Ace 50

Summary

GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST – Ace 50

Episode Date: October 13, 2022
Hosts: Rich Mahan & Jesse Jarnow
Featured Voices: Bob Weir, John Perry Barlow, Donna Jean Godchaux, Don Was

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Episode Overview

The episode celebrates the 50th anniversary of Bob Weir’s debut solo album, Ace. While labeled a "solo" venture, the album features backing from nearly the entire Grateful Dead and became a reservoir of songs that would grow into live standards for the band. The hosts dig into the album's creation, Weir's developing role within the Dead, his fruitful new partnership with lyricist John Perry Barlow, and the ongoing transformation of Ace’s material—culminating in the new ACE50 live performances with special guests.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of “Ace” and the Cowboy Phase

• Cowboy Persona:
  Weir reflects on the Dead’s “cowboy phase” of the late 60s/early 70s, fueled by a collective rural fantasy among band members:

  “We were sort of listening to country music … I had a ranch out in the Casio and I was raising horses … We’re all raising horses … Billy had a ranch, Mickey had a ranch.”
  (05:37 – Bob Weir)

• Bobby Ace:
  The “Bobby Ace” moniker arose during this period and characterized Weir’s evolving on-stage personality.

2. Bob Weir’s Songwriting Evolution

• Songwriting Partnerships:
  • Weir’s early credits came on “Anthem of the Sun” (1968); his style hit stride on “American Beauty” (1970) with tracks like "Sugar Magnolia."
  • Friction with Robert Hunter led to the end of their collaboration, but pushed Weir toward Barlow as his main lyricist.
• Collaboration with John Perry Barlow:
  Their creative partnership was seeded during a trip to Mexico and solidified during time together at the Bar Cross Ranch in Wyoming.
  "It is not easy trying to write with somebody … it's a lot like being married, actually. Sometimes we just can't stand each other over ... aesthetic differences."
  (24:54 – John Perry Barlow)

3. Song Creation Stories

• “Playing in the Band” & “Greatest Story Ever Told”:
  Unconventionally developed—one driven by a 10/4 rhythm, the other starting with the sound of a water pump at Mickey Hart’s ranch:

  “He recorded a pump and told me to write a song. Well, that pump was in C. Whatever it was doing, it was in C ... I ran the pump tape and just built a sort of core structure around it.”
  (13:46 – Bob Weir)

• Lyric Quirks and Fighter’s Dynamic:
  Robert Hunter didn’t always vibe with Weir’s approach:

  “He wants something different out of a song than I do.” (18:45 – Robert Hunter)
  The infamous lyric switch from “guitar” to “quasar” in “Greatest Story Ever Told” epitomizes their creative push-and-pull.

4. Birth of a New Lyricist: Barlow Steps In

• “Mexicali Blues”:
  • Barlow’s first lyric for Weir, influenced by Mexican radio and country-western tales. Initially, Barlow pictured a brassy polka, while Weir made it a desperado narrative.
  • Modern sensitivities about the song’s imagery are acknowledged, but it remains a Dead mainstay.
• Cassidy, Black-Throated Wind, & Looks Like Rain:
  • Barlow and Weir developed these at the Bar Cross Ranch.
  • “Cassidy” bridged the births and deaths in Barlow’s life, inspired by Weir’s goddaughter and connections to Neal Cassady.

5. Studio Sessions: Wally Heider’s, February 1972

• The “Solo” Album That Wasn’t:
  • Although intended as a solo project, Ace ended up a near-complete Grateful Dead album:

    “Of course, I ended up with the Grateful Dead on the record, which I figured up front.”
    (43:12 – Bob Weir)

• Studio Innovations:
  • Jam expansion on “Playing in the Band,” new arrangements and instrumental textures (e.g., horn section, Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel on “Looks Like Rain”).

6. Song Evolution and Live Performance

• Constant Transformation:
  Dead songs from Ace continued to evolve live—some (like “Playing in the Band”) ballooning into 20+ minute jams.
• “Walk in the Sunshine” – The Odd Song Out:
  Largely ignored by the Dead and disliked by both Barlow and Weir:

  “That’s the worst song we ever wrote.” (65:24 – John Perry Barlow)

7. ACE50: Revisiting and Remixing

• Remixing Ace for 2023:
  Weir and Derek Featherstone updated the mix, modernizing it and adjusting balances for clarity.
• Celebration Shows at Radio City:
  The ACE50 performances showcased the album live, featuring the Wolf Brothers, Wolf Pack (horns & strings), and guests Tyler Childers and Brittany Spencer—reaffirming the album’s lasting influence and adaptability.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the creation process:
  “The songs were written to sort of evolve. That's kind of how we do things or how I learned to do things.”
  (80:16 – Bob Weir)

• On the recording sessions:
  “It went by in a blurry, blinding flash ... We packed them to the point where stuff was just happened blindingly fast.”
  (42:50 – Bob Weir)

• On collaborating with the Dead anyway:
  “It's kind of like the Tom Sawyer routine with the fence ... I ended up with the Grateful Dead on the record, which I figured up front.”
  (43:24 – Bob Weir)

• On the infamous “Walk in the Sunshine”:
  “It was just terrible. It was straight out of a greeting card, a sort of a hip, hip cosmic greeting card ... that's the worst song we ever wrote.”
  (61:58, 65:24 – John Perry Barlow)

• On evolving the old tunes:
  “For every song on the album, one could create a title card to shorthand what it's been up to since 1972.”
  (81:46 – Jesse Jarnow)

• On working with special guests for ACE50:
  “I thought [Tyler Childers] sang the, out of those songs, he sounded great.”
  (84:39 – Don Was)

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 00:35 | Intro & episode overview | | 04:28 | The story of Ace, its non-linear creation | | 05:37 | Weir on the “cowboy phase” and Bobby Ace persona | | 09:06 | Weir and Barlow’s Mexico trip | | 13:46 | Origins of “Greatest Story Ever Told” | | 18:45 | Robert Hunter on writing with Weir | | 20:15 | Barlow on starting to write lyrics for Weir | | 24:27 | Barlow & Weir on their working relationship | | 29:28 | Weir & Barlow write songs at Bar Cross Ranch, haunted cabin story | | 37:51 | Barlow requests “Jack Straw” demo | | 40:17 | “Cassidy” – dual birth origin | | 42:50 | Weir recalls fast-paced recording sessions | | 47:33 | "Playing in the Band": 10/4 time and evolution | | 54:11 | Studio version of “Looks Like Rain” with strings and pedal steel | | 59:13 | "Walk in the Sunshine" origin story and Barlow’s father’s death | | 63:03 | The alternate “Dwarf” lyric | | 69:02 | “Cassidy” as album closer and its long journey into Dead sets | | 75:12 | Weir discusses live reinterpretation with expanded ensemble | | 77:02 | “Black Throated Wind” – new lyrics in 1990 didn’t last | | 80:03 | Don Was on prepping for ACE50 shows | | 81:46 | Jesse Jarnow on the legacy and ongoing evolution of Ace’s songs | | 84:07 | Tyler Childers’ guest vocal at ACE50 shows | | 86:01 | Brittany Spencer joins for “Walk in the Sunshine” | | 87:00 | Reflections on Ace as a Dead album that isn’t “by” the Dead |

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Episode Takeaways

• Ace stands as a pivotal album in the Grateful Dead story—Weir’s coming-of-age moment as a songwriter, the platform for classic tunes, and a case study in musical collaboration.
• The partnership with John Perry Barlow redefined Weir’s lyricism, injecting a new poetic sensibility into the Dead canon.
• The evolution of the Ace songs continues—new mixes, new live approaches, and a celebration of the ongoing living tradition that is Grateful Dead music.
• Even the oddball tracks have gained new life (and sometimes a little good-natured derision) at half a century’s remove.

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Further Listening/Reading

• Archived interviews, liner notes, and essay links are referenced throughout the episode, particularly regarding the songs "Cassidy," "Black Throated Wind," and Barlow's "Cassidy's Tale" essay.
• The ACE50 release features both a remixed studio album and Radio City Music Hall live performances.

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For more exclusive stories and details, visit dead.net or check out past Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast episodes.

Transcript

[Rich Mahan]

Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly.

[Narrator/Host]

Foreign.

[Rich Mahan]

The Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season six of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. As always, thank you very much for tuning in. In this episode we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bobby Weir's debut solo album, Ace. It's chock full of great songs that became Grateful Dead staples. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes including the complete seasons one through five and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen where you'd like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing hitting that like button and leave us a review. Thank you very much. Have you checked out the transcripts we now have for most of our episodes? Head over to dead.netdeadcast index and click the transcript link on the episode you'd like to explore. Well, speaking of Ace, just announced is the 50th anniversary deluxe edition of Bobby Weir's first solo album and there are a few configurations you need to know about for this new collection. Bobby remixed the original album and he pairs that with a new live version by Bobby Weir and Wolf Brothers recorded earlier this year at Radio City Music hall featuring the Wolf Pack with special guests Tyler Childers and Brittany Spencer. Our own Jesse Jarno even wrote the liner notes. There will be a 2 CD version as well as a custom high roller Pearl White vinyl release available exclusively from dead.net but both with a release date of January 13, 2023. A black vinyl version of Ace will follow on February 3rd. You can pre order any and all of the Ace releases and merch [e-mail] thanks to everyone who has left their stories over at stories.dead.net we are now asking you to share your stories of serendipity miracles and the most unbelievable, craziest stories ever told. Share those stories [e-mail] and you just may hear yourself on the Dead cast well back After a multi year hiatus, the Grateful Dead returned to cinemas worldwide for the 2022 meetup at the Movies. This year features the previously unreleased concert film from April 17, 1972, captured at the Tivoli Concert hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Join us to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dead's legendary Europe 72 tour with this epic show in cinemas for two nights only on November 1st and November 5th. Tickets and more information over at meetupatthemovies.com Seven of the eight songs on Bobby Weir's solo debut Ace became Grateful Dead classics. Ace also marked the beginning of Weir's long running collaboration with lyricist John Perry Barlow and spawned such classics on this recording as Cassidy Looks Like Rain, Black Throated Wind and Mexicali Blues. Pull up a seat at the table and let's see what cards our dealer Jesse Giorno has in store for us.

[Song Lyrics]

You just keep turning while I'm playing in the band. If a man among you got no sin upon his hand Let him cast stone at me for playing in the band.

[Narrator/Host]

In the late spring of 1972, Bob Weir's solo debut, Ace made its way into record stores featuring eight songs by Weir with backing almost entirely by the Grateful Dead. Recorded over two weeks in February and finished in under a month, the story of Ace is a few years longer than that, and since this is Bob Weir we're talking about, the story isn't always linear.

[Song Lyrics]

Moses come riding high, pull the quasar. His quasar was jingling, the door was ajar, his buckle was silver, his banner was bold. I asked him.

[Narrator/Host]

Ace would both introduce Bob Weider to the world and transform his role in the Grateful Dead, neither of which happened overnight either. The oldest piece of Ace is its title, named of course for the famed leader of the San Francisco band Bobby Ace and his cards from the bottom of the deck. Please welcome to the Dead cast Bobby Ace, also known as Bobby. We.

[Bob Weir]

We went through a sort of an intense little cowboy phase early on. We were sort of listening to country music and we, a lot of us had little mini ranches that we were we were running and so I had a ranch out in the Casio and I was raising horses and it was basically a little self inflicted dust bowl. But my girlfriend at the time was was big into raising horses and by God that was what we were going to do and, and the other guys were into all. None of us were raising cattle. I'll Put it that way. We were. We're all raising horses. Billy had a ranch, Mickey had a ranch. You know, we had horses and goats and stuff like that. Peacocks. I was just starting to sing and write and all that kind of stuff. I was young, I was in my early 20s, you know, 21 maybe, and I was just starting to sing and write and stuff like that. So guys, you know, came up with a nickname for me. I was Bobby Ace. And it pretty much stuck. I don't know where it came from.

[Narrator/Host]

Bobby Ace and his Cards from the Bottom of the Deck starts turning up on occasional posters for under the Radar Dead gigs in the spring of 1969, as they began their transition into cowboy territory. Weir's friends would deploy the name when he was trying out his new Bobby Ace Persona with the New Riders of the Purple Sage, as heard in this August 1969 show on the dawn of the New Riders of the Purple Sage box set from the Owsley Stanley Foundation.

[John Perry Barlow]

Is a famous Bobby Ace in the audience? Let him get it on up here if he can.

[Song Lyrics]

First thing I remember knowing Was a lonesome whistle blowing and a young man's dream of growing up to ride on one great train in town Never knowing where I've bound no one could change.

[Narrator/Host]

My mind but mama tried Bobby Weir received his first songwriting credits on Anthem of the sun in 1968. The first was for the other one, instantly a signature jam with the Dead, though not much by way of songwriting besides its distinct 68 groove. Another was born Cross Eyed. I love Bourne Cross eyed. But it wasn't until 1970s American beauty that Weir found his voice.

[Song Lyrics]

Sugar magnolia Possums glowing that's all empty and I don't care so much Baby down by the river Knew she'd have to come up soon for dare.

[Narrator/Host]

We talked with Weir about Sugar Magnolia during the American Beauty season of the Dead cast. It was that album, along with its companion, Working Man's Dead, that kicked the door open for the band, virtually earning them carte blanche at Warner Bros. Jerry Garcia recorded his first solo album in the summer of 1971, and shortly thereafter both Bobby and Mickey Hart earned contracts of their own. The success also earned weir something else.

[Bob Weir]

70 or 71. I took my first ever vacation myself. Our manager John McIntyre in Barlow, and we hopped in McIntyre's beat up old Saab and drove down to Mexico and spent, you know, most of a month down there.

[Narrator/Host]

One of their destinations was Guadalajara, where they stayed with Curly Jim Stallero, the Haight Ashbury character who taught Weir me and My uncle a half dozen years earlier, as we discussed during our Skull and Roses season, he was a dope dealer.

[Bob Weir]

He sold pot for a living, and.

[Narrator/Host]

In Mexico, Jim and his wife had begun to grow it.

[Bob Weir]

I wonder whatever became of him.

[Narrator/Host]

Well, Bobby, you can stay tuned for our Rolling Thunder 50 episode coming soon to a Dead cast near you.

[Bob Weir]

I had to get back for gigs, but they stayed down there.

[Narrator/Host]

It was a vacation that would set the stage for Ace, as well as one of the longest creative partnerships of Weir's career. While manager John McIntyre and Bobby's boarding school friend John Perry Barlow hung out in Mexico, Weir headed north. Back home in late January or early February. 1971 was probably when Weir finished up his first two songs for Ace. Both were created for another album, though written in collaboration with Mickey Hart and Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and it was probably in this window that early versions of both were tracked for Mickey's long delayed 1972 solo debut, Rolling Thunder. Both songs would debut with the Dead at the Capitol Theatre in Portchester in February 1971. One had been gestating for quite some that was the instrumental theme known as the Main 10, performed November 8, 1969 at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Now Dick's pick 16. There are a few different stories about where it came from. One from Weir is that David Crosby came up with the Riff during a jam at Mickey's barn. It started threading into dead jams by early 1969, when Mickey turned his barn into a proper studio. It was one of the first pieces they tried. Robert Hunter recalled the process slightly differently, beginning with Mickey's 10:4 rhythm part. Here's Hunter speaking with WLIR in 1978.

[Robert Hunter]

Mickey had a rhythm for it and I wrote the words to Mickey's Rhythm and then we came in, dug it, and he asked him to put chords to it, which he did, and that's about all there was to that.

[Narrator/Host]

However it got to him, it would take Weir roughly two years to transform the riff in 104 into a popular grateful Dead song.

[Song Lyrics]

Playing in the Band.

[Narrator/Host]

Playing in the Band would first be released on Skull n Roses in 1971, and we got way into Robert Hunter's alternate lyrics and other songwriting bits on the first episode of our season about that album. It would continue to evolve before making it to Ace, and we'll check in again on it later. The other first draft that Weir would debut in February 1971, and which, after a good bit of editing, would become the first song on Ace, also grew from experiments at Mickey's ranch. That was the sound of the water pump at Mickey Hart's ranch in Nevada, the rhythm that inspired the writing of what became Greatest Story Ever Told. The following pieces are from David Ganz's miniature radio documentary the Greatest Pump Song Ever Wrote. This interview clip with Bobby is from 1981.

[Bob Weir]

That one started out with a rhythm guitar. Actually, that one started out with a pump that Mickey had. He recorded a pump and told me to write a song. Well, that pump was in C. Whatever it was doing, it was in C. Yeah, it had pitch and so I, I ran the pump. The tape. The pump. The pump tape and just built a sort of a core structure around.

[Song Lyrics]

Now and again. These things just got to be done.

[Bob Weir]

Mickey suggested that. That I pattern the song after Froggy Went a Courtin and Heated Rudd we'll.

[Narrator/Host]

Interrupt here slightly in case you're not familiar with the old folk song Froggy Winna Courtin's it can be traced back to Scotland in the mid 15th century, but we'll just start with a bit of the Pete Seeger version from American Favorite Ballads, Volume 2 from 1958. The standard text for many of Froggy went accordin and he did ride a.

[Song Lyrics]

Froggy went accordin he did ride sword.

[Narrator/Host]

And pistol by his side. You can totally sing it along with the pump tape.

[Bob Weir]

And then Hunter responded by Froggy went accordant and he did riding. Well, Moses come Running. Riding up on a quasar was about as close as Hunter could get.

[Song Lyrics]

Buckle with silver splatter.

[Narrator/Host]

That's how great a Story Ever Told sounded on the opening night of the Europe 72 tour, not long after the Ace sessions. From a Distance there are a bunch of things that playing in the Band and Greatest Story Ever Told have in common. The first is that neither was written by sitting down at an instrument and matching chords to words. Both came with their own methods of composition. Both were recorded in early versions for Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder, and both would undergo at least one major change before the Ace sessions. Another thing the two songs have in common is that their lyricist was Robert Hunter. When Hunter arrived back in the bay area in September 1967, he took up the position of the band's lyricist in residence and worked mostly with Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh. He began writing with Weir on Sugar Magnolia in 1970 and immediately began squabbling with Weir over sugar magnolia in 1970. It's often cited that the pair's songwriting partnership dissolved backstage at the capitol theatre in February 1971, still fighting over Weir's lyric Jumps like a willis in four wheel drive. While I have no doubt that Hunter didn't like that particular edit and never forgot it, I also wonder if the fight wasn't really about Greatest Story Ever Told, which was then in the active process of revision at the Capitol. If you ever thought the image of Moses riding in on a quasar that is a quasi stellar object felt out of place, Robert Hunter might agree with you.

[Robert Hunter]

I didn't put that. I wrote Moses came riding in on a guitar and we didn't want to sing that. And I exchanged quasar for it and he thought, oh, that's great. And then subsequently I thought, wait, it doesn't fit that song in any way. You know, guitar fits it. It's a wooden image. It has wood in it. Wood and metal and there's fences and stuff like that. It fits the textures that are happening. The song Quasar does not fit it. That comes from outer space.

[Narrator/Host]

We are sang it with Hunter's lyric at the debut on February 18, 1971, at the Capitol, but the next night, later released as Three from the Vault. Hunter was at the Capitol that week with the band and in the bar car. Might have been his revision too, but it lasted all of two versions on February 21, now on Workingman's Dead 50, the third and final draft was just right. This is Robert Hunter talking with David Ganz in 1977.

[Robert Hunter]

I love to write with Weir. Well, he makes me work awfully hard. He's very, very hard man to satisfy. He'll want something to sound more textural a lot. He's not looking for the telling phrase, like real apt combination of words to fire off a thought or an emotional process more. He's looking more for water color. He doesn't go for the sharp social comment song. I haven't worked with him as much as I might, considering how much I respect his work. I think he puts together a damn good song. But I have a tendency not to want to write the sort of things that he wants in his songs, although I will. He wants something different out of a song than I do.

[Narrator/Host]

Basically. Sometime that week at the Capitol in February 1971, Weir and Hunter got into a tiff over Weir's lyric rewrites. They had a bunch of other songs in the works and would continue working together very occasionally through the later 70s and 80s. But their much mythologized fight was also a decisive beginning point for what became Ace. Also backstage at the Capitol was Weir's old friend John Perry Barlow, fresh from their trip to Mexico. Hunter turned to Barlow and told him that Weir was all his. Barlow died in early 2018, and as usual, we have our friend David Ganz to thank for a pair of interviews today, both featured in David's Eyebrows Spinning Book Conversations with the Dead. These first bits come from November 1982.

[John Perry Barlow]

Bobby had just started writing songs really, and he and Hunter had worked together on a few of them, but very few. And their relationship as co conspirators was a bit flawed, as are all of them. But, you know, they didn't quite have the same rapport. So Bobby said, well, you know, you write poetry, you might try your hand at writing song lyrics. I wasn't doing anything else, so I did try my hand at. I sort of made up some things that sounded like sign lyrics.

[Bob Weir]

We spent most of a month listening to Mexican music, you know, because that's what's on the radio. And so that was kind of ringing around in our heads.

[Narrator/Host]

Barlow too, was thinking about their south of the Border adventure and what they were hearing constantly on the Mexican radio. But according to Barlow, what was ringing around in his head was a song written by Kris Kristofferson, but brought to the toppermost of the country and western popper most in 1970 by Johnny Cash.

[Song Lyrics]

And there's nothing sure to die in that's half as lonesome as the.

[Bob Weir]

Of the sleeping city sidewalk.

[Song Lyrics]

And Sunday morning coming down.

[John Perry Barlow]

The first one was Mexicali Blues and I was just stricken when I heard what kind of a setting he'd chosen for it.

[Bob Weir]

Why?

[John Perry Barlow]

Because it was a whole different thing, what I had in mind. But it turned out to be okay.

[Song Lyrics]

Laid back in an old saloon With a peso in my hand Watching flies and children on the street and I catch a glimpse of black eyed girls who giggle when I smile There's a little boy that wants to shine my.

[Narrator/Host]

Feet Expecting a polka, A very brassy polka.

[John Perry Barlow]

Right. No, I certainly.

[Narrator/Host]

You were more of a desperado feeling.

[John Perry Barlow]

Yeah, that was. That was what I hadn't done. I thought this is going to be.

[Narrator/Host]

In his memoir, Mother American Night, Barlow wrote, these days I know it would be tricky to write a song referring to a presumably physical relationship with a girl who was just 14 years old. Even though everything in the song was purely imaginary, I did it because Weir had specifically asked me to write a cowboy song, hoping that maybe something would be there. I just turned on the song Fawcett. I still like the last verse.

[Song Lyrics]

Is there anything on end? Old standalone. Hold him in her hand Just might find yourself out there on horseback in the dark, just riding and running across those desert sands.

[Narrator/Host]

If the character in the song is by no means a good person, he certainly faces the consequences. Well, some consequences. Of all the songs on Ace, Mexicali Blues not only holds the distinction of stain in the Grateful Dead repertoire continuously through 1995, but of undergoing the fewest subsequent tweaks over the years. With the exception of the album's sole song that didn't make it into the lasting songbook, every other tune on Ace would undergo additional adjustments. But the way Mexicali blues sounded in 1972 is more or less how it sounded in 2022, when Weir staged a pair of ACE50 concerts at Radio City Music hall in New York. Now the second disc of the expanded ACE50 reissue.

[Song Lyrics]

I came to keep from.

[Narrator/Host]

Pandu.

[Song Lyrics]

So instead I Got a Bottle and a girl is just 14. And in the case of the Mexicali.

[Narrator/Host]

Blue, yeah, though Mexicali Blues might be cancelable, and not just because it's a polka. We'll shout it out to Mexicali Blues, the popular chain of heady stores in the greater Portland, Maine area, who actually outranked the original song in Google. But Mexicali Blues, the song didn't just create a first set standard for Weir, it created a new partnership.

[John Perry Barlow]

And since then, he and I have been working on things more or less continuously, sometimes over the phone, sometimes at the ranch, sometimes in California, sometimes hardly at all.

[Bob Weir]

I caught my groove. It's just I finally got the drift of how things are done, kinda. I mean, you never really get the drift of how things are done, but I kind of fell into it.

[John Perry Barlow]

It is not easy trying to write with somebody, but those things have a certain advantage in spite of the amount of turmoil that goes on. It's a lot like being married, actually. Sometimes we just can't stand each other over what are fundamentally aesthetic differences. But fortunately, as with being married, we've been good friends for so long that we've got to fall back position if things get too scary.

[Narrator/Host]

Mexicali Blues debuted alongside the Dead's new piano player, Keith Gadcho, in October 1971, along with two other Weir songs, one of which would make its way to Ace. That was an early version of One More Saturday Night from Dave's Picks 3, recorded October 22, 1971 in Chicago along with Jackstraw. The other song debuted at those October shows, which we explored during our Europe 72 season. One more Saturday Night was one of the last pieces to emerge from the original Bob Weir Bob Hunter songwriting partnership. But you won't find Robert Hunter credited for it on Ace and Elsewhere. Weir has the songwriting credit alone, though Robert Hunter wrote the first draft for One More Saturday Night. It apparently had pretty different lyrics and a different title. Here's Robert Hunter speaking with Dennis McNamara on WLIR in 1978.

[Robert Hunter]

The song that we did, One More Saturday Night, was originally Us Blues. He got it into his mind to rewrite the lyrics, and then he still wanted to call it Us Blues, and I said, no way I'll write another.

[Narrator/Host]

US Blues, you know, which I did. Slip a bookmark there for another day. In the end, One More Saturday Night was Weirs and we ers alone, he told the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The song is my attempted poetic images. It's my dream world of what kids do when they're out for a good time on a Saturday night. One More Saturday Night would transform each and every room into Saturday when it was performed. Scorching hot take incoming. I said this during our Europe 72 season, but though the Dead became known for playing it on Saturday nights, I think it's cooler on other evenings.

[Song Lyrics]

Thanks Saturday Night. One More Saturday Night.

[Narrator/Host]

Thanks Saturday Night With a good handful of songs ready to go, more than would fit onto the next Dead album. What with Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, songwriting hot streak and all, it was about time for Weir to pursue a solo album of his own. This is from John Perry Barlow with David Ganz on Kay fog in 1986.

[John Perry Barlow]

It's also the first of our collaborations. We hadn't set up ideas about ourselves as collaborators. We were going at everything from a purely fresh standpoint. And it was also written in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the winter, and I was just getting used to the idea of being back in Wyoming, and Weir was just getting used to the idea of being the kind of guy that could go out and make a record all by himself. So it was it had that nice freshness of a beginning.

[Narrator/Host]

After a few years of post college misadventures, Barlow had been on the verge of relocating to the Bay Area in part to work with Weir. But his father fell ill and Barlow returned to Pinedale, Wyoming, to tend to his father and soon take over the Bar Cross Ranch where he'd grown up and where Weir had visited and worked for a summer as a teenager. In January 1972, while Jerry Garcia toured the east coast with Howard Wales, Bobby Weir decamped for the Bar Cross Ranch. He had studio time booked for the next month and needed to finish off more songs. It was the first of many songwriting sessions with Barlow as much as we could.

[Bob Weir]

I went out to the ranch in Wyoming and hung there, lived there for a while and we'd get up in the morning and feed cattle for most of the morning and then come back and write for the rest of the day.

[Narrator/Host]

They had just one problem they had to solve before they could get down to work.

[Bob Weir]

We were living in this cabin a couple, two or three miles from the main ranch house. We were living out and there was nobody, nobody within miles of us, so we couldn't, we couldn't bother anybody and. But the cabin we, we were, we were living in was haunted and so we had to deal with that. The ghost was bothering my dog because the, the goose trying to climb into a body they're trying to, that's the, that's what they, they seem to think they want. And the dog didn't want him living in, ghost coming in, inhabiting his body. So it got loud at night and messy as well.

[Narrator/Host]

Weir had brought his dog with him, a malamute named Moondog, less than a year old. And according to Barlow's memoir, around three in the morning, Moondog freaked out. Barlow wrote the dog did a couple of revolutions around the kitchen and left a dog high line of liquid shit around the full circumference of the room. Barlow and Weir went back to bed after cleaning it up, though the ghost woke up Weir again soon thereafter.

[Bob Weir]

So I called my friend Rolling Thunder and he told me, okay, well here's how you put the ghost out at night, make sure the dog's in, put the ghost out and you know, cedar chips and, and opening all the windows and stuff like that. And of course it's the middle of winter in Wyoming, about 8,000ft, so it was cold. You know, I'd put the ghost out, put the dog in and go to bed and get up in the morning and let the ghost back in. He could get in as, as long as the house wasn't smoked up with, with cedar smoke and all that kind of stuff and everything worked out.

[Narrator/Host]

Barlow's account is a little different with Weir smearing charcoal on his face from kitchen matches, waking to discover Weir looking, as Barlow delicately put it, like Al Jolson about to break into my mammy. It was one of those rare moments in my life when I was totally.

[Bob Weir]

Speechless maybe a year later. But it was in, in March and I and I was riding and we were having a rain slash snowstorm and we got hit by lightning, winter thunder we had a lightning rod that was attached to the water heater where the ghost lived. We had this agreement where he didn't make noise while I was playing, but as soon as I stopped, he'd start. He'd start rattling and make all kinds of noise with the water heater. As soon as I started playing, he shut up. And that worked pretty well for the longest time. And then one day we got hit by lightning. Lightning strikes from the ground up. And so he was there and then he wasn't. He was gone. So I think he finally escaped being a ghost and finally moved on.

[Narrator/Host]

They were able to get to work soon thereafter. Here's how Barlow remembered Weir's working habits when he was interviewed for the Grateful dead movie in 1974.

[John Perry Barlow]

There is a way in which he's.

[Narrator/Host]

Pretty inertial, but it has some good side effects.

[John Perry Barlow]

You know, he's so lazy, but once.

[Narrator/Host]

He gets going, he's too lazy to stop. And if you can get a little.

[John Perry Barlow]

Momentum set up, he can really work very well.

[Narrator/Host]

I've seen him sit down with his guitar for five hours every morning for two or three weeks straight and beat out stuff that didn't please him.

[John Perry Barlow]

Sounded pretty good to me.

[Narrator/Host]

Didn't please him, but he was willing.

[John Perry Barlow]

To go on doing it just because.

[Narrator/Host]

He started doing it. During Weir's time in Wyoming, the two finished two songs sort of, and got nearly there with two others also sort of. There's a worktape circulating among your favorite tapers, probably recorded during Weider's January 72 trip to the Bar Cross Ranch. The other voice on it is most likely John Perry Barlow. Okay, this is Black Throated Wind as.

[Bob Weir]

It stands, I'm gonna do the first verse.

[Narrator/Host]

All right.

[John Perry Barlow]

Second take. Alright. Third take. All right, Fourth take.

[Narrator/Host]

It's not so much a demo as a work tape. Weir only sings a little bit of Black Throated Wind into this particular microphone. Because it was yet unfinished, this tape was a guide for Barlow to write the other verses before Weir got to the studio. In a few weeks, it's got a few different chords. I like the loner folk vibe.

[Song Lyrics]

Staring me down the cloverleaf town Wings in the light of the interstate Cars.

[Narrator/Host]

Passing.

[Song Lyrics]

Me by the buses and semis Plunging like stones from the slingshot on my.

[John Perry Barlow]

You get the black throated Wind, which.

[Bob Weir]

Is a particular dog.

[Narrator/Host]

And that happened in the middle of the blizzard with the aid of a lot of pressure, which probably was unnecessary.

[John Perry Barlow]

But it seemed important at the time.

[Narrator/Host]

Though John Perry Barlow had never tried writing songs before. Mexicali blues in early 1971. He'd had a premonition of it a few years earlier. His memoir, co written with Robert Greenfield, takes its name from the chorus of Black Throated Wind.

[Song Lyrics]

Black Throated Wind keeps on pouring in it's words of a life where nothing is new Ah, mother America night I lost from the light well, I'm drowning.

[Narrator/Host]

In you In Mother American Night, Barlow writes. Oddly enough, I had written the chorus while riding on a bus to the airport in Kathmandu, and not anywhere near drowning in the mother American night. If anything, I was drowning in the weird Nepali night. It was the first thing that ever showed up that seemed like it might be part of a song and not a poem. It still needed a bunch more verse. Seemingly, they only finished one song, beginning to end, at the Bar Cross Ranch, which is why it's not on the tape.

[Song Lyrics]

The covers were still warm. Where you go.

[Narrator/Host]

Along with the ghost. The Finn cabin came furnished with a print by the painter Andrew Wyeth depicting a Native American with their arms open wine night at the cabin. Weir and Barlow were drinking Wild Turkey, and Weir told Barlow, you know what he's saying, don't you? What looks like rain? And with that prompt, Weir's chords became a song.

[Song Lyrics]

Brave the storm to come. Boy, it sure looks like.

[Narrator/Host]

The song's narrative didn't come from any part of either of their lives. Barlow would write. At that point, my experience with being in love was pretty much restricted to Shakespeare, opera and novels by women with three names from the southern states in which someone would swoon. I had often thought about what actually being in that sort of love would be like, and had concluded that it was a fiction humans had created to make us all feel more painfully aware of our limitations. Both Weir and Barlow would grow into the song amid the cattle and the blizzards and the ghost. That was all they were able to get done face to face on the ranch. In terms of setting words to music. Barlow had Weir record him a version of Jackstraw, debuted recently by the Dead. I'd kind of like to have you.

[John Perry Barlow]

Do Jack Straw just so I'd have something to enjoy.

[Narrator/Host]

This is for playback purposes only.

[Song Lyrics]

This here's Jack Straw, take one.

[Narrator/Host]

The one and only.

[Song Lyrics]

We can share the women we can share the wives we can share what we've got of yours. Cause we done share all of mine.

[Narrator/Host]

Mine. But mostly Barlow had Weir record the instrumental skeletons of five more songs, some of which were fairly developed. That particular bit wouldn't resurface, but this one might sound familiar. Its working title was Apparently. Madrigal.

[Bob Weir]

This one's Madrigal, Take one. Oh, wait a minute.

[Narrator/Host]

Take two.

[Bob Weir]

Take three.

[Narrator/Host]

Not an easy madrigal, apparently. Bits of the Weather Report Suite Prelude, recorded in 1973 for wake of the Flood, had been floating around since early 1969 and would have to continue to float for another year or so. One of the pieces already had a name and a pretty distinct melody. Okay, cue in.

[John Perry Barlow]

Okay, this here is Cassidy.

[Song Lyrics]

D.

[Narrator/Host]

It.

[Bob Weir]

Had been around for a while. That song was popping out right when Cassidy Law, my goddaughter, was also popping out. She was busy being born, and so was that song at the same time. And so that was in August, I think.

[Narrator/Host]

Cassidy Law was born in August 1970 at the Rucka Rucka Ranch in Nicasio, where Weir was living. Just as the Dead were about to start recording American Beauty, he'd been working at it for a while. According to Dennis McNally's long strange trip, Robert Hunter wrote a set of lyrics for the music titled Blood Red Diamonds, but it didn't stick. Sometime in 71, Barlow tried his own hand at it, but Weir rejected the first results. After Weir packed up and headed back to California, Barlow made the connection between Cassidy Law and Neal Cassidy, the hero of on the Road, merry prankster and one time roommate of Bobby's, at 7:10 Ashbury in the fall of 1967. In 1994, Barlow wrote an Illuminative essay titled Cassidy's Tale, which we've posted a link [e-mail] deadcast where he describes the sweet and peculiar relationship between Weir and Neil Cassidy, nearly 20 years his senior. On February 18, Barlow received word that his father was dying in Salt Lake City. He ran through his work at the ranch and prepared to drive through the blizzards to see him. He wrote. Somewhere in there, the words to Cassidy arrived complete and intact. I just found myself singing the song as though I'd known it for years. It was a rich meditation on Cassidy Law, busy being born, Norman Barlow, busy dying, told through the disembodied voice of Neil Cassidy, some flashing spirit of life connecting them. That same day, back in San Francisco, Weir was recording the instrumental tracks for what was already called Cassidy. Barlow would make it back to San Francisco soon.

[Song Lyrics]

Flying the sea bears scattered like lost wear.

[Narrator/Host]

On Valentine's Day 1972, Bobby Weir oversaw his first session as a bandleader, beginning two weeks in Studio C at Wally Heider's San Francisco studio, the same comfortable room where the Dead had recorded American Beauty in the summer of 1970.

[Bob Weir]

It went by in a blurry, blinding flash. I couldn't afford mini sessions, so we. We packed them to the point where stuff was just happened blindingly fast.

[Narrator/Host]

At the board were Bob Matthews and Betty Kanter, the production team behind Working Man's Dead, and he would soon help create Europe 72. Also, the Grateful Dead were with him.

[John Perry Barlow]

It ended up being their. Their studio album for that year. But that. That certainly wasn't the way it was approached in his mind. And that was what made all the difference. It became that later on, that's all.

[Narrator/Host]

Originally, Weir hadn't planned to use the Dead as his band, but he hadn't really made any plans at all. Later that summer, he told I pretty much knew in the back of my mind what would happen. I go and get the time booked and start putting the material together. Everybody gets wind of the fact that I got the time booked and I may be going into the studio. So one by one they start coming around. Leshen Garcia hey man, I hear you got some timebooked. Wally Hiders need a bass player, a guitarist, etc. Etc. It's kind of like the Tom Sawyer routine with the fence. And I say, well, I want to be careful and get just the right musicians for the record, you know. Of course, I ended up with the Grateful Dead on the record, which I figured up front. I don't have any reason to believe anybody else thought it'd be any different. And we had a great time making the record.

[Bob Weir]

Wonderful lines and all the instruments really knitted together pretty well. Everyone was listening to each other. You could hear that.

[Narrator/Host]

It certainly helped that his bandmates had already played half of the songs in concert, but the sessions began with one they hadn't.

[Song Lyrics]

Bringing Me down, I'm running aground Blind in the light of the interstate car.

[Narrator/Host]

If they'd had time to rehearse Black Throated Wind, it was only a few days, and before the song was entirely finished. Barlow had finished the lyrics in time for the vocal overdubs, but he was still in Wyoming when the sessions started. Weir would never be entirely happy with the results, and the song disappeared when the band took their road hiatus in late 1974. It would only reappear with the Dead a decade and a half later. After the basic tracks for Black Throated Wind, the band continued with some of the songs they were already familiar with, including one that had been released on a Dead album less than six months before Playing in. The band had kept a fairly static arrangement during its early performance performances, documented on Skull and Roses. But in fall 71 after that album was already out, the band dropped in an extended guitar break that quickly became more of a jam. Damn, Keith. That was from December 10, 1971, at the Fox Theater in St. Louis on the Listen to the river box set. It wasn't a very long jam, but it was pretty sweet. And when the Dead assembled at Wally Hiders in February, it did something that Grateful Dead songs don't usually do in a recording studio. It got even longer. And not only longer, but it became one of the most thrilling jams the Dead ever played in a studio, setting off all their fireworks in rapid succession.

[Bob Weir]

It's in 104 time, which nobody in that ensemble had had a chance to play with until we got there. The fact that that whole jam remained in the 10 four time signature, well, that's, I think, quite an accomplishment, you know, for a bunch of young musicians.

[Song Lyrics]

Like a wave upon the sound they break.

[Narrator/Host]

The Ace session unlocked what would become one of the Dead's biggest jams. The take on Ace was barely seven and a half minutes longer than any version the band had yet played on stage. By the end of 1972, it was regularly between 20 and 30 minutes a night for the next seven years. Especially, the song was a portal to strange places, the band dropping decisively into the Dorian mode at the start of the jam. When Brett Midland joined in 1979, the arrangement shifted slightly, with less of an emphasis on the far off places, though it still remained one of the band's most dependable springboards for the duration of their career. There are versions they still haven't finished. The one on Ace also featured the newest member of the Grateful Dead. Keith Gotcho had joined the dead in September 1971, and Ace was his first time in the studio with the band, and really his first time recording in a studio period. Donna Gotcho, on the other hand, had logged at least as many studio hours as anybody in the Dead. She'd sung with the band briefly at Winterland over New Year's, but the studio was her natural home, and Ace was when she really joined the band. We talked extensively to Donna for an episode all about her last fall. And one thing we learned was that until the A sessions, nobody had ever called her Donna Jean. It was a kind of preemptive thing of getting me involved, more specifically in singing with the Grateful Dead. That's when Bobby first coined calling me Donna Jean here. I was born in the south and lived here all my life, and I was never called Donna Jean, it was just Donna. You know, you hear the cliche of People down here, Billy Bob and Peggy sue and all of that. I was never called Donna Jean, and Bobby started calling me Donna Jean, and so it's all his fault. That was old Ace. That was Old Ace.

[Bob Weir]

In the country aesthetic, there's a sort of formality that occurs, and you hear it in the South a lot. People addressed other people with their, you know, their middle name and stuff like that. And Donna Jean was. I. I guess I. Maybe I hung that on her. I. I didn't know that.

[Narrator/Host]

To this day, Bobby is one of my best friends. I love that guy. We are. We're brothers and sisters. Donna would appear on four of the album's songs, including the opener, Greatest Story Ever Told.

[Song Lyrics]

Abraham and Isaac Sitting on a fence get right to work with your hand is dancing all the one thing we need is a left hand monkey wrench.

[Narrator/Host]

The bridge was a new addition. Since the early versions of the tune the previous spring, it had come a long way since its pump song origins. For starters, the herky jerky rhythm of the water pump from Mickey's barn had been smoothed over with a relentless gang of one groove by Bill Kreutzman and a pump of a different kind. Garcia's boot on a Wawa pedal.

[Song Lyrics]

Pigeon, coming with his eyes on the floor, said, you ain't got a hinge, you can't close the door. Moses stood up a full 6 foot and 10.

[Narrator/Host]

The song featured a subtly augmented Grateful Dead lineup with the same bassist who'd also appeared on American Beauty's opening track, Dave Torbert of the New Riders of the Purple Sage. The new arrangement would quickly become a barn burner for the Dead, powered by what some tape traders refer to as the St. Stephen Jam. Here's a gnarly version recorded at the Stanley Theatre in Jersey City on September 27, 1972. Now Dix picks 11. Ask a tapester about the Next Night. In the 80s, the song became a power jam of a different kind, even more worlds removed from Mickey's pump in Nevada. Here's one from July 1989. Truckin up to Buffalo he asked me.

[Song Lyrics]

For mercy Gave him a gun bow in again these things just got to be done Gave her eyes and sitting on a fence you'd get right to work if you had any sense, you.

[Narrator/Host]

Know the weapon when you we'll catch up with Greatest Story Ever Told again momentarily. As with the Dead's work on their previous studio album at Wally Hiders, Ace was a chance to try things out that wouldn't necessarily work in a live setting. We are called in A small horn section credited as Louie Gaska and the Space Rangers, featuring Gaska and Snooky Flowers, his bandmate in Janis Joplin's Cosmic Blues Band. At the end of the sessions, they overdubbed horn parts onto Mexicali Blues, One More Saturday Night and Black Throated Wind.

[Song Lyrics]

In the midst of a Storm I'd rather forget.

[Narrator/Host]

The studio version of Looks Like Rain featured the song's lovely early arrangement with Jerry Garcia on pedal steel.

[Song Lyrics]

You were gone, my heart was filled with dread you might not be sleeping here again.

[Narrator/Host]

They could do that part live, but it also featured Bobby Weir's first encounter with a string section, an unnamed ensemble arranged by Ed Bogus.

[Song Lyrics]

Whoa, looks like rain turning Gran it sure do look like rain Surely looks like rain.

[Bob Weir]

I remember that there was the guy who did the the string arrangement that I brought him in and he got a little too busy for me, so I had to sort of lose some of the stuff he did. And really listening back to it, I think I just had it in my head that this, this song needs strings. If I really bothered to take the time to listen to what Jerry was doing on the pedal steel, it didn't need strings because he was doing that. But I was young and brash and I wanted strings, and by God, I was going to have strings.

[Narrator/Host]

That's what it sounded like with strings. Here's what the slightly dialed down new mix sounds like.

[Song Lyrics]

Looks like rain Here comes the rain. Surely looks like rain.

[Narrator/Host]

The pedal steel would only last 10 versions with the Dead before somebody, most likely Jerry Garcia himself, decided it was a pain to lug and tune a pedal steel just to play it on one song a night. I like the Window where Phil Lesh sang the harmony part, officially the first arrangement tweak to the Just Recorded album, like this version from Dick's Picks 30. The Last Night in New York before heading off to Europe 72, which also has Pigpen on B3.

[Song Lyrics]

Make Me Hurt again and again.

[Narrator/Host]

But.

[Song Lyrics]

I'll still sing you love songs.

[Bob Weir]

Written.

[Song Lyrics]

In the letters of your name Bravestone to come oh, it surely looks like rain.

[Narrator/Host]

Even if the subsequent versions lacked all the extra strings, the song would evolve a different kind of drama by the late 80s, summoning up raging storms, a place for powerful big venue Garcia shred and for Weir to extend the ending, our buddy Mr. Completely calls out a musical development we missed on the in and out of the Garden box set episodes, which we'll place here. Specifically that between 1981 and 1982, Garcia refined and articulated the Cool countermelody that became a hallmark of the song's vocal outro. Here it is. From Madison Square Garden, September 21, 1982. The song coming into even more focus ten years after it was written.

[Song Lyrics]

It feels like rain no more rain today no go away all my life I should Rain and rain and rain and rain and here comes some more rain.

[Narrator/Host]

There were at least two songs that had never been performed, beginning to end before the YE sessions, each having the words added in the studio with Weir singing off the lyric sheet. One would become an enduring classic for the dead. Let's start with the other.

[Song Lyrics]

Look out. Cause here comes some free advice. Walk in the sunshine Watch for the bright sun Be all those things you're able to be.

[Narrator/Host]

For the next bit of storytelling about the song that we now know as Walk in the Sunshine, we're going to alternate between a tale we are told at the first of the two ACE50 shows in New York and a version told by lyricist John Perry Barlow to David Ganz on K fog in 1986.

[Bob Weir]

We're going to bring out another guest, but first I got to tell you all the story. It's not a happy story, it's not a sad story, but it is a weird story.

[John Perry Barlow]

At the time, we were under duress. We had to. We were already in the studio and Weir and I had been battling over this song and my father died the night before. That was wrote, written, and I had to write the song and get back for obvious reasons.

[Bob Weir]

When we were making the. The ACE record, it. It came down to. As always does, it came down to the last night before the last day of sessions that I had in the AT W Highest studio in San Francisco. I had one day session left. We'd been in there for a week or so, maybe two, I don't remember. But we. We had one left. One day left and we had a bunch of vocals to do and I. I still had to. To finish the lyrics on this one. This tune we call the Sea Shuffle.

[Narrator/Host]

This is the Sea Shuffle.

[Bob Weir]

And what I did, you know. But I also had to get a night's sleep. So I was working with my. My old pal John Barlo on the. On the lyrics. And I. I said, hey, John, why I'm going to go to. I got to go to bed. I got to be fresh in the morning. I got to be able to sing. No problem. I'll finish the. Me and Frankie. Frankie was my girlfriend at the time. We'll stay up and we'll finish those lyrics for you. No problem.

[Narrator/Host]

Norman Barlow, John Perry's father, died on February 24, 1972 at age 66. His son needed to return to Wyoming.

[John Perry Barlow]

Then I was feeling especially burnt out and I wrote the first thing that came into my head and it was just terrible. It was straight out of a greeting card, a sort of a hip, hip cosmic greeting card. Go placidly amid the noise. Yeah, right. Well, that's Desiderata is a lot better. Painfully obvious. It was like 14 year old, very earnest poetry, but it was all I could come up with. I was just shell shocked. So I figured that the only way that I could get Weir to do it so I could get out of the way and whatever the consequences was to write something that was really twisted and perverse that would make the sunny sentiments of Walking the Sunshine seem much more palatable. And then he'd agree to do it and I could leave. So I wrote a song called the Dwarf.

[Narrator/Host]

It began with the immortal couplet, I'm just a small man, I'm not a tall man.

[Bob Weir]

John had been reading a book called the Dwarf and he wrote a dark set of lyrics. I mean, we're talking dark based on.

[John Perry Barlow]

The Parth Lagravist novel about a very twisted little man able to manipulate everybody in power around him. It's kind of a great song now, I see. But I figured if I gave Weir this twisted song, it would work. The pity was that I didn't, that I didn't throw away Walking the Sunshine. Just give him the dwarf and let devil take the hindmost, that's what I should attend.

[Bob Weir]

And he knew damn well that there's no way that, you know, I was 20 something in my early 20s and he knew that and it was still, still sort of the flower child era. And I just wasn't going to sing those lyrics and he knew that. He just wrote them because he wanted to.

[Song Lyrics]

And.

[Bob Weir]

And then he wrote another set of lyrics and he says, we'll go for these. And, and they're, you know, sort of hippie dippy and, and. And I think I sang them one time in the. I think I sang him one time in the studio. Just straight.

[Song Lyrics]

It's just. Not to worry. Leave it to those all caught up in time. You got to deep six your wristwatch. You got to try and understand the time it seems to capture. It's just.

[Bob Weir]

And as I recall, you can. Can actually hear on the studio recording that my voice is starting to go at the. At the end of the. At the end of. At the end of the song. And that Was it that was done singing for the day and for the project.

[Song Lyrics]

Just want to find out what's right and what's wrong I ain't burning.

[Narrator/Host]

How.

[Song Lyrics]

The world keeps on tired me I'm still trying to find out what's right and what's wrong.

[John Perry Barlow]

That's the worst song we ever wrote.

[Bob Weir]

I didn't like Walk in the Sunshine and I still don't like the name or that part of the song is, you know, it's a little too hippy dippy for this boy.

[Narrator/Host]

The Dead never even played it, though. If you squint your ears at the off mic between song chatter on the March 22, 1972 show, just a few weeks later, you can actually hear Phil Lesh suggested off mic. That left one more song to tie up.

[Song Lyrics]

I've seen Mother Wolf that Slept by the sound of the screen.

[Bob Weir]

I can.

[Song Lyrics]

Tell by the mark he left, you were in his dream.

[Narrator/Host]

Around the time the album came out, Weir told Crawdaddy, Cassidy fell together fast. It was the last song we did in the studio. Earlier in the sessions, Weir recorded a basic track with just his guitar and Bill Kreutzman's drums, reminiscent of Jerry Garcia's strategy for his own debut. That night I overdubbed a couple of rhythm guitar tracks and a lead track and threw them all together to make this sort of lush, a bit out of tune, sort of angular sound I wanted, he told the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The guitars aren't quite in tune and I feel they really shouldn't be. But besides Kreuzmann, it's all Weir with no additional piano or bass. As the sessions were getting going, Barlow showed up with a sheet of lyrics. We remembered that I just looked at the words and said, beautiful. Thought it was just dynamite and just right. And they were. I just folded the paper up, put it in my pocket and didn't even attempt to make sure that the words coincided with my melody line. It helped that he had given Barlow such a tightly phrased demo for the song. Weir worked out a vocal arrangement with a newly renamed Donna Jean, and off they went. Crawdaddy writer Andy McHale observed that it was odd that One More Saturday Night usually closed dad shows, but it was Cassidy that closed Ace. Weir told him, it seems that after one more Saturday night, you're all jacked up. At least one more Saturday Night jacks me up. And if you're all filled up with energy, it seems a nice gesture to me. Not to sedate that energy, but more to put a finishing touch on it. In my opinion, Cassidy is a much more polished song, at least the vibes I'm trying to put out, the picture I'm trying to paint is a much more mellow sort of thing, which is not to say lazy, laid back, slow or down. Cause it's a very up song to me.

[Song Lyrics]

Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine tell you well now let your life be seen by its own design Nothing to tell now Let the words be those undone.

[Narrator/Host]

In some ways it was like walk in the Sunshine it didn't make it into the dead sets in 1972. In fact, it wouldn't receive its debut for another two years, the so called Wall of Sound test at the cow palace on March 23, 1974. Released as Dix Picks 24 I child.

[Song Lyrics]

Of countless trees A child boundlessly.

[Narrator/Host]

What.

[Song Lyrics]

You are, what speaks his name Though you were born to me Born to me Cassidy.

[Narrator/Host]

But it would take another three years after that until Cassidy truly found its home in the Dead repertoire, redebuting in June 1976 and remaining an anchor in Weir's songbook ever since. In 1980 the Dead would create an acoustic arrangement, releasing it on Reckoning the following year.

[Song Lyrics]

Come roll the scorched ground green Blow the horn and tap the tambourine.

[Narrator/Host]

Close.

[Song Lyrics]

The gap with the darkness in between.

[Narrator/Host]

You and me Cassidy and by the mid-80s the intimate album Closer had become a jumping point for full powered Grateful Dead thunder that sometimes made a run for more open territory, like this righteous version from view from the vault 4. Recorded July 24, 1987 in Oakland, ACE was mixed at Alembic in early March, just before the Dead departed for points east and then easterly on their Europe 72 tour. Cover art was assigned to and created by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly, operating just across San Rafael from the Dead office, extrapolating the Ace motif into a low brow psychedelic playing card fantasia. The Ace version of One More Saturday Night was pulled to be the Dead's new single for the tour, and they promoted it overseas on West German and Danish television, Luxembourgian pirate radio and elsewhere, playing it so often that they included a version from the last night of the tour on the subsequent Europe 72 album. In the studio getting it ready for release, they added new answer vocals. As we've discussed before in this podcast, album release dates in the late 60s and early 70s were slippery things, and it seems like Ace arrived in stores around the country in mid June 1972, just after the Dead returned from Europe. It received warm reviews. Robert Criscat was into it mostly side two is pretty fantastic, he wrote in his consumer guide, Especially the big ballad Looks Like Rain and Weir's own rockabilly epiphany One More Saturday Night and new pianist Keith Godshow sounds like a cross between Little Richard and Chick Corea, which would make him the best ever. He had some unkind things about Walk in the Sunshine, but apparently so does everybody and still gave the album A solid A. Here's John Perry Barlow speaking with David Ganz in 1986.

[John Perry Barlow]

He hadn't been writing songs before that. Neither had I. That record has aged very well too. I mean, I don't look back at those songs. With the exception of one of them, I don't look back at those songs with the usual degree of remorse.

[Narrator/Host]

In late June, Weider headed east on a brief promotional tour for the album. No musical performances, stopping in St. Louis, Boston, New York and perhaps elsewhere. He told Crawdaddy that the Dead would like to rehearse a brass section and maybe even a string section and do a tour like that. We've kicked the idea around, but we're nowhere near doing it yet. They'd do a run with a horn section the following fall. The strings would have to wait. Cue the brass and strings, please. Simple stress reason that was playing in the band. From the bonus disc to the new ACE50 album, with a complete performance of Ace recorded at Radio City Music hall in April 2022, Weir teamed up with the Marin Symphony Orchestra for a performance in 2011, but it wasn't until late 2020 that Weir really got brass and strings of.

[Bob Weir]

We got strings and we we got wind instruments.

[Narrator/Host]

The expanded Wolf Pack debuted on New Year's Eve 2020 at Weir's TRI Studios, a combination horn and string section creating perhaps the richest palette Weir's ever had in his command as a band leader, releasing a two volume Live From Colorado album on third band. We'll be exploring more of the Wolf Pack in our next episode at Radio City. They put their mark on the Ace songs.

[Song Lyrics]

That's Barry Sless on pedal steel, Sam.

[Narrator/Host]

One More Saturday Night wasn't even the first song to continue its own organic evolution since the completion of Ace. That was Looks Like Rain first getting a new harmony vocal in the spring and over the summer losing the pedal steel. Though it wouldn't really move into the Dead repertoire until early 73. For most artists, the notion of revisiting one of their own classic albums, Straight through, is often synonymous with recreating the details of the original album. Nothing about ACE50 has been that which shouldn't really be a surprise. Virtually none of the songs have stopped changing since 1972. We'll delve into one of the more extreme examples.

[Song Lyrics]

That shill the keys to the road, a couple of tents and some stale cigarettes.

[Narrator/Host]

That's from March 26, 1990, in Albany. On the spring 1990 box that tour, Weir debuted a pretty drastically rewritten version of Black Throated Wind.

[Bob Weir]

If I came up with some new lyrics, I can't remember what they were.

[Song Lyrics]

When being with her was as good as it gets. When I was a man with so.

[Bob Weir]

Much in hand.

[Song Lyrics]

That a bird in the bush could be singing.

[Bob Weir]

I'm gonna have to look into that. You've piqued my curiosity.

[Narrator/Host]

Alex Allen of White Gum has posted his transcriptions and we've Posted [e-mail] Deadcast Check them out on the Spring 1990 box set. In 1989, Bobby talked to our buddy Blair Jackson about what he didn't like about Black Throated Wind. Bobby told Blair, the character in that particular tale is not somebody I can get behind. It's always been a poor fit for me. There's stuff in there I just didn't want to be singing that seemed like words to fill out a melody rather than something I really cared about. And that finally got in the way. I've always felt like the words I was singing in some specific places I won't list them, were like wearing lead shoes in a track race. I couldn't carry those words through the melodic and harmonic changes that the rest of the song had suggested to me. So it needs some adjusting. A few months later, we are adjusted it.

[Song Lyrics]

Thing.

[Narrator/Host]

The new lyrics wouldn't stick. Instead, after not too long, the song went full circle back to its original words, which is how it stayed through 1995 and beyond. The new lyrics became just another part of the song's history, something else to check out on the old tapes. Or you could just check out the new tapes. By which of course, I mean ACE50.

[Song Lyrics]

Black throated wind keeps on writing with its words of a lie that could almost be true.

[Bob Weir]

All right, there we are. I'm good most of the songs. Almost all those songs we. We played pretty much all the time.

[Narrator/Host]

From the Wolf Brothers, please welcome bassist Don Was.

[Don Was]

We were on tour, so we started working them up. Most of them we do. So it wasn't that hard. We'd start throwing, you know, one Ace song in every night to make to get tight. So by the time we got to Radio City, we pretty much knew him.

[Bob Weir]

So the songs were Written to sort of evolve. That's kind of how we do things or how I learned to do things.

[Narrator/Host]

In fact, part of ACE50 has been about literally altering the details of the original album.

[Bob Weir]

I just remixed the record more more recently. Derek Featherstone and I put mostly Derek put a. A more modern sort of mix on. It brought the vocal a little bit further up and stuff like that. I'm delighted to say that for a 20, 21, maybe 22 year old kid, I could really, I. I was, I could hit a note, you know, I can hand and hang on to it.

[Song Lyrics]

You were gone. My heart was filled with dread.

[Bob Weir]

And so a lot of it came back to me in the course of remixing it. A lot of over the notes that we went and that kind of thing, it, it was well recorded. Certain guys in the ensemble tended to rush and I don't do that very often. And so that was sort of pulling at the groove because I like to sit in the groove and not Rush or not drag. Just, you know, just play a little forward, play a little back, all that kind of stuff. And some guys only go forward. There was a little of that nagging at me.

[Narrator/Host]

So in addition to remixing the album, Weir got to revisit it, adjust the tempos and tweak the grooves. Ace 50 isn't so much a progress report as it is the progress itself. For every song on the album, one could create a title card to shorthand what it's been up to since 1972. Like at the end of the Graduate, calling an album an album is an archaic leftover from the days of 78rpm shellac discs, when music fans kept their collections and albums filled with slots for different records. Grateful Dead albums and Ace especially might be considered with this very much in mind. Capable of accumulating new memories and perspectives over the years, with the original only a placeholder for the ideas as they once stood. The shows at Radio City were just as much a showcase for Weir's new band as they were a celebration of Ace.

[Don Was]

On this reissue of Ace, at least some versions will have the live show from Radio City. And one of the things that we did in the mixing was to move Bobby's guitar and Barry's guitar into the center. So it's one thing and then you really get the interplay. Then it becomes this whole other thing that they weave. It's guitar weaving is what it is. Playing something, you know, same thing as what Keith Richardson, Ronnie Wood talk about all the time, how they. You listen to Beast of Burden you don't necessarily know who's playing what, you just hear the thing, the end result. And it was the same with Jerry and Bobby, but it's going on with Barry and Bobby too and, and by putting them together, it really emphasized that it's real cool.

[Narrator/Host]

At the ACE50 shows, Weir didn't even sing its opening song.

[Song Lyrics]

Moses Come riding up on a clazar was a jar his buckle was silver his manner was bold I asked him to come up.

[Narrator/Host]

That was Nashville musician Tyler Childers, a recent friend of weir's, born nearly 20 years after Ace's release and singing into the future.

[Don Was]

I was really impressed with Tyler Childers, man. I thought he came in and he's a very interesting guy. I played with him one time at the Americana Music Awards years ago, but I, I didn't fully understand his breadth as a, as an artist. He's studying tanning leather, you know, and he, he's got a, a working farm that he, that he owns and lives on, you know, so you, he's got some, you know, he's got some interests that are not that usual among lead singers. And I thought on like when I heard the recordings back, I thought he sang the, out of those songs, he sounded great.

[Narrator/Host]

Just like the songs can become reflections of constant change through variables in their performances, they've also surely accreted a half century of memories for Dead fans through decades of live shows and live tapes. Walk in the Sunshine by comparison is a blank slate.

[Song Lyrics]

Walk in the sunshine. Watch for the bright side.

[Narrator/Host]

That was Britney Spencer joining Bobby Weider and the gang for Walk in the Sunshine at the ACE50 shows. A 50 year old song living for four more minutes, nowhere near the past. It's almost surely the only song on the set that Weir couldn't sing in his sleep. It's not a Grateful Dead song, just a piece of music from a half century old album turned to a his hers duet and airdropped into the weird year of 2022 with barely a carry on.

[Song Lyrics]

Want to find out what's right and what's wrong what's right what's wrong I ain't right Keeps on turning Trying to find out what's right and what's wrong.

[Narrator/Host]

Ace was Weir's solo debut, and though everybody involved considers it a Dead album, it also exists in a liminal space outside the band's proper discography, the result of a subtly different decision making and even legal process. Maybe because of this, it's as unselfconscious and natural as the Grateful that ever sounded in a recording studio tricked into being somebody else for a few weeks. Approached from another angle, Ace is one of the late period classics recorded during the golden age of Wally Heider's San Francisco studio by a promising 24 year old songwriter and some of the hottest talents on the local music scene. Happy to lend their friend a hand as he got out into the world. They also happen to be his bandmates. What Ace presupposes is what if they weren't.

[Rich Mahan]

Thanks very much to our special guests from this episode. Bobby Weir, Donna Jean, God show, McKay and Don was extra. Special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for contributing audio from his interview archive. Thanks very much for tuning in. Don't forget to like and subscribe and keep your tour stories coming by recording yours [e-mail] executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.