Stinson History

Stinson Beach Music Scene Time Line: 1960s to the Present

The site above was just brought to my attention. I can't find an email for anyone in the organization based on a cursory search, so I thought I post some reactions here.

The prompt for all of this is the newly digitized source for the OAITW gig at the Stinson Community Center on September 30, 1973, same source tape as an older source I have sketchily blogged. I haven't had time to look back at this in detail, but I also want to pin Corry's post on an early OAITW gig at a Stinson Beach bar.

The point of this post is to post some corrections and ask some questions about entries in the Stinson Historical Society page that heads the post. If anyone knows any of the principals and wishes to draw their attention to the corrections, they might be interested.

“Blows Against the Empire” and “Mexico” (1969) - Jefferson Airplane

Recordings for BATE started in July 1970, just to be clear. Not sure what the Stinson connection is supposed to be here.

1970 – Peter Rowan moves to Stinson Beach from Mill Valley, where he had been playing in bands such as Seatrain and Earth Opera. Also recently been spending time playing with bluegrass legend Bill Monroe. He moves into a house on Calle del Ribera and pays $100/month in rent. He ends up writing one song inspired by Stinson Beach: “Riding the Rainbow in the Sky,” which was never released on a record.

The liner notes to Breakdown say PR arrived in Stinson Beach in October 1972.

8/27/71 - Jerry Garcia and others play at the club known as “The Red Whale,” which is located where the current Stinson Beach Water County District is located on Highway One just past the turn off for Calle del Arroyo. It would later be renovated and renamed “The Brigg.” Still later, it would be renovated again and renamed the “Over the Hill Bar and Grill.”

Mmmmm, a specific date which I don't have. I would love to know the source of this information! In the meantime, I will add it to my spreadsheet. I am presuming this would be the NRPS warming up earlier in the day before gigging at the Longbranch this night, but of course I can't be sure.

One rumor has it that the only time Jerry Garcia met John Lennon was during this time period in Stinson Beach.

Sounds familiar, but I will pin this possible crossing here.

Autumn 1972 – Jerry Garcia & David Grisman play bluegrass music several times, with Jerry practicing his banjo whenever he can after they bumped into each other at Ed’s Superette as Garcia was buying cigarettes.

I thought the story of their hooking back up in Stinson was that Pete Rowan walked Dawg (or vice versa) up the hill to Garcia's. This doesn't rule out that they bumped into each other at Ed's Superette, of course.

January 1973 – ... After playing at “Avila's Barn,” Jerry Garcia names David Grisman "Dawg" after he saw dog following Grisman on the beach at Stinson.

Avila's Barn doesn't ring a bell to me, though I bet that if I check Corry's "unknown bar" post it's mentioned there. update: I think the name is not "Avila" but Avella - so, Avella's Barn. I have changed it in my tag.

1973 [sic] - Goldie Rush starts Round Records above Ed’s Superette in 1973

First, the name "Goldie Rush" was new to me, and it shouldn't be, because apparently she was heavily involved in Round Records. Second, though, 1973 is too early, at least for "starts" in any formally institutionalized sense. Round Records was incorporated in the state of California on January 22, 1974.

1977 [sic] – David Jenkins (guitar) and Cory Lerois (keyboards) move to Stinson Beach, both members of the band Pablo Cruise. Lerois buys Mountain Girl/Jerry Garcia’s old house, and does a major remodel.

No. This was early 1978.

1979/1980 – The band “The Edge” is formed by Lorin Rowan, Mark Stein, Jim Dillon, Keith Glanz and Ozzie Ahleve [sic]

Correction: last fellow's name is Ozzie Ahlers.

Black Roots about Native Americans?

I am thinking about Native American musical influences on Garcia.

As far as I can tell, they are mediated by whites: Hank Williams's "Kaw-Liga," Bill Monroe's "Cheyenne,"Peter Rowan's "Land Of The Navajo" (which the latter inspired).

Is there any black traditional music with Native American narrative or musical themes? Like, any old banjo tunes about the Seminoles?

Some notes on classifying Garciaverse Musics

In narrating Jerry Garcia's Musical Life Outside The Grateful Dead, I think in terms of the various musics he played.

One cut is geographic: 1) world vs. 2) American.

In terms of musics he directly quasi-publicly performed, The World is mostly only reggae and Indian music (e.g., Diga). He got some stuff from Canada, but it was either Americana (e.g., The Band) or pan-white pop (e.g., Bruce Cockburn's "Waiting For A Miracle") - not what I'd call "Canadian music".

Everything else from The World comes to Garcia pre-mediated through America.

Within the second bucket, I want to distinguish a) indigenous music (Hawaiian, Native American) from b) music made by non-indigenous peoples.

As noted above, Native American music came to Garcia pre-mediated by whites. When he played "Native American", he was playing white renderings of that music. I am guessing he jammed around at Hart's with Rolling Thunder and others -- I wonder if there are calendars, diaries, tapes?? --, but it falls sort of short of my fuzzy event threshold ("musics he directly quasi-publicly performed").

It seems like the same is likely true of the other indigenous American music that Garcia engaged, Hawaiian.  Let me put it another way: he directly heard Hawaiian music (grandmother Tillie loved it - McNally 2015, 36), but in playing pedal steel guitar he was playing what white people were doing, inspired by the islanders' music. So it doesn't get the full-on music font.

b) is the set of musics that get the special font and the central real estate in my table on Garciaverse musics.

Great American String Band - May 5, 1974, Keystone, Berkeley

Sunday, May 5, 1974 found Garcia at the Keystone (typical), but in the background, picking some banjo in the Great American String Band behind its featured front line of Richard Greene (fiddle), David Grisman (mandolin), and David Nichtern (guitar and vocals).

Rather remarkably, we know a fair bit of very interesting stuff about this gig, despite the fact that there is no tape in circulation.

First, the band was billed as Great American String Band (GASB), which wasn't always the case - it sometimes traveled as Great American Music Band (GAMB), and it doesn't appear that things were particularly consistent in that regard. This testifies to the rather fluid nature of the enterprise, always of interest in the Garciaverse, which would become increasingly institutionalized as time went on. Garcia is listed first, natch - capitalists gotta capitalize - but that's pretty standard.

Second, an anonymous commenter at Hooterollin' reports special guest appearances, including, a week after Old And In The Way's abortive swan song --"no sweeping exits"-- at the Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival, the last known stage shared by Garcia and the great Peter Rowan:

I saw Great American String Band show at the Keystone on May 5, 1974 and can attest to the fact that Peter Rowan and Jack Bonus were brought out for two songs - Midnight Moonlight and Hobo Song and the show was recorded professionally for what folks at the gig were hearing would be a future album.

Third, as the commenter said, the gig was being recorded for release, one presumes on Round Records, the "side band" companion company to Grateful Dead Records. While the Dead outfit had been up and running since the previous autumn, Round was incorporated 1/22/74. A review of this show that I have just discovered (Silver 1974) confirms that Bear (Augustus Owsley Stanley III) was recording the show with a female assistant, I presume the same Vickie Babcock who helped him record Old And In The Way the previous October.

Fourth, between the Hooterollin' commenter and Sam Silver's review, we can also reconstruct some of the setlist. The show started around 11 pm with what the reviewer called "Dog's Bone", which I assume was "Dawg's Bull", a Grisman original. They played "Bud's Bounce" ("mistakenly credited to Buddy Emmonds, really belongs to Buddy Spiker"), "Midnight at the Oasis", at least one Carter Family tune, and Django Reinhardt's "Swing '42" (about which Silver raves). Anonymous commenter adds "Midnight Moonlight" and "Hobo Song" to the mix.

update: Anonymous, in comments, adds the David Nichtern compositions "I'll Be A Gambler If You Deal the Cards" and "My Plastic Banana Is Not Stupid" to this night's setlist, and that "there was another Grisman song or two"

Fifth, Silver took and the Barb published a picture of the GASB in action, one of only two of which I am aware (the other from 5/25/74 in Santa Barbara - h/t Bob Murphy).

Sam Silver's photo of the Great American String Band, live at Keystone Berkeley, May 5, 1974. Published in the Berkeley Barb, May 10-16, 1974, p. 17.

Silver is over the moon about the band, with "the best of all possible pickers for the unique job of creating a new music". The review is well worth a read, really capturing the vibe of a show where Garcia is the draw but the other players are the virtuosi, and the audience seemed ready to rock but proved able to appreciate acoustic brilliance.

All of this raises a few essential questions. Are these tapes in possession of the Owsley Stanley Foundation? If so, who can spare whatever it would take to sponsor their preservation? Why didn't the GASB record ever materialize? Most importantly, given the amazing musical direction the band was taking - it was an early germ of Dawg Music, Grisman's brilliantly distinctive alchemical blend of dozens of traditional musical forms - why didn't the String Band last as a Garcia proposition, but morph into the David Grisman Quintet (DGQ)?

! listing: Oakland Tribune, May 3, 1974, p. 30;
! listing: Hayward Daily Review, May 3, 1974, p. 44;
! listing: Oakland Tribune, May 5, 1974, p. 2-R;
! ad: Oakland Tribune, May 5, 1974, p. 2-R;
! Ref: http://hooterollin.blogspot.com/2011/10/april-10-1974-record-plant-sausalito-ca.html?showComment=1329237485261#c7438213843279921015;
! review: Silver, Sam. 1974. Waiting for Jerry Garcia. Berkeley Barb, May 10-16, 17, via Independent Voices.

David Grisman and Peter Rowan at the Freight and Salvage, December 29, 1972

I wonder what they played?

JGB: Halloween 1981 - LN jg1981-10-31.jgb.early-late.aud-levene.88958.flac1644

Late Jerry loved playing on Halloween. In the last fifteen years of his life, the only years he is not known to have gigged on Halloween are 1982 and 1994.

Table xxx. Garcia on Halloween, 1980-1994. Orange is GD, blue is GOTS.

As indicated in the table, things were distributed across the GD (6 dates/shows) and JGB (7 dates, 9 shows). From 1985 forward Garcia played Warren Zevon's "Werewolves Of London", and a good time was generally had, as at the 1989 (a very good JGB show) and 1990 (a raggedy Dead show) iterations, which I attended.

On October 31, 1981, the Jerry Garcia Band played two Halloween shows to open its 18-show-in-20-night "Return of Ron Tutt" tour. Since Garcia had actually been in London at the start of the month, it seems plausible that he might have given "Werewolves" a shot, but it was not to be.

Nevertheless, any start-of-tour is interesting to examine, and this one has some of the telltale signs, including a burst of adrenaline in the early show followed by a shorter and more uneven late show. I have not directly A-B'd his vocals here against vocals later in the tour (I have addressed myself to 11/10/81b Palladium, 11/13/81 Boston, 11/15/81 Provy, and 11/17/81 Chicago), but my unsurprised sense is that they sound better here at the front end than they do at the back end. Update: 11/19/81 has a bone to pick with this idea. Obvious enough, but aAnyway, always nice to see how they sound, take JGB #14b's temperature.

The Tutt angle is especially rich. In 1981-1982, as he descended deeper into a drug haze when not playing, Garcia nevertheless, rather ironically, started getting his business affairs in order. It seems that one early order of business was to square up with Ronnie Tutt, one of the three principals dba Jerry Garcia Band from the very beginning of the JGB and who  for many years faced liens earned by Jerry and John well after Tutt's 1977 departure from the touring band. In later years, as his income grew, Garcia expanded this practice of engineering a payday or few for a collaborator he had done/allowed to be done wrong -- see Saunders, Merl and Grisman, David. Here, in late 1981, both Peter Rowan (who opened a number of shows on the tour) and Ronnie Tutt get to set the precedent. I don't hear anything that seems particularly emotionally resonant here - more typically, I hear Jerry and the band, perhaps particularly Tutt, getting themselves together a little bit.

Two more small pieces of preface. First, I grabbed this to put some context around 11/4/81, which I have revisited pursuant to Weiner (2014, pp. 67-76), and on which I hope someday to report. Second, in terms of tape archaeology, this is the only tape in circulation as of this writing (4/11/2015). I figure several masters must have sauntered into the Philly morning, but this is the only one to have come into the digital light. Thanks to John Levene and all involved in bringing these very nice tapes forward.

Anyway, a few bullets, in no particular order.

1. The tapes sound great.
2. The early show is very long (over 90 minutes), and is outstanding.
3. The late show is much shorter (just over an hour and a 10-minute encore, still not bad), but more importantly, it just doesn't light me up, finding Garcia having to pull the e-brake on as both "Valerie" and "I'll Take A Melody" fall apart. The one exception is "Russian Lullaby", which is stellar, a smoky sensorial mix of Django Reinhardt and Irving Berlin.
4. Jimmy Warren sounds absolutely fine. People have been way too hard on the guy.
5. "Valerie" is not quite together, but boy oh boy do I love this song.
5. Late 1981, JGB #14b, is a fascinating period. Garcia's voice is still present here at the start of the tour, but with just enough weary crackle to give songs like "Simple Twist Of Fate" and "I'll Take A Melody" the ballast they really need.

Listening Notes follow.

Jerry Garcia Band
Tower Theatre
19 S. 69th Street
Upper Darby, PA 19082
October 31, 1981 (Saturday)
Levene shnid-88958

--early show (8 tracks, 93:53)--
e-t01. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [9:15] [0:08] %% [1:08]
e-t02. Catfish John [11:29] [0:10] % [0:58]
e-t03. That's What Love Will Make You Do [10:48] [0:36] % [0:14]
e-t04. [0:21] Simple Twist Of Fate// [13:22#] %% [0:29]
e-t05. Knockin' On Heaven's Door [16:20] [0:10] % [0:18]
e-t06. (I'm A) Road Runner [9:01] [0:15] %
e-t07. [0:14] Deal [8:17] [-0:05] ->
e-t08.  Tangled Up In Blue [+0:05] [10:08] (1) [0:06] %

--late show + encore (8 tracks, 73:57)--
--late show (7 tracks, 64:44)--
l-t01. //The Way You Do The Things You Do [#7:28] [0:08] % [0:08] %
l-t02. They Love Each Other [6:56] %% [0:15]
l-t03. [0:10] Valerie :11-7:04 [0:04] % [0:36]
l-t04. I'll Take A Melody [11:47] %% [0:21]
l-t05. Russian Lullaby [10:14] [0:04] %% [0:30]
l-t06. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [8:02] ->
l-t07. Dear Prudence [10:40] (2) [0:12] %% [0:16]
--encore (1 track, 9:12)--
l-t08. Sugaree [9:07] [0:05] %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #14b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-b;
! lineup: Jimmy Warren - electric keyboards;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - organ;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums;
! lineup: Julie Stafford - vocals;
! lineup: Liz Stires - 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/19811031-01 (early), https://jerrybase.com/events/19811031-02 (late).

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/88958 (this fileset).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/IBjq9

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/12/tower-theatre-19-s-69th-street-upper.html

! band: JGB #14b (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! seealso: 11/10/81b, Palladium, NYC (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/03/ln-jg1981-11-10jgblateaud.html);  11/13/81, Orpheum, Boston (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/03/ln-jg1981-11-13jgbearly-lateaud.html); 11/15/81, Provy (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/03/ln-jg1981-11-15jgballaud.html); 11/17/81, Uptown, Chicago (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2015/03/ln-jg1981-11-17jgballaud.html).

! data: Billboard, 11/21/81, p. unk, via Google Books: two sellouts, gross $58,276 on 5,960 tickets sold.

! R: field recordist: John Levene

! R: field recording gear: 2x Nakamichi 300 (cp4 shotgun) > Marantz CD330

! R: field recording location: taper: "I seem to recall that I taped the early show in the back of the floor seats, but no recollection of where I was for the late show?  I think it was the balcony."

! R: Transfer: Yamaha K-1020 > Sony SBM-1 > Nomad JB3 > Creative Play Center > Soundforge v6e > CDWav. reative Play Center software used to copy to laptop. Soundforge used to prep file for tracking. CDWave used to track and flac at level 8 compression.

! P: historical: Cognitively, we are drawn to variation, a point I discussed in "James Booker,  Classified". Methodologically, my day-job sistren and brethren like large random samples, and preferably Randomized Control Trials under asymptotically-approaching-the-experimental ideal conditions. Given the impossibility of that kind of construction in re my study of the Garciaverse, we'll have to select strictly *unrepresenentative* moments, informed by strong priors. For example, I am listening to this show precisely because it's got some unusual features from which I hope I might learn some things. Most obviously, this is the first night of the "Return of Ron Tutt" tour, 18 shows in 20 days on the road. In 1981-1982, as he descended deeper into a drug haze when not playing, Garcia nevertheless, rather ironicallym, started getting his business affairs in order. It seems that one early order of business was to square up with Ronnie Tutt, one of the three principals dba Jerry Garcia Band from the very beginning of the JGB and who  for many years faced liens earned by Jerry and John well after Tutt's 1977 departure from the touring band. In later years, as his income grew, Garcia expanded this practice of engineering a payday or few for a collaborator he had done/allowed to be done wrong -- see Saunders, Merl and Grisman, David. Here, in late 1981, both Peter Rowan and Ronnie Tutt get to set the precedent. Beyond that historical context, there's just the chance to hear the first night of the tour, see how they sound, take JGB #14b's temperature, and also to put some context around 11/4/81, which I have revisited pursuant to Weiner (2014, pp. 67-76). Oh yeah, one more thing: this is the only tape in circulation as of this writing (4/11/2015). I figure several masters must have sauntered into the Philly morning, but this is the only one to have come into the digital light. Thanks to John Levene and all involved in bringing these very nice tapes forward.

! EARLY SHOW NOTES

! R: this is a really nice tape - outstanding! There are some singers around, there's lots of ambience. There's also someone nearby who is quite knowledgeable, cheering John by name during his STOF feature.

! P: early show: I don't recall being lit up by the first three tunes when I listened to them spring break 2015. In returning 4/10/2015, a couple weeks later, I find this to be absolutely smokin. The band sounds great, everybody - Melvin a little buried in the mix but ethereal, Jimmy Warren playing well, the ladies singing powerfully for white chicks.

 ! P: e-t01 Weird little "ooh-ooh" backing vocal in HSII, a little arrangement variation to start the tour, but I think they'd drop it - wonder if they were asked to do so, or instructed to do so by Melvin?

! R: e-t01 HSII @ 3:48-3:56 real time gap. Listening to the crowd clap is just a joy - this tape sounds great.

! R: e-t04 STOF cuts in

! P: e-t04 STOF I am picking this back up a month or so after the notes from the first three tracks. Here I note Tutt sounding totally in the pocket, and Garcia singing well. The tape is great. Around 2:10 he hits a nice vocal thing, letting himself sound world weary, in a delivery that really suits the song. Huge long phrasings over 4. More long Jerry passages. John picks up his feature at 8.

! P: e-t05 KOHD Jimmy Warren takes a totally respectable solo late 7 to 8. Kahn sounds great, the whole band sounds great. As this songs ends after 16 minutes, I find myself reminded why I love this song during this era. Unlike the dirge of 1976 (which admittedly could clock in over 20 minutes, IIRC), this just hops really nicely along. I love how they arranged this with the organ, giving it a nice little lilt that it never had before. Awesome.

! P: e-t06 IARR so great! He doesn't get the lyrical progressions right, but it pops pretty nicely. Note that this is a real punchy tape and I find the music sounding punchy.

! P: e-t07 Deal this is real nice as Jerry takes another turn late 1 over 2, and he is playing very creatively and enthusiastically. 2:30ish "since you poured the wine for me", then a little vocal flub before "composin' loneseome blues". Big long 1981 vintage pull as he starts ramping Deal up ... that's a good thing. Nice feedback 4:15, great sustain, now picking up his action, characteristically great 1981-Deal-guitar. Pedals in some more raunch, dials up a little, 4:55 and over 5 he's starting to get his wail on. I can't believe he's going to play TUIB after this. Recall that 11/17/81 Chi and maybe 11/19/81 Denver are long. No shortchanging the early show ticket holders here on the opening night of the tour. 6:10 they are being treated to some serious rock and roll guitar, way up the neck 6:25 ish, mixing up long sustains and fast descending scales. Very nice guitar late 6. Doing a little Carlos thing start of 7.

! P: e-t08 TUIB first solo right from 2. Nice, sounds great. Very stringy (that's a good thing) 2:27. Another go 2:40ff, excellent. @ 2:57 Tutt hits a high hat that is perfection itself. Mid-7 just some great long TUIB expressions, very fluid and fluent. 7:58 big rock chord, faster rounds 8:07, huge feedback 8:15, wow, that is a keeper piece of feedback right there.

! e-t08 JG: "Thanks a lot. See ya later on."

! LATE SHOW NOTES

! R: late show: I suspect stage right/house left a little bit. Organ more audible late show than early show. It's very nice instrumentally, bass a little indistinct to start, now coming in l-t04 ITAM. As of ITAM I'd say the bass is still overloaded a little bit, unfortunate. This is the only circulating pull of a night that must have seen at least several tapes saunter out of both shows. Overloading again on "Sugaree".

! R: l-t01 TWYDTTYD cuts in. It sounds a little oversaturated, levels come down 0:17. Jimmy's piano very forward, way more present on the than Melvin's organ playing.

! P: l-t01 TWYDTTYD Jerry's first solo 1:44 he has turned up a little, comes in with enthusiasm and the tape picks up the crowd, pleased.

! P: l-t02 TLEO not my favorite choice, but I can be surprised sometimes. Here, because the tape has Jimmy Warren's electric piano so far forward, you can really hear what he could do, and I will say here that I think he sounds absolutely fine. It sounds like Jerry hasn't quite pinned down all of these arrangements with his band out on its first night of a very long tour. On TLEO, Tutt and Jerry don't seem sycn'd up to start, easy to say since it's just the two of them to start. But Jimmy picks up his part right on time. Melvin follows and they are providing a nice bass of support for the rhythm section to get together. I can't really hear John very well, so maybe he was responsible for the thudding start. It gets more together, but it never really goes any where for me.

! R: l-t03 Valerie taper has his levels way up and things overload until 0:16, when taper dials down.

! P: l-t03 Valerie, by contrast to TLEO, is a song I love, and this is a very early version that I look forward to hearing. On this tape, so from wherever we are in the room, we'll get a nice perspective on the early take of a great song in its too-brief place in the Garcia Band repertoire. My take is that it's what you'd expect for a new song on opening night of the tour in Philly. They are clearly pinning it down, but it's mostly fine and at times very good. Late 4 Jerry has stacked up some nice guitar and the crowd perks up its ears. Jerry delivers this song, with its shoulder shaking, finger-wagging, mane-shaking defiance, with the appropriate attitude. But then, whoops, early 6 he mumbles through a forgotten verse and is pulling the rip chord ... run away! John became audible there for a moment. So, it's a mixed bag, but interesting to hear. I love this song and you can already tell it has great promise from the get-go.

! P: l-t04 ITAM: This song sounds great in late 1981. Jerry can still sing, but he's already taking on and making good use of a weary scratch. He can still, just barely, sustain his notes, and he warbles his weariness with just enough remaining lung and force to get it a great swinging groove. He sounds confident, he's still moving ontstage with some swagger. Soon enough, heroin would trump cocaine and place the swagger with mooby, withdrawn stationarity, but not yet. On 10/31/81 in Philly Garcia can still bring it. Late 10 there is a nice scrub that sounds promising but then, in 11, and like Valerie, it just falls appart at some point ca. 11, and Jerry leads the close, preempting other trouble.

! P: l-t05 Russian Lullaby: "Russian Lullaby", how do I love thee? I love thee lots. I am really looking forward to hearing this, based on the start. Jerry and John are have constructed a bar scene in a Django Reinhardt - Irving Berlin suspensorium, to the drinker's soaked delight and amazement. This is careful, attentive music, totally respectful of the traditions, standing with and bheind them, spinning threads 3:20 and after 3:30, Tutt all gentle highhat, Melvin was playing so beautifully in this period, calm and spacious. Jerry 4:20 breaks off a shard, Jimmy feature 4:30ff and he sounds just fine, still fine over 5 and sounding great, with a glissando 5:11, cool and sounding very nice as he hands it off to John, 5:33ff. Tasteful piece. By 8:10 Jerry has bent in a little minor urgency, everything takes on a different color, John skipping lightly, Melvin and drums super tasteful.

! P: l-t06 TNTDODD This works well in this late 1981 Jerry voice. I worry about hearing this at the end of the tour, but here at the start it works well.

! l-t07 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. See ya later."

Context: April 1976 BAM listings

So here's a first example of my sources and methods for context. It's a scan of the music listings from the first issue of BAM ("Bay Area Music") magazine, April 1976.

Here are the things that went into the spreadsheet:

• the listings for Ruby, which was Tom Fogerty's band of the period;
• the listings for the Meters, who, I think, shared a bill or two with JGMS in November 1974, which Kreutzmann loved, and at least one song of which JGMS covered ("Just Kissed My Baby");
• the Roadhog listings (for Corry);
• the Mingus gigs (because one of my favorite Mingus recordings is from KK the next month);
• the Eddie Harris gigs, because I thought this might be Merl's cousin?;
• the Bloomfield gigs, for no apparent reason;
• Gravenites, see Bloomfield;
• Mandel, because he once shared a stage with Jerry (Matrix late 1968);
• the Rowan Brothers, for heavy Garciacentric relevance;
• the David LaFlamme band, shared stage with Garcia (with NRPS in February 1971, I think 2/28/71).

 More madness than method, of course, but there you go.

Ronnie's and Rowan's Returns

LN jg1981-11-13.jgb.early-late.aud-streeter.123554.flac1644

I cannot believe that things were nearly forgotten that should not have been around this late '81 JGB tour, namely that Ronnie Tutt was back on the skins. Somehow that information didn't make it to Garciabase, and thence to TJS, but thankfully Corry Knows and we have the old McNally-Arnold JG List still available. The tour was billed on the Grateful Dead Hotline as "The Return of Ron Tutt".

I haven't seen any of the papers around this tour in particular, but I know that within four months or so Garcia was busy cleaning up what I believe to be the last of the wreckage of Round Records and the original Jerry Garcia Band partnership (initially Garcia-Kahn-Tutt and Hopkins, then just the first three). So, to me, Tutt's late '81 return feels like them generating revenue together to clear away the old financial entanglements binding them. It could have been a payout for Mr. Tutt, which I don't mean in a negative sense, but just in the sense of making sure everything was buttoned up tight. Garcia and Tutt would never play together after this tour.

I like this night's performances much better than the ones in the same space nine months earlier (2/7/81). Nice punchy show. Tutt is an amazing player. Just about every song in the early show makes me stand up and take note. Only Simple Twist and ISTE didn't move me to note something.

Peter Rowan opened. I have a little bit of the same feeling about this as I do about Tutt. Well, not quite the same. With Tutt, I think they were literally taking care of unfinished business. With Rowan, it feels to me more like Garcia is throwing the occasional gig the Rowans' ways to assuage some old guilt. I have no evidence for this, but it's more than just a flier. The end of OAITW, like the end of so many Garcia relationships, seems not to cast the best light on Our Hero. David Grisman was embittered and would have nothing to do with Garcia for many years, not even wanting to talk about him (Forte 1979a, 1979b). But he was also succeeding on his own. While Peter Rowan is now, and rightfully so, a Living Legend, a guy who probably gets to pick and choose where and when and what he wants to play, ca. 1981 I suspect things were a little less comfortable.

Below I paste a table of what I can confirm in terms of a Rowan opening for (or, at least, being co-billed with), Garcia in the post-OAITW era. I don't know if he played the rest of the shows on this tour. I suspect so, but I'd like confirmation before I list them, because assumptions can be fraught.

Table xxx. Rowan and Garcia co-billings post-OAITW

Boston being the Rowans' hometown, I hope this was a nice time for Peter. I'd love to hear the tape if anyone has one.

Jerry Garcia Band
Orpheum Theatre
1 Hamilton Place
Boston, MA 02108
November 13, 1981 (Friday)
Frank Streeter MAC flac1644 shnid-123554

--early show (8 tracks, 77:13)--
a-t01. tuning [0:53]
a-t02. Sugaree [11:08] % [0:41]
a-t03. Catfish John [9:21] % [0:22]
a-t04. That's What Love Will Make You Do [9:42] % [0:44]
a-t05. Simple Twist Of Fate [14:08] % [0:15]
a-t06. I Second That Emotion [10:58] % [0:23]
a-t07. Mississippi Moon [10:23] [0:08]
a-t08. Deal [8:54] (1) [0:04] %

--late show (5 tracks, 36:43)--
b-t01. tuning [0:54]
b-t02. The Way You Do The Things You Do [7:20] [0:04] % [0:02]
b-t03. They Love Each Other [7:05] [0:02] % [0:01]
b-t04. [0:09] Valerie [6:55] % [1:02]
b-t05. The Harder They Come [13:01] (2) [0:09]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #14b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-b;
! lineup: Jimmy Warren - electric keyboards;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - organ;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums;
! lineup: Julie Stafford - vocals;
! lineup: Liz Stires - 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/19811113-01 (early); https://jerrybase.com/events/19811113-02 (late)

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/12989 (early and late, Greater Boston Deadheads Who Give A Shit Foundation, Nak 700s, shnf; I presume this is Steve Rolfe's tape, but I am not sure); http://etreedb.org/shn/89005 (late show, John Levene, flac1644); http://etreedb.org/shn/102009 (Bob Morris early show + Steve Rolfe late show, flac1644); http://etreedb.org/shn/123554 (early and late Streeter flac1644, this fileset).

! map: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Orpheum+Theatre/@42.3563142,-71.0610765,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e3709cb51cffcf:0x6575ac76b6bcc90f

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/09/orpheum-theatre-1-hamilton-place-boston.html

! band: JGB #14b (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! context: Peter Rowan opened. Late show ended early due to power outage caused by nearby fire.

! R: field recordist: Frank Streeter

! R: field recording gear: 2x Sennheiser 421 -> Sony TC-D5M

! R: field recording media: xx Maxell MX90

! R: Transfer Info: Cassette Master (Sony TC-K677ES) -> Sound Devices 744T (24bit/48k) ->
Adobe Audition v3.0 -> Samplitude Professional v11.2.1 -> FLAC/16 (2 Discs Audio / 1 DVD FLAC), all Transfers and Mastering By Charlie Miller, charliemiller87@earthlink.net, January 21, 2013.

! setlist: seeder note: "Late show ended early due to power outage caused by nearby fire"

! R: seeder notes: "Thanks to Frank Streeter for lending me his masters. Thanks to Joe B. Jones for his help with the pitch correction."

! R: very nice tape.

! P: a-t02 Sugaree some very nice guitar work in the 8-minute mark, crowd expresses appropriate enthusiasm.

! P: a-t03 CJ very nice guitar work late 7-minute mark. Jerry sounds good.

! P: a-t04 TWLWMYD Jerry is scorching over 8-minute mark. Wow. These versions from November 1981 are smokin' hot. Tutt is such a rock.

! P: a-t07 MM Melvin plays a nice feature around 8-min mark.

! P: a-t08 Deal Garcia's soloing in the late 6 and over 7-min mark is outtasite.

! a-t08 (1) JG: "See ya later on. Thank you."

! P: b-t05 HTC Tutt is a monster. Late 5 over 6-minute mark, a little Jimmy Warren feature, but Tutt is pounding behind him. Around 6:10 there's a buzz, like the fire alarm. Wow Tutt is doing some of the most amazing drumming behind HTC in the 6-minute range. Now Jerry is stepping up and he has some amazing multistring fingering happening, pulls a pull about 7:45, gorgeous.

! b-t05 (2) JG: "Thanks, we're gonna take a break for a little while. We'll be back in a few minutes." The note above ("Late show ended early due to power outage caused by nearby fire"), from etree, probably explains why there's no second set in the late show - compare 2/7/81.

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

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

A FEW POINTS TO EXTRACT:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, reading notes after the jump.

OAITW 19730305 Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

Sharp-eyed readers who checked out the March 1973 Inn of the Beginning flyer in my post about Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders 1/15/73 and Sarah Fulcher may have looked to the top-left, and seen this:

Here we have listings for two Monday, March 5, 1973 shows (9pm and 11 pm) by Old And In The Way (OAITW) at the Inn of the Beginning, 8201 Old Redwood Hwy, Cotati, CA 94931. The named players are David Diadem, Jerry Garcia and Peter Rowan. The Rowan Brothers are set to open. As a factual note, the March 1973 IOTB ledger page says the early show was at 8pm, and I think that’s the “correct” time for the early show.

Fascinating on so many levels.

First, some calendar context.

Barring very early bar gigs, Old And In The Way played its first paying gig Friday March 2, 1973, after doing a radio hit earlier in the day. That's five musical events in its first three days. (They also recorded a little jingle for KSAN!) Here at the Inn would be gigs number 5 and 6 by the end of the fourth day. Of course, our guy being our guy, he keeps playing, Tuesday-Wednesday with Merl.

If you continue the timeline forward, you have Pigpen’s death on March 8 and then the wake and funeral, an off-night gig with Merl (March 11), blow off some steam, and spend Monday-Tuesday March 12-13 at Keystone Berkeley. Then the GD are on tour all the way through early April, followed by what must have been a relatively long-booked weekend chez Freddie (Keystone) with Merl. By my reckoning, after debuting at the Share OAITW wouldn’t play another weekend until April 20-21, 1973, by which time they had Richard Greene. So it seems to me like they really needed a fiddle player, and that, among other of its complicated aspects, OAITW fell prey to the vicissitudes of Garcia’s schedule, and some odd circumstance. The man was just fundamentally a workaholic and had too many irons in the fire. What’s more, the fact that OAITW would have this “false start” of sorts in March, then have to begin anew in April, must have been frustrating to Rowan and Grisman. (I have recently written about the transition through what I might now call the "third phase" of OAITW, the Vassar Clements period.)

Anyway, it’s always neat to recover a date and put it into its calendar context, so there you have it.

Second observation, smaller: David Diadem. This was the nom-de-freak that David Grisman was using at this time, as far as I can tell for reasons known only to him. He was a highly spaced-out dude at this time, from what I can tell, but a mind-blowing player, composer and eventually band-leader who was just about ready to carve his own channel of genius through the world, and then walk it, strongly. We should all be blessed with such strengths and opportunities!

Third, aside on the Mark Braunstein collection. The March 1973 IOTB calendar was the front page of the Inn of the Beginning Flyer. I didn’t take careful notes on the evolution of the flyer itself, but roughly it began as a single calendar sheet and evolved into at least an 8-page Flyer, a newsletter of sorts that was mailed out to folks on the Inn’s list. And it is a rich, rich source of information. I was able only to scan the calendar pages and selected other pages, as well as the handwritten “ledger” of bands and arrangements compiled at the end of each month. So there are countless pages of amazing narratives on the bands, the scene, stuff going on in Cotati, Sonoma and beyond, etc. I hope someday some museum will take these materials and catalog them fully. They deserve it. And thanks, Mark, for letting me go through this amazing stuff!

Fourth, a business aspect or two. The IOTB had calendared this as a “Special Show” and run the blurb above at the top left of the inside cover (p.1 of the Inn of the Beginning Flyer proper). As ever, Being Jerry Garcia involves not being able to escape on a Monday night to pick some banjo, but having to be part of a “Special Show”, with Your Name In Lights. An insider reminds me that there’s ego involved here, and Garcia was as subject to that kind of motivation as anyone else. So I don’t want to pluck the harp strings for him here. It might be “having to do this”, but it’s also “choosing to do this”. But it might also be just a little bit of a drag, dontcha think? Maybe a reflection of a constrained choice-set rather than some underlying preference to be on the marquee? Pigpen is laying in his bed and dying, Garcia has to help launch a new band, on top of being Jerry Garcia Of The Grateful Dead (“Let’s start a record company!”) and headlining with Merl. (Aside: no wonder he had John Kahn manage band decisions for him! With Sarah, and George Ticker, and Martin, and Tom Fogerty, and Vitt and Kreutzmann, and mystery rhythm guitar players [at least once, no, at least twice and mystery harmonica players and mystery trumpet players and all that, Garcia/Saunders alone should have been a full-time job. Have John do it!)

I nearly left out the most interesting business aspect that these IOTB materials reveal. On the back of the February 1973 ledger there is a handwritten note, written and circled with palpable excitement, that says "Jerry Garcia | new group: "Old And In The Way" | Peter Rowan guitar, David Diadem mando, JG banjo" and maps out the contours of the night with the Rowan Bros opener, the percentages, a note to "turn house" (i.e., have separately ticketed/charged early and late shows), etc. It's great to see such rich contextual evidence for the fact that a band with Garcia was a relatively "big deal" and a sure money maker in Cotati. We "knew" this, but now I feel like I "know" it in a fuller way.

Anyway, I am sure everyone did well this night. Tickets are two bucks. The ledger shows the band’s guarantee as $500 or 80%. I am betting the place was packed to the damn rafters, because insofar as I understand it the capacity might have been 250 or so. So they might have sold $1,000 or more of tickets, depending on how crowded they let it get. So be it. Be Jerry Garcia. Grab your banjo, go out there and put one guy’s kid brothers on first, make some bread ($800 four ways, not bad!), pick some bluegrass, maybe start a band and cut a best-selling record.

Do y’thing, mang.

Welcome to your new home, Vassar Clements: OAITW at the Keystone, 7/21/73

LN jg1973-07-21.oaitw.b-live-all.sbd-PNW.113845.flac1644
 
updated 20110629-1438 EST

updated 20200723

We have here a 94 minute soundboard of Old And In The Way, identified as at the Keystone, 2119 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94704 on the evening of Saturday, July 21, 1973. The tape was in the collection of Will Boswell via Jerry Garcia’s own copy, held and apparently shared by his once and future main squeeze, Debbie. Matt Smith is doing the transfers, and I tend to shorthand these as ‘PNW’ because they emanate from the Great Pacific Northwest. This same source also supplies a rehearsal tape, said to be from earlier this same afternoon at the Lion’s Share, a club which would have been local to the Marin- --and, for a number of them, specifically, Stinson-- based freaks in the band, at 60 Red Hill Avenue in San Anselmo. As Matt pointed out in his notes, it’s neat to have a rehearsal tape and a gig tape from the same day, provides a nice “day in the life” feeling, back when Garcia could still mostly live like a human being.

It’s terrific material, and we are all incredibly fortunate to be able to listen to it. We have to remember what lucky music fans we are. Here we have rehearsal and gig tapes, nice tapes, of the great Vassar Clements. (And all the rest of these guys, natch.) We can study this stuff intensively and extensively. It’s great stuff.

Little outline for what has become a longish (for me) note.

• I. Dating: Might as well call it 7/21/73b.
• II. Aside: Was there a Boarding House show on 7/23/73? tl; dr: YES
• II. Personnel Comments
• A. John Kahn
• B. Vassar Clements
• 1. Welcome to the Bay Area as Member of OAITW, Vassar!
• 2. The Arc (or Three Bursts) of Vassar with/and OAITW
• 3. Was Vassar Clements a "Member" of OAITW?
• 4. The Improbable Junction of Vassar and the Rest of These Guys?
• 5. Clarence White and Muleskinner, RIP
• 6. Was it Mostly About Making (a) Record(s)?
• III. Setlist and Repertoire
• IV. Listening Notes

I. Dating

The gig tape under analysis comes with impeccable provenance, as described in the 1^st graf. It says 7/21/73, and that should be our operating assumption, our baseline.

Yet, some questions arise around this dating.

First, this is the same material that has historically circulated as "7/23/73 Boarding House" (e.g., shnid-4490, shnid-4491, shnid-11888). A priori, a Monday night gig at the Boarding House sounds a little unlikely. Furthermore, I have not seen any evidence for the 7/23 dating other than recordings, though it’s possible I have not looked. The McNally-Arnold JG List lists neither date. update: plenty of listings and such for the 7/23/73 Boarding House show. There are ads in support of a 7/21 listing. If this were all, I’d say it’s an overdetermined, closed case of a more credible tape label and other evidence defeating a less credible tape label. Full stop.

But that’s not all because, second, this recording raises a few questions.

(1)  why is John Kahn not present here (I don't think -- see personnel note below), when he was at the afternoon rehearsal (he does play on the 7/21/73a rehearsal)?

(2)  Why does audience member ask for "Wild Horses" toward the end of this fileset (see d2t10 note 4 below) when they had already played it as the performance is represented here (d1t09 as released; d1t10 on my retracked copy)?

(3)  The placement of certain cuts and chatter doesn't make sense. For example, they say they are on their last number before Hobo Song, but then there's a setbreak announcement after High Lonesome Sound, which is presented as the last song of the night. It's just not consistent with this being in the same order in which it was played, which opens up more general questions and joins with the questions above to raise some doubts.

(4)  Not a question and certainly not a criticism, but the nature of the recording--lots of tape discontinuities-- makes it impossible to know where things should go.

Overall, there's no smoking gun, nothing that unambiguously supports or contradicts either dating for this material. Maybe it’s a little of both. Maybe it’s other dates. Maybe it’s a hodgepodge. We just can’t know, and so I conclude that we should just keep calling it "7/21/73b", the live gig at the Keystone on the Saturday night, after the earlier rehearsal that same day, the 2nd night of weekend in Berkeley, etc.

II. Aside: was there an OAITW show at the Boarding House on Monday, July 23, 1973?

Update: TL;DR: Yes! 

mention: San Francisco Examiner, July 20, 1973, p. 33;

! mention: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook 19730722p27;

! listing: San Francisco Chronicle, July 23, 1973, p. 40;

! listing: San Francisco Chronicle, July 23, 1973, p. 41;

! listing: San Francisco Examiner, July 23, 1973, p. 23.

et la pièce de résistance: OSF has a tape of it! QED.

The only evidence known to me is a tape label which, as I have just elaborated, probably loses a provenance test to the PNW source. It is interesting that it did not figure on the McNally-Arnold JG List. More often than not, a tape with these features –not on that list, and duplicating material dated differently—will turn out to have been a mislabel. The Jerry Site's 7/23/73 entry notes contribution from Ed Perlstein, who is pretty good provenance himself. If TJS contributor Kurt Asplundh can shed any light, or anyone else for that matter, that'd be great!

This little period is clearly unique (as they all are, I know!), and might  involve otherwise-implausible gigs because of the details of Vassar’s involvement.  Let me elaborate.

Vassar joins up with OAITW on the East Coast on June 4, 1973, warms up with ‘em in the hotel room, and plays gigs in Boston (Orpheum Theatre, June 5), Passaic (Capitol Theatre, June 6^th, ?Garcia’s first John-Scher booked non-GD gig?) and the Palace Theatre in Waterbury, CT (June 7^th – not 100% sure about this listing). Then they do the Whippoorwill Festival in Warrenton, VA on June 8, 1973 –about which I plan on saying a considerable amount at some point, Garcia burns for two days with the GD and the Allmans and others at RFK in DC, and then one more gig at Temple University-Ambler in Ambler, PA on the 11^th.

After that, Garcia does a tour with the GD after apparently taking a weekend off (Friday 6/15/73 and Saturday 6/16/73 … anyone wanna bet he had his guitar handy, wherever he was?). Then he and Merl warmup on a Thursday at the Lion’s Share (July 5, 1973) before recording a series of shows for commercial release. The 7/7 show is a mystery, but the great July 8^th Record Plant session is a great way to get ready to record. Then come the July 10 and July 11 JGMS shows which gave us a whole mess of officially released material. Live at the Keystone (Fantasy F-79002, 1973), Keystone Encores Volume 1 (Fantasy FCD 7701-2, 1988), Keystone Encores Volume 2 (Fantasy MPF 4534, 1988) were on vinyl. As Scofield notes, “the tracks from the original double LP and the two 1988 releases were reconfigured and released as” the CDs Live At The Keystone Volume 1 (Fantasy FCD 7701-2, 1988) [JGMF], Live At The Keystone Volume 2 (Fantasy FCD 7702-2, 1988) [JGMF], and Keystone Encores (Fantasy FCD 7703-2, 1988) [JGMF]. As far as can be determined from existing setlists, all but three or four of the songs played at this pair of dates were released.

On July 15, 1973, guitar legend, apparent übermensch and Muleskinner compadre Clarence White is killed in a car accident. This forms a piece of the Muleskinner-OAITW jigsaw puzzle that Corry has started to unravel in his "1972-73 Muleskinner/Old And In The Way Timeline" at LLD. At the very least, there's a weird emotional register to the 7/21/73b material that might be partly accounted for by the melancholy of such a moment. Not a lot of cutting up, laughing. Vassar as the only one really yee-hawing it up. (I am not accusing him of being insensitive, BTW. Just pointing it out. We all deal with this stuff as we do. And I think Vassar knew Clarence. Hadn't Vassar been in So Cal for a bit, sort in his Earl Scruggs Revue and Will the Circle Be Unbroken period?)

A few days later, we have a show listed as OAITW, a Wednesday (7/18/73) in Cotati, which I find perfectly plausible. [edit: indeed!] This would be Vassar Clements's first Bay Area OAITW show. Gotta get warmed up together, run through some numbers? Do it midweek in Cotati. I bet it was an absolute blast ... oh to have been a fly on the wall. There are some canceled GD gigs in this window (Duke University, Friday 7/20/73, per Deadbase IX), the weekend in Berkeley, a gig at Crabshaw Corner in far-flung Sacramento –perhaps Garcia’s first GOTS gig in that Queen City (2/12/72 is spurious here)--, then down to Homers Warehouse in Palo Alto on the 24^th before Garcia leaves for Watkins Glen. My friends, that’s six out of seven nights with OAITW. (Jerry spent his “off” night from OAITW with JGMS on 7/19/73, a party gig put on by Fantasy to celebrate the release of Merl's Fire Up. Slacker.)

So my notion is that they played like hell when Vassar arrived to make him some gittin’ started money, and that this makes a 7/23/73 Boarding House gig totally plausible. Maybe it’s not on the old lists because they got a last-minute, Monday night booking? Maybe this is related to the GD's cancellation from Duke? If you owned the Boarding House, wouldn’t you do it? Hell, yeah. Gotta be better than however many dime beers you’d sell otherwise.

Wow, that got long, sorry. Anyway, bottom line: 7/23/73 Boarding House seems pretty rock solid.

Update: there is no longer any doubt. It happened, and Bear taped it.

III. Personnel

A. John Kahn (June 13, 1947 - May 30, 1996)

Is he here? For the life of me, I do not hear a bass player. I think, instead, the bottom I hear is mostly from Peter Rowan’s guitar. It’s possible that Kahn wasn’t mic’d for some reason. But it’s also possible he’s not there. As I note above, this would raise some question as to the dating, since he is present on the 7/21/73a afternoon rehearsal tape. Maybe there was an emergency or he got a flat tire, no idea. And not a big deal in the scheme of things. But the number of shows that Garcia played without either Phil Lesh, John Kahn or David Torbert on bass is strikingly small, and any deviation is probably worth noting.

B. Vassar Clements (April 25, 1928 – August 16, 2005)

1. Welcome to the Bay Area as Member of OAITW, Vassar!

As I noted in discussing the rehearsal tape, this was a pretty big night for OAITW. Insofar as anyone invested any hopes and dreams in this agglomeration, Saturday 7/21/73 in Berkeley was important. I hypothesize that it was conceived as the introduction of fiddle legend Vassar Clements as a member of OAITW to the home crowd (after the smaller "hello" in Cotati on 7/18). I admit that I am mostly basing this on the ad, with its “Special Guest Fiddler From Nashville Vassar Clements” addendum, but it also makes sense. We know that these guys, and it seems to me most notably Grisman, were pleased as punch to have Vassar on board. And why not? The man was a deserved legend.

2. The Arc (or Three Bursts) of Vassar with/and OAITW

I have already chronologized a little above, but let me summarize it in a table, with data derived from the Jerry Site (but excluding the mid- and late-summer 1973 bluegrass festivals, at which OAITW almost certainly did not play).

Old And In The Way w/ Vassar Clements. Data source: The Jerry Site.

OAITW with Vassar Clements amounts to something like twenty shows, total. And, when you look at the pattern I have set out above, you see that it was actually approximately three one-week spurts of gigging, with a single one-off in the middle. (I’ll add that I’d like to see evidence that OAITW played that 8/22/73 gig. Color me skeptical until I do.) You get a spurt in June, one in July, and one in October. The November gig was a reschedule from an earlier cancellation, and then OAITW played one more time, a special reunion to close out the Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival on Sunday, April 28, 1974. That’s it!

3. Was Vassar Clements a "Member" of OAITW in the formalistic way I understand that term (as distinct from "invited guest", as distinct from "sitting in")?

All of this, and some conversations I have been having about the meaning of such concepts as "band", "group", "membership" and others, leads me to revisit something. Here's a tighter view on the Keystone Berkeley ad from the Berkeley Barb, July 19, 1973 - August 1, 1973, p. 21:

Vassar is listed as a "Special Guest". Without taking that word as if it were consciously deployed in the same sense in which I mean it, I wonder if "guest" isn't closer to the truth of Vassar's connection than "member". I don't know. It's heretical and contradicted by the language used by everyone else, as far as I know. But these three one-week spurts ... I wonder when the plan to record live (which is represented by all of the releases featuring material from the October 1 and October 8 shows, recorded by Bear) was hatched, by whom, and if this thought wasn't hand-in-glove with bringing Vassar in? In this sense, I wonder if Vassar wasn't more than a hired gun -- an amazing one, but a hired gun nonetheless?

All we ever hear about Vassar coming in are vague platitudes of the "he was great, he was available, we jumped at the chance" variety. "[fill-in name here, Grisman or Rowan] just called him up." Those things are probably mostly true/accurate. But I certainly think there were good, clean professional and pecuniary motivations at work, too.

update: yes, from the vantage of 2020, I consider him a full-fledged member of the band.

4. The Improbable Junction of Vassar and the Rest of These Guys?

Now, to start, it's not improbable in the sense that they were all pretty hot musicians wanting to play hot music with other hot musicians. We don't need to be musicologists to understand that this drives a lot of things! And the fabric of bluegrass was woven pretty densely, so there are almost certainly a large number of small-world network linkages between these five guys. So I don't want to overstate the case.

But, yet, here's a Southerner (born in North Florida, i.e., the Deep South), 15-20 years older than these other guys, pomade-slicked-it-was-a-crewcut-once 'do, apparently coming off a drinking problem which put his career on hold for some number of years ca. late 1960s-start of 1970s, been gigging around with the cutting-edge Earl Scruggs Revue and and meeting-of-the-generations Will the Circle Be Unbroken project around that same time, who can tear the fucking fiddle to shreds and make you weep while he does it.

Here's fellow former Blue Grass Boy Pete "Panama Red" Rowan, now chasing the next line, Marin on top of LA on top of Bahston, via the Land of the Navajo. Here's the very scruffy and very far-out spacy, but exacting and smokin'-hot-pickin' David Grisman, just out of his "David Diadem" phase and on the verge of creating a pathbreaking musical style of his own. Maybe a big tall feller on the big fiddle, quiet, smart, funny, good player. Last but not least, you learn when you meet him, here's a 'lectric guitar rock star who was once a banjo star. Jerry Garcia is a hairy, hairy freak of a man, but he's a force of nature on every dimension that might matter.

I guess I think the shared interests and the shared networks and the setting and possibilities combine to make the Vassar-OAITW connection. They are in Marin County, CA, it's summertime, they've got a built-in ticket-buying audience (thank you, JERRY ... Jerry ... jerry ... GARCIA ... Garcia ... garcia !!! ... !! ... !), record company lined up ... why the hell not? Line up a bunch of gigs, get warmed up, roll some tape, and then see what happens.

5. Clarence White and Muleskinner, RIP

One other thing. Having just revisited Corry's post on the Muleskinner-OAITW connections. To recap, the members of Muleskinner were as follows:

• Peter Rowan-guitar, vocals
• Clarence White-lead guitar, vocals
• David Grisman-mandolin, vocals
• Richard Greene-violin, vocals
• Bill Keith-banjo

John Kahn also played some bass with Muleskinner, and recall that Richard Greene played fiddle with OAITW for a month or two ca. April-May 1973. So there's massive overlap between the two groups. Corry describes Clarence White's passing thusly:

July 15, 1973: Clarence White died after being hit by a drunk driver at 2am in Palmdale, CA, while White was loading equipment into his car. It would take me 10,000 words to explain how great a player Clarence was, and I'm not even a guitar player (apparently it takes even more if you can play). Suffice to say, any plans that Grisman, Rowan and others may have had for "Muleskinner" would have been put permanently in abeyance with Clarence's untimely death.

At the risk of being crass, I wonder if Clarence's passing, and, as Corry notes, the demise of any professional plans organized around Muleskinner, didn't act as an accelerant for OAITW, or for professional (i.e., money-making) aspirations surrounding it, including Vassar's "membership". I am not saying they called Vassar up on the 16th and asked him to do some gigging and cut some records over Clarence's still-warm body. Hell, they had already played with Vassar the prior month, and it seems pretty clear that they (felt they) needed a fiddle player. And Vassar is one hell of a player. But I do wonder if the short-cutting of Muleskinner engendered the jump-starting of OAITW, both with some gaggles of gigs and through cutting some studio tracks.

6. Was it Mostly About Making (a) Record(s)?

Thought experiment: perhaps it's not coincidence that OAITW ended once the recordings were in the can? After the October Boarding House gigs, did any of these guys play again with Vassar (at least in the 70s) except for the 11/4/73 makeup, the GAMB 4/26/74 sit-in by Vassar, Garcia and Vassar in together with the Greenbriar Boys on 4/28/74, and the OAITW "reunion" performance later that night? It seems like they broke up right after they recorded the live tracks for possible release.Can anyone shed any light on the reported studio recordings of OAITW? Now *those* I would love to hear.

Summary of all of this: To me, Vassar’s playing is the real highlight of this music. He provided such depth to this band of young hotshots. Too bad it didn't last, for whatever reason.

IV. Setlist/Repertoire

I am not sure how noteworthy the setlist is relative to other OAITW shows, but since I have never gone through OAITW setlists very carefully I thought I’d do it here, get a since of the distribution of musical sources and styles. Here’s a table of the credits for the songs they played on this night, from data hosted by Alex Allan.

OAITW’s repertoire presents a fascinating slice of the many American (or pseudo-so, as in "Wild Horses") musics from which the band and its members drew.

First are the traditional, old-timey and bluegrass numbers. There are lots of grey areas here, of course, lots of speciation happening between those niches. Carter Stanley and Bill Monroe credits and that sort of thing. I have no idea if the distribution of songs springing from this well is different here on July 21 than it typically would be around this time, or would have been with Richard Greene in April, or not. I have a tiny hunch that there's more Carter Stanley here than I am used to seeing, stuff shading a little more toward the old-timey and traditional vein, but I can't be sure. Either way, all of that would represent the lingua franca between the hairy freaks and Vassar. If you look through Allan and Scofield's notes on these songs, you'll see a bunch for which tape from Garcia's pre-GD days also exists. This is further confirmation, I'd say, of the lingua franca appeals of the old favorites.

Regarding the specific versions of these songs, I am just not expert enough in listening to this sort of music to give much evaluation. I would love if some bluegrass freak looking for good conversation would join our little community here (but everyone should blog, and blog more! Join us! You have nothing to lose but your time!). Anyway, I'll just mention two specific numbers very informally. Number one: this is the only OAITW version known to me of the great Monroe haunter "Cheyenne". Not sure how the Big Mon could pick up the feel of those particular high plains, but he does it brilliantly here. Great song. (I think Rowan would agree, since "Cheyenne"'s feel becomes "Land of the Navajo"'s hook.) Number two: "Orange Blossom Special" is just a brilliant piece of songwriting. Greatest. Train. Song. Ever.

Second, we find six Peter Rowan originals in the setlist. One function/aspect of the band was indeed as a Rowan "song" vehicle. If forced to choose I would mostly classify these as country-bluegrass, while some ("Lonesome L.A. Cowboy") are closer to soft country rock (early "Eagles", for example). I have to say that these songs are generally pretty awesome, though no versions from this fileset jump out as me as exceptional.

Third, this set features only one instrumental contribution each from David Grisman and the great Vassar Clements, whose "Lonesome Fiddle Blues" is a freaking masterpiece. Haunting and fantastic, right up there with the great fiddle tunes that I know (though I confess to not knowing many.) The Grisman datum is interesting because in listening to the tapes I sometimes get the sense that David is treated a little like a beta dog. "Fanny Hill" also seems not to have been a favorite of his, insofar as it wasn't released until sometime later. It feels kind of like a transitional piece for Grisman, more toward bluegrass than Dawg Music. Grisman was clearly growing very quickly at this stage, and I suspect that the misfit between his own ambitions and musical trajectory and the space allowed for him to enact them in this particular band may have been one of the frictions that led to its too-quick demise.

Fourth, there’s a smattering of other country-bluegrass stuff, on none of which I am particularly qualified to speak.

Summing up, and as Corry has discussed with me, one aspect of the relatively short tenure of OAITW may be the different pulls of, say, Peter Rowan's songs vs. traditional/bluegrass/oldtimey/etc. vs. Dawg Music. I am not making it too conflictual, but we don't know much about how OAITW ended and it's pretty straightforward to suggest that there were just too many tradeoffs to be made, too many songs (and musical styles) chasing too few gigs and album tracks. The fact that certain members had tightly constraining "other obligations" *cough* GD! *cough* certainly wouldn't have helped, but it could be that there other design flaws in the band's DNA that doomed it to be short-lived.

V. Listening Notes follow after the jump.