Dating the September 1971 Lion's Share Gigs

Consider this a throwback post, in that it does what the blog started out doing, and that's just trying to correct and fill out metadata around Garciavents. Here, I argue that the material we know from circulating tapes as 9/24/71 is actually from the next night, 9/25/71, also at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. The post also serves to pin down a third set of music from the four played this weekend, from newly digitized (and, as of today, circulated) tape of what, I argue, should be seen as the 9/24/71 late show.

Tom Fogerty left Creedence Clearwater Revival on February 1, 1971 (Boucher 1972), seeking to escape the domineering shadow of his little brother John and carve out his own musical identity. Around May 26, 1971, he first sat in with Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders and their unnamed group, at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. He gigged on and off with them for a year-and-a-half, while also doing all kinds of studio work at The House That Creedence Built (Fantasy in Berkeley). He continued collaborating on Merl's Fire Up into late spring '73 before exiting the Garciaverse. Some of his correspondence with Merl lives in the GD Archives, and from what we can glean he was a sweet and generous guy who was very fond of his labelmate. He continued to play and record through ongoing back problems, fell on some hard personal times, and apparently contracted HIV/AIDS from an unscreened blood transfusion connected with a back surgery in the early 80s. This led to his untimely demise from a tuberculosis infection at the age of 49 on September 6, 1990.

I have yet to come to a clear understanding of my own of the mix of music and commerce (especially, the role of Fantasy Records) in the "Tom Fogerty Era" of the Garcia-Saunders group, partly because, outside studio recordings, so few tapes of them playing live are available to hear. The first pop up almost four months after his arrival, in September 1971, with two widely-circulated sets from the Lion's Share which I will focus on here. After that, the next tape comes June 30, 1972 at the Korner, and then December 28, 1972, again in San Anselmo. That's it - though tape exists of September 20, 1971 at the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati, and December 5, 1972 at the Boarding House in the city, it does not circulate. And, while he figured in some billings early in 1973, it seems highly unlikely that he ever gigged with these guys after 1972. 

We currently list 48 Tom Fogerty events at Jerrybase, we have a few setlists from newspaper reviews and attendee recollections, and now pieces of five shows. Tragically, all of our JB listings are for public events. Fantasy has remained completely opaque in terms of session dates, which I estimate might number in the few dozens from 1970 or 1971 through 1974 or 1975.

As a result of all of this, the little tape that we have is precious. I have spent considerable time with it trying to glean some insight into the Fogerty Era. It's risky to extrapolate much from the little we can hear, of course. But it seems clear that he and Jerry shared a love for 50s R&B numbers such as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters' "Annie Had A Baby" (1954), The Four Deuces' "W-P-L-J" (1956), and Jimmy Reed's straighter blues "Baby What You Want Me To Do?" (1959), the latter of which the Dead played a few times but none of which is known to have appeared in any other GOTS configuration. They also played Jesse Winchester's super-sweet "Biloxi" from his 1970 debut, and a bunch of tunes that otherwise seem part of the Garcia-Saunders repertoire of the period, insofar as we can know it.

The Lion's Share gigs on September 24-25, 1971 were well advertised and, in a refreshing change of pace, Fogerty's name preceded Garcia's. Yayyy, Jerry! (We celebrate this because the guy just wanted to play, he didn't need or necessarily want top-billing). Maybe it was just done alphabetically. Anyway, only the Berkeley Tribe specifies early (9 PM) and late (11:30 PM) shows. The ads all identify Jerry Corbitt, Billy Cox, and Charlie Daniels (yes, the one you've heard of) opening, though for some reason Jerrybase currently shows Loading Zone and Congress of Wonders the first night instead of them. Gideon and Power were also on the bill the second night, per the Lion's Share calendar.

My partner David Minches and I have just had the pleasure of working with 1971-1972 Lion's Share soundman Lou Judson to arrange a fresh transfer of these old tapes. The three from this September 1971 weekend present, first, a Sony PR-150 labeled "Friday 24 Sept 71 last 1/2 hr)".

The labeling is confirmed by the end of the recording, where the emcee says "Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty and Bill Kreutzmann. They'll be back tomorrow night, for another two shows, along with Jerry Corbitt and Charlie Daniels. Come back and bring your friends. Thank you for comin', and good night." So this is clearly 9/24/71b. As you will hear when the seed hits the ether, this is distinct music that has never circulated among collectors.

It seems that there probably was a first reel from this night, but, alas, it remains MIA.

But wait, you say - don't circulating filesets already purport to include 9/24/71b? Indeed, they do. But these tapes clearly establish that they are mis-dated, and derive from the second night. Lou's other two reels from the weekend are Sony SLH-180 stock, and clearly labeled "September 25 Saturday '71 first set" and "September 25, 1971 second set".

The material on these tapes corresponds to the material that has long circulated as 9/24/71. But it is actually 9/25/71.

Last thing to do is pin down what we can from the partial setlist for 9/24/71b, and post listening notes from all three sets of material. That stuff follows.

~~~~~

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Lion's Share
60 Red Hill Avenue
San Anselmo, CA 94960
September 24, 1971 (Friday) - Late Show / reel #2
Judson MSR > HD 2022

--end of late show (6 tracks, 5 tunes, 30:28)--
19710924-l-t01. [0:46] Annie Had A Baby [3:21] ->
19710924-l-t02. W-P-L-J [3:48] [1:07]
19710924-l-t03. Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do? [5:16] [1:08]
19710924-l-t04. I Was Made To Love Her [7:51] [1:05]
19710924-l-t05. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [5:31]
19710924-l-t06. outro (2) [0:36]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Tom Fogerty - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! 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/19710924

! db: none in circulation from this date. The following are mistakenly dated 9/24/71, but are actually 9/25/71: https://etreedb.org/shn/4497 (early and late, via Shriver shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/137584 (Reel Master 10inch Master Reel@7.5ips 1/2trk > DAT, via Eaton-Scotton-Miller-SirMick); https://etreedb.org/shn/138213 (raw version of shnid-137584)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/FCaYZGNhk21VzhvF6

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/lions-share-60-red-hill-avenue-san.html

! personnel: NB no bass.

! R: field recordist: Lou Judson

! R: field recording gear: PA line out > Viking 88

! R: field recording media: Sony PR-150 1/4" x 7" @7.5ips stereo (tape "GS6")

! R: lineage: MSR Sony 854-4 playback > Sound Devices 744T (24 bit / 96kHz wav) > editing and mastering by David Minches, July 2022.

! t02 (1) @ 4:27 JG: "No dancing in the Lion's Share. At least - nobody's dancing in the Lion's Share. [inaudible] dancing right around here [inaudible] I don't know [inaudible]

! R: t05 some kind of noise in TNTDODD, not sure if it's tape or equipment

! t06 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot folks. See y'all later." Emcee: "Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty and Bill Kreutzmann. They'll be back tomorrow night, for another two shows, along with Jerry Corbitt and Charlie Daniels. Come back and bring your friends. Thank you for comin', and good night."

~~~~~

Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders
Lion's Share
60 Red Hill Avenue
San Anselmo, CA 94960
September 25, 1971 (Saturday)
Judson MSR > HD 2022

--early show (7 tracks, 6 tunes, 51:56)--
e-t01. Introduction (1) [1:09]
e-t02. Save Mother Earth [11:38] ->
e-t03. Imagine [5:19] (2) [2:28]
e-t04. One Kind Favor [8:45] [1:25]
e-t05. I Was Made To Love Her [9:53] [0:32]
e-t06. Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do? [3:47] [0:04] %
e-t07. Biloxi [6:51] [0:06]

--late show (7 tracks, 51:55)--
l-t01. [0:15] Hi-Heel Sneakers [8:36] [1:10]
l-t02. Man-Child [10:21] ->
l-t03. Summertime [10:07] [1:14]
l-t04. That's A Touch I Like [5:47] (3) [1:52]
l-t05. Annie Had A Baby [2:55] ->
l-t06. W-P-L-J [3:17] [0:13] %
l-t07. [0:19] The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [5:40] (4) [0:09]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Tom Fogerty - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: John Kahn - electric bass;
! 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/19710925

! db, mistakenly dated 9/24/71: https://etreedb.org/shn/4497 ("MSR>1C>D etc.", via Ryan Shriver and Danny Metz); https://etreedb.org/shn/137584 ("MSR>DAT etc.", via Paul Scotton and SIRMick); https://etreedb.org/shn/138213 (raw transfer of Scotton DAT). Prior to 8/9/2022, no sources have circulated dated 9/25/71, which is the correct date for this material.

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/FCaYZGNhk21VzhvF6

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/lions-share-60-red-hill-avenue-san.html

! R: field recordist: Lou Judson

! R: field recording gear: PA line out > Viking 88

! R: field recording media: 2x Sony SLH-180 1/4" x 7" @7.5ips 1/4 trk stereo (tapes "GS7" and "GS8")

! R: lineage: MSR Sony 854-4 playback > Sound Devices 744T (24 bit / 96kHz wav) > editing and mastering by David Minches, July 2022.

! e-t01 (1) JG: "Hey - whoever it is that controls the lights, could ya turn 'em down, these ones here? Ahh, yes. Keep it going ... thanks, great. You can turn 'em down even farther ... that's good. [To band] Can you guys see well enough?" Tom: "Oh yeah, for sure." Emcee: Let's have a warm welcome for Jerry Garcia, Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders, and ... friends." JG: "That's, uh, John Kahn and Bill Kreutzmann, are the 'friends'." Emcee: "Thank you." JG: "Don't mention it."

! P: e-t02 SME very slowly paced. @ 7:30 JG pedals in a little wah or whatever that is. Things getting melty in 9.

! e-t03 (2) Tom: "Can we get some beer and apple juice, please?" JG: "And a little bit of light - just the tiniest little bit" [some chuckles].

! R: e-t07 Biloxi patched in from shnid-137584. How it could be complete there and not here is a mystery ...

! P: l-t01 HHS Tom's buzzsaw tone fatigues my ears

! P: l-t02 Man-Child John starts rumbling fantastically in 6

! l-t04 (3) Tom: "Can we please have some beers and, uhh, two apple juices?"

! R: l-t07 TNTDODD in mono

! l-t07 (4) JG: "Thanks a lot. Good night."

Enter Tom Fogerty

update 20230712

I have no idea why I inferred Tom Fogerty saw JGMS at Keystone Korner on 5/20/71. It seems more likely to have been 5/22/71, and his arrival may mark why they made tapes of the next two nights.

Further, I have no idea why I inferred he first joined in Berkeley on 5/26/71, when Tuesday 5/25 is even more likely, based on the "off-night" clause of The Iron Law of Breaking in New Band Members.

So, as of 7/12/2023, I am calling 5/22 the visit and 5/25 Tom's debut.

/update 20230712

A couple of years ago I discovered this youtube content called "Goodbye Media Man", featuring video of Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders, Bill Vitt, various studio engineers and others unknown to me, working on a track by that same title.

Here is the description (published October 9, 2013):

Tom was the original singer of the Blue Velvets and the Golliwogs, both of which evolved into Creedence Clearwater Revival. Tom Fogerty had the chops to be a star in his own right. Within the band (Doug, Stu, Tom and John), Tom was overshadowed by younger brother John, who's talent was clearly evident. "Goodbye Media Man", recorded in 1971, was Tom's first solo single after leaving Creedence. A great track with solid musicianship and hooks. To my knowledge, this is the first time this video has been posted. Tom left us far too soon, passing on September 6, 1990. Back in the day, he was a friend, and I miss him - Ken Levy, Brooklyn NY / Addlestone, Surrey England

Wow.

I continue to be amazed at the material that continues to crawl out of the woodwork. It gives me hope for the Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival (GSCBF) film, among many other things. This post will pin down the metadata but also talk about how remarkable is the wealth of material we have available to study, across many different media - and why we get to enjoy that wealth.

Metadata
Location

Appears to be Berkeley, both at Fantasy Studios and at Tom Fogerty's professorial manse with a bunch of kids running around.

Date

The video is only dated 1971. Recall that Tom Fogerty had announced on February 2, 1971 that he was leaving the lucrative Creedence Clearwater Revival over differences with the band's dominant force, his little brother John, and to spend more time with his four children.[1] We also know that the House That Creedence Built, the new Fantasy Studios facility at 10^th and Parker in Berkeley, had come online right around this time. Local journo students Kathie Staska and George Mangrum ("KG") ran an amazingly rich column in the Hayward Daily Review starting in February, and got a tour of the new facility from the one and only Ralph Gleason, now working full time for Saul Zaentz at Fantasy.[2]

KG reported on March 11 that Tom had started work on his solo album.[3] Just after the solstice, on June 24th, KG reported that the record was done and was set for release the next week,[4] also noting that he'd be part of Merl Saunders's band for a release on the same label. On June 29th, Robert Hilburn noted in the LA Times that "Goodbye Media Man" was set for imminent release. So the video presumably features material from this late-winter to early-summer span. Intriguingly, a youtube posting of the "Goodbye Media Man" single associates a date of "the 17th of June 1971" with it:

With all of this, the studio film could come from anywhere between March and June, but I strongly suspect that the home material is from closer to June, as the single neared or achieved completion. Update: John Wasserman mentioned that Tom was cutting "Goodbye Media Man" in his Chronicle column of June 21st, so this is very much in the nearing-completion stage - right around the solstice.

Forging The Garcia-Fogerty Connection

Our Hero comes up in the interview, and I think this comment sheds some light on the Tom Fogerty version of the Garcia-Saunders band.[5] Tom says

I only want to jam around right now and perform with as many people as possible. I’ve learned more about music this last month [i.e., May-June] from meeting other people than during the whole time while I was with Creedence ... One night, I just happened to go over to Keystone Korner. Merl Saunders had invited me over to hear him and Bill Vitt and Jerry Garcia, and within a week I was up on the stage with 'em. And, uh playin' with 'em, and at that point I decided that that was ... the kind of music that I wanted behind the song. It was within about three days that the thing came together with Merl.

When might this have been, exactly? Let's investigate. Jerry and Merl had played the following Keystone Korner gigs from the first Freddie Herrera - Jerry Garcia Joint through mid-1971:

Table xxx. Garcia at Keystone Korner, 11/25/70-6/16/71. Follow this link for a more complete table of Garcia's Keystone Korner gigs. Click image to enlarge.

Tom's narrative and the overall evidence best fits Tom having seen JGMS on 5/20/71,[6] and sitting in with them on Wednesday 5/26/71. This frame fits "within a week" from Tom's filmed reckoning, and I am pretty confident about the interval, if not the specifics. "Three days" from Tom is a little unclear to me, certainly could suggest it was other nights than the ones I pinpoint. So, why these?

This is going to get really convoluted, and, despite my best efforts, I assume it will be somewhat hard to follow. You can just take my word for it, or you can try to follow me into the data.

First, there is tape of 5/20/71 and 5/21/71, the first out of the Garcia Vault and the second locked away there until its 2020 release. May 11, 1971[7] and these tapes represent the earliest-audible Garcia-Saunders performances (perhaps as many as eight months after they started gigging![8]), and they precede a four-month gap that audibly ends when Lou Judson becomes the second Marin County soundman to run PA tape of The Group in late September. The 5/20/71 tape escaped into the world because Garcia had it amongst his stuff when, ca. Christmas 1975, MG threw him out of Sans Souci --on which the couple had closed on ... May 5, 1971!-- and he shuffled off to Deborah's for the first time. Debbie took possession of the tape, someone found a way to copy it, and now anyone can hear it.

Second, I submit that the fact that Jerry had this tape amongst his personal stuff is not innocent with respect to the very question we are considering. I think he had the tape "pulled", either initially recorded or pulled out of wherever most of his tapes were kept, or both, precisely so Fogerty could give it a listen. We know the Dead were in the habit of pulling recent tapes to prepare their incoming members, e.g., the "Houseboat Tapes" of August 1971 that they gave Keith Godchaux to listen to. I think Jerry lent it to Tom or dubbed it for him so he could come up to speed with the band and its material.

Third, and with respect to the late boundary, I glean one other possible tidbit of information from the table above, in the advertising patterns. I am almost certainly over-reading this, but the Thursday-Friday-Saturday 5/20-22 run looks like Big Nights - advertised in the Chron, weekend shows, some real buzz. Even Tuesday 5/25 gets a Wasserman mention, which may well have been enough to sell the gig out. But 5/26, Wednesday, gets a measley mention in the Trib's "Bay Sounds" items, which usually ran more toward jazz and soul. Probably a much quieter night for Tom to step up and play some for the first time, dontcha think? I can't adduce all of the evidence here, but it is as close to an Iron Law as exists in the Garciaverse that new players are broken in off-nights, off-the-beaten-path, or both.

Art and Commerce

For Garcia of this vintage, the aesthetics of any musical choice should go without saying. He wanted to play more music with good players than the Dead could afford him (especially in this very fallow period between the closing of the Fillmores East and West). As Corry and I have elaborated, Tom Fogerty advened alongside huge changes in The Group's approach and repertoire, from spacey organ jazz to all kinds of Americana, white (The Band's "Dixie Down", Jesse Winchester's "Biloxi", some good ol' rockabilly), black (Stevie Wonder, Motown, etc. etc.) and everything in between, mostly more or less contemporary stuff. In short, I think Fogerty came in because Jerry wanted to sing some tunes, wanted to bring in more white contemporary, and Fogerty could sing, play rhythm guitar, and bring in some new material. [update: the release of the pre-Tom 5/21/71 Garcia-Saunders gig gives the lie to the idea that it was all space jazz pre-Tom, with white-roots-flavored stuff coming in with him. Dixie Down, Mystery Train and arguably a few others were already in the repertoire. This is a case where fragmentary tape evidence led us {at least me} a little astray.]

But there were almost surely also commercial logics operating here, too. Whether they came from Jerry, from Merl, from Tom, from Saul Zaentz (or Ralph Gleason), and/or others, I can't know. But Fantasy Records stands at the center of this.

Indeed, I want to revise my conjecture above about why the May 20-21, 1971 JGMS tapes were made (and recorded in 4-track, no less). This was long before Rex and then Betty started taping Jerry, so why is there this one pair of shows? I said a few paragraphs ago that it was so Tom could bone up. I think that's half-right – it was so Tom could bone up, and Tom joining this operation cannot be separated from Tom making records for Fantasy, Merl making records for Fantasy, etc. etc. Remember that Merl invited Tom down to the club. He might have had a purpose in mind - say, to make a Group for Jerry that would record on Fantasy and make them all rich, what already wasn't, and them richer what already was. Corry and I have concluded that Fogerty's arrival served a sea change in the Garcia-Saunders aggregation, taking it from space organ to Dylan, Band and Motown numbers. (update: we overstated the discontinuity here. The 5/21/71 show has "Dixie Down", for example.) Why this big artistic shift? Quite possibly, to work up some more commercially viable material than the "out-there" jams they had been doing. Hooteroll? (Douglas 5, December 1971) would cover the space-organ piece of the market for the jazz heads, while The Group could do some white and black contemporary tunes for the dormitory set. It's all made to order, including an eager press. Indeed, two days after writing about Fogerty's upcoming release, our intrepid collegians K and G found themselves at the New Monk in Berkeley, where Tom, Merl and Jerry were holding forth for a standing-room-only crowd, just blocks from Fantasy.[9]

Conclusion

I feel quite confident, though not certain, that Tom Fogerty first sat in with JGMS on May 26, 1971. I also think Fantasy Records was the Prime Mover behind this partnership.

Now, Garcia and Tom did end up on Merl's Heavy Turbulence (Fantasy 8421, 1972), which looks to me like it could have been recorded in 1971, and Fogerty's Excalibur (Fantasy 9413, October 1972) which, though seemingly released later, feels roughly contemporary. Merl's Fire Up (Fantasy 9421, 1973) feels more like 1972, though of course it's pretty hard to say. But Fantasy's big golden goose feast, 1973's Live at the Keystone (Fantasy F-79002), featured the Fogertyless quartet of the aforementioned goose plus Merl and the Kahn-Vitt rhythm section. As best we can tell, Tom left the fold at the end of 1972 after eighteen months with The Group. What happened? I dunno, but I welcome your speculations in comments.

---

[1] “Tom Fogarty [sic] Leaves Creedence,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 1971, p. 42.

[2] See also Staska and Mangrum 19710225.

[3] Staska and Mangrum 19710311.

[4] Staska and Mangrum 19710624.

[5] I have written at length around all of this. See "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix - A Dialogue" (with Corry Arnold), URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders-at.html; "Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders & Tom Fogerty Sat-Sun, New Monk", URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jerry-garcia-merl-saunders-tom-fogerty.html; and "Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders and Friends - June 25, 1971 Keystone Korner", URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/tom-fogerty-merl-saunders-and-friends.html.

[6] See "'JGMS 5/20/71' is probably really JGMS 5/20/71," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jgms-52071-is-probably-really-jgms-52071.html.

[7] See "JGMS: Matrix, May 11-12, 1971," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jgms-matrix-may-11-12-1971.html; "'Hey Merl, you wanna do that tune in 'G'? Get spaced out a little?' LN jg1971-05-11.jgms.partial.aud.28784.flac1644," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/hey-merl-you-wanna-do-that-tune-in-g.html.

[8] "When did Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders first play together?" URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/11/when-did-jerry-garcia-and-merl-saunders.html.

[9] Staska and Mangrum 19710701.

New Riders of the Purple Sage and Acoustic Grateful Dead: Lion’s Share, San Anselmo, July 30-August 1, 1970

(This is an updated version of an earlier post,
“GD/NRPS19700731-19700801: Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA, 4/20/2011.)

Some time back, I reported listings for "New Riders of the Purple Sage & Grateful Dead, Lion's Share, 9 pm" for both July 31, 1970 and August 1, 1970, in the calendar section of the Berkeley Tribe. Here’s the scan (click to enlarge). (FWIW, the Tribe calendar’s name was commonly “George”. This day, it was “David” [at the tag end of the question “how about George David?”.)

Calendar section of the Berkeley Tribe v3 n4 (no 56) (July 31 - August 7, 1970), back page.

I have just uncovered a few more tidbits, so I am updating the whole original post. The tidbits are a calendar listing and a preview ‘blurb’ establishing to my satisfaction that the New Riders of the Purple Sage and Acoustic Grateful Dead played the Lion’s Share, 66 Red Hill Avenue, San Anselmo, CA, 94960 on Thursday, July 30, 1970, in addition to the previously-established shows the next two nights.

“Datebook/Opening Today,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1970, p. 41;
“’Purple Sage’ At Lion’s Share,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1970, p. 41.

Let me go through some of the points that come up out of this little bit of material, in no particular order.

1. The New Riders of the Purple Sage and Acoustic Grateful Dead played the Lion’s Share, 66 Red Hill Avenue, San Anselmo, CA, 94960 on Thursday, July 30, 1970, in addition to the previously-established shows the next two nights (July 31-August 1, 1970).

2. Michelle’s Mc’s Midsummer 1970 Memories of Acoustic GD at Lion's Share seem confirmed.

With the addition of the Thursday night to our understanding of this run, we can now confirm four of the five confirmable assertions made by Corry's informant "Michelle Mc", as relayed by him at LLD:

The acoustic Grateful Dead played a number of shows at the Lion's Share. They played two or three nights in a row, on a weeknight in the middle of the summer of 1970. She knows--she went. These shows were utterly unpublicized, and only friends of the band were given the heads up.

• Acoustic Grateful Dead: confirmed.
• “two or three nights in a row”: confirmed.
• “weeknight”: confirmed.
• Midsummer 1970: confirmed.
• No publicity: disconfirmed. The idea that these shows were mostly for GD family insiders is supported by the fact that the Saturday show was Jerry Garcia’s 28^th birthday. If it appeared in the Chron –and more importantly, given that there was an item in the Chron—it was no secret. However, it’s possible that the Share staff called the papers, but weren’t supposed to.

3. Acoustic Grateful Dead

The item and Michelle’s memory make it clear that the Grateful Dead played acoustically (AGD). This brings the 7/30/70 and 8/5/70 tapes to mind, the only two all-acoustic GD nights –billed as such—that I can think of.

4. What About The Tapes?

By the tapes, I refer to the New Riders tape and an Acoustic Grateful Dead tape (shnid 17077), both dated 7/30/70 and said to be from the Matrix. First, given the relative reliability of an “Opening Tonight” item in the Chron and a Matrix tape label, I propose that our lists (i.e., The List) be updated to list GD at Lion’s Share this night, and not at the Matrix.

Second, I had actually offered some analysis and speculation about all of this in the 7/30/70 installation of my still-unconcluded NRPS-Matrix-1970 series. Let me just quote myself at length.

Note that the first NRPS piece (I'll call it set I) runs only 23 minutes. Normally, we would conclude that it's incomplete (and probably missing the material at the start of the set, since there's a set break announcement over continuous tape after Lodi). I do think it's probably incomplete. But it could also be that this night was different, and ended up including the mini GD acoustic set. That might have substituted for at least some part of the expected additional NRPS material.

The tapes do suggest that there was a three-part show on 7/30/70: (I) NRPS, (II) AGD, (III) NRPS. I think the billings fit hand-in-glove with this structure, because …

5. ... The NRPS Appear to Have Been Headliners Above the GD

I think this newly-discovered evidence supports the view that these tape fragments are of a piece, insofar as NRPS seem to be headlining over the Grateful Dead. As far as I know, this is the only time such an arrangement, a kind of inversion of the “An Evening With the Grateful Dead” set structure (see my discussion in connection with a 5/1/70 analysis), ever materialized.

In my post “NRPS-Matrix-1970 05 of 7: LN19700730: Thursday, July 30, 1970”, I had run the discovery of the Tribe listings for 7/31 and 8/1 through evidence provided by the tapes, and said this:

I am intrigued by the possibility that the order in which the acts are listed for those shows might reflect that NRPS was "first billed" over the GD, which might be consistent with NRPS doing two sets and GD just a little acoustic one.

The discovery of another (partially independent) piece of data from the Chron reinforces this connection between these shows and these tapes, in my mind. Both of the calendar listings put the New Riders first, and the Grateful Dead second. If I understand how such listings came about, this correlation is partly spurious: presumably the same person from the Share or from the GD offices called the item into both the Tribe and the Chron. But there may be at least some independence among these observations, insofar as the staffers at the two separate newspapers did not turn the order around and put the GD first. That would have been the obvious, natural thing to do. As far as I know, this is the only time the New Riders are billed over the Grateful Dead. I think the fact that things are billed this way in both papers is no accident. I believe (pure conjecture, of course) that these were quite explicitly and consciously listed as NRPS-GD.

The headline of the preview item, “’Purple Sage’ At Lion’s Share”, especially, reinforces this. It is, I think, incredible to imagine that, under usual circumstances, this would not have said “Dead At Lion’s Share”. Woe betide the Chronicle lackey who should make the mistake of headlining the second act instead of the Grateful Goddamned Dead! No. This was quite consciously constructed with the New Riders at the top of the bill, and the Grateful Dead at the bottom.

I view this as just one more incremental step in the gradual speciation of the New Riders from the Grateful Dead.

David Torbert had been around as NRPS bassist (I said, NRPS bassist. Or, NRPS personnel more generally!) since probably April. They had done a number of high-profile gigs in the An Evening With the Grateful Dead format. I don’t have precise dates for when they started working on the first New Riders album in the studio, but it is certainly right around this time. Dryden said that Tolbert was brought for the express purpose of making an album (Kahlbacher 1974, 27). By mid-1970 the cognoscenti are starting to ask about the Riders’ studio plans (Hard Road interview, took place on 6/22/70). In October 1970, Garcia says that the NRPS record is “about 50% underway” (Goodwin 1971).

We also know, conventionally, that on the Festival Express train a month or so prior to 7/30/70, Garcia had spotted a hotshit pedal steel wizard named Buddy Cage and appeared immediately to have conceived the idea of bringing the Canadian on as his own full-time and permanent replacement. This seems only to have put flesh on the bones of a general plan that he harbored all along, to help found and launch the Riders, help his friends out financially by getting them a record deal (and the attending patch of land in Marin or Sonoma or wherever) and making them famous, and then stepping out gracefully. He was already public with a desire to step back by late 1970: “I think eventually it would be groovy if they auditioned other steel players so they could go out and tour, without having to depend on the Dead” (12/27/70 KPPC-FM interview, shnid 26583).

So, why would NRPS have been top-billed at a local show in a little Marin club that held like 212 people? It’s not like this was their big break. I don’t think they were planning on this being the launch of a national tour in this configuration, of course. Most plausible seems to be just that they wanted to keep things low key, and probably especially the GD guys. These quiet acoustic sets, with loads of wonderful spirituals and such (Jordan, A Voice From On High), along the lines of show known as 8/5/70 San Diego, are profoundly relaxed. From my listen to the NRPS set dated 7/30/70, I said “sounds like just a good old time foolin' around at the bar. It seems to run quite late." Here are Cousin Ace (Bob Weir) and Marmaduke to a sparse and shrinking late-night crowd:

Cousin Ace: “Well the rats are desertin' the sinkin' ship. And, uhh, in the meanwhile we're gonna do a ...” [interruption by Marmaduke: "Welcome to the campfire folks... "] “... hot lead and bloodshed ballad ...” ["... this is story time ..."] “...sad story time ...” ["... here on the plains"] …

All of the tapes in the NRPS-1970-Matrix nexus (feels redundant, but better than NRPS-1970-Matrix matrix!) have that kind of feel. More of alcohol vibe (a la the Festival Express train) than an acid- or coke-fueled one.

So, putting this all together, I think it was probably just a fun, low key, local trial balloon designed to try on what it would look like to have the New Riders go first.

6. What About The Tapes? Part II

So, do the tapes that circulate come from the Lion’s Share? I don’t know. I am honestly pretty stumped.

Everything I know about Lion’s Share tapes has pretty much been posted. Garcia shows are overrepresented since Betty taped so much. Outside of those the only period in which I know tape was regularly spinning at the Share was June 1971-January 1972, when soundman Lou Judson made an impressive handful of recordings.

I cannot explain why the “7/30/70” material comes out of “Matrix Tapes”. The likeliest possibilities, it seems to me, are

1. that the material is from the Matrix, and is mis-dated (though not by much), and the similarities of the tapes and these Lion's Share shows is spurious. Maybe the tapes really are from 7/27/70, as "Mickey Hart and the Hart Beats, with Jerry Garcia", a billing I have just confirmed at LIA's place, also from the Chron (7/27/70, p. 37); or
2. the material is correctly dated, but comes from the Lion’s Share (e.g., taped by the GD folks), and somehow eventually made it into (or became conflated with) the Matrix Tapes; or
3. the 7/30/70 show was moved from the Share to the Matrix.

I doubt #3, but #1 and #2 seem about equally plausible to me.

7. NRPS : GD :: Hot Tuna : Jefferson Airplane

Just wanted to note that the Chron item draws this analogy. It’s true for a time, and interesting. Around the same time that Jack and Jorma are branching out from well-known “day-bands” to play some American roots music on the side (alongside, early on, some really hot rock jamming) –which seems to begin in earnest ca. January 1969—Garcia and others in the GD are doing the same thing. It’s obvious, but since I have Jerry and the Jeffersons on the brain I thought I’d bring it up.

Of course, after the initial period, the arcs of Hot Tuna and NRPS diverge. NRPS ends up completely speciated from the GD in terms of personnel and, eventually, organization. Garcia builds it up and then walks away from it. Hot Tuna, of course, always has and always will include (no, really, "be") Jack and Jorma.

8. Summary

Summarizing, six take home points.

1. This began as a way to just put another event into The List: NRPS/GD at Lion’s Share on Thursday, July 30, 1970, based on evidence from the San Francisco Chronicle.
2. It seems to confirm the recollection by Corry’s informant Michelle Mc of Acoustic GD sets at Lion’s Share in midsummer 1970.
3. It is suggestive of one of the only all-acoustic GD sets, ever (alongside San Diego, 8/5/70).
4. It dovetails almost perfectly with the tapes we have that are dated 7/30/70, though said to be from the Matrix: two NRPS sets sandwiched around a homey AGD set that also features David Nelson and Marmaduke.
5. It seems to be a rare (perhaps the only) instance of the NRPS headlining over the GD, a kind of reversal of the “An Evening With the Grateful Dead” format (AGD, NRPS, EGD) of 1970. I have argued that this is a small milestone in the gradual (over two year!) differentiation of the NRPS from the GD, which culminated in Buddy Cage taking over Garcia’s pedal steel bench in November 1971.
6. I don’t know how to reconcile the tapes (said to be from the Matrix) with the rest of the evidence.

There we have it. Why say it in 50 words when you can say it in 2,300?!?

SOURCES:

• Arnold, Corry. 2011. John Kahn Live Performance History 1970 (John Kahn IV). Lost Live Dead, March 20, 2011, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/03/john-kahn-live-performance-history-1970.html, accessed 2/21/2012.
• “Datebook/Opening Today,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1970, p. 41.
• Goodwin, Michael. 1971. Jerry Garcia at 700 MPH: Incidental Music at the Celebration of Life. Flash no. 0: 32-39.
• “Jerry Garcia,” Hard Road 1, 1 (July 20, 1970), pp 1-4 (unnumbered).
• JGMF. 2011. “GD/NRPS19700731-19700801: Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA.” Jerry Garcia’s Middle Finger, April 20, 2011, URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/04/gdnrps19700731-19700801-lions-share-san.html, accessed 2/21/2012. Deprecated as of 2/21/2012
• Kahlbacher, Gene. 1974. Aquarian Interview: New Riders of the Purple Sage. Aquarian, January 29-February 12, 1974, pp. 14, 27, 31. Annotated at http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/03/reading-notes-kahlbacher-gene-1974.html.
• Light Into Ashes [LIA]. 2011. The Hartbeats - July 1970. Grateful Dead Guide, March 30, 2011, URL http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2011/03/hartbeats-july-1970.html, accessed 2/12/2012.
• “’Purple Sage’ At Lion’s Share,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1970, p. 41.