Enjoying the Ride: On Tour

Summary

Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast: Season 11 Finale – "Enjoying the Ride: On Tour"

Release Date: June 5, 2025

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Introduction

In the season finale of Season 11, hosts Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarno take listeners on a nostalgic journey through the Midwest, exploring some of the Grateful Dead's most iconic venues. This episode, titled "Enjoying the Ride: On Tour," delves into the rich history of the band’s tours, the evolution of Deadhead culture, and the lasting impact of their live performances from 1965 to the present day.

Mail Order Ticketing and Touring Practices

The episode begins by highlighting the practical aspects of touring during the Dead’s heyday. David Lemieux, the Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager, discusses the grassroots nature of mail-order ticket sales in the pre-internet era. He explains how Deadheads organized tours by pooling resources to afford tickets, accommodations, and transportation. The meticulous process involved filling out detailed orders, adhering to strict guidelines, and often enduring long waits to secure tickets for multiple shows. This system fostered a strong sense of community and commitment among fans.

Key Venues: Red Rocks and Oakland Auditorium

Rich and Jesse shift focus to the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver, Colorado. Jay Curley, a longtime Deadhead, recounts his first experiences at Red Rocks in August 1979, describing the venue’s natural beauty and the intense emotional experiences during performances. The introduction of Brent Mydland as the new keyboardist brought a fresh dynamic to the band’s sound, enhancing their live performances with powerful vocals and innovative keyboard arrangements.

The Oakland Auditorium Arena (later Kaiser Auditorium) became the Dead’s new home following the closure of Winterland in December 1978. Jay Curley shares memories of camping in his van outside the venue, emphasizing the camaraderie and preparation that went into attending shows. The transition to larger venues marked a significant shift in the Dead’s touring strategy, accommodating growing audiences while maintaining the intimate atmosphere cherished by long-time fans.

Alpine Valley Music Theater: A Midwest Haven

Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin, emerges as a pivotal location in the Dead’s Midwest tours. Tom Ryan reminisces about the challenges and adventures of reaching Alpine Valley, describing it as a sprawling venue nestled among ski slopes. The venue’s extensive parking lots became vibrant hubs of Deadhead activity, featuring vendor stalls, handmade crafts, and a thriving community spirit.

David Lemieux highlights the significance of the 1980 debut at Alpine Valley, noting that it wasn’t initially equipped for the massive crowds that would come in subsequent years. Over time, Alpine Valley became synonymous with Deadhead culture, hosting multiple-night runs that solidified its reputation as a beloved destination for fans.

Deadhead Community Evolution: From Shakedown Street to Vendor Culture

The episode explores the transformation of Deadhead communities, particularly the emergence of Shakedown Street in 1989. Rebecca Adams, a sociologist, discusses how vendor dynamics shifted from grassroots operations to more organized businesses with credit card transactions. This change led to increased regulation and the involvement of security forces aimed at maintaining order within the parking lots.

Holly Rose, an author and longtime Deadhead, shares insights from her journals about the challenges and camaraderie experienced during the tours. Her forthcoming book, When Push Comes to Shove, offers a personal glimpse into the economic and social structures that supported the Deadhead lifestyle during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Technological Innovations: Jerry Garcia’s MIDI Guitar

Phil Garfinkel, a dedicated musician and Deadhead, recounts his role in introducing technological advancements to the Grateful Dead’s live performances. In 1988, Phil assisted in equipping Jerry Garcia’s Stratocaster with MIDI capabilities, allowing for a broader range of sounds and enhancing the band’s improvisational segments. This innovation marked a significant evolution in the Dead’s musical experimentation, blending traditional rock elements with electronic influences.

Personal Stories from Deadheads

The episode features heartfelt stories from various Deadheads who attended pivotal shows at venues like Deer Creek Music Center. Scott Bauer shares his transformative experience at the 1989 Deer Creek show, highlighting the sense of community and the profound impact of witnessing the Dead live. Bill Lemke discusses his journey as a photographer capturing the essence of Deadhead culture in the parking lots, emphasizing the unique blend of art and music that defined the era.

Conclusion: The Legacy of Touring Deadheads

"Enjoying the Ride: On Tour" encapsulates the essence of what it means to be a Deadhead, showcasing the dedication, creativity, and resilience of the community. From the logistical challenges of mail-order ticketing to the vibrant scenes at Alpine Valley and Deer Creek, the episode paints a comprehensive picture of the Grateful Dead’s touring legacy. As Rich and Jesse wrap up the episode, they reflect on the enduring influence of the Dead’s live performances and the unwavering spirit of their fans.

Special Thanks

The hosts extend their gratitude to all the guests featured in this episode, including David Lemieux, Jay Curley, Holly Rose, Bill Lemke, Phil Garfinkel, and others who shared their invaluable stories and insights. A special mention is given to David Ganz for his extensive interview archive.

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For more episodes and to explore the full archive of the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, visit dead.net/deadcast.

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 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 the season finale of season 11 of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast of I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in this season. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast, we do wrap up season 11 with one last foray into enjoying the ride. This time we hit the road and go on tour to explore some of the great venues the Dead frequented in the Midwest. We want to extend a hearty thank you to everyone who pre ordered and joined the ride. It is officially sold out. You can still grab great music from the set, however, by digging into the breakout 3 CD the music never Stopped, which distills enjoying the ride into a shorter route through the band's Diamond Anniversary celebration. Featuring at least one song from every venue in the deluxe set, it offers a briefer but no less illuminating journey through the music that shaped the Grateful Dead's live legacy. It is available now. You can find out [e-mail] it's available as a 3 CD set and a 6LP set and of course digitally. Also recently announced is a brand new Grateful Dead Greatest Hits, a perfect entry point for the budding Deadhead in your life and a great single disc addition to your collection. This comes out on June 13th and will be available as a single CD or LP. Make sure to visit rhino.com for more info on both of these not to be missed releases. While you're online, head on over to dead.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes. We have a complete list of everything that we've released up till now. You can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how, when, where and however you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing Share the Good Old Grateful Dead cast with your friends on social media. Tell your grandma hit that like button. Share and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review because it really does help. Thank you very much. We're always looking to get great stories about your experience with Grateful Dead. Head on over to stories.dead.net and record your story talking about that epic road trip, how you met your significant other, the best show you ever saw, something funny that happened in the lot. We want to hear it all. You may just hear yourself on a future episode of the Deadcast. And of course we have transcripts from many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading and research pleasure. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. Well, we are getting our act together and taking it on the road. Going to a Grateful Dead show was a ton of fun no matter where they played, but there was always an extra sense of excitement whenever you hit the road to see the band play outside of your hometown or in this episode, our season 11 finale, we travel to some of the well loved venues in the heartland of America to explore what these shows are like on the new Enjoying the Ride box set. Make sure you've got the car loaded up with everything we need for this one because our next stop we're picking up our good friend Jesse Jarno.

[Jesse Jarno]

We've spent the last few episodes talking about some of the Dead's favorite venues on the west and east coasts, but today we point the Dead cast bus on tour where the country is landlocked but the roads are open.

[Rich Mahan]

Trucking, got my chips can't steal Keep trucking like the do your man together more or less in line.

[Jesse Jarno]

Just keep trucking. There were all kinds of Deadheads and all kinds of ways to go on tour. Please welcome back grateful Ed archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

[David Lemieux]

When tickets are 18 to $20, you're spending at most about $20 a night, $25 a night to stay. You could go on tour for two weeks for well under $500 and a meal is $8 different times for sure. It's not hard when you're going on tour two or three times a year for eight or 10 shows. It's not hard to work and save up. You save up $500 and then you blow it on tour and then you do it again. I know that nowadays it's hotels are a lot more and tickets are a lot more and everything is a lot more. A lot more like like exponentially.

[Jesse Jarno]

Let's revel for a long moment in the pleasures of the pre www.

[David Lemieux]

It was a lot of work back then. Everything from finding out when the shows were. The only way you'd find out is if your buddy called you or you called Steve Marcus or Eileen Law's messages on the east coast or west coast hotlines.

[Eileen Law]

Thank you for calling the Grateful Dead hotline number. This is a new Message as of October 31st. Happy Halloween.

[Jesse Jarno]

Happy Halloween to you too, Eileen. As Cory Arnold of the Lost Live Dead blog puts it, the concept of Deadheads can probably be thought of as an east coast invention. The Dead established their east coast hotline in 1979, 201-777-8653, three years before they got their west coast hotline into action in the spring of 82. That's 415-457-6388. Probably shouldn't call them now.

[Eileen Law]

The Grateful Dead will play four concerts at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention center in Oakland, California on December 27, 28th 30 and December 31st.

[Rich Mahan]

New Year's Eve.

[Eileen Law]

All four concerts will feature special guests.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Neville Brothers.

[Eileen Law]

All show times are 8pm Tickets will be available by mail order only starting November 4th. Do not send in now. All instructions must be followed exactly.

[Jesse Jarno]

Mail ordering for tickets was fairly common for rock concerts in the 60s and 70s, but operated by the venues and promoters rather than artists. The Dead experimented with mail order tickets sold directly to their fan club with their comeback tour in 1976, not coincidentally mostly on the East Coast. But they only really got their own mail order operation off the ground in 1983, thanks to Steve Marcus. And it was a few years yet before they offered mail order tickets for every show. There were some very specific Instructions.

[Eileen Law]

Tickets are $26.25 per ticket, with a limit of two tickets per order and one order per person. The ticket price includes a $1.25 per ticket service charge. Duplications of any kind will cause disqualification of all involved orders. Each person must fill out their own order, make sure that the money is correct or no tickets.

[David Lemieux]

It was an undertaking and it would take half a day. You have to gather up hundreds of dollars to do this. It was fun. It was what we did.

[Jesse Jarno]

David was in charge for mail order for his group.

[David Lemieux]

I do the mail orders for the tickets. They would all give me their money, but I would make sure it happened. So nothing fell through the cracks that I knew how to do mail order efficiently. And doing mail order for 10 shows on a tour that would literally take you half your day. Because the three by five index cards, the number 10 envelope, the postal money order, you had to go to the post office, send your order in a.

[Eileen Law]

Number 10 size envelope containing a number 10 self addressed stamped, envelop $0.22 for up to 8 tickets, $0.39 for 9 to 12 tickets. Also include a 3x5 index card with your full name, address, area code and phone number in the upper left hand corner. List how many tickets to each concert you want and your order of preference. Write anything, if you will, accept anything. Yeah, this is very important.

[David Lemieux]

You had to watch that they were doing it to the precise penny in US funds coming from Canada. And then self address stamped envelope. We couldn't buy US stamps in Canada, so you'd buy this postal equivalent. It was like $2, and then presumably you send that in with it and then the grateful ticket sales office would trade that in for a stamp to get it back to Canada. So it was a whole undertaking.

[Jesse Jarno]

David also participated in another hallowed tradition.

[David Lemieux]

Maybe you decorated your envelope. The anxiety was making sure I didn't have a class that day and I could go to the post office and do it, but otherwise I'm certain I skipped school to go and do that. I know I did.

[Jesse Jarno]

The decoration of mail order envelopes was a time honored Deadhead pastime. And according to Steve Marcus, at least in the early days, it did help with tickets.

[David Lemieux]

And then you got a mail order for tickets and you got to wait and see if you actually get them. You got to wait a few weeks and then you got to book your hotel. And then there was always one or two of us in every group of friends who was really good at it. And then the rest were kind of the slackers who brought something else to the table. Maybe they brought all the tapes and maybe they brought all the whatever the thing. I was one of the guys who was always in charge of hotels.

[Jesse Jarno]

Not every Deadhead gang had it together to plan hotels and travel in advance. And plenty preferred just to go on the road in emulation of their beatnik freak ancestors, sometimes with only a hitchhiking thumb to guide them. But for many, being a Deadhead was a team effort.

[David Lemieux]

We had these things in the late 80s, early 90s. You'd go to the AAA, the car automobile association thing, and you would tell them where you wanted to be as part of being a member your $30 a year membership. They say, okay, I'm starting in Ottawa and I need to drive to Hartford, and then I need to drive Albany and Hamilton. And then you get these things called triptychs. They were awesome. And there would be these little rectangular books of maps and you'd flip them page by page and it would have maybe 50 miles on a map and then you get to the bottom, you flip the next page.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead Cast is going to be your triptych today through the Far Wilds of Dead tour. First up, we're pointing ourselves to red Rocks in August 1979.

[Rich Mahan]

This is the word for the way that you're making this feeling Got a.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hell of a girl When I need.

[David Lemieux]

The medication to the wall this is.

[Jesse Jarno]

Real Now I'm telling her Jay Curly has popped up a few times on the Dead Cast, including our episodes about Vanita in 72, Watkins Glenn in 73 and Winterland in 74. When we last spoke with Jay, he just moved to the Bay Area in time for the Dead to take a break from the road and catch five gazillion shows by Legion of Merry, Kingfish, Roadhog, the Keith and Donna Band and other familiar configurations. In 79, he was still at it. As we said, there were lots of ways to follow the Dead around, and in 79, Jay wasn't exactly on tour. But he wasn't not on tour.

[Jay Curley]

My choice of career really facilitated going to Grateful Dead shows. I could go to any town that I wanted to and get a job pretty much immediately being a substitute teacher. So I went from preschool to preschool to preschool, depending on my whims, and I was able to go to Dead shows.

[Jesse Jarno]

If you plant ice, you're going to.

[Rich Mahan]

Harvest all the way.

[Jesse Jarno]

Could do.

[Rich Mahan]

Pull away the dune.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead made their Red Rocks debut in early summer 1978 and loved it so much they returned a month and a half later.

[Jay Curley]

They played 7-78-and my friends had gone to that and they just raved about the place. So when they announced the August shows, I totally jumped on it.

[Jesse Jarno]

A natural amphitheater inside Denver's Red Rocks Park. There were performances at Red Rocks as early as 1906, though the modern amphitheater was finished in 1941 with the help of the New Deal powered Civilian Conservation Corps. Thanks, fdr. With general admission bench seating framed by giant sandstone crags and a view of Denver twinkling in the distance, the 9,000 capacity amphitheater is one of the coolest places to see the Dead or anybody.

[Jay Curley]

The first time I went, I hitchhiked. I caught the August shows and those were just spectacular. I loved the place. I loved the way they played there. The first shakedown was there. I was just totally, totally impressed with the place.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jim Jones left us this story about 78 first times they played Red Rocks.

[Rich Mahan]

I was there. It was spectacular. They were playing. It looks like Rain with Donna and Keith, and they're going back and forth.

[Jay Curley]

It looks like rain, it feels like rain.

[Rich Mahan]

Oh, Lord, here comes the rain. And right at the crescendo, when Bobby goes, oh, Lord, here comes the rain, it's lightning. Thundered and poured rain. Of course, we were tripping, and we.

[Jay Curley]

All thought, oh, my God, Jerry has a way in.

[Jesse Jarno]

We call that foreshadowing. By the time the Dead returned to Red Rocks the following August, as always, there were changes afoot. In April 1979, they debuted their new keyboard player, Jay Curley.

[Jay Curley]

I was at the Spartan Stadium show that introduced Brent, and everybody was totally knocked out by him. That was. That was great.

[Jesse Jarno]

In December 1978, Winterland closed for good, and the Dead made their new home at the Oakland Auditorium arena later, the Kaiser Auditorium, which we talked about in the second part of our Enjoying the Ride episodes. They played there again in August 1979, which included the debut of Althea, as well as the proper introduction of Jerry Garcia's new custom Doug Irwin guitar, known as Tiger.

[Jay Curley]

I camped in my van outside the Oakland auditorium for the 8, 4 and 8 5, 7, 9 shows. There was two of us there, my van and then another van, and we were it. It was just us both. There's like maybe four people all told. So the camping hadn't really commenced, and we were very conscious of the neighborhood. And so we didn't make any noise or turn on our music or anything. It was pretty mellow. It was pre camping. My van is well broken in for Grateful Dead by then.

[Jesse Jarno]

And then it was time for Red Rocks.

[Jay Curley]

I was thrilled to go back there again a year later for 79. I drove my new van. Sort of new to me then, anyway, which I was living in at the time, made it real easy to get over there. I took us 50 all the way across in 79. It hadn't gone over the top yet. It was still sort of word of mouth. Oh, I had a whole van load full of freaks. I was not feeling great on the first couple days, but I was in full form by the time we got to Colorado, that's for sure. But I love us 50. It's a gorgeous road. My friends had gotten there a couple days earlier, so I drove my van in and stayed with them in their campground space at the Chief Hosa Campground. That was our home away from home. In terms of Red Rocks. I plugged in with a whole bunch of people.

[Jesse Jarno]

When I got there, Chief Hosa became a legendary Deadhead spot.

[Jay Curley]

What a scene. Oh, my goodness. Heads partying and camping everywhere.

[Jesse Jarno]

Definitely a stop on the heady highway. Red Rocks built its Deadhead reputation with nights like August 12th, 1979.

[Jay Curley]

What an incredible place. And for a geology nut like myself, it was also very fascinating.

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux this is a rare 1979 Betty recording. Betty stopped recording the Dead on the road after the summer of 78. She did go to Egypt for the multi track recordings and then by 79 they were recording. Dan Healy was recording PA cassettes for the most part. But thankfully the three night run in Red Rocks and McNichols the Colorado run in August of 79 including the show in the box are from the Betty recordings and sound. Magnificent.

[Jesse Jarno]

Our captain fell in love with a.

[Eileen Law]

Lady like a dove.

[Jesse Jarno]

And he call my name pretty.

[David Lemieux]

There's a couple of things going on in the mid 79 is that I think Brent's organ in particular was able to fill those places and make them, you know, really fill the sound, whether it was a big indoor arena or a place like Red Rocks. The organ. Brent's vocals were powerful. They were the high harmony the Dead needed to replace Donna. But they were also incredibly powerful.

[Rich Mahan]

Upside Down Falls upon the Only Cave.

[Jesse Jarno]

In Town.

[Jay Curley]

Jay Curley and the Althea into Passenger. I've rarely seen Jerry play as fast as he did when he played Passenger. I mean, he just flew up and down the neck there. It was unbelievable. I haven't heard it since, actually.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, Linda, we have the box set for you.

[Jay Curley]

And then opening the second set with China Cat. That was fantastic. My goodness.

[Jesse Jarno]

Before we get into the heart of the show's jam, there was another significant plot unfolding that night.

[Eileen Law]

It started on August 12, 1979 at Red Rocks. I remember it very distinctly. It being the second most powerful day of my life. The first being the closing of Winterland, of course.

[Jesse Jarno]

Of course. This is Dick Lotvalla speaking. Courtesy of David Ganz and Grateful Dead. Hour 267, which we've linked [e-mail] Deadcast Dick was no stranger to Dead shows. He'd seen them regularly in the primal days of the Carousel Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium. And by the end of the 1970s, was heavy into tape trading. We talked a bunch about Dick in our Inside the Vault episode, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast By 1979, Dick was living in Hawaii, but starting to feel the pull of the mothership. The Red Rock shows would be a significant step on his road towards becoming the Dead's archivist in the mid-1980s.

[Eileen Law]

Yeah, went out with a Friend from.

[Phil Garfinkel]

Hawaii who knew someone in the scene, and they got us tickets.

[Eileen Law]

So we flew from Hawaii to Denver and I was in the lobby of the hotel sitting there with my suitcase while he went upstairs and somehow freaked.

[Jesse Jarno]

Out and left me all alone there.

[Eileen Law]

And I didn't know anyone.

[Jesse Jarno]

Somewhere in there, Dick got dosed, maybe not even unintentionally, but also lost his glasses. That part probably wasn't intentional.

[Eileen Law]

I fortunately got a ride from Nikki Scully, who got me backstage.

[Phil Garfinkel]

And I met Kid, and he was.

[Eileen Law]

The first person I met.

[Rich Mahan]

Who is Kid?

[Eileen Law]

Bill Candelario.

[Jesse Jarno]

He's one of the roadies and one.

[Eileen Law]

Of the prime players at Grateful Dead merchandising. And from that moment on, well, he offered me a backstage pass and I ended up taking him up on it.

[Jesse Jarno]

I tell the story in my book Heads. There's a great photo of Dick backstage at Red Rocks that night without his glasses, which he said is his favorite all time picture of himself.

[Phil Garfinkel]

I ended up on that rock behind.

[Eileen Law]

There for my first time backstage. And it was a powerful moment, you know, it changed me forever.

[Jesse Jarno]

We'll return to Dick's Colorado story momentarily, but imagine him backstage for the first time during these jams. In the early days, Brent Midland's main axe was the Dyna Roads, which is the percussive sounding keyboard you hear him playing while conversing with Garcia during Estimated Profit, David Lemieux.

[David Lemieux]

We talked about Brent Midland joining in earlier. 79. And really by the end of that May tour, he's a fully integrated member of the Grateful Dead.

[Jesse Jarno]

It's a great segue into a nearly 20 minute version of Eyes of the World, around 130 beats per minute, about 20 bpm faster than the 1973 and 1974 versions. Garcia sings an alternate first lyric a few times that summer.

[Rich Mahan]

Right outside this.

[Jesse Jarno]

The eyes is nearly 20 minutes and friends, it goes places. During Brent Midland's earliest tours with the Dead in summer and fall of 1979, he got deep with his Polymoog synthesizer in ways that didn't often happen in the years that immediately followed.

[David Lemieux]

At the end of the jam sequence, before going into drums, they would do these meltdowns, often driven by Brent's keyboards. But the rest of the bed. And there's a great one. There's a great estimated eyes here. And then it just turns into this incredible meltdown.

[Jesse Jarno]

Speaking of meltdowns, this is one of the earliest tapes where sound engineer Dan Healy starts treating the drums and space segments with some additional mixing effects. Unless it was Betty mixing it in either Way sounds ace. Some scene reports say that Bill Walton was up there for the Rhythm Devil segment. Walton was definitely at the gigs.

[Jay Curley]

I ran into Bill Walton in a park in Denver. He was getting his bicycle together to do some exercise, riding around this huge park there.

[Jesse Jarno]

But being Red Rocks in the summer, there's a safe movie cliche you could almost always utter. What did he just say? He said, there's a storm coming in.

[Jay Curley]

Back at Chief Hosa, everybody was under tents and under tarps and stuff. It was very wet.

[Jesse Jarno]

So much for three nights at Red Rocks.

[Jay Curley]

Oh, two of them were rained out. I called the entire weekend the Red Rocks McNichols fiasco.

[Jesse Jarno]

Bill Walton had a story about one of the McNichols shows, which he told to the Pardon My take podcast in 2017. We've linked to their full [e-mail] deadcast.

[Rich Mahan]

So I'm just cruising through the whole arena, and there's this guy. So we stop and I look at him and I said, that is the coolest shirt I've ever seen in my life. This was like an airbrushed history of the world through the prism of the Grateful Dead, right? With pyramids and exploding bus stops, rainbow spring, serpents coming out. And it was just as wild a shirt as you can possibly imagine. He just looks at me, doesn't say a word, and rips off his shirt and gives it to me, and then he just goes on his way.

[Jesse Jarno]

We asked the Deadhead style archive, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast, but nobody seems to know of a shirt that matches that description. If you know of one, please send a photo our and their way. It sounds awesome. Later, as Walton and the band were exiting the venue, he encountered the Deadhead again.

[Rich Mahan]

We're getting in the vans, and I look over and there's that guy who gave me the shirt, and he's standing on the front of the rail, reaching in, looking still with no shirt on. And I look at him and I said, you're coming with us. And so I picked him up by the back of the neck and lifted him up over the barrier, threw him in the van and says, let's go. We got back to the hotel, I introduced him to everybody all around. They looked at my shirt and said, oh, my God, that's the coolest shirt ever built. And they hired him on the spot. That was Dick Lotvalle, and he went on to become the curator of the vault.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dick's full onboarding story was a little more nuanced, but I like that version too. There was no question that the infinite improbability field around the Dead was growing denser after being one of two vans parked outside. In August, Jay Curley and his van returned for the New Year shows at Oakland Auditorium Arena.

[Jay Curley]

That's when I first noticed people camping and moving in and Bill Graham hiring people camping out in the park to help with a food trip inside. Those New Year shows were fantastic. 1226 man knocked me right out.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's now Dick's picks five. The New Year's 79 shows were another major turning point. The first time the Dead officially allowed camping outside a venue. There had been a growing scene outside shows, but in a sense it was over New Year's 1979 that Bill Graham and the Dead made it official. It would be a while before the term Shakedown street came into effect, but by the turn of the 80s, the mobile community around the Dead was starting to become visible to the naked eye.

[Rich Mahan]

Nothing shaking on shake Our street.

[Jesse Jarno]

Used.

[Rich Mahan]

To be the heart of town.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hometown.

[Rich Mahan]

Of this town ain't got no heart. We just gotta poke around.

[Jesse Jarno]

In real time. It looked like a band that was getting slowly more popular as the Dead cast trucks into the Midwest. We're gonna be looking at a few different levels of Deadheaddom, and there's no better place to observe that than the enormous parking lots of the Alpine Valley Music Theater, the giant outdoor venue nestled among the ski slopes in East Troy, Wisconsin. The August 23, 1980 show on enjoying the Ride was the band's first visit there. Tom Ryan left us some alpine [e-mail].

[Tom Ryan]

The journey to Alpine Valley was always an adventure. Heading out of Chicago, getting out of the city on the freeway, and then taking the back roads to Alpine Valley, which was nestled out in the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin between Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison.

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux Alpine I believe to this day it's the same thing. It's a huge parking lot, the same big Alpine sign. So you get off the highway and there's one way in and it's pretty efficient, but you're still stuck in traffic. That place holds 36,000 on a sold out show. So it's a pretty big undertaking to get in there. And I remember my first shows there were 88.

[Jesse Jarno]

We've been offering occasional traffic tips during these enjoying the ride episodes, and Alpine Valley was definitely a place where it was baffled to know the best way in.

[David Lemieux]

I was staying in Lake Geneva, this little resort town on the Lake Geneva just near Alpine, and they said, okay, when you get off the highway. They're going to direct you this way. But what you want to do, you want to go the other way. And trust me. And so we did try it. And you kind of feel you're going in the opposite direction, the wrong direction, because there's no cars. And all of a sudden you pop out in a proper. There's a. There's a resort at Alpine, a ski resort of all things. So then there's a. I think a chalet, a lodge. And there's a way back there that is open to the public because there's non Deadheads who are using that lodge. And so I think they kind of keep that quiet for the people paying good money to go stay at that lodge. There were a couple of lots at Alpine. There was the big lot, right when you drove in, and there was one around the back. And you'd walk kind of thinking around the venue, and you'd be in the farther lot. But Alpine was massive. And when the Dead played there, when I saw them, they did four nights one year with a night off. So it was really a week almost. And then three nights a couple of years later, the next year in 89. And it was like the entire parking lot was shakedown. Everybody was vending something.

[Jesse Jarno]

But in 1980, when they played Alpine Valley for the first time, the Dead still had to grow fully into it. In the late 70s, they made their Midwest home at the Chicago Theater, where they played 11 shows in 1978 and 1979 alone. This is from Dave's picks 31, recorded in December. 79. Chicago, New York.

[Jay Curley]

Tree Tortoin.

[David Lemieux]

It's on the same street.

[Rich Mahan]

A typical city involved in a typical daydream.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings. Through the early 1980s, the dead tried to have it both ways, supplementing their beloved small theater gigs with occasional moves into bigger spaces. Alpine Valley was centrally located to Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison. But this story that Art Moss left [e-mail], illustrates perfectly how Dead shows in 1980 were drawing far more than the local audiences.

[Rich Mahan]

Summer 1980. I just finished my first year at UCLA and working a casual job as a mover. Not one of the best jobs in the world, but hey, what can you do when you're 19? My buddy mom was from Kansas City, and she happened to be visiting family early in the summer, and she heard that the Grateful Dead were going to be in Kansas City. She told my friend, my friend told me, and we thought we should go. So we decided to see what other shows were Going to be around then. And we landed on Kansas City Uptown Theater for three nights and then Alpine Valley. We loaded the car up. Two days of driving got us to Kansas City, saw that show. Three great shows at the Uptown and a show at Alpine Valley.

[Jesse Jarno]

Even if it wasn't a full on parking lot bazaar just yet. Deadheads were definitely making friends.

[Rich Mahan]

We had traveled with our homemade bong called Kaboom. Now when we parked at Alpine Valley, we met a couple folks from, I think, either north or South Dakota. We introduced them to Kaboom.

[Jesse Jarno]

But Dead shows were for locals and out of towners, people who'd seen them since the 60s, and people who were just getting on the bus. Lisa Hitchcock left us this story.

[Eileen Law]

I had been to my first show May 30, 1980, in Milwaukee. I was immediately hooked and dove headfirst into the tunes, the lyrics.

[Bill Lemke]

I bought albums and searched for bootleg recordings that would turn up at our.

[Eileen Law]

Local shop, Record Head. Then Alpine Valley was announced. This was home turf and I could see them again. My buddies and I were in high school and scored lawn seats. We were totally stoked. Finally, the day of the show came and we raced to the front of the lawn. We set up camp at one of the only flat spots on that big old steep hill. We were ready to rock. Go to Heaven was the latest album, and we were psyched. They opened with Alabama.

[Jesse Jarno]

Please welcome from CA Community Radio's Grateful Dead and Friends show, Phil Garfinkel.

[Phil Garfinkel]

That was the first time that I think most of us had been to Alpine. It was a pretty new venue. We had seats under the roof, and they had just played three amazing shows at the Uptown in Chicago, which was a tiny, little intimate venue. Alpine was huge compared to the Uptown in Chicago. The sound was good, it was outdoors, it was a beautiful night, was lovely.

[Jesse Jarno]

Become man. He's gone again. It's a sweet tape. David Lemieux.

[David Lemieux]

Our job in the Grateful Dead archiving world is not to fill in gaps in people's collections. If there's not a board tape, I mean, it's nice when it can come out, but it's got to be a great show. So it's not like we've ever released anything, only because there's no circulating board. It's more of an afterthought when we find this out and we're like, oh, and also, this doesn't circulate in Soundboard. The alpine show from 1980 in this box. I don't think that circulated in soundboard. And great show, great history. It's the first Grateful Dead show at Alpine, where they played a lot of shows over the next decade. You look at the satellite, it's like, okay, pretty straightforward. But the playing itself is just top notch. Great lazy light and supplication.

[Jesse Jarno]

Phil Garfinkel.

[Phil Garfinkel]

Keith had just died. And what I remember most vividly from the second set was when they started, He's Gone. And everybody in the seating area around me was like, this is for Keith. This is for Keith. This is for Keith.

[Jesse Jarno]

Keith Godcho had died in a car accident exactly a month earlier, a few days after his 32nd birthday.

[David Lemieux]

There's a huge jam out of He's Gone.

[Jesse Jarno]

The jam gets into some other one territory. Alpine Valley in 1980 was the first Grateful Dead show for our next guest, but also a reminder that it was perfectly possible to be a fan of the Dead without seeing them in concert, but that it was also pretty different if you finally saw them. Please welcome to the Dead cast Bill Lemke.

[Bill Lemke]

That was my first Dead show. Yeah, I first started listening to him in the probably maybe late 60s to early 70s, and I was just a young teenager at the time. I was pretty familiar with the music.

[Jesse Jarno]

Bill spent the 70s devoted to learning the craft of photography.

[Bill Lemke]

My senior year in high school, early 1970s, I took a photography class and I thought, this is what I want to do for a living. And ended up going to Milwaukee Area Technical College. I went out and did some workshops with Ansel Adams. And I just like traditional film photography.

[Jesse Jarno]

Bill was on the road as we spoke. Then as now. Bill was a rock photographer, but not music.

[Bill Lemke]

Most of my photographs are landscapes. I'm out here in Utah and Arizona making landscape photographs. Traditional, like Ansel Adams would do. I do art festivals as well with my black and white photographs. So I was doing a show in Madison and friend of mine said, hey, let's. Let's go to Alpine. Deader plan. I said, yeah, let's do it. And we all piled into a van and went out there. And it was just such a great experience. It was just so much fun. The audience was such a big part of it. And I thought, this is so unique to this particular group. I gotta figure out a way to record this somehow. And I think it was probably in the early 80s as well. I saw a Richard Avedon exhibition where he traveled around the west and did portraits of people just traveling people working in coal mines. And I thought, boy, what a great series of photographs. And maybe what I should do is do the same with Deadheads and do them very formal and use a tie dye backdrop to pull it all together.

[Jesse Jarno]

And that's just what Bill Lembke did and part of why we're talking to him on the Deadcast today. We've posted a link to his forthcoming Deadhead photography [e-mail] deadcast everybody's a photographer these days, but Bill Lembke was a photographer in the most old school technical sense.

[Bill Lemke]

I typically work large format. I was working and I still do work with a big camera, a 4x5 view camera. I got film holders. I'm putting in the back of the camera and it's obvious what I'm doing. I can't hide behind anything. I hadn't done a lot of portrait work. I felt a little uncomfortable with people in front of the lens. But I quickly got over that because photographing Deadheads is. It's just fun. It's pretty laid back and pretty loose. So it was an easy transition.

[Jesse Jarno]

We'll return to Bill Lemke's story in a moment. Also on Enjoying the ride is the second set from the band's second visit to Alpine July 11, 1981, which we'll use to soundtrack this next segment. Imagine a coyoniscotsie like Time Lapse now where the Alpine Valley parking lot fills up and empties out. Fills up and empties out, getting a little fuller and denser with each iteration. Here's Tom Ryan with another important Alpine Valley travel tip.

[Tom Ryan]

Alpine Valley was an amazing place to see the band. I saw 17 shows there starting in 1981. The local municipalities and law enforcement folks in the area recognized a good money making opportunity when they saw one starting 10 miles away from the venue. On these two lane roads you would pull up to a light and on the side of the road on top of a VW bus would be guys that looked just like the rest of us on the way to the show. Tie, dye shirts, jeans, bandana, hoisting up a beer and toast to the cars driving by who would of course hoist their beers as a sign of acknowledgment. Well, in an interesting twist, those nice folks on the top of the van turned out to be undercover cops. About a quarter mile up the street would be a uniformed policeman directing us to turn off the road into a little corral where they performed some fast justice. They were set up to charge fines of $75 each, process the payment and send us on our way to the show. Now, $75 back then was a lot of money, probably three times the price of a ticket for the show. And this went on around Alpine Valley for years. Bob Weir even referenced this practice from the stage before the encore on August 8, 1982.

[Rich Mahan]

Get home tonight, be careful. There are police everywhere and they've got.

[Jay Curley]

Their eyes on you and they want to.

[Jesse Jarno]

So.

[Rich Mahan]

So if you're in a car or something like that, be real careful or they'll hang you up and take your money.

[Tom Ryan]

Justice notwithstanding, there was nothing like Alpine Valley on a warm summer evening.

[Jesse Jarno]

Traffic sucked. But there was also an easy way to beat the traffic. Just camp.

[Tom Ryan]

I have sweet memories of just arriving and saying to myself, I don't need to leave for two nights. Or in the case of 1988, for four nights. Ah, the sweetness of a multi night run. There is a ski lodge, golf course and hotel right behind the music venue at Alpine Valley. And I was lucky to get four or five rooms for friends. We would come prepared with food, beverages and other treats, put our cars in park for two or three nights and just have the best time with a few hundred other Deadheads lucky enough to also snag a room. We'd sit around the pool and watch the band fly in on helicopters in the late afternoon before a night show.

[Jesse Jarno]

We'd be remiss not to mention that this is how Stevie Ray Vaughan died following a show at Alpine in 1990, about a year after the Dead's final gig there.

[Tom Ryan]

And then at showtime, we take the five minute walk to a rear entrance at Alpine Valley and walk in. I don't remember any lines and no significant security for a place that held 30 to 35,000 folks. My friends and I had it down and we knew how lucky we were. No hassles, no driving, just lots of fun.

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux the parking lot scene was no joke. It was pretty darn cool. I could see why people without tickets would come just for that, because it was unlike anything else. It was a whole vending area. People go to the holiday fairs, the crafts fairs, to buy things for presents. Same thing there, whether it was crystals or it was homemade pipes, whatever it was. And these were good artists and they were making some incredible clothing, jewelry, all sorts of things. I wore my Guatemalan shorts and my Guatemalan shirt. I have a lot of tour shirts. I'd definitely be buying some of the shirts that the Dead were selling. But I bought a lot of really nice shirts. Out in the parking lot there was a lot of movement where people would have a backpack filled with shirts and they'd just be walking around selling their shirts. And then if you wanted a Medium. They'd pull them out of their backpack and sell you that.

[Jesse Jarno]

We talked about Deadhead T shirts and blotter craft during our Friend of the Devils episodes. And by the 1980s, the Deadhead graphic and textile arts were vast. There was a good chance you'd cross paths with Bill Lemke and his large format camera.

[Bill Lemke]

I made photographs from around 85 through 90, mostly Alpine, Rosemont, Horizon in Chicago, Tinley Field, and then down to Deer Creek in Indiana. I would get to the parking lot and I'd set up this easy up canopy so I had nice soft light underneath. And then I would put that tie dye across the back. And as people would wander through the parking lot, I would just say, hey, do you mind sitting down? I'd love to do a photograph of you. And I would get their names and addresses so I could send them a print.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was also around the time of the Dead's 50th birthday in 2015 that the project truly came back to life.

[Bill Lemke]

There's a guy down in Iowa that I've stayed in contact with. He was a teacher down there. And he said, my daughter and I were photographed by you. She's since grown up and she moved to Chicago. She would love another print. And I said, no problem, I'll send you another print. And he said, hey, would you consider coming down to Chicago and doing another photograph of us? And I said, I'd love to do that. So we went to Chicago. It turns out his son in law was a chef, so we had a great lunch and we hung out for the day and I've talked to him several times since.

[Jesse Jarno]

The session was the inspiration for the new book project Aging Gratefully, which pairs Bill's original 1980s portraits with updated versions shot in front of the same tie dye backdrop. With the decades between the photos, it's really a remarkable project. Plus it's got an introduction by our dear friend David Ganz. We've posted a [e-mail] deadcast there's a.

[Bill Lemke]

Guy named JJ that we photographed and he was just a teenager at the time and now he's a music producer in Los Angeles. There's a few other that have not changed a whole lot. There's one guy in particular, he was from New Zealand and I photographed him. He was pretty young at the time, I think 19 or something. He eventually got arrested for selling some illegal stuff and went to prison in the us Ended up on a flight to Philly where the marshals were waiting for him. I won't give too much detail I don't want him to be tracked down. But he eventually went back on the road and followed the dead for two more years because he didn't get deported like he was supposed to be. He got back to New Zealand. He's in Southeast Asia now. And last January, we went to Asia to rephotograph him because he can't come back to the U.S. a set of.

[Jesse Jarno]

The photographs was published in Relics. But after that, the photos weren't seen publicly again until 2015, when he exhibited some of his portraits outside the Fare Thee well shows in Chicago.

[Bill Lemke]

I had some prints on display and a couple people came up and said, you know, I remember you in the parking lot, and there was no way I trusted you to do my photograph. They thought I was a DEA agent or something. Well, who would go to that extreme to set up a 4x5 view camera to do that?

[Jesse Jarno]

That people didn't want their photos taken at a Dead show is a position our next guest can appreciate.

[Eileen Law]

We would know that they were taking our pictures with telephoto lenses as we were in a fatty circle.

[Jesse Jarno]

Holly Rose is the author of a crucial new book, When Push Comes to Real Life on Dead Tour. But unlike virtually any other book ever published about the dead, When Push Comes to Shove. As Holly's tour journal, covering her years on full time dead tour from 1988 through 1992, we've obviously linked to [e-mail] deadcast.

[Eileen Law]

I've been writing journals since the minute I came out of the womb. I came out of the womb writing. I always thought I was writing so that someday I could write a book about it. These were going to be the barest notes that would jog my memory to write the book. And when I started transcribing them, I started to realize, because I had also spent many years studying diaries and journals just because I love the genre. And I started to realize that everything I love about a good diary and a good journal is present in my own stuff.

[Jesse Jarno]

Holly's published journals begin in 1988.

[Eileen Law]

I pretty much was on tour immediately in 83. I did 23 shows in my first calendar year. I hit my hundredth show in the summer of 87 and stopped counting.

[Jesse Jarno]

But when the Dead exploded back into the national spotlight, her journal keeping took on a different purpose.

[Eileen Law]

I started to realize at that point I'm like, something is really going on here. It's not just me leaving Connecticut and going on tour. Like this really matters. And it is getting bigger. It is like turning into a ball of fire or something and I need to try to get a handle on what this means.

[Jesse Jarno]

For many, following the band, touring became a refuge from the conservative bent of the Ronald Reagan and George Bush 1980s. Part of the ball of fire that Holly was experiencing was related to the band's in the Dark success and its impact during these same years. Starting around the time of Touch of Grey, LSD use in the United States began to grow for the first time in over a decade. While the government enacted draconian mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws, the dea, local police and other law affiliated Jim Jims were infiltrating the Dead parking lot, a constant existential threat to even low level psychedelic users. We've heard about all kinds of ways you could follow the Dead from one offs to weekend jaunts and longer expeditions by road trip, plane flight or hitchhiking adventure. Holly's book is a glimpse into the financial and karmic economics of what it meant to truly structure your life around the Grateful Dead.

[Eileen Law]

All names have been changed except for my best friend and quote, partner in crime, Corvette. Because everybody who knows me would have known it was Corvette right next to me. She was my best friend. She's still my best friend.

[Jesse Jarno]

I've seen some attempts to map out Jerry Garcia's musical social network, but with Holly's book, one could map out a certain chunk of the parking lot network too. Holly and her friends were also involved in various specialty businesses in the parking lot scene, which can be viewed if you glimpse between the lines of Holly's journal writing.

[Eileen Law]

I don't really actually write anything incriminating. I did, I never did because I was really hyper aware of, you know, people could get in trouble if my van got pulled over and they read my journal.

[Jesse Jarno]

The late 1980s and early 1990s were also a fraught time in the Dead parking lot as the Drug Enforcement Administration began trying to break up the LSD and marijuana sales networks that had bonded themselves to the Dead's taurine itinerary from the very earliest days when push comes to shove can be a bit harrowing in that sense, with lots of busts and lots of mutual aid bail funds. We'll be hearing a few entries from Holly's journal from Alpine Valley in July of 1989. What turned out to be their final shows there now released in part on Downhill From Here. These are from Holly's forthcoming audiobook, which we've edited to jump around slightly, but all tales from the Alpine parking lot. Do check the [e-mail] deadcast July 16th.

[Eileen Law]

Alpine met some bikers on the way in, they sold me a Monday ticket, which you had to have to get into the lot. Drove in right behind Hilton John John's Hilton is quite the energy center. It's the only great bus out here. Now.

[Jesse Jarno]

I had to ask Holly about what the Hilton bus looked like. Turns out the Hilton bus was literally a bus from a hotel.

[Eileen Law]

That particular bus was a newer bus to the scene. Hilton John had some money at the time, so it was well done up. It had all the best tapestries of tie dyes inside. It was a hotel bus that all they ever did was drive their football team to the stadium across the way forever. It had like, like no miles on it. And they sold it to him for like $400. And so he had plenty of money to do it up nicely. And it was out there because it was also not very ostentatious. It was not outrageous on the outside.

[Jesse Jarno]

Back to Holly's journal today.

[Eileen Law]

When I first opened my eyes, it was quiet and not hot. I went back to sleep, so must have everyone else because you could hear cries of surprise an hour later when Mother Nature dumped on everyone.

[Jesse Jarno]

This is why you can see people slip sliding down the alpine lawn in the Downhill From Here video.

[Eileen Law]

It rained all day yesterday and downpoured most of the first set. We had an indica bubble. Blake took plastic from the speakers and we huddled under it. Don was the center umbrella holder. Dave Echo was tweaking. He popped under the bubble, babbling about, hiding from someone. He disappeared, then came back again, panic in his eyes. And security followed him into our bubble. Kennedy got involved. It got really weird for a minute. Silas took my hand and pulled me away from the weirdness. I didn't stay gone long. I had to get back to the bubble. They were waiting for me because the pot in the fatty was half mine and half Blake's.

[Jesse Jarno]

Holly's journal is super cool and both she and I would be interested in reading other Deadhead tour journals if they're out there. Get in touch with her if you've got one. We've posted a link at the usual place. One of the things that when push comes to shove documents is the extent to which people were able to live off the mainstream economic grid while following the dead.

[Eileen Law]

I had to take out all the political stuff. Now I probably wrote 40 pages about Rodney King because those things happened during this time. Tiananmen. That's not it. Once in a while I left a few little political things in there. Like we go to the anti George Bush rally when HW gets inaugurated.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead would certainly bristle if you called them symbols of the 60s, but they were also happy to enact a full service alternative to the mainstream of the 1980s. We've said it before and we'll say it again. The Dead were an 80s band making 80s music. Even still, there are infinite ambient cultural undercurrents throughout when push comes to shove. And there are countless ways. Holly's book is fascinating if you're interested in the history of Deadheads. She includes a glossary in the back that crosses with Steve Silberman and David Shenk's Skeleton Key, but also introduces a few terms to the historical lexicon. And actually, one of those terms, all but forgotten now, was so obvious then that she didn't even include it in the glossary.

[Eileen Law]

Vendors Row. That was where the big vendors would be, right? Like. But the lot was the greater everything.

[Jesse Jarno]

Vendors Row was what Holly and her friends called the central artery of the Grateful Dead parking lot. But at the Alpine Valley 89 shows we've been hanging out at, there were signs of change. Holly wasn't the only one taking notes. In the summer of 1989, sociologist Rebecca Adams was on tour with her graduate students on Dead Tour in a chartered bus. We've posted a link to their collective [e-mail] deadcast, a book titled Deadhead Social Science. You Ain't Gonna Learn what yout Don't Wanna Know.

[Rebecca Adams]

One of my graduate assistants, John Epstein, had a friend who was a vendor, so he spent a lot of time with the vendors on tour. When we got to Alpine, there were all these meetings of the vendors trying to work out their disputes with one another. And subsequent to that show, that fall or the next fall, I interviewed Henry Sullivan, who was at the time. I think he was the head of security or. I mean, I don't know what his title was, but he. He was always in the parking lot trying to negotiate things and stuff. And I just re listened to this interview with Henry where he mentioned that at Alpine that summer of 89, all of the vendors wanted to be on, in his word, what they called Shakedown Street. He brought it up as if this was a new term to him. I recently posted something about it on. On a Facebook thread. And a woman came back and said, oh, well, that explains why that fall that they had an area labeled Shakedown Street. She remembered it was the first time she had seen that label a couple months after Alpine. So it kind of confirms that Henry absorbed it. And he said they all want to be on Shakedown Street. And of Course, location theory. They didn't want to be parked out in the hinterlands. They all wanted to be parked on Shakedown Street. And I remember that whole discussion was at Alpine. Shakedown was a very specific part of the lot. It wasn't the whole lot. It was kind of like downtown. And the nitrous vendors would be out in the rural area, so to speak.

[Jesse Jarno]

We're listening to the Kaiser November 21, 1985 version, by the way. So here we have at least one origin point. The term Shakedown street came into use in the summer of 1989. Things were reaching maximum density in the era after Touch of Grey. The band called it the megaded period. We spoke a few episodes back about the Hog Farm skeleton crew, led in part by the indomitable Calico, dispatched onto Dead Tour in the mid-1980s by Bill Graham and Grateful Dead Productions, who tried to keep the scene in the parking lot under control. Here's Rebecca Adams describing them in the An American subculture documentary.

[Rebecca Adams]

The Grateful Dead hire a group of people called the Skeleton Crew, who go around the parking lot discouraging the sale of alcohol, discouraging the sale of nitrous oxide, discouraging people from doing things that are dangerous, like setting off fireworks in your gas tanks and things like that.

[Jesse Jarno]

And here's Rebecca. Now.

[Rebecca Adams]

I just remember the Skelling crew was trying to manage the big influx because of in the Dark and Touch of Gray and Touch Heads in the Darkers. Calico and the other Skeleton Crew people were trying to. To manage this mess in the parking lot.

[Jesse Jarno]

Holly Rose and her friends crossed paths.

[Eileen Law]

With Calico one year at Alpine. This is, I think, before the book starts, maybe Alpine 87ish or something. But she came out and yelled at us in our fatty circle that the band could see our fatty from the stage. Therefore, it was obviously abuse and flagrant and we needed to just stop. And we were like, well, first off, we were really proud. The band can see our fatty from the stage. Like, yes, awesome. We liked being outrageous. We kind of liked being flagrant. We liked rolling joints, but they were the size of a stage smudge stick or something, you know, like, we really did. So here's Bill Graham Productions and they're all just trying to, like, save this overpopulated scene. The overpopulation was the whole problem. And they're saying, you know, don't come without a ticket. We come anyway. Don't sell stuff. We sell stuff anyway. Don't sell food. We sell food anyway. Don't sell tickets and tapers and what we do it all anyway. And I'm like, so does that make us the ones who ruined the scene? I mean, does it? Arguably, you could go there.

[Jesse Jarno]

You could. But for the most part, the Hog Farm were trying to keep it a deadheady scene.

[Rebecca Adams]

Rebecca Adams and I remember Calico in the area that we would now call Shakedown street in Philly that summer. I remember Calico shouting, circle the wagons. Circle the wagons. We've got to stick together. Circle the wagons. And so everyone was moving their vans and everything and trying to kind of keep some quote unquote local control, meaning deadhead control of what was going on.

[Rich Mahan]

Up drinking on Shake Down Street.

[Rebecca Adams]

There were all these people wandering around the parking lot like tourists who had no tickets and no intention of trying to get tickets. They were just like tourists in the parking lot. And then I guess they just let people in without a ticket because they also had all those vendors who didn't have tickets.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Deadheads were a mobile community with a local culture. It wasn't exactly nice and quiet, but through much of the 70s and 80s it remained mostly self contained. But the Megadet era changed that.

[Rebecca Adams]

There were outside vendors. My students called them corporate vendors. And so instead of it being just Deadheads trying to earn money to get to the next show, there were vendors that were businesses with credit card machines. The old fashioned time you swipe back and forth.

[Jesse Jarno]

In the age of Venmo, it might be hard to imagine, but certainly not all Deadheads operated with bank accounts.

[Rebecca Adams]

And my students, they wrote about it. I remember when I read the notes, that several of them had observed Calico, like basically picking up a credit card machine and smashing it. My memory is there was like this whole circle around this vendor she was taking under control seriously.

[Jesse Jarno]

Don't fuck with Calico, man. That does sound pretty satisfying to Smash, though. We're going to move on from Alpine Valley now and actually jump just a few days backwards from the Alpine 89 shows to July 15, the Dead's debut at another Midwest venue, the Deer Creek Music Center. I had a hard run.

[Rich Mahan]

Running from your window.

[Rebecca Adams]

We were on the bus and. And I had my class with me in the Deadheads in American Subculture video. There's actually a little clip from the parking lot at Deer Creek the summer of the class, because there was this guy on tour, a comedian from Florida named Norm B. And he would walk around with a sign that said deviations from the Norm. But I remember Emily Edwards, the producer of that, filming Norm B doing his crazy song that he was doing all Summer right outside the bus where we were parked. What's kind of amusing about that video clipping is one of my students who was in the class and had paid for hotels and a bus ride and all of that stuff, walks by in that video behind Norm B and just kind of waves at us. Well, he was supposed to be on the bus with us and he was just. He had been missing in action for several nights.

[Eileen Law]

Bury my bones by the big old.

[Jesse Jarno]

Gregory Maturing nature ring nurturing niche Bury.

[Rich Mahan]

My bones by the big old graveyard.

[Eileen Law]

I've got the scratch if you've got a niche Sedentary sediment sediment sediment sediment mint Separate element Sediment impediment but cannot.

[Jesse Jarno]

Make sediment sin We've posted a link to Deadheads in american [e-mail] deadcast grateful ed archivist David Lemieux was on tour that summer too.

[David Lemieux]

We got in the car after rfk. So seven straight shows at stadiums were kind of burnt out from these big cities and big stadiums. And we drive to Indianapolis on a day off and we get in about 10 or 11 at night. And I remember it was classic Midwest July 14 weather. When we got in, it was hot and humid. And I remember the sound of the cicadas or grasshoppers or whatever. They were just that buzz that they make in the air. Next day we left Indianapolis and drove about a half hour, I don't know. And we drove through cornfields, two lane cornfields. And there was no traffic, it felt like. And all of a sudden you just pull into the parking lot with still grass.

[Jesse Jarno]

What they discovered was a fairly standard summer shed, but it was a summer shed in the far off cornfields that felt galaxies away from the gargantuan stadiums that made up the rest of the tour dates. David Vandiver left us some [e-mail] My.

[Scott Bauer]

First show was this 71589 show at Deer Creek. There was an actual creek in the outside. And this was kind of like the border between the parking lot, the lot scene and. And the concert venue. And so people would always kind of hang out at the creek. There would be kind of a certain smell coming from the creek. There were very hot days. The Dead played there in June and July and Indiana. And so people would go chill out by the creek. And I know the local authorities would sometimes the concert venue security would like to move people out of there. But it was always just kind of a big attraction during the whole lot seen during the day to kind of go hang out on the banks of the creek.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was Julie Dock's first Dead show too.

[Eileen Law]

My first Grateful Dead show was Deer Creek, 1989. I remember it so well. I just graduated from Purdue University. Earlier that spring, we loaded up in the car with about 11 of us. I was riding shotgun with my boyfriend, driving, drove two hours down 65 to Deer Creek, took in the parking lot scene, the T shirts, the jewelry, the grilled cheese.

[Scott Bauer]

David Vandiver Being a Deadhead, young Deadhead and kind of learning the ways from some of the older crowd, I bought too much from Shakedown and I took all these like stickers and T shirts and stuff in the bathroom with me. And this nice Deadhead was like, hey man, you know, I'll hold that for you while you go to the bathroom. And of course I thought, he's gonna run off with it. But he clearly didn't and he just kind of showed me the way.

[Jesse Jarno]

Two days after finishing two nights at the 90,000 capacity RFK Stadium in Washington D.C. the 21,000 capacity Deer Creek felt positively intimate.

[David Lemieux]

We had lawn seats because I was taping and we go in early to get set up. And I just remember feeling very peaceful, which I hadn't felt at the stadium shows because there was a lot of concrete and a lot of. And Deer Creek was brand new at the time.

[Jesse Jarno]

Scott Bauer left us this story.

[Rich Mahan]

The Deer Creek show in the summer of 1989 was my second dead show of the year and the second dead show of my life. I was a 17 year old high school kid who saw the Dead in April for the first time in Cincinnati and got turned onto the band thanks to my older brother. Luckily I was able to hit the Deer Creek show only about an hour and a half away from where I lived, along with a family friend who was also about my age. We sat out on the lawn on a beautiful summer day and I was feeling pretty good about myself there at my second Dead show in only a few months when the two old guys in front of me were talking and I heard one of them say this was his 430something dead show. It was then that it kind of sank into me that I really was out of my depth and didn't quite know what I was getting myself into.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's not always the worst feeling, it turns out.

[Scott Bauer]

David Vandiver they started off with Bertha and just kind of the best song, the one I wanted to hear as the kickoff song.

[Jesse Jarno]

I had to move. We had to move. That's why don't you come around here anymore?

[David Lemieux]

David Lemieux it was an excellent show. It was A very good first set. A great Bertha. Greatest story. To open up We Can Run was great. The Bird song was stratospheric. And I just remember the. The venue, the heat, the. The humidity. And I remember the show being exceptionally good. And I had a great view of the band. We were front row of the. Of the lawn, so it was just seats in front of us and we had our taping stuff up. And then right in front of us was a. A delay speaker. And that's what my microphones picked up. So my audience tapes from that show actually sound virtually like soundboard recordings. And I listen to those probably more than any tape I ever made at a Dead show.

[Jesse Jarno]

Mobile Steel left us this story about Deer Creek 89.

[Bill Lemke]

Me and some fraternity brothers, they came down from Chicago.

[Rich Mahan]

They kind of introduced me into the band in college. And I've been seeing some. Some cover bands and into the music, but had not seen the Dead live.

[Bill Lemke]

In person until then.

[Jesse Jarno]

And it was a transformative experience in many ways.

[Rich Mahan]

It was also the first time that.

[Jesse Jarno]

I took a little. Little enhancer.

[Bill Lemke]

So as the day progressed and it was good timing as the show started.

[Rich Mahan]

And it felt like I was on a colorful waterbed.

[Eileen Law]

And.

[Rich Mahan]

Then as it got dark, one of the cooler things that I remember.

[Bill Lemke]

Is a hippie girl with a flowing.

[Jesse Jarno]

Dress in front of me.

[Rich Mahan]

Her friend sprinkled her dress with Glow in the Dark goo. And as she twirled, it lit up like orbs.

[Jesse Jarno]

And it was entrancing Julie Doc.

[Eileen Law]

During intermission, we laid on the blanket on the lawn and watch the clouds formations and describing what we saw.

[David Lemieux]

And then the second set. There are a couple of real clams in that second set, which is interesting because the second set is so well played. A great Foolish Heart.

[Jesse Jarno]

Yeah.

[Rich Mahan]

Look to where the river stand where the river start.

[David Lemieux]

There's a crazy fingers that's just gorgeous. It kind of has a couple. It has a big clam in it. It is what it is. It's 10 seconds of oh. Followed by, you know, 20 minutes of wow. One of the best trucking smokestacks I've heard of from this era. It is relentlessly driving.

[Jesse Jarno]

The summer of 1989 was witnessing the beginning of perhaps the Dead's last major transformation in the crowd that night. And playing a supporting role was Phil Garfinkel, who we spoke with earlier this episode about seeing the Dead's first Alpine Valley show in 1980. Phil is what we call a musicer, a serious fan who followed his ear into jobs in radio live sound engineering and in the 1980s, getting under the hood of the gear. A true Dead freak.

[Phil Garfinkel]

I started working at this music store, and I became a Modulus dealer. And I talked to Jeff Gould frequently. Just. We developed a friendship.

[Jesse Jarno]

We spoke with Jeff Gould a bit in our Ship of Fools episode about how the Winterland 74 shows inspired him down a path to what became Modulus, building guitars and basses with graphite necks favored by Bobby Weir and Phil Lesh, among others.

[Phil Garfinkel]

In 1986, I came out to New Year shows at. At the Kaiser and was visiting the Modulus factory headquarters, whatever you want to call it. And there is this pink guitar there with a graphite neck. I'd gotten pretty good at installing pickups and soldering. And Jeff said, if you can wire Bobby's guitar in 30 minutes, I'll give you tickets for tonight. Mike, you're on. I did it. So I guess y' all can blame me for the pink guitar.

[Jesse Jarno]

From then on, Phil Garfinkel was part of the extended family of serious music heads floating in orbit around the Dead. He worked on wireless guitar setups for Weir, which got the band firmly into the 1980s. But it was one of his guitars that brought the Dead even further into the future.

[Phil Garfinkel]

In 1988, Jeff called me and he said, garcia never liked the graphite neck. He never liked it for whatever reason. And he said, garcia wants to see some Strats. Will you take some Strats down to Alpine Valley? This is June of 88. And I said, sure.

[Jesse Jarno]

Sorry. We somehow ended up back at Alpine Valley for a second. It'll probably happen again.

[Phil Garfinkel]

I brought some really nice, like, 1962 reissue strats, whatever. He picked this black American Standard with a maple neck. And I was like, all right. They gave me cash. I gave him a receipt, and I saw a couple of shows and went home.

[Jesse Jarno]

In the spring, when the Dead returned to the Midwest, Phil caught a bunch of shows and wound up backstage in Cincinnati.

[Phil Garfinkel]

We got there, and Parrish called me backstage and said, hey, Garcia wants to talk to you. I'm like, okay. And he was sitting there noodling on that Strat. And I didn't think anything about it. Nothing. It's just, you know, we talked to you. Hey, man, how you doing? Hey, man, how you doing? See you like the guitar, you know, that kind of thing.

[Jesse Jarno]

But it was sometime in that week that the guitar transitioned from being a standard black American Stratocaster to being a tricked out by the Dead Standard black American Stratocaster. When someone on the band's Crew perhaps Dan Healy installed MIDI pickups into it. Garcia began to use it during space segments a week later in Bloomington. With access to an infinite tone palette. We'll head now back into space from Deer Creek. Phil has a pretty decent guess as to why the Strat became Garcia's first midified guitar.

[Phil Garfinkel]

Wolf, Tiger, Rosebud, Top Hat, Lightning Bolt. These are not cheap guitars and they weren't given to him. He bought them. Right? You have a substantial investment back then. An American Standard strat cost about $600. So if you're going to experiment, buy something cheap that you like the feel of. Put the pickup on that, see if it works before you start gouging the wood to install a pickup and futzing with the electronics and all of that.

[Jesse Jarno]

And in fact, by July 12, Garcia's Wolf guitar made its first on stage appearance since 1979. Wired with Midi, the band's new futuristic tools clearly imprinted on Jerry Garcia's already very science fiction coded brain. Julie Doc I remember space very distinctly.

[Eileen Law]

Because they had Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And the lights and background, it was just intense.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was something of a bust out. The band played with the Close Encounters theme around the time the movie came out in 1977. Check out Dave's picks 23 from 1-22-78. And it popped up occasionally afterwards, though rarely. It was a clear signal that the dead were back in space. It's not totally clear which MIDI guitar Garcia played during space at Deer Creek. He played Wolf earlier that week in Washington D.C. there are no circulating videos of the space segment from Deer Creek.

[Phil Garfinkel]

It's a super psychedelic post drums space. They do the Close Encounters theme. Garcia's playing a MIDI thing, but I couldn't see the stage. So I, you know. But I could tell that Garcia was doing something with Mitty. Didn't think about it. A couple nights later I'm sitting in the seats at Alpine Valley and Garcia walks on stage for the space carrying that black guitar with the. With they'd put a MIDI pickup on it.

[Rich Mahan]

Wow.

[Phil Garfinkel]

I'm still speechless to this day. It's like, holy shit. I sold Jerry Garcia a guitar and he's playing it on stage.

[Jesse Jarno]

Sure enough though, there it is in the Downhill from Here video. I'm not sure how many times the Strat appeared after that. And MIDI soon came to Tiger, Garcia's main axe. Maybe he just wanted to make sure Phil saw it. The introduction of MIDI both changed the complexion of the band's sound and led to what became their final album of original music 1991's Infrared Roses we've linked to our Deadcast episode about [e-mail] deadcast it's after the Close Encounters quote that the space at Deer Creek really gets weird, becoming something like a digital rhythm. Devils after Space Garcia keeps playing the black Midi Stratocaster as they move into Chinadoll, and he takes his first solo on virtual trumpet.

[Eileen Law]

Julie Doc they played Truckin and Sugar Magnolia, two of my most favorite favorite Dead songs. And we wound our way through the crowd just hugging people left and right, dancing to the beat of the music and the drums, and it was just. It was the most fabulous experience I ever had in my life.

[David Lemieux]

The Sugar Magnolia at the end of when Weir sings Take Me On, I wander around at the end before Sunshine Daydream, Brent does this big keyboard flourish and I just remember hearing that blast through the speakers and it just. My friends and I looked at each other, just high fived. It was like, yeah, this is what we're here for.

[Jesse Jarno]

For good reason. Deer Creek quickly became beloved by Midwestern Deadheads. David Vandiver One of the other things.

[Scott Bauer]

That was so wonderful about being a Hoosier Deadhead was that the Dead were coming to the small Deer Creek amphitheater, and we'd see them and be able to experience it, whether in the pavilion or out on the lawn. And then this is the same time when they were just packing stadiums. And so you go see them at a smaller venue like Deer Creek and then maybe go over to Buckeye Lake, but then go up to Soldier Field and see two or three nights in just where they'd fill out Soldier Field, which was amazing.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead return to Deer Creek every summer from 1990 through 1995, playing two or three night runs.

[Scott Bauer]

I think I did every Dead show that came to Deer Creek, and I always feel like I brought a different friend with me to kind of bring, you know, show them the ropes, get them experience and see what a Dead show was, was really like and having them experience it. And I remember going with friends like Tony and, you know, Morlock and. And I just remember I. I got to know this guy who had a dog named Gumby. And Gumby had been to like, I don't know, 40 some dead shows. And I always thought to myself, this was like my third or my fourth after a couple years, and I was like, I'm, you know, the 8th, whatever. But I was never going to reach Gumby's level of the number of shows seen. I think I ended up close to there by the end by 95, but I think Gumby still got me beat.

[Jesse Jarno]

The Dead's 1995 show at Deer Creek played heavily into what was called at the time the Tour from Hell, which included a campground porch collapse, Deadheads hit by lightning, massive overcrowding on Shakedown street, and Jerry Garcia's visibly worsening health, along with a massive gate crash on the first of two scheduled nights at Deer Creek, causing the band to cancel the second show a week later. On July 9, 1995, the band played what would be the final Grateful Ed show a month before Jerry Garcia's death.

[Rich Mahan]

Just a box of rain or a ribbon for your hair Such a long.

[Jesse Jarno]

Long time to be gone and a.

[Rich Mahan]

Short time to be there.

[Jesse Jarno]

But let's head back to the proverbial parking lot for one last thought from David Lemieux before we steer the Dead cast bus back onto the highway home.

[David Lemieux]

One nice thing about getting out of the show and being stuck in these parking lots for an hour or more as a taper, I could listen to tonight's show as I was stuck in parking, and it was the best because I'd be cranking it with my lady friend and we'd be listening to the Dead, and people would be walking by saying, hey, is that tonight's show? And we'd be crawling and people would just like get around the car and hover around it. Listening to tonight's show. My tapes weren't great, but they were good enough that you could hear what was going on, which is kind of.

[Jesse Jarno]

What we've been doing this season of the Dead cast swarming gently around David Lemieux's car and checking out the jams. But David Lemieux is a Deadhead, and Deadheads like sharing.

[David Lemieux]

I was very impatient, and I didn't want to get home from the tour and then set up a tape trade and then three weeks, a month later, finally get the tapes of the show. I said I really wanted to not only have the tapes to listen to right then, right after, but I wanted to also share them with people. That was something I really loved is I often traveled with two tape decks, and in hotels I'd be making coffee copies to give to somebody the next day or as soon as I got home from tour. I was making copies of making copies of those tapes, so many of them.

[Jesse Jarno]

And that's enjoying the ride. In a nutshell. A month on the road with the Grateful Dead, sharing tapes across 10 states and 17 years and too many miles to counter.

[Eileen Law]

Come and go, night over.

[Rich Mahan]

Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. Friends, we've enjoyed having you along for the ride through season 11. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode David Lemieux, Jay Curley, Holly Rose, Rebecca Adams, Bill Lemke, Phil Garfinkle, Jim Jones, Tom Ryan, Art Moss, Lisa Hitchcock, David Vandiver, Scott Bauer, Julie Dock and Mobile Steel. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for his ongoing contributions from his extensive interview archive. See you next season. Executive producer for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux, Brian Dodd and Doran Tyson. All rights reserve.