James and the Mercedes demos

The great Stephen Barncard has posted some snippets of 1974 James and Mercedes demos from Weir's place. I had never heard these before.

http://media.barncard.com/audio/history/james-mercedes/

No Garcia Content (NGC). 

NRPS 19710121 Freeborn Hall, UC Davis, Davis, CA

My questions about whether the NRPS played the January 1971 out-of-town GD shows in Davis (1/21/71), Eugene (1/22/71) and Seattle (1/24/71) , and my conjecture that maybe they just stayed at Heider's, are at least partly answered and stand at least partly wrong.

California Aggie, January 25, 1971, p. 8; photos by Jim Quigley.

Here's a little pictorial from the campus newspaper, the California Aggie, regarding the show at Freeborn Hall, UC Davis, Davis, CA on January 21, 1971.

So the Marmaduke picture answers the NRPS question. Then I have a few other questions from this great little display. First, who are the guys besides Weir, Garcia and Kreutzmann in the bottom-right panel? The guy far-right could be Mickey, I guess, but to the right of Billy in the picture ... who is that? Second, there's the James and the Good Brothers reference. And, sure enough, a brief review in the same paper ("Dead, Riders, Brothers," California Aggie, January 27, 1971, p. 6) mentions that the show went James and the Good Brothers, NRPS, and two sets of GD.

Reviewer, Aggie. 1971. Dead, Riders, Brothers. California Aggie, January 27, 1971, p. 6.

So, yes Virginia, the New Riders did play Thursday 1/21/71  at Freeborn Hall, UC Davis. And it appears from Jim Quigley's photos to have been "fantastic".

Update 10/12/2014: there is now an audience tape of the GD set in circulation [shnid-131516, flac 2496 | shnid-131517, flac1644], which I hope to listen to and report on soon. In anticipation, here's the last visual I have for the show (a preview), and, below that, a link to LIA's post on this show.

LIA: http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/january-21-1971-freeborn-hall-davis-ca.html, which reproduces the following: Abramson, Hilary. 1971. Grateful Dead Shake Freeborn Hall. Woodland Democrat, January 22 1971, p. unk.

James and the Good Brothers (Courtesy of the Grateful Dead)

Found this interesting. The New Orleans House ad from the Berkeley Tribe v.3 n.15 (issue 67) (October 16-23, 1970), p. 21 lists "James & The Good Brothers (Courtesy of the Grateful Dead)" for Friday-Saturday, October 13-14, 1970.


Corry has said this about the connection between the bands:

James and The Good Brothers were a Canadian trio (James Ackroyd and twins Bruce and Brian Good). They made contact with the Dead on the infamous “Festival Express” train trip, and were invited to San Francisco. They recorded an album for Columbia (NRPS’s label), produced by Betty Cantor-Jackson, with Bill Kreutzmann on drums, and possibly an uncredited Jerry Garcia.

He has mentioned them again in the context of a post on the Festival Express, while the post quoted above is primarily about a Garcia guest shot with them in February 1971 at the Fillmore West.

This ad interests me for a few reasons. First, I don't recall seeing much stuff like this in pawing through old ads and the like. How common was this, and what did the "courtesy of" really mean? Was this just advertising, or would the GD somehow have contributed financially?

Second, Matt Scofield's deaddisc entry for the JATGB album contains contradictory information, with the story quoted from Corry above alongside the claim that "After moving to California to play some gigs they were 'spotted' by Jack Casady and Bill Kreutzmann - attention that eventually led to a recording deal. This LP was the result." So the one version has them hooking up with the GD on the train and then coming to CA, while the other says they were already in CA when Jack and Billy "spotted" them. Not a big deal, but I do wonder which one is closer to the truth.

Third, maybe most importantly to me, I wonder how the various record deals floating around relate to this, if at all. In our various Hooteroll? discussions (I guess this one was the last post that I did), there was lots of talk of how the pieces of the puzzle --Garcia, Hooteroll?, NRPS, Rolling Thunder, the GD's contracts, etc. etc.-- all fit together (and not). I wonder when JATGB signed with Columbia (and precisely when NRPS) did, and how it is that the GD were "promoting" them, as it were.

Anyway, really just a "hmmmm...", from my perspective.