley, for his groovy-priest show "I Believe", aimed especially at the youth crowd. (This becomes unfortunate once we learn that Fr. Riley apparently/allegedly fell from grace for sexual abuse of a 16 year old girl.) I had annotated an incomplete audio fragment from Hank Harrison's cassette in 2011, and in 2021 video emerged which is worth your time. Garcia is very relaxed and the conversation touches on some good terrain. It's especially interesting to hear him talk about his mother, Ruth, who passed in 1970. 

 

The program aired at 1 PM on January 31st.

January 20-22, 1976 (Tuesday-Thursday)

Film house.[8]

4. My band is in a state of flux right now

January 23, 1976 (Friday)

About midday, Garcia heads to the KSAN studios in the city and does a live interview with the delightful Bonnie Simmons (Simmons 1976, via GDAO), ostensibly to promote his forthcoming record Reflections (Round RX107, February 1976).[9] Her "tell me about your band" elicited the epigraphed response. I hate to treat him like an oracle, but for purposes of this blog, which focuses on Garcia's musical life outside the Grateful Dead, this is very important material – he was rarely asked and less often spoke about his side bands, let alone at such a fluid time. So I'll unpack it a little, representing in a way that's more narratively convenient for me.

5. "John Kahn and Ron Tutt and I are the main … are the nucleus of it, such as it is"

They seem to have formed this nucleus upon Tutt's arrival (with the formalization of a band name, Legion of Mary), and at this time the nucleus probably included Merl, who had been doing "Jerry and Merl" paperwork for sometime. When Nicky arrived he joined the core group, but when he spun out his name pretty quickly came off the fictitious business name statements. Garcia, Kahn and Tutt remained, dba Jerry Garcia Band.

Is Bonnie implicitly asking "Why did Nicky leave/Why was Nicky let go?" Given how big a name Nicky was and the utter absence of information about his abrupt departure, I have to think she is. Regardless, I'll proceed as if she is. The JGB's problem, Blair Jackson writes, "was Hopkins, who besides being a major cokehead -- not an issue where Garcia and Kahn were concerned-also had a severe drinking problem. This is why he occasionally rambled on incessantly between songs onstage, muttering incomprehensibly in his thick British accent, and why by year's end he was out of the group" (Jackson 1999, 270). Blair lays out John Kahn's elaboration for why "it didn't work out".

Tutt really didn't like Hopkins, and after a while he blew Jerry out, too, because he was just too over the edge; he was too fucked up to play music. That's the line where you've gone too far. At this Winterland show [in December 1975] he was on another planet, playing in the wrong key, and you just couldn't get to him. He sort of wrecked that whole gig. Tutt was really mad (Kahn in Jackson 1999, 271).

Thankfully, Jerry would never have narrowcast that sort of slight over the short wave of a conversation, less still broadcast it over KSAN's 35,000 watts. He keeps it simple:

6. "So far, the combinations that we’ve tried have been interesting, but not exactly where we’re trying to go musically"

On its face this could sound like the "irreconcilable differences" of the musical vocation, a catchall, a nostrum. But I find it an informative little kernel, consistent with what John told Blair. Musical problems, in the end, are the one thing that can't be overlooked. He could have said that Nicky was pursuing other opportunities – everyone would have been ready to hear that the Session Man had some big jobs lined up, whether that was true or not. Instead, hearing Garcia say it leads me to think that it "really" was so simple as that, by whatever means, stuff was getting in the way of the music.

I don't think of this question and answer in terms of James Booker, because no more than a few hundred people at most were aware of his connection to Garcia. But everything I said above Nicky above applies to Booker by analogy, each the driver of his particular rig down the "Genius Highway" (Corry). And the Booker experiment was certainly interesting, no doubt about that.

To what extent, if any, is Merl implied in this answer? I don't know. I don't get the sense that Jerry intends this explanation to go back that far. But then again, it's only been five months, so maybe it does cover Legion of Mary. Hell, maybe after playing almost five years together, "what happened with you and Merl?" might be the real $64,000 question. Toward the end of the interview, in a question put by a fan (via Ms. Simmons), Garcia is asked about playing again with Merl. He says "Yeah, if it's the right situation", without further elaboration. It must have been painful for him to be broadcasting his need for a keyboard player, while clearly not preferring this particular one that's ready-to-hand. Reconstruction would reconstruct their musical partnership, for a time, but that is almost three years in the future.

7. "we’re more or less auditioning keyboard players, playing with different people"

My initial reaction to this was something like "Well, you didn't try very hard", since only the Booker tryout has been known. Who else, I asked myself, did they bother trying out? How active a search was this? Did they "audition" anyone else?

Corry once wrote about a mysterious episode, October 11, 1975 in which a second pianist sits in and is introduced by Nicky Hopkins as "Tim Hensley", in his "first gig with the band"; he sticks around and plays again the next night. He offers various kinds of speculations about why the band would try out a second keyboardist while Nicky was apparently on board, and what might have gone down. Hell, until reading this you don't even know who "Tim Hensley" is, and that's because drunk Nicky mis-slurred Tim Henson's name. Corry has kindly shared some thoughts via email, including this link with more information about this very talented man, a member of the famed Muscle Shoals rhythm section, shot to death on Christmas Eve, 1977. I am not sure whether the fact that he didn't stick makes it more or less likely that he might have gotten a call in January. Either way, if we're drawing up a roster he might need to figure.

We presume that Larry Knechtel could have been another candidate. Of course he appeared on Reflections, and a February ad for the record introduced him as a member of the Jerry Garcia Band (Village Voice, February 16, 1976, p. 117). My hunch is that this just reflects old, ambiguous, indifferent copy, possibly desperation (leveraging Bread!), and not any real information from inside Garcia HQ. But there must have been some chatter about Knechtel joining the band, maybe coming out on tour. Since he doesn't remember anything, and no-one else has ever said, this has to remain pure speculation.

There's one other name I can add to the mix, and as with the others I can only mostly speculate. Steve Brown noted Garcia Band gigs January 26-28 (see below) as "Keystone with Randy Wallace", with the latter name crossed out and Keith and Donna substituted.[10] Who is Randy Wallace? I have no idea. Did he ever play with Jerry (e.g., at the 1/24 rehearsal)? I don't know that, either. What happened to him? Your guess is as good as mine. But apparently things were far enough along with him that Garcia's business manager wrote down his name.

One final set of points for now from the Bonnie Simmons interview. The pretext for the visit is to promote the forthcoming Reflections (Round Records RX 107, February 1976). They play pretty much the whole record and talk about it. Again, that's why they are there. Bonnie's question "Do you have any upcoming gigs?" is supposed to elicit a response like "Well, yes, Bonnie, we'll be at the Keystone Berkeley next Monday through Wednesday, come check us out." But when Bonnie asks him about upcoming gigs, he either willfully or uncomprehendingly relates it to the Dead and the group's still nebulous plans to start playing live again.

Given that the historical record shows (see below) that the Jerry Garcia Band, whose leader Jerry Garcia was about to drop a new record, indeed did play locally three days after the interview, and given that they are together in a promotional context, why didn't Garcia mention the gigs?

One possibility is that he just forgot. Another is that they hadn't been booked yet, though I doubt that (see the next few days' entries). Still another is that, because this was basically an audition, he didn't want to bring out too many people, put that pressure on the new (presumed) guy. A fourth, not contradictory with the previous one, is that he didn't know who the new guy would be, and was hedging in case he had a dozen wigs, and maybe needed patches over both eyes, but, unlike Booker, couldn't play. Whatever the case may be, I entertain the idea that Bonnie's question, or rather his inability really to answer Bonnie's question about upcoming gigs, may have spurred what we see over the next few days.

8. State Change

January 24, 1976 (Saturday)

If forced to choose, I'd say the tide turned, and the switch from challenge to comfort was proximally effected (like very nearly in the "pulling the trigger" sense) on this date. See next entry.

January 24-25, 1976 (Saturday-Sunday)

Steve Brown's papers identify Front Street rehearsals on these dates.[11] Nothing else is known about the 24^th. Soundboard tape of 1/25/76 circulates,[12] and it finds Keith at the keys and Donna Jean singing harmonies, including quite nicely over multiple takes of the Porter Wagoner – Dolly Parton smash "Tomorrow Is Forever". (Dolly, by the way, was Jerry's "favorite girl singer", per McLanahan 1972).

But, uhh,– Keith and Donna? WTF? How did that happen?

More below, but first let me step back.

Also on Sunday 1/25, the Oakland Tribune runs listings for Garcia Band at Keystone starting the next day and running through Wednesday (i.e., January 26-28).[13] This must have been called in the day before at the latest, i.e., on Saturday 1/24. Again, this puts Garcia's non-response to the question about upcoming gigs in sharp relief. Speaking on Friday, he could have forgotten there were gigs coming up to start the next week. But I don't think so. It's also possible that the gig was not planned when Bonnie asked the question, but was spurred by it – signaling to Jerry that he needed to start shitting or getting off the pot when it comes to the band-in-flux. Somehow, though, I think it's that he wanted to keep a real quiet couple of nights in Berkeley, less pressure on whoever's auditioning. Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday shows? That's typically how they structured the first shows out for new (or temporary) players, especially if they didn't manage to book off the beaten path, in Cotati or somewhere.

Summarizing the arc of the weekend: On 1/23 Garcia either forgets the gigs or, perhaps because they haven't pinned down who will be on keys, he just doesn't mention them. By 1/25, they have advertised gigs starting the next day and they are rehearsing with Keith and Donna. 1/24 Looks like the inflection point to me.

January 26-28, 1976 (Monday-Wednesday)

The Garcia Band System, such as it was, involved breaking in new or temporary players on off-nights, off-the-beaten-path, or both. A Monday-Wednesday run at the Keystone fits the bill perfectly. Though the first night has been in some question,[14] I don't see any reason to doubt it, first because it's advertised in the Trib and second because (though this is not necessarily independent of the listing), it's in Steve Brown's notes. Originally noted by Steve Brown as "Keystone with Randy Wallace", he later crossed that out and substituted Keith and Donna.[15]

But what happened to …

"… we’re hoping to have a four-piece band that we all like, sometime"

That's what Jerry had said on 1/23. Somewhere in advance of that, Brown wrote that Randy Wallace was to be tried out. Yet, on 1/25 Garcia's doing his best Porter to Donna Jean's Dolly, in a five-piece band, 3/5 of the members of which are in the Grateful Dead. WTF? You're Jerry Garcia, you have most every keyboardist in the Bay Area at your disposal, and many beyond, you are looking to put together a quartet, in your project generally aimed to delivering things you can't get out of your playing with the Dead, and you end up with the Dead keyboardist, neighbor down the street, and, oh, by the way, you're a quintet because you got his old lady (again, Dead), in the deal. The Garcia Band is made more of a redundancy, the Italian Senate of the Garciaverse.

C.      JGB #2 Membership

But this gives me an opportunity to play with concepts and words that matter to me. Like all human scoeities, the Jerry Garcia Band was stratified. At the apex, of course, stood its namesake, a very consequential Head of State, with his Prime Minister John Kahn, his right-hand man, running the show day-to-day. Ron Tutt joined them in the ownership group. Nicky Hopkins had been, but eventually he buys or is bought out, and his name disappears from the papers. (I have never seen any contracts, fictitious business name statements, or anything else that might clarify the details of how, precisely, these gents were dba Jerry Garcia Band, despite years of searching. I know the formalities only through tax liens against the band and its members.)

Unlike the man he was replacing, Keith never joined the ownership group, and generally seems to be held at arm's-length, a hired player. Donna Jean, far from not being on the ownership group, is not even listed among gig personnel on the union contracts, which I gather would be something of a no-no for her and for the Garcia Band. She only led on one or two numbers a night, it's true, but she was onstage with the band, singing harmonies or just swaying around (to no small effect on anyone who could watch her, not least Jerry, as video from the period shows), more often than not. There's probably a technicality at the union about what percentage someone needs to play before they need to be listed. But it's also possible that everyone was just skirting whatever requirements there were. I am not even sure Donna Jean was in the union.

From Nicky to Keith, then, the JGB undergoes an organizational change – the keyboardist is no longer an owner, but a hired player.[16] The formal triumvirate endured beyond Tutt's participation in live gigging with the Jerry Garcia Band – it would take the late-1981 "Return of Ron Tutt" Tour to generate the cash needed to square everything away, I believe. After that, Jerry Garcia Band is, formally, what had long been germinating in practice: a Jerry Garcia-John Kahn joint.

January 29, 1976 (Thursday)

Maybe he rests a little, gets his haircut.

IV.                Garcia's Comfort: The Godchaux-Era JGB

The Godchaux Era JGB appears to have been born by default, for wont of a better option (or the time/energy/inclination to generate it). That's probably too harsh – Jerry and John did try to "drive the Genius Highway" with Booker even after co-genius Nicky Hopkins flamed out; playing with Booker, and working with him, would have been ... a challenge. But the only other known candidate is Randy Wallace, it's not clear to me who he is --though I suspect, based inter alia on the arcs of two careers and my own preconceived ideas, that he'd have had a hard time challenging Garcia in the latter's band—and it's not even clear that he ever played with these guys. No other players are known to have been engaged, and then, of a sudden, it's Keith and Donna.

LIA gets one great angle on this:

It's interesting to me how passive Garcia seems to have been about getting bandmembers - like whoever wound up there, 'OK, let's try it out. Kahn, this would sound nice with some pedal-steel ... or maybe another piano.' This might explain why some of these mid-'70s guests/members didn't last very long. And of course, when he was done with somebody, he wouldn't say a word himself but left it to a henchman. What a strange band-leader.

Indeed! He put his name on it, but, as Corry has said, it could also have been called the John Kahn Band, since Mule ran the thing.[17] And whether it was John's inertia, or Jerry's, or their co-dependent (or, hell, independent!) "both", it doesn't really matter. That inertia, or a lack of time or energy, should drop its leaden hand on the proceedings is fitting, since, like the new drug of choice, the band is all about the comfort. Musically, and not unrelated, it favored a super slow, super opiated groove. Check out the January 27 and 28 shows[18] for this in spades, or even worse, the Valentine's Day show, which … makes … me … sleepy even to contemplate. The January recordings sound incredible (made respectively by Betty Cantor-Jackson at the soundboard and Bob Menke and Louis Falanga from the crowd) – but this band utterly slogs. It's a matter of taste, of course, but I find the slow tempos of the 1976-1977 Garcia Band – Jerry's Comfort, though it was Robert Hunter who would, the next year, adopt a band of that name—I find the plodding dirges utterly exhausting and generally uninteresting. Keith Godchaux could play (especially when he could stay awake and upright at the keyboards), but whatever his native gifts he could never challenge Garcia the way Nicky or Booker could.

Inertia seems to have driven this outcome. When asked about Keith and Donna joining the JGB, Rock Scully (RIP) replied that they were just around - he mentioned Club Front as the center of gravity, that whoever was there was a live candidate, whoever wasn't, wasn't -- some auditioning process!. Keith and Donna were there, and they just sort of accreted into JGB membership by virtue of their sheer presence. Inertia is a powerful force, and the comfort of the tried-and-true is especially appealing when all else is askew. Garcia's personal life was in a shambles - he and MG had just broken up for good (sort of) around Christmastime, he had moved out of Sans Souci and was just moving in with Deborah right at this time. He was working like a maniac, starting to spend lots of time at the "film house" in Mill Valley, working on the movie that would consume two years of his life and leave him rather a smoking ruin, all Persian, Peruvian and Camel cigarettes (vaguely Ottoman, judging by the iconography).

We can't always do it all, sometimes we just have to cut the knot, and sometimes cut knots take on lives of their own. I think that's what happened here, and that's what happened on the Side Trips road from challenge to comfort.

V.                  Postscript

January 30-31, 1976 (Friday-Saturday)

The knot cut, Garcia kept on working, as the creatively-inspired and/or workaholic will do, whatever their drugs of choice and the other opportunity costs they pay. The last weekend of the month found our Leonardo mixing the Good Old Boys' forthcoming Pistol Packin' Mama at Ace's, at Bob Weir's house in Mill Valley.[19]

I love this as a postscript. After what seems like a very busy month full of other things, he has still other things to do, a hat he has been paid to wear --$2,100 and 10¢ a disc[20]– as a record producer, winding up the business of Round Records with its final release.

Because even if, as I suggest, the Garcia Band keyboard flux materialized with a thud in Keith Godchaux's heavily percussive hands, with consequences for the musical experience of the next 18 months, even if Jerry's personal life was in a shambles and his pharmacological choices becoming riskier, even if he is still scrambling around his record companies going bust, his pirate business partner is about to snatch back two hundred twenty-five thousand 1976 dollars, even if the GOB stuff had been recorded precisely a year before (January 27-29, 1975) and was probably way behind schedule -- well, there's no time like the present.

In other words, these last two dates remind me to give the guy a break, to set my own preference for other musical approaches aside, and understand that sometimes a piece has to be held back to move others forward. Let JGB coast for awhile, a very simple enterprise requiring effectively no adjustment to the status quo ante, almost certainly a net improvement in terms of hassles encountered and time to do other things. And he is doing other things: not least continuing to make records and, now becoming utterly consumed in a theatrical film project, for the first time. But maybe, too, if only momentarily, he's drawing back, if only a little, from some of the ambitions of a younger-man. Sometimes you have to just hunker down, and that's as good as a way as any of characterizing where his Side Trips find themselves as the January 1976 page turns.

REFERENCES:

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 1987. The Jerry Garcia Band: 11 years and still rockin'. Golden Road no. 13 (Winter): 22-26.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2010. October 11-12, 1975 Keystone Berkeley Jerry Garcia Band w/Nicky Hopkins--Tim Hensley, electric piano. Lost Live Dead, January 10, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/01/october-11-12-1975-keystone-berkeley.html, consulted 12/21/2013.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2012. January 9-10, 1976: Sophie's, Palo Alto, CA: The Jerry Garcia Band with James Booker. Lost Live Dead, May 24, 2012, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/05/january-9-10-1976-sophies-palo-alto-ca.html, consulted 12/31/2013.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2013. "Reflections" Reflections (Round Records RX-107). Lost Live Dead, August 1, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2013/08/reflections-reflections-round-records.html, consulted 1/24/2014.

! McClanahan, Ed. 1972. Grateful Dead I Have Known. Playboy 19, 3 (March): 84-86, 108, 218-228.

! ref: Simmons, Bonnie. 1976. Bonnie Simmons with Jerry Garcia. Broadcast on KSAN in San Francisco on January 23, 1976 [radio broadcast]. Grateful Dead Archive Online, accessed November 10, 2013, http://www.gdao.org/items/show/379971.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Beyond the usual suspects, particular thanks to the Special Collections pros at McHenry Library, UC Santa Cruz, most obviously and especially Nicholas Meriwether, who expertly curates the amazing Grateful Dead Archive. It's a real pleasure to be able to dive into the Dead's papers, which hold a million answers to crucial questions we didn't know we had.

---

[1] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 10: "[xxx-need label]." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[2] See my "'Gimme some chords, Jerry Garcia, gimme some chords' - LN jg1976-01-07.jgb-rehearsal.93mins.sbd-tjs.8385.shn2flac," http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2015/01/gimme-some-chords-jerry-garcia-gimme.html, at note 6.

[3] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 4: "Calendars, 1974-76." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[4] Listening notes at URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2015/01/gimme-some-chords-jerry-garcia-gimme.html.

[5] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 4: "Calendars, 1974-76." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[6] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 4: "Calendars, 1974-76." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[7] Grateful Dead Archive, MS332, Ser. 2: Business, Second Accrual (preliminary), Box 1018, folder xxx [xxx]. Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[8] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 4: "Calendars, 1974-76." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[9] See also Corry's "'Reflections' Reflections", URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2013/08/reflections-reflections-round-records.html.

[10] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 4: "Calendars, 1974-76." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[11] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 4: "Calendars, 1974-76." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[12] shnid-12504

[13] Oakland Tribune, January 25, 1976, p. 11-E.

[14] Arnold (1987, 23), places the birth of this incarnation of the JGB to the next night, but I think 1/26/76 is correct.

[15] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 4: "Calendars, 1974-76." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[16] Corry probably first pointed the seed of this idea in my head, at http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/10/december-21-22-1976-keystone-berkeley.html?showComment=1287334532866#c44991062198337918.

[17] see also LIA at URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/10/december-21-22-1976-keystone-berkeley.html?showComment=1287551854169#c4173965395789718940.

[18] From shnid-17120 and shnid-17695 respectively, to my taste.

[19] Steve Brown Papers, MS338, Box 1, Folder 4: "Calendars, 1974-76." Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.

[20] Grateful Dead Archive, MS332, Ser. 2: Business, Second Accrual (preliminary), Box 1006, folder 33: [Royalty of the Good Old Boys]. Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz.