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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.
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Foreign.
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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 as we dive into the making of Jerry Garcia's first solo album. Garcia Very fitting considering we're dropping this episode in the days between a time that we like to celebrate Jerry and the music that he gave us all. In this episode we will hear from Bob Matthews, Steve Silberman, Robert Hunter, Joe Jupiel, and of course the man himself, Jerry Garcia. Friends, this is the final episode of season three of the good old Grateful Dead cast and we sure do appreciate all of you who have tuned in to listen and share this journey with us. Don't forget to visit us at our website dead.netdeadcast where you can find all of our past episodes including the complete seasons one and two, as well as the five part Skull and Roses series from season three and all the great bonus episodes we release too. There are also extra materials for you to peruse for each episode, including photos, links and videos. You just gotta poke around. You can link from dead.netdeadcast to your favorite podcasting platform. Please give us a hand. Subscribe Hit that like button. Share it with a friend. Leave us a review. We appreciate it. It really helps. Thank you. Did you hear about the new St. Louis box set that was just announced? It's a 20 CD extravaganza that explores the Dead's 1971, 72 and 73 shows in that fair city and these performances are sure to clang that bell on your trolley. Listen to the River St. Louis 7172. 73 is coming October 1st and you can find out all about it and Pre order@dead.net well, Garcia was recorded 50 years ago at Wally Heiders, the same San Francisco studio where the Grateful Dead cut American Beauty. David Crosby recorded if I Could Only Remember My Name Crosby, Stills Nash and young cut Deja Vu. Brewer and Shipley made Tarkio, and and Graham Nash recorded his solo debut there, too. Songs for Beginners. And Jerry Garcia played on all of these. The amount of material Jerry recorded during the early 70s at this famed studio boggles the mind. And what's more, he played everything on his first solo album, Garcia save the drums, which were deftly handled by none other than Bill Kreutzman. You want to hear all about it? You came to the right place. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesse Jarno.
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Imagine that it's 50 years ago this summer, July of 1971, and you're a musician or a close personal friend thereof, and you're wandering the halls of Wally Heider's studio at the corner of Hyde and Turk in San Francisco, looking for something to do, somewhere to jam, maybe something to smoke. And you find yourself in front of Studio D, up on the second floor. Engineer Bob Matthews has a vested interest in making sure you don't turn the knob and has come up with what turns out to be a flawless deterrent to keep randos from swinging through.
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I put a sign out on the studio door that said closed session. Anita Bryant.
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Oh, come along with me to my little corner of the world.
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By 1971, Anita Bryant was known for being pro citrus in her role as spokesperson for the orange industry. And that's cool, but also for her virulent conservative stances and public homophobia. Whatever a musician's position on citrus, no bueno.
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We didn't want people dropping in and saying hello. We wanted, you know, we wanted really to get work done. We were keeping this really quiet. This was Jerry's first solo record that.
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Was one of the most enjoyable and I figure creative projects in my career. Artists used to have what they would call a masterpiece, and in my recording career, Live Dead to me is the best I did. But Jerry's first solo record was something really amazing.
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Jerry Garcia and a small group of his closest collaborators checked into Studio D for a week of basic tracks on July 2, 1971. The Grateful Dead had played their final show at the Fillmore west, which we heard about in the last episode of our Skull and Roses series. Over the July 4th weekend, Garcia had two gigs with Merle Saunders at the New Monk in Berkeley, and on Monday, July 5, entered Wally Heider's San Francisco studio, in which he recorded, overdubbed and mixed his solo debut during a month of ultra productive overdrive to talk about one of the great undersung studio albums in the entire Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead multiverse Please hoist your freak flags. And welcome back our friend, Steve Silberman.
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Well, it came out around the time that I was just getting into the Grateful Dead. So I got into the Grateful Dead through a somewhat unusual path. I really got into them through David Crosby's if I Could Only Remember My Name, which will be coming out again in the fall with bonus tracks and new liner notes by me. And so I just started to pick up all the albums that I could, and Garcia was certainly one of them. And it was also. I was drawn to it because the COVID art was so fricking weird. You know, it looked like there. You know, not only was there some nerdy gear and maybe equipment, you know, amplifier thingy, I don't know, but it also looked, even though it was an arm and a hand, it looked kind of sexual, like there was some weird. You know, there was definitely the good kind of weirdness in the COVID art once I heard it. I mean, not just the songwriting, but the timbres of the instruments really appealed to me. And that was all Jerry. You know, Jerry was playing. You know, I mean, Billy was certainly, you know, prime collaborator, and the drums on that album are amazing. But every other sound on that record was made by Jerry Garcia. It's incredible how offhanded and casual that session was. And I really wish there had been more, much more even, of Jerry's building an entire idiosyncratic sound world of his own with hardly anybody else contributing. Like, sure, Jerry was a master collaborator, a master of what he called the instruments, talk to each other, et cetera. But he was great alone. And I love that it was this kind of completely idiosyncratic and deeply weird. And it gets weirder. On the second side of the lp, it was just Bob and Betty who were engineering the album, Ramrod who is guarding the door, and Robert Hunter, who is up against the wall furiously writing lyrics as Jerry and Billy jammed together.
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The half dozen new songs that Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter contributed to the album were instant classics in their songbook deal. Sugary Birdsong, Loser To Lay Me down and the Wheel. For Hunter, it fit right into the vibe of the other classic albums of the Dead were producing. As he remembered, on WLIR in 1978.
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Were it not a Garcia solo album, it would fit in right with that Working Man's Dead, American beauty and Europe 72 feel of songs. This would be even fortunate. But I guess it's not fair to add that to it, since this is so. But this has got a lot of the things that have that same sort of feeling that the American Beauty songs have. The Sugary and Loser, especially in Deal.
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Since it cost a lot to win and even more to lose. You and Me by the Spence of Time.
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For his solo debut, Jerry Garcia assembled an even tighter squad than usual. On drums was dead comrade Bill Kreutzman, but Garcia played all the other instruments himself. Bass, keyboards, organ, piano and pedal steel. Robert Hunter was there to contribute lyrics and as we'll hear, general weirdness. Plus engineers Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor, along with Ramrod, the roadie guarding the door. Who is Garcia hiding from? To answer that question, we have Joe Jupiel, one of the scholarly forces behind Jerrybase.com, which powers much of this podcast's deepest data.
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The list of San Francisco Sessions in 19 I started in 1969, 70, 71, and I think I have 72, comes from the archives of the American Federation of musicians local number six, which was down on. I think it was on 6th street, just off market in San Francisco. And this is a beautiful thing about advanced capitalism for research purposes, is that it generates lots of pro forma paperwork that we can study and which is very routinized, and so it's systematic. Every session supposed to have paperwork filed with the union, all of the players, their locals listed. So if you're coming up from la, you're in a different local. If you're from in town, you're the local six or whatever it is. And the rate. So is somebody getting double, double time if they're the session leader and on and on, the record company that's financing the session, the material, and then there are various tape references and there's other information. So. So all of this stuff theoretically was filed at that point. The archives were still just in a filing cabinet in the basement. In 2012, when I went, I was able to scan just about everything and then come back and then just make a data set. And I didn't scan everything that was in there. I scanned everything that was adjacent to the Garcia verse, as I. As I call it. So basically, anybody that Jerry had played with, anybody else that interested me from the San Francisco scene, it is astonishing how productive and busy Jerry was. And we know this, if you just look at his album credits, that this period is fertile beyond imagination. I mean, he was on dozens and dozens of records credited and probably as many more uncredited, and everybody was around.
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So when we use these union archives to look at San Francisco session dates from 1971, we see a remarkable degree of cross fertilization between all Kinds of artists going beyond the sort of conventional understanding of what the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra involved with the Grateful Dead, the Jeffersons, Crosby and so forth. Brewer and Shipley were recording at Heiders in July of 71. And there are six overlapping dates. So of the 10 when Jerry played, Jerry was in that studio. Brewer and Shipley were also in the house. And two of those also feature John Kahn on bass and Spencer Dryden on drums. Danny Cox was in the building. I find three overlapping dates between Danny Cox in one studio and Garcia in another. And Cox, of course, was using as session men Merle Saunders, John Kahn and Bill Vitt, who were precisely the band that Jerry was playing with all over the Bay area. Of the 10 known dates that Jerry is in the studio at Heiders In July of 1971, seven of them also find in that building someone with whom Jerry had played live or would play live. And the others, Brewer and Shipley, are merely people for whom Jerry had recorded and had gotten some recording credits. So it's a remarkable system of, you know, overlapping musicians that we find at Heiders in July of 1971.
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Bob Matthews had very good reasons to keep things quiet. Nearly all of Jerry Garcia's closest side collaborators, Merle Saunders, John Kahn, Bill Vitt and Spencer Dryden, might be found in the same building. Jerry Garcia was a nearly inescapable presence at Wally Hyder's in 1970 and 1971, contributing to albums by everybody seemingly just short of Anita Bryant, superstars and pals who'd surely be happy to return the favor if asked. But that wasn't the point. This was the exact opposite of a record by the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra. The informal coalition of musicians from the dead. Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young and beyond. This time they were on a budget.
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From Jerry's mouth. From an underground newspaper, probably published in Newcastle on Tyne, where they played the following year. The underground newspaper is called Mother Grumble. And this was published in May 1972. This is Jerry on that album and why he did it. And it's hilarious and very enlightening. The solo album is just me being a band, really. I played all the instruments and so forth, and it's. I can't really say what it is. You'd have to tell me what it was like, because for me, it was fun. It was fun and really easy. I didn't go through a lot of changes about it. And I spent maybe three weeks at it, which Bob Matthews confirms that the whole thing, from start to finish, Took three weeks at Heiders and it was very easy and fun. I wouldn't describe it as being serious, for example. I think the result is pretty good for how much time and work I put into it, which wasn't really a great deal. It flowed very nicely. I thought that being able to approach it on that level of me being the only performer made it really, really easy in terms of getting a good sound on each instrument and getting the kind of flow I like to hear happening on various levels. And also it was interesting because I wasn't relating to it on the basis of being a guitarist. So it wasn't like ego involved with certain parts of the music. Since the whole thing was me. It made it possible for me to have sort of a central view. And I learned a lot from making that record, which was part of my intention. I'm not going to follow it up with a career or anything like that. Also, one of the prime reasons for doing that was that I borrowed a lot of money for the record company in order to buy a house out in California. And I had no way, of course, to pay it back except to make a record. That's why the record is Wheel and.
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Deal Goes to show you don't ever know Watch each car you play and they slow Wait till that deal come round don't you let that deal go down no, no.
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For the previous two years, starting in early 1969, Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter had cohabitated along with their partners in Larkspur and then in Nevada. But then Mountain Girl found an incredible spot overlooking the ocean and Stinson beach. And they decided it was time to buy because it was my house. Garcia told the British magazine rock in 1972. I thought it should be my record. I wouldn't have felt right about it if it had been a grateful lead record. To pay for my house. It was sort of an extracurricular activity. And also Ramrod, who's our main equipment guy, and Kreuzmann worked with me on the record. So I gave them each a percentage of it. So they had the ability to buy their own place, buy some land or something. In fact, Ramrod would receive a co production credit on the album and equal pay with Kreutzman and the other contributors. There was a lot of spontaneous creation afoot. But Garcia also arrived with some potent pieces of music in various states of completion. Loser and Deal had both been written during the period when the gang lived in Nevada. Here's Robert Hunter speaking about it with Blair Jackson in 2004 from a bonus feature on the Jerry Garcia Band live at Shoreline DVD.
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A Deal and Loser were both written about 7 o' clock one morning when we were all living in Nevada. I was just up back in those days, up chipper and feeling wonderful, and I just dashed those two songs off.
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That's a pretty productive morning already. A pair of lyrics connected by card games and as it turns out, written in one burst.
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Then the Garcia got up a little bit later, he was reading the newspaper at the breakfast table and I laid these two lyrics on right then off I went to town to do my business and everything like that. He generally showed a great deal of resistance to lyrics, but once he liked one and set his mind on, he could get right through it. And I got back a couple hours later, he had both of them set.
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Baby or you let my dear go down Go down.
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Lots of choruses about deals going down.
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Don't you let that deal go down don't you let that deal go down.
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Which puts both of these songs right in the Garcia Hunter tradition of updating old folk memes, here's Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers from 1925. Garcia and Hunter probably first picked it up from the New Lost City Ramblers a few decades after that version. Deal made its Grateful dead debut on February 19, 1971, at the Capitol Theater, a run of shows we delved into extensively during our episode about side A of Skull and Roses. This version was released on three from the Vault.
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If I told you all it went down would burn off your head.
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Apparently Jerry Garcia and Merle Saunders were playing Deal in their Bar band in early 1971 on the recently rediscovered recording of May 21st of that year, released as Garcia Live Volume 15. The band performed the song, but the tape was too fragmentary to release. For Hunter, Deal and Loser were truly entwined, two songs with cosmic stakes, their lyrics melding together as he described deal on WLIR in 1978.
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I think that's probably less reflections on what it's like being in the. In the rock and roll business or the music business. It costs a lot to win, but it costs even more to lose. And all I'm asking you for is one gold dollar that I can pay you back with one good hand.
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Loser appeared for the first time in those same Capitol Theater shows and had also been in play a month or so before during the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra sessions. This is Garcia teaching the song to David Freiberg.
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Now that that part, the second phrase in it is, is slow. It's just half the changes. That's okay.
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It's perfectly cool.
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The other one fits. Actually, it ends up in the same place.
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Opening and closing the first side of Garcia's solo debut, the songs are thematically related. Cosmic card games revealing the fates of the universe in an unfolding poker hand. This is from an alternate stripped down version on the All Good Things box set.
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Don't you push me baby cause I'm on in low I know a little something you won't never know don't you touch heart liquor Just a cup of cold coffee Gonna get up in the morning and go.
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Jerry Garcia dug the way the lyric could roll in different directions. He told Blair Jackson in 1988 Sometimes I sing that song Loser and it's a self congratulatory asshole. Sometimes it's an idiot. The lyrics have the guy an idiot, but the idiot's version of himself is, hey, I'm great. I can ride that either way. And there's lots of shading in between where it's both those things at the same time. I love it when a song is ambiguous like that.
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On Inside Straight. Well, I've got no chance of losing this time well I've got no chance of losing this time well I've got no chance of losing this.
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For Hunter, there were deeper themes running below even the best drawn hands. This is from a 1988 interview with David Ganz. Incredible. Thanks to David for this. Hunter said, I'm coming from somewhere. I'm a bit of an alarmist. I'm one of the vanguard of the first to react to a perceived social malaise. I pick up on these things very quickly. It's my talent to see things and to address them and to kind of generalize them and to get down on it and to write a hopefully an amusing song that may illustrate something without maybe coming right out and saying it. I mean, there are songs that just come right out and say it, like Loser or something or Deal, that just come right out with that line, say this is the way it is. Or the wheel. There was a point, I think, really high on that Garcia album when all those songs occur, where the message was being laid out in no uncertain terms. I tend to do that, I think, a wee bit less these days and go more for the illustration without the proverb. In 1991, Garcia described deal and Loser to Blair Jackson as frontier music. It's the frontier where the laws are falling apart and every person is the sheriff and the outlaw. Diehl made the jump into the Jerry Garcia band when that group was revived in 1979, around the time the song grew an extended outro that sometimes veered from solo into jam. It was played constantly with both groups through 1995, counting both bands. It was by far Jerry Garcia's most performed song, 727 times, according to Jerrybase.com, even more times than the Dead played Me and My Uncle. Here's what it sounded like at Madison Square Garden on November 15, 1991, from the Great recent Jerry Garcia Band archival Release, Garcia Live, Volume 16.
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Sam.
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Sugaree fit into the wheeling and dealing mode as well, somewhere on the far side of the turning ethical wheel. This is from an early alternate take of the song included on the expanded Garcia release.
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When they come to take you down, when they bring that wagon around when they come to call on you.
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And.
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Drag your poor body down Just one thing I ask of you.
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Here's Robert Hunter describing its origins in 1978 on WLIR when I was being.
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A criminal Back many years ago a friend of mine always used to say, can you believe he'd say okay, hold your mud and don't mention my name. And that was the genesis of Just don't tell them you know me. It was kind of that criminal consciousness, the ethic that when you get busty when they come to take you down hold your mud and don't mention my.
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Name Just one thing I ask of you Just one thing for me Please forget you, you knew my name My daughter Sugary Shake it, shake it sugary Just don't tell him that you know.
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Me Like Deal, Sugary has a seemingly obvious lineage in folk music.
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Have a little song, won't take long sing it right once or twice oh lottie me, didn't I shake Sugary Everything I got is done in palm Everything I got is done in palm.
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That was the legendary guitarist Elizabeth Cotton with her song shake sugary from 1967. Not a traditional tune, but an original by her with vocals sung by her 12 year old great granddaughter Brenda Evans. It's one of my all time favorite performances by any artist. Yet Robert Hunter insists that Elizabeth Cotton Sugary wasn't actually an influence on his lyrics, at least at first. In the liner notes to the All Good Things box set Hunter wrote, sugary was written soon after I moved from the Garcia household to China camp. People assumed the idea was cadged from Elizabeth Cotton's Sugaree, but in fact the song was originally titled Stingaree, which is a poisonous South Sea manta. Why change the title to Sugaree? Just thought it sounded better that way, made the addressee seem more hard bitten to bear a sugar coated name. The song, as I imagine it is addressed to a pimp. And yes, I knew Libba's song and did indeed borrow the new name from her, suggested by the shake it refrain. As Joe Jupiel points out, like Deal, Sugar E was a song that crossed into the Jerry Garcia solo repertoire later in the 70s.
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These are Jerry songs, and they're Jerry songs wherever Jerry goes. Well, you know, he played Deal once he started playing deal in 79 in the Jerry band. He kept playing it. Sugar EE disappeared after a while in the Jerry Band. I want to say about 82 or couldn't even, you know, could have been a little bit later, but in the in the first half of the 80s. But these are Jerry songs and he'd play them with the Dead and he'd play them with the Jerry Band. There aren't very many songs that have that. That character Friend of the Devil was one, although again, eventually he sorted these things into one band or the other. But Deal and Sugary are two songs that, you know, show a little bit of overlap. So. So this is obviously stone cold classic Garcia Hunter music.
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Sugary was built to have long rambles between the verses, and I can say with absolute certainty that there are people listening to this podcast who have dearly beloved and totally sick versions of sugar ri to recommend from every single year between 1971 and 1995, and probably some versions from post Garcia bands. If you're looking to go deeper, though, my scorching hot take is that spring 77 rules with two drummers, the song stretched out a framework for everybody to color the jam and built a cool double time section. Plus, it was Keith Godshaw's last tour with an acoustic grand piano. Here's a bit of May 22, 1977, from our friend Rick's favorite venue, the Sportatorium in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Released on Dick's Picks 3. Listen to how it became an elastic roof for Garcia, Weir, Godcho and Lesh to all find their own spaces as the jam builds.
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Sam.
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The album also had two deeply aching Garcia Hunter songs. Neither stayed in the repertoire full time from 1971 all the way until 1995, but both emerged for powerful performances into the Dead's last years. On side one was Birdsong.
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All I know is something like a bird within her saying All I know she sang a little while and then through the wall Tell me all that you know I'll show you snow and rain.
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Nope, sorry, no Idea who the woman is screaming underneath Garcia's voice. I assume it's a subliminal David lynch like preview of the collage, like musique concret approach they take on the album Second Side. In 1991, Garcia told Blair Jackson about Birdsong. To me, it's like another fiddle tune. It isn't that different to me than a lot of other things. And it's got a bridge which is very much like the chorus of He's Gone. It's very similar.
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Sleep in the stars don't you cry Dry your eyes open.
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So beautiful, so beautiful. I mean, not only I really appreciate the version on Garcia because it's very stripped down. It's almost like it's kind of like the brutalist version of Birdsong. Like you. You know what I mean? Like, it's kind of crunchy in a way.
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I do. Robert Hunter would make the song's genesis clear in his lyric book A Box of Rain, but he described it on WLIR in 1978, maybe for the first time publicly.
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Birdsong we wrote for Janis Joplin, which is not commonly known.
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Janis Joplin had been Garcia and Hunter's close neighbor in Larkspur. We explored just how close in our Cumberland Blues episode last year, a quick walk through the woods, more or less and more importantly, a close friend. Her death in October 1970 was a deep blow to the San Francisco music community. Robert Hunter told Blair Jackson in 1991 about birdsong. It's what we both had in mind for that song from the beginning. In the 2004 liner notes, Robert Hunter wrote, the Birdsong image came from a beautiful collage someone had constructed and hung on the wall when I was a waiter at St. Michael's Alley on University Avenue in Palo Alto, a year or two before the transition from folk and bluegrass into Rock, maybe 1963. The collage had a picture of a bird and a quote. All I know is something in me sang. That in me sings no more. I don't know whose quote that is, but it stuck with me over the years and finally found its expression in Birdsong. It was by the poet Edna St. Vincent Millais. Hunter got it mostly right, though. The original is lovely, too. They're the last lines of Sonnet 42, sometimes known as what lips my lips have kissed. Here they are read more recently by Francis Sternhagen.
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I do not know what loves have come and gone. I only know that summer sang in.
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Me a little while that in me sings no more. Thanks to the beatnik who posted that at the coffee shop and slapped a bird on it. An early version of Birdsong shows up on a Soundcheck recording of David and the Dorks at The Matrix in December 1970. Garcia with Lesh Kreutzman and David Crosby Birdsong appeared in the Grateful Dead's repertoire at the Capitol Theater in February 1971, along with Deal, Loser, Wharf Rat, Greatest Story Ever Told and other new Dead originals. It was all material perhaps originally intended for the live album that became Skull and Roses. Birdsong went through a number of arrangements across the first part of 1971, clearly not yet ready for primetime, before arriving at the version that they recorded for the album. Birdsong had a habit of disappearing and coming back with a different feel over the years, like a seasonal migration of sorts. After disappearing in August 71, it returned in July 72 with what many consider to be its most classic arrangement by the one drummer quintet Dead, featuring the brief moment when it seems like the song is about to end, but instead bursts to an even higher place. Here's part of the version from August 27, 1972, in Veneta, Oregon, released as Sunshine Daydream. But in 1980, Birdsong came back during the band's acoustic sets, dropping from the key of E to the key of D and sounding jewel like as on the version From Reckoning, recorded October 14, 1980, at the Warfield in San Francisco and played electric once again. It really took flight. Deadcast pal Christian Krumlish once told me that Birdsong is where Darkstar was hiding out in the 80s, which I think you can hear right out of the gate in the first electric version in over a half decade at the Fox theater in Atlanta, November 30, 1980. What's up? Fox's Dan Heads, released on Dave's Picks 8.
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F
Later, of course, it became this such a lyrical venue for exploration by the whole band, and some of the best collective dialogues they ever had were on Birdsong. And it was used, you know, strategically, sometimes near the end of the first set or whatever, to really invite the muse for the second set. Jamming later.
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C
If you go looking for Bird songs, there are many beautiful specimens, as I said, extending into the 90s, but we'll leave off with those. And none was quite like the version recorded in Studio d at Wally Heider's in summer 1971.
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F
The end of the studio track of Birdsong is kind of interesting because it's almost as if Jerry is like looking for a way out, you know, out of the tune, you know, so it's sort of it's like a. It's like a, you know, a black hole, like, collapsing in on itself slowly. It's beautiful.
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C
Alright, that covers the songs on side A of Jerry Garcia's solo debut. Now fix yourself a totally legal refreshment, dim the lights, fluff your bean bag, adjust your planetarium star projector, and flip the record. That track is called Late for Supper, and it begins a nearly uninterrupted album side that flows between deepest electronic weirdness and a pair of Garcia and Hunter's most beautiful songs. There are some recordings on the expanded version of the album that shine a bit of light on what's happening.
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J
I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna count two. I'm gonna count two bars, and then on the one, play a big crash and let it hang for as long as you hear the piano hanging. And then we'll just start with something. I'll just play a chord or something. Something will happen. I'll place it. I'll do some weirdness. It'll be weirdness, weirdness, weirdness. Okay, we're rolling.
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G
Are we rolling?
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J
Yes, we're rolling. Okay.
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For most of the pieces on the side, Garcia and Kreutzman began with a loose instrumental, then started in with the overdubs. On the expanded version of the album, there's a scratch track called Dealin from the Bottom, where it seems like Garcia's leaving space to pile on pedal steel or the whatnot. More likely the whatnot. Sam, all the instrumental tracks have pretty righteous names.
- [43:34]
F
Can we talk about Spider God? Because it is nothing. It is like nothing else in the Grateful Dead oeuvre. Exactly. I mean, you know, obviously space, you know, would get to places and, you know, Mickey would be sampling the gyuto monks in space or whatever. But my God, I mean, what I think of. And this is purely projection, you know, Deadheads constantly say, oh, well, what I heard in that jam was, blah, blah, blah, you know, and this is. So this is my projection. I hear a childhood spent listening to the radio. And so these ghostly radio voices are floating in and out of this extremely cosmic, psychedelic space. And the song sounds haunted to me. Like it's not just, like, good vibes or not even just weird. Like it's kind of. It's dark in that way that Garcia loved. Like in horror films and Frankenstein and whatnot. I mean, Jesus, like, I'd love to know where Spider God came from. And I know that, you know, Jerry was a science fiction fan, so that's probably where that word came from.
- [44:46]
C
Hunter described some of the music on side I was allowed into the process by playing notes of the scale on trumpet, running on parallel tracks so Jerry could fade in the notes. He wanted to make a melody line. I recorded the ominous newscaster voice from the radio on a handheld ultra low fidelity cassette machine. Bits of the political context of the time. When all the submixes were done, Jerry played piano over the audio collage.
- [45:13]
B
It.
- [45:44]
C
The instrumental centerpiece of side B has one of my favorite Eep Hour. It might seem like another spontaneous composition at first, but its name contains a small clue about its origins. Garcia was toying with it at the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra sessions in January.
- [46:00]
F
They tried to do epauer with Jack Cassidy and probably David Crosby or maybe Paul Kantner, and it's okay. But what you notice about that version of E. Bauer, which is called Rounds on many circulating parotapes, is that it really does sound like Bach. And why would there be a reference to Bach in a song by Jerry Garcia? Well, you look at the name E. Bauer and it's a reference to E. Power Biggs, who sort of popularized Bach for Acid Heads with his Takata and Fugue organ recordings. And plus he had the best name ever, you know, E. Power Biggs. My God.
- [47:45]
C
E. Power Biggs is in fact an awesome name, and I'm just thankful he decided to be a classical organist instead of a military industrial surrealist supervillain. On the expanded version of the album, there's a guitar demo titled Study for Eep Hour that makes the connection even more audible. I also love Bill Kreutzman's drumming here. I also love the way the guitar and piano enter at the end of E Power to create a bridge into the next piece of music.
- [48:51]
B
Sam To Lay Me Down Once more To Lay Me down.
- [49:35]
C
Written during the run up to American Beauty the previous summer. We covered To Lay Me down pretty extensively during our American Beauty season, so we'll refer you back there for the discussion of the song's lyrics. But the music for To Lay Me down had in a small way turned the key that unlocked the second side of this album. As with much of the album side, it was built around Garcia's piano playing. He discussed it in a 1981 interview with David Ganz and Blair Jackson. Thanks, guys.
- [50:03]
J
About the time I did my first solo album, I started writing that group of songs there. I started writing using the keyboard.
- [50:12]
C
To Lay me down.
- [50:13]
J
Yeah, to lay me down Some keyboards. That's probably my first keyboard song. I mean, a lot of times I Have to figure out what I'm doing. But in a way that's liberating, you know, because I would think it would be confining. No, no, it's not. It's not. It puts you in the situation of seeing relationships in a kind of a fresh way. Since I don't spend a lot of time looking at a keyboard to get into the keyboard, I only started to do that relatively recently. I sit down with a piano and sing. That's what I do. Usually if I'm working off of lyrics that are already there, then what I'll do is play a chord or play a couple of chords and just let them ring and see what saying the lyrics does. And starting from. Sometimes I like to just start from what rhythmically the phrasing suggests to me or the meter suggests, and then I go from there.
- [51:02]
C
The final song on Jerry Garcia's solo debut is a piano tune. And in some ways the album's most beautifully frozen moment.
- [51:10]
J
That's one of those songs that happened in the studio as a complete accident, really.
- [51:14]
C
It's one of Bob Matthews favorite stories of all time. So we'll let him tell it.
- [51:18]
E
Jerry did the tracks just with Billy. Some he did guitar and some he did the piano. And it was, you know, we were starting the evening session. Betty and I were out setting up the mics around Billy's drums and hanging, you know, packing blankets because the piano was right next to it. And, you know, it was grand piano had mics in it. And we were working around Billy and Jerry, and they were, you know, talking to each other and they were creating music, a new idea. We finished up and sort of disappeared into the control room. And about 10 minutes later, Jerry looks up from the piano into the control room to me and says, matthews, you didn't happen to record that, did you?
- [52:33]
C
As Jerry Garcia described to Blair Jackson in 1988, it was just one time through on the piano. I was playing on the piano and I didn't even know what I was doing.
- [52:42]
E
I was happy to say that was one of the times when I recorded more than I erased. And so they came back in to listen to it because it really was the first complete arrangement framework of the wheel. And while we were listening to it, Bob Hunter. This was back in Studio D, second floor, where there was enough room for a peanut and a sneeze. Hunter was writing words on his notebook, with his notebook on the wall, because there wasn't anywhere else to sit or stand as we went through the first playback. He was an example of Spontaneous improvisation. That just felt so good. That smile that I was able to give Jerry when he said, did you happen to record that? It was a great feeling.
- [53:32]
B
The wheel is turning and you can't slow down you can't let go and you can't hold on. You can't go back and you can't stand still on the dawn get you in the lightning well.
- [53:53]
J
Won'T you try.
- [53:54]
B
Just a little bit harder? Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
- [54:02]
E
It was a major realization. It was. We had a new tune. I mean, it felt so good. That's a great piece of music as far as how it makes one feel.
- [54:12]
B
Round, round robin run Got to get back where you belong Little bit harder, just a little bit more A little bit further than you gone before Wheel is turning and you can't slow down you can't let go and you can't.
- [54:31]
F
Hold on David Crosby's laughing on if I Could Only Remember My Name was Jerry's own favorite track of his pedal steel playing. But I think equal to it really is his pedal steel playing on the Wheel. And it's such a shame that he, you know, he just gave up on the instrument really, not long after that. You know, I mean, he was brilliant at it. Completely distinctive. His sound on pedal steel had a cry in it, as they say about, you know, Coltrane's saxophone had this completely inimitable cry. So did Jerry's pedal steel playing. And I only wish there had been more of them.
- [55:42]
C
That's from an alternate take to the Wheel on the expanded edition of the album, which highlights both the spontaneity of the session, but also how hard Garcia worked at even refining those ideas. I also love this bit of them working on the transition into the tune. There's also this other segment, and it's hard to tell if it came before or after the story Bob Matthews tells. But it's a Garcia Kreutzman segment working through a very different set of changes. That's slightly adjacent to what became the Wheel, maybe more a premonition than a sketch, almost a different song entirely. However long it took to invent the Wheel, Hunter's spontaneous lyric creation fit right into the wheeling and dealing themes of the album and amplified their cosmic factor with its cyclical chord changes. The equally cyclical lyrics capture the feeling of momentum perfectly. Hunter discussed it on Wlir in 1978.
- [57:20]
G
The wheel is turning and you can't slow down and you can't get. Wheels turn and you can't hold on. You can't Let go and you can't slow down or something like that. That's also the nature of this business. You know, you are on the. You're riding the back of a tiger and you get off and obscurity waits right there for you. And once you get a taste for this, you don't want to get obscure.
- [57:43]
C
I gotta say, the Wheel didn't turn up in Live dead sets until 1976. There were some great versions, especially during the era when Garcia shared the vocals with Donnajean Godshow with luxuriously unfolding guitar. This is From Dave's Picks 1 in Richmond, Virginia, May 25, 1977. One person who instantly understood the wheeling dealing themes of the album was the photographer and graphic designer Bob Seideman. He designed the COVID for Blind Faith's self titled debut in 1969 and a few years later would help create Neil Young's on the Beach. Sometime In July of 1971, he shot the band portrait included on the Dead Skull and Roses. And perhaps that same day Jerry Garcia invited him to Wally Heiders for a late night listening session for his solo album in progress. When the album finished playing, Seideman recounted, I said I see a wheel as if I was having a vision. A wheel of fortune floating over a female form symbolizing life. And the wheel symbolizes geared chance and the industrial age. And as the hand reaches through the hole in the center of the wheel of fortune, it's cut off by a numbered playing card. Let's keep it clean, just numbers, just digits. Let's get the hand up. Jerry said, what hand? I said, your right hand. And he almost jumped out of his chair. Garcia's four fingered right hand featured prominently on the COVID sideman designed for the album along with subtle red, white and blue themes. Above part of a woman's nude torso were four knobs. The numbers on the knobs, NGC 205 and so on, are actual coordinates for galaxies in our sector. It was a visionary time blossoming from the Tenderloin in San Francisco. Steve Silberman actually got to visit Wally Hyder's recently. It's now known as Hyde Street Studios. And he got to see a few cool signs of the studio's earlier days.
- [60:05]
F
At the front desk. There was a little button by the desk that, you know, kind of not surreptitious but, you know, not obvious, that said release the Kraken. And what that button was was the panic button. So if cops came to the studio, everybody could start flushing their weed like, you know, release the Kraken.
- [60:27]
C
The reason Steve was at Hyde Street Studio should be especially sweet news to all the dead cast listeners who loved our visit with David Crosby during the Addicts of My Life episode last season and wanted even more about Crosses, if I Could Only Remember My Name and the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra, Steve's own podcast with David Crosby, Freak Flag Flying, has just launched its second season.
- [60:49]
F
We agreed to do four more episodes of Freak Flag Flying, two of them on David's new album with his son James Raymond, which is called For Free with Joni Mitchell's title track and also the re release of if I Could Only Remember My Name. So looking David wanted to. It was still during the pandemic, which is still going on, by the way, so we thought we would do it remotely with me in San Francisco and David down near his house in Santa Ines. When I told Crosby that we were going to do it at Wally Hyder's, he came up. So I just went to Wally Hiders, where all these albums that, you know, I really cannot overstate this. Those albums change the inside of my head forever. That room. And actually I was in both Studio A, which was the Airplane domain, and Studio C, which was kind of David's domain during if I Could Only Remember My Name. The albums made in that room completely rearrange the inside of my head forever, you know, and so I'm in, you know, I'm in the studio and David and I had a great conversation. Those upcoming podcasts are gonna come out soon, but, you know, I could still see traces of the glory days. Grace Slick. We were in Studio A when I was talking to David and he also played the piano, which was, you know, pretty sweet. Grace wanted a, like an aura of light around her head while she sang. And so I could still see the hole in the ceiling where she had had like a chandelier to put the aura of light around her head.
- [62:28]
C
For the latest product of the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra Historical division, featuring its newest member, Steve Silberman. Check out the upcoming episodes of Freak Flag Flying. And even if Jerry Garcia and Ramrod were trying to keep extra people out of Studio D while the solo album was in session, Garcia himself was back in Studio D with another artist almost as soon as possible, before they'd even finished mixing. Garcia's not credited on Danny cox's self titled 1971 album, and you can't even really hear him in the mix at all. But according to the union paperwork that Joe Jupiel found, Garcia contributed electric guitar to a pair of songs recorded in late July 1971, Lady Mine and Poland Day, Garcia didn't maybe make the final mix, but in Poland Day, Danny Cox does drop a Dead reference.
- [63:15]
F
Do the things you like to do.
- [63:17]
B
The best, do them good.
- [63:19]
C
Forget about the rest.
- [63:20]
F
Clear your head with the Grateful Dead. Make you feel like you're still in bed.
- [63:28]
C
One of the things I love about Jerrybase.com is that you can display a whole year at a time in Jerry Garcia's musical life all laid out at once. For 1971, you can see studio sessions at Heiders, gigs with the Dead, Merle Saunders and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, cancelled shows, jam sessions and a generally unceasing torrent of musical activity.
- [63:49]
D
One of the things that pleases me about Jerry Bass, and that I hope other people can sort of see, is the patterns of productivity. And especially in these years when Jerry was just so fertile and had so much energy and was so active that you can trace his movements right from studio to gig back to studio. And that really think paints an important picture of Garcia as a musician. You know that he was insatiable.
- [64:24]
C
There was always more music to be played. The New Riders had weekend gigs at new monk on July 24th and 25th, then a little bit more mixing for the Garcia record, and then it was off to the Dead scattered August tour dates. You can hear the first of those at the Yale bowl on July 31st on road trips volume one. 3. It's one of the very few live Bird songs that begins with the big crashing chord, the same way the album version does. The house that Garcia bought overlooked the Pacific and Stinson beach on the far side of Mount Tam from the Dead's office in San Rafael. When they moved in, it already had a San Souci, French for no worries. The name was on a little sign on a tree, Mountain girl said in 2013. We thought that was sweet. As the Garcia sessions were winding down, Jerry and Mountain Girl were visited there by Rolling Stone founder Jan Wenner and Yale law professor Charles Reich for a long interview, along with photographer Annie Leibovitz, who took photos at the house and a portrait session with Garcia on the beach. The interview and the pictures made it to the COVID of Rolling Stone early the next year, as well as the book A Signpost to New Space, published by Rolling Stone, which also included the Stone Sunday wrap that Wright conducted in the spring. Both are available as part of a signpost to new space, available from Da Capo Hachette wherever books are sold. We've been listening to some Fun bits of the stone. Sunday rap all season. So we'll end with one more.
- [66:18]
J
Me and Matthews were down in LA not too long ago. We were mastering a single of mine and we were in the. The airplane airport, little coffee shop there, and we were about to order something, and the waitress came bustling over in the middle of about doing about three things, and she was sort of taking our order and, you know, we gave her our order. And then, you know, some confusion or something happened, and she picked up one of the things that Matthews ordered without him ever seeing it.
- [66:48]
C
The single was almost certainly sugary, released as a 7 inch in the spring of 1972, cracking the Billboard top 100, but just barely at number 94.
- [66:58]
J
He didn't say it, you know, but she heard it, you know, and she heard it because everything else was happening too, you know what I mean? And it left. I could see the little hole, you know what I mean? I can see that. I can see it brush in.
- [67:12]
B
Chocolate shake.
- [67:13]
J
Right, Right. You know, just like that. That's so unbelievable, you know, and it was like all that I remembered then. You know how many times there's those things when, you know, like you're distracted in that instant and it's like a voice or something, you know, like you hear a thing, you know, I mean, I know that the thing is uncovering those abilities.
- [67:30]
C
Apparently Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl had those abilities readily built in.
- [67:35]
J
And it was a chocolate shake.
- [67:39]
C
No way I could have known it was a chocolate shake.
- [67:41]
A
Yeah.
- [67:42]
B
Because I've never been eaten out with Matthews.
- [67:43]
D
Right.
- [67:44]
J
Except I was thinking chocolate.
- [67:46]
C
Mmm, Psychic chocolate milkshake. Or maybe they'd all been thinking about the sugary milkshakes because they just mastered the song with the lyric, shake it.
- [67:55]
F
Sugary Shake it, shake it sugary.
- [68:01]
B
Just don't tell them that you know me Shake it, shake it, sugary sugar.
- [68:13]
J
Just.
- [68:13]
B
Don'T tell them the truth no.
- [68:20]
D
Me.
- [68:26]
C
And hey, that brings us to the end of this season of the good old grateful Bedcast. We've got some heads to thank. We had an incredible roster of guests over this past season, and we especially want to send out some love to Bob Matthews, Alan Trist, Rosie McGee, Sam Cutler, Candice Brightman, Courtney Pollack, Sally Mann, Romano, David Freiberg, Stanley Krippner, Steven Barncard, Rick Turner, Alan Arkish, Denise Kaufman, Ken Babs, and of course, David Crosby. And the most excellent Judy Collins extra. Love, as always to dead journalists and pals David Ganz, Blair Jackson, Gary Lambert and Steve Silberman for all their work over the years, eyewitness accounts and day to day assistance with this project. This webcast couldn't exist without them. Nor could it exist without the work of a whole squad of historical Dead blogs, scholars and comment sections. Much respect to Dead sources, the Grateful dead guide, Corey Arnold's Lost Live Dead and Hooterolan, Sir Alex Allen's White Gum lyrics site, and Joe Jupiel of Jerrybase.com Raymond Foy provided invaluable help on mike and off, as did Nicholas Merriweather. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back in a little bit, so everybody hang loose.
- [70:07]
A
There are so many fantastic songs and sounds on Garcia, it's really no surprise that many of these songs went on to be Grateful Dead classics as well as hold key places in the Jerry Garcia Band songbook. Thanks so much for tuning in to not only this episode, but all of our other episodes in season three of the good old Grateful Dead cast. As we bring this season to a close, we want to reiterate how grateful we are for your support and we love hearing from you. It's gratifying to know that this podcast means as much to you as it does to us. So thank you. Take care of yourselves and each other and we'll see you a little further on down that golden road. Executive producers for the good Old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson. Produced for Ryan Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.