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- [00:00]
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 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. Hello friends, welcome back to the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. We have a very special episode for you this time around, focusing on the great lyricist Robert Hunter, the the man who gave the Dead songs the literary qualities that truly make them the enduring works they are. This episode lands just in time to celebrate Mr. Hunter's 80th birthday. We have some new visitors to the Dead cast this time around, including singer, songwriter Jim Lauderdale, drummer and songwriter Greg Anton, and hunter advocates Raymond Foy and Alex Allen. As always, you can get new episodes of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast right here every other week. Visit us at our website dead.netdeadcast and check out the extra materials we have for you to explore for this episode. Also@dead.net deadcast are all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons one and two, and you can link from there to any and all of the podcasting platforms available so you can listen where you like to listen. Please help this podcast subscribe. Hit that like button and if you're up to the task, leave us a review. It really helps. Thank you very much. You have probably heard that it is the 50th anniversary of the Dead's live double album from 1971, the wondrous and amazing Skull and Roses. There is an expanded anniversary edition of this album coming on June 25th. It includes more than an hour of unreleased Music from the Dead's final Fillmore west show on July 2, 1971. Several configurations are available, including a 2Lp vinyl set, a 2Cd set, and it will of course be available on your favorite streaming platform for your digital consumption. Pre orders are open now@dead.net it is also worth noting that we are not done yet with episodes about Skull and Roses. Grateful Dead songs are the wondrous journeys they are due in great part to the amazing lyrics they deliver. Robert Hunter contributed the lion's share of the words that the Dead set to music. And these songs have become part of our culture and really are one of the reasons they are timeless and continue to endure. Who better than one author to examine another? Ladies and gentlemen, Jesse Jarno.
- [03:04]
Robert Hunter
The prodigal son steals off in the night.
- [03:08]
Raymond Foy
He done it before it worked out.
- [03:11]
Robert Hunter
All right he took a wrong turn and wound up in a ditch. Well, he could have done worse, though, and ended up rich. His songs were cut open and found to be clay.
- [03:22]
Raymond Foy
The hope of the future served up on a trip.
- [03:25]
Robert Hunter
I mean, who do you think is.
- [03:33]
Jesse Jarno
That was Keys to the rain from Robert Hunter's 1974 solo debut, Tales of the Great Rum Runners, released seven years after he joined the Grateful that as lyricist and began his extraordinary partnership with Jerry Garcia. Here's how Garcia described their songwriting to Dennis McNally in the 80s, part of the great Jerry on Jerry, available in audio and print wherever you get your books.
- [03:56]
Robert Hunter
But he's so easy to work with. God, I couldn't hope to work with a guy that was more perfect. Plus, he has the ability to say what I would have wanted to say. I mean, sometimes I can read things and he can write for me from my point of view so effortlessly. I'm as transparent to him as a window pane. I'm sure he knows me so well.
- [04:19]
Jesse Jarno
His work with Jerry Garcia was the most visible and audible part of a remarkable career that included the live stage, the written word, and most especially, the magical spaces in between. Hunter's powerful and borderless combination of folk balladry, ancient and contemporary literature, plus his own expanded perspective made him a truly countercultural voice, speaking not for the psychedelic 60s, as it turned out, but for each successive generation of listeners who found their way to the Grateful Dead experience and everything adjacent. Alongside his collaborations with Garcia and his own solo performing career, Robert Hunter wrote poetry, novels, screenplays, kept a public online journal, and wrote songs with a slew of other artists. Beyond the albums and concert tapes on which they were recorded, his words continue to live and unfold anew each and every time they're sung.
- [05:10]
Robert Hunter
When there was no ear to hear, you sang to me.
- [05:28]
Jesse Jarno
Robert Hunter's words are filled with profound wisdom, layered meanings and cosmic mysteries unveiled and further iterated within economic turns of phrase. Virtually every song and project he touched could take up its own podcast episode. Today, though, we'll be providing an atlas to the creative worlds of Robert Hunter. So who is Robert Hunter? In the 1972 interview with Jerry Garcia, known as a Signpost in Newspaper, available from Da Capo and Hachette The Yale law professor Charles Reich wanted to know that too.
- [05:59]
Robert Hunter
You know that you ought to publish.
- [06:01]
Greg Anton
A picture of Hunter.
- [06:03]
Robert Hunter
Everybody won't have it. No, everybody wants to know what he looks like. And I suspected.
- [06:10]
Jesse Jarno
This is from a 1975 interview with Ben Fong Torres on Khe San.
- [06:13]
Robert Hunter
He's seen the rest of us blunder. You guys make those mistakes. Not me, man. You know, I want to be able to go into someplace and not have anybody know who I am. And I can dig it, you know, I mean, he's real paranoid about it for sure. He doesn't want it in his life.
- [06:29]
Jesse Jarno
But Garcia did admit to Charles Reich that if you wanted to know what Robert Hunter looked like, you could squint at the COVID of one of the Dead's most famous albums. There is a picture of him on.
- [06:38]
Robert Hunter
The COVID of Working Man's Dead.
- [06:40]
Jesse Jarno
It's true. Hunter's down there at the end of the line, all the way on the left, next to Garcia, a cigarette in his mouth, looking down and perhaps smiling a little.
- [06:48]
Robert Hunter
That's as much as he'd agreed to. Well, I think he's smart, but everybody is curious.
- [06:56]
Nicholas Meriwether
This is Hunter here.
- [06:58]
Greg Anton
Incredible.
- [06:59]
Robert Hunter
Me and Hunter standing side by side.
- [07:01]
Jesse Jarno
I wish I could see what photo Jerry was showing Charles Reich. But here's Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia singing side by side.
- [07:09]
Robert Hunter
If I could I surely would I stand on the rock Where Moses to Lord Pharaoh's eyes oh Mary, don't you weep oh Mary oh Mary, don't you weep, don't you moan oh Mary, don't you weep, don't you moan Girl's army got drowned oh Mary, don't you eat.
- [07:35]
Jesse Jarno
That was 19 year old Robert Hunter doing his best. Pete Seeger leading Jerry Garcia and the assembled in a Weaver style. Sing along. At Brigid Meyer's 16th birthday in May 1961. It's the oldest recording of both Garcia and Hunter. You can hear it on the really great before the Dead box set. Hunter and Garcia had met only a few months before, both part of the flowering bohemian scene around Palo Alto, California. We explored those years a good deal in our American Folkie bonus episode last summer. And though Jerry Garcia's early musical activities are comparably well documented, Robert Hunters are less so. Born In California in 1941, he had a childhood in motion, finding refuge in books while living in foster homes after his parents divorce. When his mother remarried, he took on his stepfather's last name and Robert Burns became Robert Hunter. After attending junior high and high school in Palo Alto, the family relocated to Connecticut, where he played in his first band. Here's how Hunter remembered it to WLIR's Dennis McNamara in 1978, I had a.
- [08:40]
Robert Hunter
Band in the 12th grade called the Crescents and went to Stanford High School for a year. We would play around little dances and things. I played trumpet. I had a bass clarinet and a guitar and drums. We played veterans, hospitals and weddings, bar mitzvahs, what have you.
- [09:00]
Jesse Jarno
Significantly, Hunter was a musician before he began to write lyrics. But his songwriting career did begin during his stint with the Crescents.
- [09:07]
Robert Hunter
I wrote a tune called Rock and Roll Moon, which I sent off to one of his little ads, Tin Pan Alley ads. It says, we will send us your tunes, you know, and we'll publish them for you, or something like that. And I got a thing back that said that the words were good but the music was lacking, and that they would rewrite the music for me for a fee and give me promotion and everything. And I was smart enough to know it was a scam right then.
- [09:33]
Jesse Jarno
During his year at the University of Connecticut, Hunter discovered folk music with a vengeance. In early 1961, after time in the National Guard, Hunter returned to Palo Alto. Not long after meeting Jerry Garcia and becoming quick friends, he discovered his new friend had a particular talent.
- [09:50]
Robert Hunter
I was at a party with Garcia and there was one guitar there. So, you know, me being a folk singer, I didn't know he played there. I snatched it up and began singing my folk songs as I would do at parties. And he said, give me that guitar, right? So I was gracious and I let him have it. And he never gave the damn thing back.
- [10:11]
Jesse Jarno
This is Garcia on KPPC radio in 1970.
- [10:15]
Robert Hunter
He's brilliant. Robert Hunter is really a far out guy. He's like, see, he and I used to. We used to live in a couple of wrecked cars in a vacant lot in East Palo Alto together. And we ate this crushed pineapple man that he stole from the army. I had a glove compartment full of plastic spoons in my car.
- [10:39]
Jesse Jarno
The two performed together as Bob and Jerry. It didn't become a habit, but the two even wrote a song together called black cat in 1990. Hunter remembered a few of the verses of the song for Dennis McNally, a true dead cast hero.
- [10:52]
Robert Hunter
Tell you a story about my old ass Cat the cat, whose title's uncommonly Black Fortune and good luck Cat.
- [11:01]
Jesse Jarno
The.
- [11:01]
Robert Hunter
Man who crosses black cat's path. Old man's cat went out one night in the moon and stars are shining bright across the path along his way. That was the first Hunter Garcia Song.
- [11:31]
Jesse Jarno
Robert Hunter was part of the Palo Alto folk scene and played bass and other instruments with many of Jerry Garcia's folk and bluegrass bands between 1961 and 1964. But around the scene he was mainly known for being Robert Hunter, a prolific reader and writer who could quote pages of James Joyce. He wrote at least one novel during this period and was one of the first members of their scene to experience LSD firsthand when he volunteered to be an unknowing test subject at the local VA hospital. By 1964, new vistas were opening. This is from the 1978 WLIR interview.
- [12:04]
Robert Hunter
Then Mother McCree's jug band came up and I was out of town for a while when that formed and I came back and Jerry asked me if I wanted to play jug and I gave a couple of poots into the jug and couldn't get a sound out of it and said I don't think I can. So I didn't. I dropped out of the music at that point and went into another scene and the Dead formed from that and I went up to New Mexico for.
- [12:37]
Jesse Jarno
A while, at least until Jerry Garcia summoned his old friend back to the Bay area in late 1967 to become the band's lyricist and credited offstage member of the Grateful Dead.
- [12:46]
Robert Hunter
Look for a while at the child a cat's sunflower Brown walking jingle in the midnight sun Come but don't hold it Drip with silver Come on.
- [13:07]
Nicholas Meriwether
That.
- [13:07]
Jesse Jarno
Was China Cat Sunflower from Oxamoxoa, one of the first batch of lyrics Hunter mailed to Garcia. In some tellings of the story, Hunter said they were dictated to him by a cat. But Hunter really came into his own as a lyricist over the Course of the Dead's two 1970 albums, Working Man's Dead and American Beauty. You can hear lots about Hunter's work on those two records over the first two seasons of this podcast. I'd especially draw your attention to our episodes about Black Peter and Easy Wind, and it was during this period that Hunter became a fully salaried member of the Grateful Dead. To speak with us today about Robert Hunter, we're very pleased to welcome Raymond Foy, the great Post Beat curator, writer, editor and countercultural worker. When he published the Hanuman Books poetry series out of the Chelsea hotel in the 80s and 90s, he convinced Hunter to contribute and in the process became a friend and colleague. But he'd been a fan since first hearing their records from his older siblings in the late 60s. Growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts, hometown of Jack Kerouac.
- [14:08]
Raymond Foy
I always liked the Dead. I didn't really pay attention to them as closely or seriously until Working Man's Dead came out. That was the album that really grabbed me. And the first question I had was, who is Hunter? Because every song on that album is Garcia Hunter, except for Easy Wind, which is just Hunter. And I thought, who is this guy? And how interesting for a band to have a dedicated lyricist. There aren't too many like that. After Hunter, there are a few, but before that, there aren't too many. Although, of course, lyricists are very common in the whole world of songwriting teams. You know, there's an old anecdote about Mrs. Richard Rogers and Mrs. Oscar Hammerstein at a party, and Mrs. Richard Rodgers says, when my husband wrote Some enchanted evening, and Mrs. Oscar Hammerstein interrupts her and says, no, darling, your husband wrote Da Da Da Da Da. My husband wrote Some Enchanted Evening. It shows you the power of the lyricist. And it was a great collaboration. It was a very equal collaboration. One thing that I always think about Hunter, and it's a quote by Stephane Mollmay, the French symbolist poet. He said, purpose of the poet is to purify the text of the tribe. And I always thought that applied perfectly to Hunter. Purify in the sense of distill and the text of the tribe. I mean, he has given words to all of our experiences. You know, if you think of, say, Lennon McCartney, who are extraordinary lyricists. But Hunter has something more than that. He has a cogent philosophy. It's not an academic philosophy. It's more of a natural philosophy, a kind of esoteric philosophy coming almost out of the occult. But it comes from nature. Nature is extremely powerful in his work. The seasons, the planets, day and night, these. These cycles, the great cycles of the universe. That's what he's very much in tune with. And I think he's really a great nature poet. And he always knows just how to throw in the unexpected image, the one that's arresting. You think you're going somewhere, and suddenly a word comes in that is very, very different. And it's what keeps him from being sweet and sentimental. The key to Hunter, for me, always, is he can be simple without being simplistic. And when you think about what the Grateful Dead would be without Robert Hunter, it's unimaginable. That guy saves their ass big time. And nobody realized that more than Jerry.
- [16:55]
Jesse Jarno
Here's how Garcia described it to Dennis McNally, part of the Jerry on Jerry audiobook.
- [16:59]
Robert Hunter
When Hunter and I write a song together, I can Tell Hunter where I want the vowels and consonants, you know, and what kind of vowels I want. Like that, you know. And he can write to order like that, you know, and still make it make sense and still make it be good, you know. And that is not easy.
- [17:20]
Jesse Jarno
Their songwriting partnership never grew formulaic. Sometimes they worked head to head for more than two years. They shared a house in Larkspur, where most of the songs were working. Man's Dead, American Beauty, Garcia's self titled debut, and others began to take shape. Hunter would stay up all night chain smoking and writing. Sometimes they started together on a song, sometimes they both started with concepts and met in the middle. This is how Garcia described it in December 1970 to KPPC radio.
- [17:47]
Robert Hunter
We work at any number of ways, man.
- [17:49]
Jesse Jarno
Sometimes I'll have, like a melody, you.
- [17:51]
Robert Hunter
Know, a whole complete melody, including phrasing. And I'll like, slow, sing a wordless song, and I'll put it on a tape form or something like that. And he'll listen to it and listen to it, and it'll creep in and out of his head for weeks maybe. And pretty soon he'll write several alternative possibilities of songs that it could be, and I'll go through them, and it's kind of like really a good relationship. Hunter's a great guy to work with because he goes in every direction. He's completely flexible.
- [18:16]
Raymond Foy
Jerry was also a great editor of Hunter. Hunter did require editing because he wrote a lot and he was always open to editing. So Jerry was a great editor of Hunter. He knew how to take the raw material and cut and polish it.
- [18:34]
Jesse Jarno
Here's what Garcia said to Peter Simon in 1975.
- [18:37]
Robert Hunter
I'm a better editor than I am a writer for sure. You know, I mean, my. My capacity as a person who chooses a lyric to sing is really about as much as I would want to have toward the responsibility of the content. I mean, the fact that those are the things of Hunter's output, which is really pretty enormous. Only a small part of it ever gets to be he and I songs, and those get to be. Those are usually edited quite a lot from what they originally were.
- [19:07]
Raymond Foy
The only thing he didn't like with Hunter was in the beginning, Hunter would give him the tunes as well as the words. And Jerry would always say, hunter, when you give me the words, don't give me the tune with it, because it takes me weeks to get it out of my head. So because Hunter had melodies and tunes to all of those songs, that's how he wrote them.
- [19:29]
Jesse Jarno
Very occasionally there were Songs Garcia didn't add his name to Hunter's 1974 solo debut. Tales of the Great Rum Runners is one of my favorite studio albums from the expanded Grateful Dead universe. This is side two, track two. It must have been the Roses.
- [19:52]
Robert Hunter
Annie laid her head down in the roses. She had ribbons, ribbons, ribbons in her long brown hair. I don't know. It must have been the rain Roses. All I know, I could not leave her there. I like Rum Runners, Scott. Must have been the Roses art, which remains just about the favorite thing I've written.
- [20:19]
Jesse Jarno
Tales of the Great Rum Runners was a Dead family production all the way around, recorded at Mickey Hart's barn with contributions from Hart, Garcia and many members of the Dead world. Last year, on a special bonus episode, we spoke to Mickey about different projects recorded at his Barnes studio in Nevada.
- [20:36]
Robert Hunter
We made the Hunter Records, too.
- [20:38]
Raymond Foy
I was producer of the Tales of the Great Rum Runners with the first.
- [20:43]
Robert Hunter
One, and I think the second one was Tiger Rose, if I recall. And so me and Jerry did both.
- [20:51]
Raymond Foy
Of them there at the studio with Hunter.
- [20:56]
Robert Hunter
Those were good days. They were sweet, you know. You know, Jerry and Bob working together and having fun and, you know, and doing Bob's music, you know, Hunter. Hunter had such a charming musical sensibility. I mean, he wasn't really a musician, per se. Like, he wasn't like a great player. I mean, he played really one. He played great pipes, Scottish pipes. He played really well. But he made do. And, you know, it was just a wonderful time, you know, I don't know how long it took us to make that. It seems like it was really quick. Yeah, they were great records. And I just loved the Hunter's versions of songs.
- [21:47]
Jesse Jarno
Donald Jean Godscho sang on It Must have Been the Roses, too.
- [21:50]
Robert Hunter
I don't know. Maybe it was the Roses. All I know was I could not leave her there. The whole Rose, Rose, Rose.
- [22:05]
Raymond Foy
Rose.
- [22:18]
Robert Hunter
By the Roses I had thought of as my signature tune. And old Jer decided he wanted to do it. And I was not too happy about it because I had recorded it already because I knew a lot of monsters he is that that song would no longer be identified with me once he did it. So I almost think it is a Dead tune that I do. Maybe it was the Roses. All I.
- [23:03]
Jesse Jarno
That was my Go to version from one from the vault, recorded Aug. 13, 1975, at the Great American Music hall in San Francisco. It was a lovely part of Dead Sets, but it still might be Hunter's signature. In 1976, Robert Hunter began performing live for the first time since the folk scare and continued to tour with a few hiatuses for the next few decades. In the beginning, he toured with bands including Road Hog, Keith and Donaging Gotcha's Heart of Gold Band. Hunter's own band, Comfort, as a duo with a bassist, but mostly by himself. While the songwriting team of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter slowed down in the 1980s, Hunter finally found other outlets. Alex Allen is The proprietor of WhiteGum.com, the most complete collection of Robert Hunter lyrics. Tracking his work with the Dead solo and with collaborators. This podcast would be very different without his incredible work.
- [23:55]
Nicholas Meriwether
It sort of grew gradually. I mean, I started sort of, you know, collecting the lyrics and then I started collecting more and getting very, very interested in them. I think he's absolutely brilliant lyricist. You know, I thought Hunter had an incredible way where the rhymes are really apt, but they're not the sort of. And hackney sort of. You know, everybody writes that, you know.
- [24:21]
Jesse Jarno
Something rhymes with something.
- [24:22]
Nicholas Meriwether
I mean, they're always sort of interesting twists and they seem very natural. They don't seem, you know, he don't. He never seemed to write, oh, God, you know, I've written this line. What rhymes with that? Can I write another line? It never felt like that.
- [24:35]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter's solo music in the late 1970s and 80s never lacked for ambition. Releasing the album length works, Amagamalin street in 1984 and Flight of the Maria Helena, a musical narrative in 1985, he also found himself traveling far and wide in a mythical universe of his own creation.
- [24:55]
Robert Hunter
Inspiration move me brightly Light the song with sense and color hold away despair and more than this I will not ask Laced with mysteries dark and vast.
- [25:17]
Jesse Jarno
In 1980, Hunter released an expanded and maybe completed version of the Terrapin Station suite on the album Jack O Roses.
- [25:24]
Robert Hunter
Terrapin Station, Terrapin Anyone should ask of you who made the this song say the Jack of Roses and all who played along Terrapin.
- [25:43]
Nicholas Meriwether
I thought that his full versions of it were amazing.
- [25:47]
Robert Hunter
I always thought it was rather sad.
- [25:49]
Nicholas Meriwether
That the Dead only did a couple.
- [25:51]
Raymond Foy
Of parts of it.
- [25:52]
Nicholas Meriwether
I thought, you know, the rest of it because, you know, Hunter's full thing sort of gets. Turns.
- [25:57]
Raymond Foy
It turns the full circle and brings it back.
- [25:59]
Jesse Jarno
During this period as well, Hunter also returned to the Eagle Mall, a collection of interconnected songs he wrote in the late 60s as a follow up to Live Dead. Sometime in the early 80s, he began writing a fantasy novel titled the Giant's Harp, set in the universe of Terrapin Station and connecting cryptically to the Eagle Mall. I tried to untangle It a while back. There's a link@dead.net deadcast it wasn't the only non music writing Hunter did in the 80s. If you were tuned into CBS in 1985 or 1986 and caught an episode of the rebooted Twilight Zone, not only did you hear the new theme music by most of the Dead with Merle Saunders, but there's a chance you may have caught a Twilight Zone episode penned by Robert Hunter. It's called the Devil's Alphabet. If you want to see it, you just gotta poke around or, you know, search for those terms. But it was at the turn of the 90s that Robert Hunter got serious about poetry again and began to publish for the first time since his contributions to the Dead's mailing list in the mid-70s. Nicholas Meriwether is the president of the Grateful Dead Studies Association.
- [27:16]
Nicholas Meriwether
The poems that he did, the half dozen or so, I think seven poems that he did for the Deadheads newsletter really are unusual poems. They are very different from the kind of much more classical formal poetry that he did starting in the late 1980s. These are much more. These early poems very much show his interest in debt to and influenced by the Beats and in particular Lew Welch, who he credits for part of his burgeoning and awakening sensibility as a lyricist. In the late 60s, when Hunter began.
- [27:51]
Jesse Jarno
Publishing again, he did something audacious is.
- [27:54]
Robert Hunter
Not the undeclared intent of earth in urging lovers on to make creation thrill to the rhythms of their rapture threshold. What do lovers care if splinter by ancient splinter, they shred the lintels of their own front doors as well they as the many before and the multitude to come.
- [28:17]
Jesse Jarno
That was Robert Hunter at Fez in New York in November 1993, reading from his translations of Rainier Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies. It was an audacious translation because Hunter didn't speak a word of German, working by comparing other translations with his own ear and instincts.
- [28:34]
Nicholas Meriwether
His translation of Rilke is just amazing. The German with a strict sort of sense of where the rhymes come. He's translated it and got the rhymes in the same places and in perfectly natural sounding English.
- [28:50]
Raymond Foy
I don't speak German, so I can't.
- [28:53]
Nicholas Meriwether
Really appreciate the German, but I can appreciate how the structure relates and obviously tour de force.
- [29:02]
Jesse Jarno
And after that he wrote his own homeric epic, a 42,000 word poem called a Strange Music.
- [29:08]
Nicholas Meriwether
It falls at a time in Hunter's life when he in his career, when he is very actively stretching himself as a poet and he's thinking in the largest terms and on the grandest scale. And he makes it clear that his Gulf War poem, long Poem is this follows hard on the heels of his work translating Rilke, which he undertook as a part of his self education as a poet. This is his Iliad. But the really cool thing about that is it's got this wonderful postmodern or modern twist, which is it's very much a metacritique of the media portrayal of the war. And he still does that Homeric thing of the point is to imagine what this looks like to your opponent, what this looks like to both sides. And Hunter does a magnificent job of managing to go beneath the media depiction, which is all about justifying the Allies and all about justifying the US to see what this felt like, especially to, you know, an unwilling and, you know, deluded Iraqi conscript. Hunter does such a good job of criticizing the portrayal of the war and in particular the kind of, you know, video game like Polish that he was seeing and seeing right through.
- [30:58]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter circulated drafts of the poem among his friends and eventually published the whole piece on his website, and it now lives in the index@HunterArchive.com, part of a ranging and subtly interconnected body of work.
- [31:10]
Nicholas Meriwether
It's like any other sort of visual or creative artist. It's the same artist. The challenge for us as readers, as critics is to see that unity and to figure it out, because I do see more connection. If we phrase it that way, then it becomes a lot easier to see, well, the way that he deliberately sets out to translate Rilke, the way that he deliberately sets out to write his own Iliad. Isn't that very much the same mentality of somebody who sits down and says to Jerry, yeah, why can't we write our own version of Duprees? Why can't we write our own version of these songs that have had multiple authors in the past? That's the definition of a folk ballad. Why can't we deliberately, self consciously participate in that tradition? What's the difference from a literary standpoint? You know, this is challenging yourself to work in a particular idiom.
- [32:14]
Jesse Jarno
According to Hunter, the work that preceded his Rilke translation was his attempt to write a string quartet, which evolved into the song Seraphina Magdalena never recorded in a studio. This version from June 20, 2004 at Red Rocks was posted on Hunter's website.
- [32:32]
Robert Hunter
Seraphina Magdalena Lena throw the potter's clip on the wheel Sit back, light up a cigarette Gaze through the kitchen window down the lane and far Away sun that falls over garden walls sun that rings in the long.
- [33:00]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter began publishing his poetry, putting out three collections in the 90s. Night Cadre in 1991, Sentinel in 1993, and Glass Lunch in 1997. In 1993 as well, Rykodisk put out a CD titled Sentinel, containing readings from the first two books. This is from Rainwater Sea. Excellent for late night.
- [33:20]
Robert Hunter
Mixes humanity without allegory. Man, his own metaphor, A quality transparent as heaven at apogee Revolving in silence over a broadleaf tree where rainwater rivers run side alongside down to a rainwater sea.
- [33:43]
Jesse Jarno
In the early 1990s, Raymond Foy became friends with Hunter. Like Jerry Garcia, he discovered that Hunter worked well with specific assignments.
- [33:51]
Raymond Foy
I had this small press with Francesco Clemente called Hahnemann Books. And it published a number of different kinds of literature. There were beat writers. We published Ginsburg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Hunky. There were young writers on the Lower east side like Cookie Mueller, Eileen Miles, David Trinidad, Amy Gerstler. There were writings by artists, De Kooning, Max Beckman. And then there were these kind of outliers. And I very much wanted a book by Robert Hunter. I wanted a book by Patti Smith, and I wanted the book by Robert Hunter. And I got in touch with Hunter. I sent him a couple of books that I had edited for Black Sparrow Press of John Wieners. He was a big John Wieners fan. And he invited me to visit him at his house out in Mill Valley. So I went to see him, drove up the hill, went into the house, actually went into his writing studio. And when I walked in the door, there was a floor to ceiling bookcase that extended the entire wall. And it started with a, with A.R. ammons and Arto. And it went to Z with Louis Zukovsky. And it was a kind of exact replica of my bookshelf. There was John Wieners, there was Bob Kaufman, Diane De Prima, Robert Creeley, Ginsburg. And I realized this guy was a great lover of poetry. So we had that connection right off. I always made a point of not getting into the Grateful Dead with him. The basis of our relationship was literary, was poetry. And I asked him if he would contribute a manuscript to the series. And he said yes. And he sent me a manuscript. And I didn't like it because it was about the Iraq War, the first Iraq war, which had just broken out. And I didn't want to publish something that was timely and political. It was just a preference I had. And I told him that. And he sent me another manuscript. And the next manuscript, just didn't fit the format. I felt it was a little bit overwritten. And it was a particular format in that it was a miniature format. It was about two inches by three and a half inches. It's a small book. And I said to him, this really isn't for me either, Hunter. Now, later on, I realized rejecting two manuscripts from an author. A lot of authors I know wouldn't accept that. Wouldn't go along. They just say, screw you. I'm out of here. Didn't bother Hunter in the least. He was absolutely fine. He said, well, what do you want? And I said, well, set your typewriter carriage at 31 characters to the line. And give me 11 lines to a page. And write in that format. And he said, great. He said, I'm like a carpenter. If you tell me you want the table to be 40 inches high, you get it. 40 inches high. If it's too long and you want six inches cut off, I cut six inches off. He was a real craftsman. So he handed in a manuscript called Idiot's Delight, which was absolutely thrilling.
- [37:03]
Robert Hunter
All roads lead to the tabletop. The long board of locking leaves. Altar of appetite. Vital as it may sometimes seem to distinguish crepe from flapjacks. Remember, a menu is not a map. Feed rather upon glass fruit, upon the shine, the shadow or tint of the glittering pear. Gloss of the mineral grape flesh, tone of amethyst apple with pits of pearl.
- [37:30]
Jesse Jarno
That's from the 1993 reading Raymond, organized at Fez in New York, broadcast on WFMU, the station where I've hosted a show for the past decade and change. Thanks to Music Faucet host Nick Hill, engineer Irene Trudell, and bored opping back in East Orange, my buddy and late station dead freak Frank o'.
- [37:46]
Robert Hunter
Toole. If it is our lot to be ill, let us be ill with appetite. Ill to the blue heart of God. From the gash between ourselves and eternity. A place with numerous humorous roses. Is not the place to speak of roses. Here alone, in barren soil of sand and thorn. Do they ghost into flawlessness without distraction of perfume?
- [38:09]
Jesse Jarno
Nick Merriweather is a fan.
- [38:11]
Nicholas Meriwether
The Hanuman is just a delightful one shot, but it's kind of. It's radically different. That one, I think that's the wonderful exception to what I said in the first part of our conversation. Which is. That one, I do think owes much more to a beat sensibility. It's beat, but it's also imagist. I mean, there's as much Charles Olson, I think, in there as there is Kerouac or anything else.
- [38:40]
Raymond Foy
It's actually one of my favorite books. Out of all the 50 books in the Hahnemann series, it's definitely one of my handful of my favorite books. And along with Patti Smith's Wool Gathering, I think it's the only one that was specifically written for the format for the series. Idiot's Delight is about gluttony, desire. It's about that Blakeian proverb, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough. It's about consumption, taking habitual greed, taking more than your share. But it does arrive in a place of real wisdom and the imagery behind it. The origin of the imagery comes out of the painter Bruegel, Peter Brueghel the Elder. If you look at Bruegel's paintings, many art historians have pointed out that what he's illustrating are proverbs, adages, folktales. They are literal visual illustrations of folk proverbs. I've always thought that one of the great strengths of Hunters is mastery of the folk tradition.
- [39:51]
Robert Hunter
Care little who walks them. What of it all seasons are spring and some climb. Not all water is blue, but song bursts free of polarity, and the one can indeed become the many. An eagle circles the ceiling of this small room, and her wings whisper as she brushes the four corners in a single sweep. My cousin cup is unclouded, I drink when it appeared.
- [40:21]
Raymond Foy
We did a lot of poetry readings, and I introduced him to Allen Ginsberg, who took a lot of great photographs of Hunter in Allen's loft. I introduced him to Robert Creely. Creely is one of the few poets who knew Hunter's work and admired it in advance. Ginsburg did as well. But Creeley was his real fan and vice versa. And I remember the first time they met. I took Hunter to a Robert Creeley poetry reading at Peter Bloom Gallery in New York. And Hunter, who was a very modest individual, very shy, very understated. I mean, he really grew on you over time, but not right off, very reserved. And I could tell he was a little bit concerned that Creeley wasn't going to know who he was or maybe acknowledge him or say hello. He just wanted to hang in the background. And I said, no, come on. And we went up and I said to Creely, this is Robert Hunter. And there was a pause and Creely looked at him, and suddenly he threw his arms around him and he gave him this enormous hug, and Hunter pretty much melted. It meant so much to him, what Creely appreciated was balladry. And that is what Hunter is a master of, is balladry. And when Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize, a lot of critics said that he didn't deserve it. And all they did was show their ignorance of the history of poetry, the 5000 year history of poetry, which begins as balladry, sung, chanted to an audience. And that's the tradition that Hunter has mastered. And his language is exquisite. I mean, it includes the King James Bible, it includes Shakespeare, it includes the child ballads and the Harry Smith Anthology, as well as Yeats and Ginsburg. And he's got a remarkable toolkit to work with and the fact that he employs it all in such an unencumbered way.
- [42:30]
Jesse Jarno
At the same time that Hunter was delving ever deeper into the poetry world, he also began doing something he hadn't done much of since the early 70s, and began to collaborate with songwriters besides Jerry Garcia. In the early 80s, Hunter had played with the Dinosaurs, a group of scene veterans including Quicksilver, Messenger Services, John Cipollina and others. Around then, Cipollina was also starting to play with a new Bay Area band formed by drummer Greg Anton and guitarist Steve Kimmock called Zero. Anton had been in Keith and Donna Jean Gotcha's Heart of Gold band in 1980 and even played drums behind Hunter when they toured together. But when Zero got going and began to build their following in the Bay Area, they played almost exclusively instrumental music, at least until Greg Anton ran into Robert Hunter around the turn of the 90s.
- [43:17]
Greg Anton
I was at a party, a small party of maybe 10 or 15 people at a woman's house, and we were both there and we just ended up hanging out and talking and. And he said to me, you know, that band Zero's, you know, a really cool band, and you can go on being a favorite of all the Bay Area musicians, or you can get some songs and maybe, you know, break out further. And so I said, you got any? And he says, yeah, do you? And we had just recorded a instrumental Zero record, and I gave it to. I had one with me. I had just gotten it days before that, and I gave it to him. I said, see if anything strikes your fancy. And he wrote lyrics to one of our instrumental songs. That first song, I suggest I said, check out this one song that I think would be good for singing if we had some lyrics.
- [44:25]
Jesse Jarno
Memories differ, but Zero tapes seem to indicate that their first collaboration was the song Home on the Range. But their body of work grew quickly from there, and Xero even recruited a new vocalist, Judge Murphy.
- [44:37]
Robert Hunter
Too long in this condition and sense enough to know the sooner I get outta here, the smoother things will go. Don't know what holds me me I sure ain't like a nerve Gotta get back on the range to say what I deserve I wanna home on the ranch where the.
- [45:05]
Greg Anton
It kind of clicked with the two of us. And then I started writing songs with them. I would almost always give him the music, and he would give me the lyrics. And then we would get together. I would either give him a recording, or I would go to his house and play piano in his living room. And he would sit with a guitar or a pencil, one or the other, and he'd maybe play guitar and sing or maybe write down some words and try singing them to me playing. And that's how he did most of it. Once in a while, a few songs, he would say, hey, I got an idea. And he'd give me the words. And that was more difficult for me to write music to words rather than just write music. I'm a pretty basic piano player. So that's how the process got going. He mentioned that he liked going down to the inception of the thing, that the Grateful Dead were already well established and doing their thing, and it was fun to write with something new. He really liked the band. He trusted me with his lyrics. And so I could pick and choose and move things around and maybe take lines from one verse and combine it with lines from another verse or something. He would allow me to do that, but he would not want any additional words because he was very particular about his words.
- [46:42]
Jesse Jarno
Having a new songwriting partner also gave Robert Hunter some new freedoms, which he employed on occasion.
- [46:47]
Greg Anton
He intentionally, I think, with the Grateful Dead remained apolitical. And from the stuff that I've read about Garcia and talked to him about a little bit, they felt that the current political scene in America, whatever it was, at any given time, was transitory, where their music was more enduring. And so they didn't want to get hung up on today's politics, whichever day's politics.
- [47:21]
Jesse Jarno
Greg was the recipient of a few sets of lyrics that fell outside this usual rule. Last year, Greg released one of them called American Spring.
- [47:28]
Greg Anton
I'm a very slow songwriter, so I would work months on chord changes of melody to try to develop something. Anyways, I worked real hard on this one thing. It's got a lot of changes in it, chord changes. And I brought it over to him. I don't know if I recorded or played it for him, one or the other. And he said, damn, he says, I wrote this song Already, and now you wrote the music for it. I got, you know. And then he said to me, and he was a very modest guy about his own work, and he said, this is one of the best songs I ever wrote. And he said, I started it with Garcia, and then Garcia died, and now you wrote music to it. So here you go, and it's a really powerful song.
- [48:26]
Robert Hunter
American Spring of the. I sing of all the hopeless hopes you bring Stars and bones twined in your head Electric music in your stand.
- [48:43]
Jesse Jarno
Later this year, Zero will issue some live tapes recorded at the Great American Music hall in San Francisco in 1992, when Hunter introduced the band. Keep your ears out. Here's a little taste. Thank you, Greg.
- [48:55]
Robert Hunter
Long ago, in a galaxy far away, a civilization sent out a radio signal hoping to detect signs of intelligent life in the universe. We have received that signal and are ready to respond through the only coherent language civilization has developed specifically for transportation, transmission across the vastness of interstellar space. Rock and roll. Ladies and gentlemen, adjust your headsets and clear the channels for the first contact between intergalactic cultures. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
- [49:42]
Jesse Jarno
Over the decades, Robert Hunter earned a reputation for being extraordinarily private. And it's not untrue, as Raymond Foy remembers.
- [49:50]
Raymond Foy
Yes, yes. Well, he was very old fashioned, and he believed in that almost extinct quality right now, which is privacy. He was a very private person, and he valued his privacy because that's the place where he did his work.
- [50:08]
Jesse Jarno
But at a time when the Grateful Dead were the biggest touring band in the United States, Hunter became more accessible and visible than ever. In the 1990s, there were a lot.
- [50:15]
Raymond Foy
Of poetry readings that he would give where you could tell that somebody had hitchhiked across the country with a small backpack and a deck of tarot cards and, you know, their illustrated journal, and they just had to speak to him. And he was always so kind and gentle and made time for people.
- [50:34]
Jesse Jarno
In 1996, the year after Jerry Garcia died and the Grateful Dead officially dissolved, Robert Hunter launched his own webpage through the Dead's official site and for a time even served as webmaster for the entirety of DeadNet, moderating the DeadNet Central Board for years on and off. Between 1996 and early 2008, he posted regular journal entries. He posted the entirety of manuscripts, including his Terrapin Station related novel, the Giant Sarpent, as well as his epic poem, A Strange Music, plus vignettes, correspondences, small screenplays, and regular editions of his open mailbag, often publishing his email address directly. It was a different era of online communications, for sure, but you could just Like Email Robert Hunter and Robert Hunter was a fan of email. In fact, he wrote a book of surreal and sometimes interconnected short stories titled Red Sky Fishing that he published exclusively by email to a group of friends. He included a cover letter. It read, you may distribute the stories by email to those among your circle you think will enjoy them, and they may do the same. Such activity constitutes a new idea of publication. It's an experiment in the dark, because there'll be no way to tell how well it succeeds or fails. Kindly include the following info in your cover letter if you distribute any or all of these stories by email. The collection of short stories called Red sky fishing is copyright 2007 by Robert Hunter Limited. Publication by Email is encouraged, but the author requests that none of the stories be published on the Internet. Nicholas Meriwether read it.
- [52:05]
Nicholas Meriwether
Bibliographers have this attitude. If something was actually set in type or reproduced and then made available for sale, even if it's only a half dozen or a dozen copies, that technically counts as publication, that is to make public. So I think Hunter has got a similarly sophisticated an elastic sense of, well, why can't I publish something via email? As long as you actually credit and he goes one step further and says, I don't mind if you reproduce this. I don't mind if you continue to promulgate this, as long as you respect my copyright and don't edit my stuff. And that definitely says that he is viewing this as a publication. Red Sky Fishing. It is not a traditional novel, perhaps in the way that we think of a unified, single, tightly written narrative where the individual chapters can't be excerpted and stand on their own. It's sort of like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, or there are lots of examples in American literature where you can find collections of stories that work on a deeper level than as just separate stories.
- [53:28]
Jesse Jarno
In the 90s and early 2000s, Hunter's circle of collaborators and conspirators seemed to be radiating further and further. Along with Zero, he contributed lyrics to projects by all of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, which can be heard on recordings of the other ones, Phil Lesh and Friends, Mickey Hart's Ramu, Missing Man Formation, the Trichromes, and furthermore, the list also includes Jesse McReynolds, David Ganz, Los Lobos, his old friend David Nelson, and Elvis Costello, a song called Tomorrow Blues, still unrecorded apparently, but played live.
- [53:59]
Nicholas Meriwether
One of the things about Hunter is just the huge range of lyrics he.
- [54:04]
Robert Hunter
Wrote for other bands.
- [54:05]
Nicholas Meriwether
I mean, there's some great ones he did for songs he did for himself, as we were saying, but there are also some, you know, fantastic songs he did for, you know, I mean, umpteen other bands, which, you know, I think some of those are really great. I love some of the Zero songs.
- [54:22]
Jesse Jarno
For example, we'll have more with Alex in another deadcast soon@dead.net deadcast we've posted links to his site where I feel like I discover something new almost every single day. For example, when I was researching this episode, I Learned that in 2011 Robert Hunter even contributed lyrics to U2, getting a co writing credit with Bono and the Edge. That's what I Said. Released originally through U2.com and later on their collaborative Duels compilation. It's a tribute to Ronnie Drew, the late singer of the Irish band the Dubliners, who made their name during the peak of the folk revival. Hunter was apparently a fan. Not sure who wrote what, but this sounds kind of Hunter esque to me.
- [55:01]
Robert Hunter
A knife for a knife for a hand for a hand Trust in the music and strike up the bands the more that we sing the less that we fight Time and again this has proved to be right Build you a statue on St Stephen's Green no fair A monument heir to be seen A statue of Ronnie Drew holding the hand of a girl with her hair in.
- [55:30]
Jesse Jarno
A black but it was in the late 90s that Hunter began a major new collaboration with Nashville songwriter Jim Lauderdale, which would prove to be one of his most fruitful.
- [55:40]
Nicholas Meriwether
I guess I've recorded 88 of our compositions, probably written about 100. And how it started out was I was. And I guess this is for musicians who ask other people, you know, kind of go out of their realm and just try to figure, grab your dream. And so it started with I had met Ralph Stanley, which is already dream.
- [56:11]
Jesse Jarno
Enough for most people. But Jim Lauderdale wound up working on a collaborative album with the pioneer bluegrass banjo player and vocalist, and was able to get in touch with old guard bluegrass fan Robert Hunter through a mutual acquaintance.
- [56:23]
Nicholas Meriwether
Robert and I connected over the phone and so Robert faxed me a lyric and I put a melody to it and I overnighted him back a cassette and he liked it and then recommended another lyric that was off of the book Box of Rain. And he said that a melody hadn't been put to it before and he it just kind of came to him that that might be good for something with Ralph. So I put a melody on. I will wait for you Blood red.
- [57:00]
Robert Hunter
Birds sing in the sky sun is spinning My, oh my Stuck up on this bearing Hell pray for rain it never will I will tell you once again case you didn't hear before you won't find a better ride no one else will love you more I will wait for you in the morning I will wait for you in the dawn I will wait for you, my darling I will wait for you till I'm.
- [57:27]
Jesse Jarno
Gone With Jim Lauderdale, Robert Hunter found a new way to write, to order, one that yielded perhaps the most new material since his early days working with Garcia.
- [57:36]
Nicholas Meriwether
He came to Nashville and kind of did this pilgrimage for a few months and I got him a place to stay at this place called the Spence Manor, which is down on 16th Street. It's this kind of apartment. It used to be a hotel, but it's this office apartment building. It's got a guitar shaped swimming pool. It's kind of towards the end of 16th Street. So anyway, Robert came to town and I'd go. I was on the road a fair amount, but I would go when I was in town and we'd chat for a little while and then I'd say, I've got a melody. And then I put it down on a cassette and leave him the cassette. When I come back, he'd have a lyric. Sometimes I'd go over and he'd go, here's a lyric. And I take that back with me. We had a real fast writing process and this. And so what happened was then he. He left after a few months and I ended up making this record of 13 of. I guess we wrote about 33 songs during this visit. And it was mostly an acoustic record. And then I overdubbed. There were some people he, Robert, when he was in town, went out and saw people. He was big Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, big, big fan of theirs. And so they're on the. The title track called Headed for the Hills.
- [59:26]
Robert Hunter
Headed for the hill Headed I can hear him calling Hit it from the hill.
- [59:55]
Nicholas Meriwether
Daryl Scott is playing guitar and a bunch of stuff. Tim o', Brien, Emmylou Harris is singing harmonies on the first song. Buddy Miller, I love you and I.
- [60:08]
Robert Hunter
Always will Although we forever more part Sierra Nevada remembers us still holds our love deep in her heart.
- [60:23]
Jesse Jarno
That was hot hi Timberline From Jim Lauderdale's 2004 album Headed for the Hills, the first of a half dozen albums with lyrics entirely by Robert Hunter, representing a massive late career output. In 2008 and 2009, Hunter found another unlikely new songwriting partnership. It was less prolific than his work with Jim Lauderdale, but it was also far heavier. I still can't believe this happened.
- [60:50]
Robert Hunter
Down below Loads of broken cars don't know what I'd do without her without this love that we call her and here lies nothing Nothing but the moon in.
- [61:08]
Jesse Jarno
The star that was beyond Here lies nothing the opening track From Bob Dylan's 2009 album Together Through Life. According to Raymond Foy, it would grow into one of the most fully collaborative lyric endeavors for either Bob.
- [61:20]
Raymond Foy
Aside from Jacques Levy. I think Hunter is the only lyricist who Dylan ever collaborated with. And I remember when Dylan and the Dead were getting together to do that tour and Dylan came to Front street to do the rehearsals. Hunter very much wanted to be there. And Dylan asked for. Hunter, wanted to see him. But the day they had set aside to meet, Hunter had a. Some kind of driving infraction and he had to appear in court. And if he didn't appear in court, he would have lost his license. And he. It was something he simply had to do. So he missed seeing Bob. So instead he gave somebody a notebook with a bunch of lyrics in it to give to Bob. And Bob took the notebook and he chose Silvio and Ugliest Girl in the World out of that and wrote the music to it.
- [62:07]
Jesse Jarno
Here's Silvio from 1988's down in the Groove with Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Brent Midland on background vocals. I love Silvio. It became one of Bob Dylan's most played songs during the late 90s legs of the Neverending Tour. And like with the Dead, it really transformed when played live. And I prefer these versions. Here's a little bit from the 1999 take in Tampa released by BobDylan.com Starting in 1990, Dylan performed a number of Hunter Garcia songs during the Neverending Tour, including Friend of the Devil, Black, Muddy River, Alabama Getaway, and West LA Fadeaway. His friendship with Robert Hunter seemingly deepened.
- [63:31]
Raymond Foy
But it's Together Through Life, the Dylan album, that's the true collaboration that was written with constant back and forth between Dylan and Hunter not sitting next to each other. Mostly it was done by faxing back and forth, and you would be hard pressed to know who wrote what. It's a true collaboration. So if you really want to see the Hunter Dillon collaboration, you go to the album together through live.
- [63:56]
Robert Hunter
I'm gonna back up your beat. I blew it in your face this time tomorrow I'll be rolling in your place I wouldn't change a thing even if I could. You know what they say? They say it's all good. It's All Good.
- [64:18]
Jesse Jarno
Oh yeah, that was it's all good, from 2009's Together Through Life. It carried over at least to the first song of 2012's Tempest, Duquesne Whistle.
- [64:29]
Robert Hunter
Can't you hear that Duquesne whistle blowing? Blowing like the sky's gonna blow apart? You're the only thing alive that keeps me going you lack a time bomb in my heart I can hear a sweet voice suddenly calling Must be the mother of our Lord.
- [64:58]
Jesse Jarno
And perhaps it carried even further than that. Hopefully the new Bob Dylan center in Tulsa scans all those faxes before they fade. I know a few eyeballs that'd like to check them out. While Robert Hunter really leaned into new collaborations during his last working decades, to my ears, some of his most beautiful songs are totally solo compositions he debuted during his last decades of touring, but never recorded in a studio. Hunter was a fan of taping and posted links to free soundboard downloads of his performances. This is into the Blue, recorded in 2004 at Red Rock's opening for the Dead.
- [65:32]
Robert Hunter
Buttermilk Sky, Cold Train and Coffee Night Train and Joffee Sleep and Die, Gravity's Rainbow, Sketches of Spain Bright rapping like bandits and feeling no pain do you remember? I know that you do the way it's at you Like a bolt from.
- [65:57]
Jesse Jarno
The blue they're worth seeking out from a tape trader near you. In 2013, the Americana music Honors and Awards presented Hunter with a lifetime achievement for songwriting at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, with an introduction by Jim Lauderdale.
- [66:11]
Robert Hunter
There's a man whose roots run so.
- [66:16]
Nicholas Meriwether
Deep that it's almost unfathomable but there's.
- [66:21]
Robert Hunter
A key his words.
- [66:26]
Nicholas Meriwether
His words have so much meaning that.
- [66:30]
Robert Hunter
They give new meaning to the word meaning.
- [66:33]
Jesse Jarno
Though Hunter was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame along with with the grateful dead in 1994, neither he nor Jerry Garcia showed up for the ceremony. Hunter spoke a few words here, though, and as always, he picked carefully in.
- [66:47]
Robert Hunter
This digital world where songwriter credits have largely disappeared along with royalties. I accept this award in the name of those who labor in anonymity in the song minds, hoping against hope for the hit that so rarely comes, the one that pays the rent and feeds the kids. If actual recognition is hardly to be expected, I accept it in the name of those who pursue this uncertain occupation for the sake of the song itself.
- [67:20]
Raymond Foy
In Hunter's lyrics, you get stories, you get characters, and you get. You get code of ethics and behavior. Because the Deadheads are a bunch of young people, and they're all suddenly out there on their own for the first time. And it's like the Graham Nash line, you who are on the road must have a code that you can live by. That's what he provided. It was a kind of code of behavior. Very unifying effect that his words had. And we're lucky to have had them in our heads all these years. It's extraordinary achievement.
- [67:54]
Jesse Jarno
Hunter's last appearance was at his induction into the Songwriters hall of fame in 2015.
- [67:59]
Robert Hunter
A song cannot emerge in any time but its own. The time it helps create. A tune contains its unique place in eternity, just as a specific time contains the tune, allowing the past to sketch the outlines of the future. It can take a lifetime to grasp that or an instant, whichever is longer.
- [68:24]
Jesse Jarno
Robert Hunter passed away in September 2019, a visionary songwriter whose visions will keep coming anew over and over each time they're sung. Thanks, Bob. And one last bit from the Stone Sunday Rap with Charles Reich, available in the book A Signpost, A new Space from Da Capo Hachette. I wish I could see which photo of the dead Jerry is pointing at.
- [68:44]
Robert Hunter
He's got a poster of this at home, and he's got little talkie balloons coming out of all our heads. And he's got little expressions, you know, for each one of us that are absolutely perfect. Man, you know, they're just perfect. But the rest of what I have to say is best conveyed in a Garcia melody. You who choose to lead must follow but if you fall, you fall alone if you should stand, then who's to guide you? If I knew the way I would take you home.
- [69:33]
Rich Mahan
It's worth looking up Jim Lauderdale's introduction of Robert Hunter at the 2013Americana Music Awards, where Robert wins the lifetime achievement award. It's a moving speech. I love asking musicians about their songwriting process and learning how they go about constructing songs. There are so many ways to get that job done. And I always find it fascinating hearing from musical heroes as they pull back the curtain and show their processes. Take care, friends. We'll see you next episode. 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.