Wake Of The Flood 50: Weather Report Suite

Summary

GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST

Episode: Wake Of The Flood 50: Weather Report Suite

Date: November 16, 2023

Hosts: Rich Mahan & Jesse Jarnow

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Episode Overview

This finale of Season 8 dives deep into "Weather Report Suite," Bob Weir’s epic and singular songwriting contribution to the Grateful Dead’s 1973 album, Wake of the Flood, marking its 50th anniversary. The episode explores the piece’s musical evolution, the studio saga behind its creation, its legacy on stage, and the broader historical context of the album’s release, including the Dead’s foray into independent record-making. Featuring rare demos, multitrack studio insights, interviews with musicians, Dead insiders, and fans reflecting on the song and era, the journey illustrates why "Weather Report Suite" remains a defining, sometimes divisive, jewel in the Dead’s discography.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. "Weather Report Suite" — A New Type of Dead Epic

• A Suite for the Ages:
  • On release, it was the longest piece on any Grateful Dead studio album and unique for being recorded before ever played live (04:48).
  • David Lemieux: “It’s a very rare Grateful Dead song that kind of hadn’t been really written until they recorded it and wasn’t played live until after they’d recorded it.” (05:13)
  • The suite is structurally divisive—embraced by some fans, contentious for others, and a “stand-in for the album as a whole.” (05:25)
• Songwriting & Structure:
  • Bob Weir’s ambition—crafting a personal suite—marks his most musically complex composition for the band.
  • The suite was comprised of three pieces: "Prelude," "Part I" (with lyricist Eric Andersen), and "Let It Grow" (with John Perry Barlow), initially known under working titles like “Bob’s Song” and “I Am the Rain.” (35:34)

2. The Evolution: From Sketches to Studio

• Musical Seeds Planted:
  • Mike Daly’s recollections and old tapes reveal Weir’s intro licks as early as April 1969, with the seeds popping up in jamming through the early '70s.
  • An early sketch, “Madrigal,” predates the full suite and was first reworked with Barlow, then attempted with Hunter, with lyrics never quite landing until neighboring songwriter Eric Andersen was drafted in last minute (08:30–30:21).
• The Writing Process:
  • “Let It Grow” is one of the rare Dead songs where Weir and Barlow wrote lyrics and music simultaneously (13:10).
  • Musicians analyzed the chordal complexity—the distinctive use of diminished chords and modal progression.
    • Quote: “For me, the tone is set right away when they sit on the diminished chord… It kind of immediately sets the tone of being, you know, this is the Grateful Dead prog statement.” – Sean O'Donnell (14:24)

3. Studio Alchemy & Guest Collaborators

• Challenging, Layered Production:

  • The session reels reveal not only the Dead’s trial-and-error approach but a growing ambition for orchestral arrangement.
  • Guest musicians include:
    • Sarah Fulcher: backing vocals
    • Doug Sahm: bajo sexto
    • Martin Fierro, Joe Ellis, and Bill Atwood: horns
    • Matt Kelly: harmonica
    • Eric Andersen: lyrics on Part I (57:57–65:36)
  • Quote on Weir's vision:
    “He had this conception in his head. Not being literate as far as musical notation was concerned, he just sang parts to the players… being inspired by things like Gil Evans arrangements for Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain.” – Gary Lambert (51:49–54:58)

• Complex Arrangements:

  • Discussion of the multitrack breakdowns, pedal steel textures, and the “epic” production that took the piece from folk, to prog, to cinematic Western ("Text-Mex" section), culminating in horn-driven grandeur (55:22–57:05).

4. The Album Release: Wake of the Flood (1973)

• A New Era of Independence:

  • The Dead launched their own label, motivated by control over quality, profits, and the fan experience (100:28).
  • Ron Rakow’s stories illuminate wild label logistics—quixotic ambitions, "quality vinyl," and artist-led distribution efforts.
  • Challenges:
    • Vinyl quality issues: The pursuit of “the best vinyl for storing musical information” led to logistical chaos, as pressing plants were unable to comply (102:06–104:31).
    • Counterfeiting crisis: Immediate bootlegging of the album resulted in a fan-driven campaign to smoke out fakes, lawsuits, and even mafia involvement (114:46–119:05).
    • Oil embargo impacts: Rising production costs due to the 1973 oil crisis affected both pressing and touring logistics (111:30).

• Iconic Album Art:

  • Rick Griffin’s wheat-reaper cover and crow symbolism are broken down for metaphysical and practical meanings, including a hidden “anamorphic” skull on the LP back (94:27–98:20), and the almost-included biblical quote removed for being “a step too far” (96:12).

5. On Stage: The Suite & "Let It Grow" Live

• Inaugural Performances:

  • The suite’s live debut occurred in September 1973 at the Nassau Coliseum, at once captivating and confusing for fans (68:48–70:09).
  • Horns on tour: A brief experiment with Doug Sahm’s horn section on tour quickly faded from the setlists (81:55–82:04).
  • Over time, Weir dropped the Andersen-penned Part I for his distaste for the lyrics ([15:53], [82:04]),
  • By the late ’70s, “Let It Grow” became a jam vehicle and setlist staple, its form evolving and solidifying as a band showcase through the ‘80s, ‘90s, and now into Weir’s Wolf Brothers and symphonic projects (83:20–90:27).

• Memorable Audience Experiences:

  • Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo):
    “The first time I saw them was at Nassau Coliseum and they did Weather Report Suite or maybe just Let It Grow before it came out…I certainly remember Let It Grow. That really stuck.” (69:49–70:48)

6. Reception, Legacy & Debate

• Initial Reaction:
  • Listener Cary Coles, from the UK:
    “My main reaction to Wake of the Flood was actually one of disappointment… the poetry just seemed to me to be whimsical or nonsensical or cartoonish. And it didn’t open the doors for my imagination. There was nothing on the disc that rocked.” (121:09)
  • Critics divided; Robert Hunter blamed himself for not supplying stronger material (123:42).
• Commercially:
  • Despite the cult narrative, Wake of the Flood became the band’s highest-charting album to date and profitable for the newly minted label (120:13, 119:21).
• Enduring Influence:
  • The piece and the album fueled decades of reinterpretations, from Weir’s Wolf Pack orchestral versions to Yo La Tengo lyrics and a general ethos of never playing the same show/setlist twice (78:34, 90:27).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Suite’s Rarity:
  “It’s a very rare Grateful Dead song that kind of hadn’t been really written until they recorded it and wasn’t played live until after they’d recorded it.” — David Lemieux [05:13]

• On the Songwriting Process:
  “It was one of the few times Barlow and I sat and wrote words and music simultaneously.” — Bob Weir, quoted by David Lemieux [13:10]

• On Production Ambition:
  “You start out with the nylon string guitar, then the bass comes in, then the pedal steel…where a whole horn section comes in. You’re so far from where you started…but it all kind of makes sense. That’s production, man. That’s great production.” — Scott Metzger & Brian Kehue [45:42–51:35]

• On Artistic Vision:
  “He had this conception in his head… being inspired by things like Gil Evans arrangements for Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain.” — Gary Lambert [51:49]

• On Divided Reception:
  “My main reaction to Wake of the Flood was actually one of disappointment…there was nothing on the disc that rocked…The poetry just seemed to me to be whimsical or nonsensical or cartoonish. And it didn’t open the doors for my imagination.” — Cary Coles [121:09]

• On the Album’s Place in History:
  “Another remarkable aspect of the album, that they put it out on their indie label incredibly efficiently…at that point, it was their highest charting…top 20 album that they put out themselves.” — Gary Lambert [120:13]

• On the Crow Symbolism:
  “If I have to eat crow, I want one. Convenient.” — Ron Rakow (on why a crow was on the album) [99:28]

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Important Timestamps

• 04:48 — Introduction to "Weather Report Suite"
• 05:13–05:25 — Lemieux contextualizes the song’s rarity and ambition
• 08:30–30:21 — Bob Weir’s compositional process, early demos, Eric Andersen joins
• 13:10 — Barlow/Weir quote, simultaneous lyric/music creation
• 14:24 — Sean O'Donnell on harmonic structure
• 35:08–40:01 — Tape session details, Let It Grow jam evolution
• 45:42–51:35 — Multitrack analysis of studio arrangement
• 51:49–54:58 — Weir's orchestral inspirations, arranging challenges
• 57:57–65:36 — Guest musicians, musical layer breakdowns
• 81:55–83:20 — Suite’s live debut, quick dropping of parts, evolution of "Let It Grow"
• 90:05–90:27 — Modern live interpretations with Wolf Bros and the Wolf Pack
• 94:27–98:20 — Album art, crow/skull symbolism, hidden messages
• 100:28–104:31 — Grateful Dead Records, vinyl quality fiasco, label independence
• 114:46–119:05 — Bootlegging crisis, fan engagement, mafia resolution
• 119:21–120:13 — Wake of the Flood: Profitability and legacy
• 121:09 — Cary Coles’ dissenting fan reaction
• 123:42 — Robert Hunter reflects on his lyrics

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Epilogue: Closing Reflections

"Weather Report Suite" stands as both a summation and an outlier in the Grateful Dead’s studio oeuvre—a testament to Bob Weir’s ambition, the band’s spirit of invention, and the wild ride of music, business, and mythmaking that surrounded Wake of the Flood. This episode blends personal narrative, deep musical analysis, and passionate dissent to illustrate the unique place the suite, the album, and the era occupy in Dead history.

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Further Listening/Reading:

• Rhino’s Wake of the Flood 50th Anniversary Edition
• Yo La Tengo's "Drug Test" (for a musical reference)
• Eric Andersen’s catalog
• Dead.net for episode transcripts, references, and past Deadcast seasons

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.

[Brian Kehue]

Foreign.

[Rich Mahan]

The Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season eight of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. We've reached the final episode of season eight, which means we're also on the last song from Wake of the Flood, Bob Weir's singular song contribution from the Dead's classic 1973 studio record. And what a contribution it is. Weather Report Suite takes up most of the real estate on side two of the album, and the second half of the suite, Let It Grow, became a staple of the Dead set list for the rest of their touring career. It's the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead's wake of the Flood and to celebrate this, Rhino has a grand 50th anniversary release which includes the original album remastered, some really cool early demos of songs from the album, and six songs from a live show at Magaw Memorial hall at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois from November 1, 1973. There is special vinyl as well as standard black vinyl, a very cool Wake of the Flood picture disc on vinyl. CDs and digital versions are also available. More info and orders are happening now [e-mail] head on over to dead.net deadcast and check out all of our past episodes, including complete seasons one through seven and any of the season eight episodes you might have missed. You can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing hitting that like button and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Very kind of you. Thank you very much. Well, we have transcripts for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available now for your reading pleasure. Head over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. And thanks to everybody who left their stories this [e-mail] we appreciate it and we love hearing what you have to say. We're always looking for more of them. Please go to stories.dead.net and drop your dead. Related Stories we love the tour stories. We love hearing the funny stories. We love the heartfelt stories. Keep them coming folks. There is an option to write your story there, but if possible please record yourself telling your story and if you need longer than the time allotted, leave a second one or a third. Thank you very much. Well, as you are about to hear Weather Report Suite, Bob Weir's wonderful songwriting contribution from Wake of the Flood wasn't your average studio endeavor. There are many guest musicians on this recording, and the song is a journey unto itself as it winds through myriad musical styles, employing different instruments throughout. It's the longest song on Wake of the Flood and it's only fitting that we deliver its story as a nice long Dead cast season finale. Here's Jesse Jarno to lay it all out for you.

[Narrator/Reader]

Now tell me why Summer's Fade Roses.

[David Lemieux]

Day Listeners bringing Wake of the Flood home from the record store and taking it out of the sleeve might immediately note that its second side contained the longest piece of music yet on a Grateful Dead studio album, Bob Weir's Weather Report Sweep Three pieces of music over two cuts flowing into one multitude containing album closing Blowout Listen to the gun.

[Narrator/Reader]

Shout I am, I am.

[David Lemieux]

Here's Bobby Weir on waer in Syracuse in 1973.

[Brian Kehue]

Last week, more or less the Weather Report Sweet.

[David Lemieux]

Yet another song about the weather. Weir's song about the Weather fit right in with a collection that included songs like Here Comes Sunshine and Eyes of the World. Both lyrically and musically, the Grateful Dead were a progressive band, and Weather Report Suite was a progression. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David.

Lemieux It's a very rare Grateful Dead song that kind of hadn't been really written until they recorded it and wasn't played live until after they'd recorded it. There aren't a lot of songs like that.

And if the Dead had long thought in terms of suites like the interlocking pieces of Anthem of the sun or Live Dead or their modular set lists, this was something new for Bob Weird, a suite of his own and the most ambitious piece of music he'd written or attempted to record, Weather Report Suite held a privileged place closing out the Dead's first album on their very own label, Grateful Dead Records, and it can be heard as a stand in for the album as a whole, a highlight for people who love Wake of the Flood and a point of contention for people who don't so like the piece of music we're talking about, today's episode will be something of a multitude containing sweep following the album to its completion and then out into the world, the future and our own blowout, ending with many voices. Here's a tease courtesy of our friend Steve Brown at Grateful Dead Records.

[Steve Brown]

You pick up the phone and it's the federal government calling you. You know, the FBI. It's like what?

[David Lemieux]

Listen extra close to this very short bit of between song tuning from 1969. That was a tape of the Grateful Dead at the avalon Ballroom on April 5, 1969, more than three years before the debut of the Weather Report Suite, where you can hear the first breath of Weir's intro. Those distinctive intro licks pop up in numerous Dead jams over the next few years. Here it is on August 6, 1971, as the band moves back into the other one now on Dix Picks 35, Bobby Weir takes his time writing songs. As we've learned on past seasons of the Dead Cast, the earliest glimpses of playing in the band came in early 1969 as well, a few years before the rest of the song. In the summer of 1970, he began work on Cassidy, a song that he and lyricist John Perry Barlow were still working on right up until he recorded it in the studio in the spring of 1972. Early in 1972, Weider had spent time on Barlow's ranch in Pinedale, Wyoming, working on the songs that he was to record back home in California. Before he left, he recorded a tape of unfinished songs that included the unfinished version of Cassidy. It also included an instrumental piece that Weir was calling Madrigal. The other voice on this tape is lyricist John Perry Barlow.

[Narrator/Reader]

This one's Madrigal, take one.

[David Lemieux]

It was somewhat difficult to play.

[Narrator/Reader]

I would have been take two.

[David Lemieux]

Take three, Spider fingers here. But eventually he gets through it. Over the summer of 72 in Seattle, we are earnestly debut the instrumental with the Dead now on the Download Series Volume 10, but the rest of the band doesn't quite know it yet.

[Narrator/Reader]

Well, anyway, what we're gonna do next is history.

[David Lemieux]

Not that it stopped Weir from dropping the piece into other Dead jams in the era. By the spring of 1973, though, the rest of the Dead fleshed out Madrigal a little bit more and played it a few times as a dramatic prelude of sorts to other pieces of music, like this one from Springfield on March 28, where it sets up Darkstar.

[Brian Kehue]

SA.

[David Lemieux]

In our Here Comes Sunshine episode. Musicologist Sean O' Donnell discussed how Weir had developed a new improv vocabulary in this period.

[Brian Kehue]

I think it's the other side of that coin. It's sort of the composer version of that in some ways. Basically doing like a recital piece, being on a tightrope on your own like that is scary and big. It's brave. That's a lot of work to keep those chops and keep that ready to go the whole time.

[David Lemieux]

By the spring, the Future Suite had developed a second section, though it's not clear if the pieces of music were attached just yet. There's an early 1973 dead rehearsal, probably from Point Reyes, where the band plays through what's now known as Weather Report Suite Part one. But it's hard to say if the prelude is there too.

[Brian Kehue]

Bridge.

[David Lemieux]

Like some of Weir's earlier song sketches, he already had a vocal melody for it. His usual songwriting partner, John Perry Barlow, wasn't able to find words. Apparently he was going to have to keep working on it. They were more successful with what became the later part of the suite. We'll use the August 1973 rehearsal tape for this next segment. Now on the 2004 edition of Wake of the Flood, it's got an alternate line in the first verse.

[Narrator/Reader]

Morning comes she follows the path to the river shore Stepping free She places her feet where they fell before See the sun sparkle in the reef Silver beads fasten to the sea.

[David Lemieux]

Without having gone through every single one of Bob Weir's original contributions to the Grateful Dead to this degree just yet, I'd wager a guess that Let It Grow is one of the top two or three least complicated in terms of songwriting process. Weir told our buddy Alan Paul in 2001 that it was one of the few times Barlow and I sat and wrote words and music simultaneously.

[Narrator/Reader]

She comes from a time when they call her the woodcutter's daughter and she's brown as the back when she kneels down to gather her water.

[David Lemieux]

And she.

[Narrator/Reader]

Bears it away with a love who left the river and has taught her.

[David Lemieux]

According to Barlow's notes, their songwriting session took place at his mother Mim's apartment in Salt Lake City in February 1973, meaning either February 27th or 28th, when the dead were in town for the show that's now on Dick's picks 28th.

[Narrator/Reader]

Let it flow. Ready, flow and clear.

[David Lemieux]

Sean O' Donnell hears the chord changes under the verse as striking a kind of keynote or perhaps more of a mode note that puts the song in line with Jerry Garcia's compositions.

[Brian Kehue]

On the album for me, the tone is set right away when they sit on the diminished chord each time. So you have the A minor chord and then you go to the g sharp, diminished 7 chord, and it functions just like the dominant chord would in there, like an E7 would. Except they are making this epic sound just by the change in sonority, even though the function doesn't change suddenly. It's not just a tune going A minor, E, A minor, B. You're saying this is something bigger and more grand in that way. It kind of immediately sets the tone of being, you know, this is the Grateful Dead Prague statement.

[Narrator/Reader]

What shall we say? Shall we call it by name? Well, look out the angels dancing on a pin Water bright as the sky from which it came and the name is on the earth takes it in Will not speak but stand inside the rain and listen to the thunder shout I am, I am, I am, I am.

[Brian Kehue]

And then, of course, the life cycle and almost biblical kind of text really makes it epic in itself, too.

[David Lemieux]

Ah, yes, the biblical kind of text with, shall we say, biblical gender roles. In the liberated territory of the Grateful Dead. It wasn't a very liberated song and still isn't.

[Brian Kehue]

So it goes.

[Narrator/Reader]

We make what we make since the world began Nothing more. The love of the women, the work of men.

[David Lemieux]

But it was also rich in imagery. At the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus presentations have used it as a springboard to Taoism, German Romantic philosophy, and images of light and dark. In Dead lyrics, the Plummet as broad.

[Narrator/Reader]

As the back of the land he's.

[David Lemieux]

So.

[Narrator/Reader]

As he dances the circular track of the plummet however knowing but the work of his days Measures more than the planting and growing Let it grow greatly grow bright and clear.

[David Lemieux]

Scott Metzger from Joe Russa's Almost Dead and a gazillion other projects has spent time internalizing Let It Grow.

[Brian Kehue]

It's actually not that complicated compared to.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Some of the other weirder stuff.

[Brian Kehue]

When you start talking about Lost Sailor.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Insane of circumstance, you're talking about very.

[Brian Kehue]

Like, how did he think of this kind of stuff? But Let It Grow. It is involved. Yes, but with all of weird stuff, once you learn it, you're kind of like, oh, I see what he was thinking, kinda. I kind of see how he came to this conclusion.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Yeah, there's some complex chords, there's some diminished chords which are a little more advanced.

[Brian Kehue]

They're in the same school, those seventh.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Chord chords that we keep talking about.

[Brian Kehue]

Throughout the record, you know, the verses are in A minor and they kind of stay around A minor morning comes.

[Narrator/Reader]

She follows the path to the river shore Stepping free She places her feet.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Where they fell before the chorus is very complicated.

[Brian Kehue]

There are a lot of chords in.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

A very short amount of time.

[Brian Kehue]

I mess it up regularly in J Rad. It's a lot to remember.

[Narrator/Reader]

What shall we say? Shall we call it by name as well? To count the angels dancing on a pin Water bright as the sky from which it came and the name is on the earth Takes it in Will not speak but stand inside the rain Listen to the thunder shout I am, I am, I am, I am.

[David Lemieux]

The problem is that by the time the Dead were ready to record Wake of the Flood in August, Weir still didn't have the words for the first part. Nor had the Dead sewn all the pieces together and performed them over the weekend of August 4th, both Weir and Phil Lesh recorded solo acoustic demos for songs they hoped to track with the band for Wake of the Flood. Weather Report Suite is finally performed as a whole piece of music, except this one doesn't have a name yet. Almost every 60s and 70s Dead studio album, besides Working Man's Dead, had songs that weren't played live before being recorded because of the automatic publishing payoff that occurred when songs were on albums by semi well paying bands. Album sessions also served as popular motivators for finishing songs, and most often those still working on their songs were songwriters besides Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter.

[Narrator/Reader]

Whoa, I'm proud of Cucamonga Whoa Little olives in the sun Whoa, I had me some loving and I dump some time.

[David Lemieux]

That was Phil Lesh demoing a version of Pride of Cucamonga on August 4. Now on the 2004 edition of from the Mars Hotel, and this is Lesh demoing Unbroken Chain that same day. Also on the 2004 edition of Mars.

[Narrator/Reader]

Hotel, Blue light rain Unbroken chain Look for familiar faces in an empty window pane.

[David Lemieux]

In our eyes of the world episode, we played a bit of the studio outtakes from China Dollar recorded for Wake of the Flood, but put aside until the sessions for from the Mars Hotel in 1974. The band also spent some time working on unbroken chain on August 10th and again on August 16th. It didn't go terribly well.

[Brian Kehue]

Nope, nope nope nope nope, nope nope.

[David Lemieux]

Brian Kehue is the engineer responsible for the transfer of the Angel Share tapes.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Jerry's songs are defined, and Jerry's songs.

[Brian Kehue]

Are compact in a way too. They're also pretty tight, they're well arranged, and everybody's had time to work with them, so those go down pretty quickly. But Phil's song as it starts. Unbroken Chain, you know, takes a lot more time.

[David Lemieux]

Unbroken Chain was and is a complicated song, no doubt. I mean, the first lines, like the first.

[Brian Kehue]

The first lines of each half should have that rhythm. And the other. The other halves should have that straight. Yeah.

[David Lemieux]

It's one of the only times on the Angel Share tapes where there's any real tension. Right.

[Brian Kehue]

Well, either make it straight or else everybody learn it that way. Let's everybody learn it that way, please. You just simply count. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3. Da da da da da da d minor. What's fun about that? It ain't fun. It ain't supposed to be fun. It's just supposed to be right.

[David Lemieux]

They did make it through one full version of the song, sorta. But Phil Lesh has a decent suggestion.

[Brian Kehue]

I think it'd be neat if everybody learned the chords and stuff before we.

[David Lemieux]

Tried to rehearse the thing. They table the song until they return to the studio next spring, and so will we.

[Brian Kehue]

And I don't think us trying to make a tape with all the wrong chords is gonna make a lot of difference.

[David Lemieux]

Not only did they table the song, but according to Brian Kehue, actually taped over some of their attempts to record it, including, apparently a few finished takes. Using the reel for more work on Weather Report Suite. It's a handy example of why these sessions can be difficult to date, even if they have dates all written on the boxes. On August 7, they worked on the Garcia Hunter song Loose Lucy for a while. First they tried at the brisker tempo at which they debuted it. Around 110 bpm.

[Narrator/Reader]

Running and we ball all Night.

[David Lemieux]

And then they try it at the slower tempo they changed it to in July, around 10 bpm slower. That one was a little bit easier in their set list since the early part of the year at a few different tempos. And they tracked three quick takes. Though it would be tabled until the next album, too. Jerry Garcia was on record as saying the game plan for Wake of the Flood was always to whittle the music down to a single discovery. But I'll use this occasion to propose a double LP version based on the songs in development at the time of the sessions. The first LP would be the same as the final album, except with Eyes of the World replaced by they Love each Other. Side C would be Unbroken Chain, Loose Lucy and Wave that Flag. Side D would be the extended Eyes of the World with the full ending jam, followed by China Doll. A Felican Dream.

[Narrator/Reader]

Take up your china Doll. It's only fractured and just a little nervous from the fall.

[David Lemieux]

Before we table Loose Lucy until the spring, I'll use it to flag something. If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you've probably observed that there are a whole lot of dudes, and we're always looking to counter that when we discuss Mars Hotel. Next year, we're going to get to a few songs that, as our old friend Thoughts on the Dead might have put it, are residents of the problematic. If you're a Dead cast listener that identifies as non male, we'd love to hear your takes on Loose Lucy, Money, Money, or any topic you think might be relevant. You can record or leave text [e-mail] but let's get back to what the tape boxes originally labeled Bob so at some point during the sessions at the Record Plant, Weir located the missing piece of his new song A New Neighbor in Mill Valley.

[Narrator/Reader]

Come to my bedside, my darling Come over here and close the door.

[David Lemieux]

That was songwriter Eric Anderson performing Come to My bedside from his 1972 breakthrough Blue River. Eric was a Greenwich Village songwriter in the mid to late 60s. Besides his own songwriting and performing, he was also Joni Mitchell's portal into alternate guitar tunings. He first met the Grateful Dead on the Festival Express in 1970. Please welcome to the Dead cast the wonderful Eric Anderson.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

I had met everybody when we did the Canadian Train tour, the rock and roll tour across the county. So I was the only acoustic actor on the show and Janice was on there and Buddy Guy who was probably the biggest party on wheels that ever happened in the history of mankind and womankind. I think he had like six doctors on board. We had special rooms for the doctors in case somebody was about to collapse. They could revitalize them to do the shows with adding amphetamines and B12 shots.

[David Lemieux]

You can learn a lot more about Eric in the documentary the Song Poet, now streaming from pbs. The Festival Express was just the beginning.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

So that's where I met John Dawson. We were both on Columbia. They teamed me up with the Birds on some shows. They teamed me up with the New.

[David Lemieux]

Riders briefly, a label made of the Dead on Warner Bros. In 1969. Eric Anderson had migrated to Venice beach, signed with Columbia in 1972 and released his successful Blue River.

[Narrator/Reader]

Your eyes are bluer than the mountain.

[David Lemieux]

Wall.

[Narrator/Reader]

Your hair is flowing dark and flowing long.

[David Lemieux]

And your skin is more.

[Narrator/Reader]

Cool than a morning sunrise.

[David Lemieux]

Yes, it.

[Narrator/Reader]

Is softer than the breeze of a summer's dawn.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

And then when I was with Columbia, I made some money and we moved to Mill Valley. That's how that happened.

[David Lemieux]

Money In Mill Valley, Eric Anderson came into close range with the Grateful Dead. Though more than a decade into his own career, he didn't entirely process.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

I was a singer songwriter and I knew singer songwriters, but I didn't listen to a lot of them because that's what I did. I wasn't really into the Grateful Dead musically. I was more leaned into soul music, you know, listening stuff like Otis Redding and blues stuff. Lightning Hopkins.

[David Lemieux]

At some point in August 1973, Bobby Weir found Eric Anderson and drafted him into service.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

This was a personal connection. I was like a little hired gun. Other than having heard a couple gigs, you know, I just lived in the neighborhood and I came over and tried to help the cause.

[David Lemieux]

Just as Cassidy had struck out with Robert Hunter, it seems like this one had too.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

I think they had tried to do the song with Garcia and Robert Hunter. I don't know the details, but they kind of went down the list and they. I say, hey, Eric's around here. You know, let's see what he comes up with. So I went over to Bobby Weir's house and I arrived there in the dark and I left in the dark. I don't remember actually seeing the place, you know, he was like the only one there. There wasn't anyone. I didn't see a soul. It was just him. He answered the door and was just coming me for a couple hours and we knocked this thing off.

[David Lemieux]

We're using the multi tracks to make this version, which you can play [e-mail] playingintheband for the songwriters, it would prove to be a one night stand. In Weir's telling, there was a bottle of whiskey involved, but Eric Anderson doesn't remember it like that.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

I started cold just sitting at a table in a kitchen or something like that. He was just looking for a specific thing. Lyrics for a certain part, I think so. I didn't know how expensive this thing was. We had guitars, there were guitars. They'd been trying different situations. So, I mean, I guess he got lucky. Got a shortcut with me.

[Narrator/Reader]

Like a desert spring My lover comes and spreads her wings Like a song that's born to soar the sky flowing Till the water's all I drive the loving in her eyes.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

The album came out. I don't think I heard it right away. For a couple years I didn't even know about it. And then a couple years later I heard about the record and I, you know, I'd been getting some money, but I didn't really pay attention closely.

[David Lemieux]

I'm not even going to invoke the name of the songwriter that reminds me of, but you can hear the story of me and my uncle in the side C episode of our Skull and Roses season. I think Eric actually did hear the song live a few times.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

I was doing shows in Colorado. They were playing and I mean, I just remember there was like a wall of speakers, kind of like an auditorium, like one of those big places where they play hockey or something. And I just remember there was just a wall of speakers. And I thought, how could anybody stand? And it was just a huge amount of speakers piled up and I don't you wondered how they could play and not go completely deaf.

[David Lemieux]

If my math is correct, this would have been in November 1973 when Eric was playing at Ebbets Field in Denver and the Dead came through for two nights at the Coliseum.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Garcia came to my hotel room and I had a guitar, a 12 fret Martin, and he loved this song, Come To My Bedside that I'd written. And he started to play it, but the bridge snapped off. I've never seen it happen before. I've never seen it happen since. In the back, the bridge. Well, anyway, the thing just became unglued and just snapped. But he just kept playing, even with no bridge, you know, and he found the chords and he found the thing and he just kept going like nothing happened. It was hilarious.

[David Lemieux]

I'm not sure how to emulate that sound, but here's a little more of Come to My Bedside, My Darling, the Eric Anderson song that Garcia dug.

[Narrator/Reader]

And your breast is told my hair life's golden silver secrets your back has shown my fingers endless rose.

[David Lemieux]

And your.

[Narrator/Reader]

Lips have whispered wisdom at its time about life and death and things I never know.

[David Lemieux]

I can totally hear Garcia in on it. I can sort of guess why it maybe didn't register if Eric heard Weather Reports Suite live.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

I just remember that everybody was on acid. I mean, to the point where I was even doing shows on acid.

[Ira Kaplan]

For a while.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Garcia and I, we kicked around. We were talking about trying to do something together, but of course our fates never intertwined again.

[David Lemieux]

It was a briefly lived partnership for Eric Anderson and Bob Weir too. Eric is still making music and actively touring. We've posted links to his [e-mail] deadcast I quite loved the first part of weather Report Suite and we'll listen to some more of it shortly. But apparently Bobby Weir had some regrets about his musical One Night Stand. As with Walk in the Sunshine, another song finished in A drunken lyric session just before the vocal overdubs for Ace Weir sometimes tried to forget it, even if Anderson was just remembering it. Weir told Alan Paul in 2001, I liked the music, but it sounded like a love song, which is not my forte. Then Eric Anderson and I got a bottle of whiskey and wrote this sappy love song. I always hated what we did, which is why that part of the song vanished for years. Those words couldn't pass my lips without me visibly retching. And I'm not going to do anything that I'm embarrassed about walking into. I do enough stuff that I'm embarrassed about after the fact. Yeah, well, sorry, we're in.

[Narrator/Reader]

Sands of time and seasons Will end In tumbled rhyme and little change the wind and rain.

[David Lemieux]

When transferring the tapes, Brian Kehoe couldn't help but notice the complexity of Weather Report Suite and how much tape they spent on it.

[Brian Kehue]

Certainly the Weather Report Suite, just because of the scale of it, is so much time spent, so much effort spent. But it's hard to learn. I mean, it's really a lot to digest, and yet it does make sense when you hear the final thing. But you can imagine them at the beginning. This is like how yes or ELP probably tried to learn their songs at the time. There's a lot to take in just.

[Ira Kaplan]

To get through that Weather Report Suite.

[Brian Kehue]

It's a lot.

[David Lemieux]

The tapes for Weather Report Suite aren't a mess exactly, but they're somewhat confusing because of the order in which it was recorded, and possibly a case where the session spilled over onto the ends of earlier tapes, making it somewhat hard to date when exactly each piece is from. Compounding the confusion is that all the pieces had sometimes blurry working titles. The first part of the suite was generally known as Bob's Song, and Let It Grow was then called I Am the Rain. I'm attempting a bit of reconstruction here, but I think the process began by the band attempting to play through the entire suite in one pass. Though the tape boxes for August 7th and August 8th show it. I think those might be spillover sessions with the main work beginning on August 11th. Whenever it was, it sounds like lyrics still weren't done for the first part. Somewhat nearby, Eric Anderson doesn't know he's about to be drafted. On the early takes, Jerry Garcia plays electric guitar, almost as if he's sketching out the pedal steel overdub to come in the background, you can hear Keith Godschow playing a monophonic synth of some sort of Sam. They make it into Let It Grow. Keith Gadchaux switches to piano the lyrics for Let It Grow were in place, as we can hear by Weir's scratch vocals, but he's still singing the alternate lyrics in the first verse, apparently rewritten before overdubbing it in. The week or so after this.

[Narrator/Reader]

Morning comes she follows them back to the river shore Stepping feet She places her feet where they bare before See the sun sparkle in the reef Silver feet.

[David Lemieux]

Walk to the city Weir is calling out the changes when they hit the jam. Ultimately, the band would jettison these takes of the Prelude in the first part, recording those by themselves on August 17, then creating a single piece of music on the Angel Share. There are only two versions like this, which seems to mean that the keeper take of Let It Grow was perhaps only the third time they'd played it through as a band. Certainly Jerry Garcia sounds plenty comfortable playing through the changes already, and you can hear him play through the peak that would be given over to the horns on the final version. The working title for the Let It Grow portion of the suite, as labeled on the original track sheets was I Am the Rain, and it's this elemental thought that comes at the center of the song. Like the rest of the piece, the music's dynamics match the lyrics.

[Narrator/Reader]

Bridge what shall we see? Shall we call it funny as well to count the angels dancing on the bed 45 is the sky for when you came quiet and the name is on the earth Takes it in when I speak but stand inside the room Listen to the thunder shout I am, I am, I am, I am, I.

[Brian Kehue]

Am.

[David Lemieux]

2, 3, 4 Sean O' Donnell.

[Brian Kehue]

It might be their biggest level of bombast to that point. The sort of end of Terrapin hits a big a bigness later on, but it's massive. There's other tooth. They're powerful like Other one is powerful and they can pummel it. But this is composed to be big like that.

[David Lemieux]

The Jam Inletic row would evolve over the years, though its form was in place on the album version. We're going to mute the horns and as you'll note, Jerry Garcia left space for them. We'll also let Scott Metzger annotate It.

[Brian Kehue]

Is an enormous open section at the end of the verses where there's a.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Major jam that goes through a few different key centers or a D major.

[Brian Kehue]

Very triumphant feeling when we play it. I always think it can almost get into kind of like fish sounding territory.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Just because of the nature of the progression. Then you drop down to an A.

[Brian Kehue]

Minor gets a bit more mysterious and dramatic.

[Narrator/Reader]

Sam.

[Brian Kehue]

And then you get to that big E minor where you're like. Which you can hear on the record. But they don't really lay into it on the record.

[David Lemieux]

They certainly don't, neither in the middle of the song nor the outro. Though implied by the song's changes, the part Scotcha sang wouldn't emerge for another few years into the life of Let It Grow, long after the album's release, which we'll get to shortly. The master take for I Am the Rain seems to be from August 11, with a few stars and exclamation points written on it and a note that says, wow, we're going to double back to the Let It Grow section momentarily. But first the band had to nail the prelude in the first part, which they worked on on August 17, one of the final sessions for Basic Tracks. Though they'd played it live, there was still some arranging to do. They knew already that Garcia would overdub pedal steel, and he lays out of the prelude, but still plays some electric. When they get to part one, Keith Godcho is on Rhod, and they iron out the drum entrance and dynamics.

[Narrator/Reader]

On the second one of these.

[David Lemieux]

I want Billy to come in and ride Boom.

Do it one more time, Bobby 2.

This is the second one of these. I'm not positive about the order of everything, but I'm pretty sure it's after this that Weir switches over to acoustic and Garcia drops out of the basic tracks entirely. The math is a bit furry on the tape boxes, but the tape box says they nailed the prelude in the first part on take 12. Let's get into the multitracks with Scott Metzger his way into the album version.

[Brian Kehue]

That is an epic, epic couple of minutes of music. The arrangement is so good on all the 12 minutes of that, like, because you start out with the nylon string guitar saying. And then the bass comes in, Sam.

[David Lemieux]

Sa.

[Brian Kehue]

And the pedal steel. Right.

[Narrator/Reader]

Winter rain now tell me why summer's fade and roses die the answer came.

[David Lemieux]

The wind in flame on the basic live track for the first part of Weather Report Suite, Keith Gadcho is playing Rhodes, but he also overdubbed a layer of organization. Here's a submix of the two keyboards and pedal steel combined into one lovely texture. For the transition into Let It Grow, they add what sounds like a Leslie rotating cabinet to the pedal steel.

[Brian Kehue]

Get to the whole vocal thing.

[Narrator/Reader]

Flowing, growing.

[David Lemieux]

There are some lush vocal overdubs that starred in here, too. In the vocal blend is a second female voice, Sarah Fulcher. She'd released her solo debut the year before, titled Sarah and credited to Sarah and Friends, she'd been singing with Garcia's club band that year and introduced favorite Like A Road into the Garcia repertoire. Here she is freestyling a verse and a chorus on I Second that Emotion from Garcia Live, Volume 12, recorded January 23, 1973.

[Narrator/Reader]

Maybe you think that I'm not the one to sport you well, if you do want something that emotion I believe in two nine one came a brand new friend star wow. If you feel like loving me.

[Brian Kehue]

Then you get eventually to let it grow where a whole horn section comes in.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

And you're so far from where you.

[Brian Kehue]

Started with the nylon string bit, but you're still in the same Somehow it.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

All kind of makes sense.

[Brian Kehue]

You don't really notice how far you've gone. That's production, man. That's great production.

[David Lemieux]

It was part of the expanding vision of Bob Weir from the Golden Road Shakedown Stream and our jazz gig near you.

[Gary Lambert]

Gary Lambert I first interviewed Bobby very shortly after Wake of the Flood came out, and we specifically got to the area of Weather Report Suite, and he talked about that being sort of the tentative beginnings of an ambition he'd had for a long time, which is to introduce extended ensembles into the music. And of course, on Ace, there had been some strings and some horns, but that was arranged by someone else.

[Narrator/Reader]

Turning granite. Sure to look like rain Surely looks like rain Looks like rain. Oh, well, it looks like rain.

[Gary Lambert]

But this was really Bobby's baby, and he had this conception in his head. And of course, if you've heard his solo acoustic demo of Weather Report Suite, all the music is in there in his hands. His challenge is in making the record was to have a larger section realize what was in his head that he couldn't get to with his hands. And he told me, being not literate as far as musical notation was concerned, he just sang parts to the players. And I thought it came out remarkably well for a first effort in arranging. And Bobby has told me at that period he was inspired by things like Gil Evans arrangements for Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain. And another favorite of his in the larger ensemble arrangement field was the charts that Eric Dalfi and McCoy Tyner fashioned for John Coltrane's Africa Brass.

[Narrator/Reader]

Sam.

[Gary Lambert]

So Bobby was listening to all that stuff and absorbing it and, you know, not having the full musical vocabulary to put it down on paper. But he had an intuitive way of communicating it to people. It's extraordinary. And this was like a guy who was, what, 23 or something like that?

[David Lemieux]

24 the scope of the song comes into fuller view with its big scene change. Let's hear a stripped down version of it first.

[Narrator/Reader]

She comes from the town where they call her the woodcutter's daughter and she's brown as the bank where she kneels down to gather her water.

[Brian Kehue]

And she.

[Narrator/Reader]

Bears it away With a love that the river has taught her Let it flow fairly flow wide and clear.

[Brian Kehue]

Scott Metzger Then you get this like really cool text mechs. I love that. I love that halftime feel section where it goes between D and A chords. Sean o' Donnell I think the change in feels make a big difference too. So you start with that epic progression and then suddenly you're somewhere that lives closer to Mexicali and El Paso when it switches to the D major stuff. So you're moving through a lot of.

[David Lemieux]

Landscapes quick with the full complement of overdubs. Let It Grow shifts into a moment that suddenly sounds like they could be in a Marty Robbins song or on a big soundstage Western.

[Narrator/Reader]

She comes from a town where they call where the woodcutters daughter she's brown to the bank where she meals down together the water and she bears it away with the love that the river has taught Let it flow, let it flow white and clear.

[David Lemieux]

From a madrigal to a singer songwriter tune with pedal steel, through some proto prog moves, into cinematic C and W and towards Gil Evans influenced horn arrangements. Let It Grow had some sweep. By my count, there are eight musicians on Let It Grow besides the core sextet of the 1973 Grateful Dead. We've heard from vocalist Sarah Fulcher, and we spoke about saxophonist Martin Fiero during our Let Me Sing youg Blues Away episode. The other horns included Bill Atwood on trumpet, Frank Morin on tenor sax, Pat o' Hara and Joe Ellis on trumpet. Lately, Ellis and Fierro had been making names for themselves on the local salsa scene, playing with bandleader Benny Velardi, who contributed Timbalis to Eyes of the World. But the real connecting glue was a musician who can only be heard for a little over a minute of Let It Grow and only then pretty far in the background.

[Narrator/Reader]

She comes from a town where they call her the Woodcutter's daughter.

[David Lemieux]

Do you hear the Balho Sexto part in there? It's played by legendary Texas musician Sir Douglas Somme Gary Lambert.

[Gary Lambert]

It was wonderful to me to see those credits on Wake of the Flood when it came out. And there in the fine print is Doug Sahm on Bajo Sexto. And I thought, oh, how cool.

[David Lemieux]

Is that.

[Gary Lambert]

And I sort of wondered at the time how that came about.

[David Lemieux]

Like virtually all of the guest musicians on Wake of the Flood, Psalm was a fixture of the Bay Area music scene, even if he wasn't always a resident. Gary Lambert would connect with SAHM later down the line.

[Gary Lambert]

He was an absolute baseball addict. He would plan his drives from San Antonio to the Bay Area by the schedules of minor league baseball teams. So he'd come by way of Visalia and Fresno and maybe drive up and see the Sonoma Crushers play or whatever. And he also told me if he was driving down the road and he saw a pickup sandlot game going on, he'd probably park the car and watch three or four innings.

[David Lemieux]

But let's back up slightly.

[Gary Lambert]

It was a real privilege to know him. And he was such a unique character in that he covered so much musical ground. He was like a child prodigy steel guitar player in his preteens. There's an apocryphal story that he was on stage with Hank Williams at Hank's last show, and he put out records, I think at 11 or 12 years old, as little Doug on the steel guitar. And then he got a little weirder as he got a little older and formed the group that turned out to be the Sir Douglas Quintet.

[Narrator/Reader]

Move out. Whoa, yeah what I say hey, hey.

[Gary Lambert]

After they moved to the Bay Area, they just became hippier and hippier and the records got a little weirder and they had horns on them, including Martin Fiero.

[Narrator/Reader]

It was a calm occasion. You said it was all my fault, if it even break me down.

[Gary Lambert]

And Doug always had a great affinity and love for the Grateful Dead. Of course, there was that famous jam at Armadillo World headquarters in Austin in 1972 with Jerry, Phil, Leon Russell, among others, and Doug, which is a coveted tape. There was always an interesting Texas to Bay Area connection. So many people essential to the scene. Boz Skaggs, Janice, of course, some of the members of Mother Earth and Chet Helms. So it's an interesting. A little sub history.

[David Lemieux]

It's a sub history that plays out across Lettick Row, also featuring another pair of Texas to California musicians in Martin Fierro and Sarah Fulcher. When the band needed a horn section for Let It Grow, they borrowed Doug Sommes. They happened to be genuine Texans, but they also happened to be convenient for a number of other reasons. Only a few weeks after the Thanksgiving jam in Texas, sometime in December 1972, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman appeared on a studio session for Somme, not released for some years on the genuine Texas Groover collection from Rhino Handmade. There are rumors that Jerry Garcia plays uncredited pedal steel on Psalm's classic 1973 album, Doug Somm and Friends, but I'm not sure I hear it anyone either way. By the spring of 1973, Doug Somm was stablemates with the Dead on the out of Town Tours roster. Sir Doug opened for the Dead in June at RFK Stadium, which we covered last season, and then again for a week of shows after the album came out, where Martin Fierro and Joe Ellis joined the band on stage most nights, which we'll get to shortly. But in the summer of 1973, when the dead needed horns, they got him. And they got Psalm too, playing Bajo Sexto, a 12 nylon string acoustic guitar, perhaps as a union rate. Thank you for borrowing his horns. That's seven musicians. The eighth is so ambient I wouldn't have been able to pick it out without the multi tracks. That's the isolated harmonica of Matt Kelly from the Big Explosion and Let It Grow. Here it is in context. Matt Kelly and Bob Weir went to junior high school together in Atherton, but as Dead scholar Cory Arnold has highlighted, Matt Kelly's adjacencies to the Dead scene ran deep. Jamming partners with the future members of the New Riders of the Purple sage in 1974, he would become a co founding member of Kingfish, Bob Weir's side trip for the next few years. He and Weir went back a ways, but he appeared on David Rhee's slue foot in 1972, Weir's debut as a producer, and it seems like they reconnected. Then it seems like he actually made music on stage with Jerry Garcia first, sitting in with Garcia and Saunders at the Great American Music Hall a few weeks before the Wake of the Flood sessions. I like what his harmonica brings to Wake of the Flood in isolation. It sounds like the somewhat now forgotten western part of what the country and western equation originally meant. Like say, the Bing Crosby version of Streets of Laredo.

[Narrator/Reader]

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo As I walked out in.

[David Lemieux]

Laredo one day and Matt Kelly on Wake of the Flood. It was a whole pile of musicians on both Let It Grow and the album as a whole, the most ambitious studio production since the widescreen excesses of Oxa Moxoa. With the Dead producing themselves, they were mixing themselves too. Sessions at the Record Plant lasted through the end of the month. The basic tracks were done by August 17th before they shifted into overdubbing and mixing. Here's how Bob Weir described the process to interviewers on Waer a few weeks here Emil a horse created by a committee.

[Brian Kehue]

But after this many years, I guess everybody pretty much knows what's gonna fit and what isn't.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Yeah, come up with a better and better candle.

[David Lemieux]

The master tape seems to feature the album's first draft. Track order Here Comes Sunshine, Ms. Half Step, Stella Blue and Ro Jimmy on side one, Eyes of the World, Let Me Sing youg Blues Away and Weather Report Suite on side two. Apparently the order wasn't finalized until mastering. It seems like they moved into Studio B at the Record Plant to track more takes of Ro Jimmy and Eyes of the World on August 28th and 30th, respectively, which would have been after everything else had been overdubbed and mixed. But they stuck with the takes they'd already caught. It's possible, too, that Jerry Garcia was doing double mixing duty during late August 1973. According to paperwork turned up by Joe Jupiel, from August 26 through September 3, the Jerry Garcia Merle Saunders Live at Keystone album, recorded earlier that summer, was being mixed at Fantasy Records in Berkeley. It's unclear, of course Garcia was there for the mixing, but he certainly was when Garcia Saunders played Labor Day weekend at Keystone Berkeley, probably the live debut of his new Wolf guitar, which we talked about on our Here Comes Sunshine episode just before they departed for their east coast debut, including a Hell's Angels party on a boat and a gig in Passaic before the Dead opened their own east coast tour. As the gears of their new record company fired up, the Dead played a few weeks of shows during our Stella Blue episode. We heard about Bruce Hornsby's revelatory experience seeing the Dead in Virginia during that tour. They'd opened the run with two shows at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island September 7th and 8th, 1973, where let it Grow got its live debut on the first night, separate from the rest of the Weather Report suite. And on the second night, the band debuted the full shebang now on Dave's picks 38 I love how it sounds, with Garcia and Donna Jean singing the answer vocals on the first part.

[Narrator/Reader]

Seasons Change, We'll See Summer by.

[Brian Kehue]

Same.

[Narrator/Reader]

Old Friends the Wind and Rain Like a song on the summer skies.

[David Lemieux]

The Grateful Dead were one of the biggest bands in the United States in September 1973, with a fan base that was still expanding, the Dead would have an influence in all kinds of ways that might not be obvious at first glance. One new fan in the Crowd was a 16 year old who trekked down from a few hours to the north. Please welcome from one of my all time favorite bands, Ira Kaplan of Yola Tango.

[Ira Kaplan]

I'm guessing the first one I got when it came out was Europe 72 and everything else was like catch up. The first time I saw them was at the Nassau Coliseum and they did Weather Report, Sweep or maybe just Let It Grow before it came out.

[David Lemieux]

At 16, Ira was already a veteran showgoer, having convinced his parents to take him to see Country Joe and the Fish with the Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac at the Fillmore east in December 1968, just before his 12th birthday.

[Ira Kaplan]

I got to go to the last weekend of the Fillmore, I think because it was closing. I don't think that would have been like normal permission. And then I went to lots of shows at Wollman Ring because that was just so suburban friendly. They were over before it was dark and then I'd just get on the train.

[David Lemieux]

NASA Coliseum was and is a little less friendly by public transportation. An hour trek down from Ira's hometown of Croton.

[Ira Kaplan]

That must be something of an aberration. But I guess there's probably something to turning 16 and friends having cars. I mean it was definitely a car full of people driving out to Long Island. I only saw them maybe like four times or so. And oddly that's the least vivid of them. I certainly remember Let It Grow. That really stuck.

[David Lemieux]

A rare jam where Keith Godshaw moves from piano to organization, which he had with him for the first legs of the fall 73 tour. Though rarely played it. It was only about a month later that the album hit the streets.

[Ira Kaplan]

I remember being kind of befuddled by it, all the slow songs and even like Weather Report, Suite. I can recall like, you know, this was so exciting live and now it's different. What's with this different, Stu? I mean, I guess especially because they hadn't made a record like that maybe ever. And if they had, you know, not since before Live Dead, like a real studio record to the extent that's like Wax moxo. As a 16 year old I was confused.

[David Lemieux]

Across.

[Narrator/Reader]

The lazy river.

[Brian Kehue]

Across.

[Narrator/Reader]

The Rio.

[Brian Kehue]

Land Rio.

[Narrator/Reader]

Causal Lazy River.

[Ira Kaplan]

It's an ambitious record, which is pretty exciting, especially now looking back. This notoriously studio averse band really dove in and went to work on it instead of, you know, putting out me and Bobby McGee. Especially now I can enjoy it and really respect it. At the time it was, it definitely wasn't, you know, half step Toodaloo didn't exactly burst out of the speakers.

[David Lemieux]

There was no, Bertha, I had to move.

[Ira Kaplan]

Really had to move.

[Narrator/Reader]

That's why I'm here. But please, I am on my hands and knees. Bertha, don't you come around here anymore.

[David Lemieux]

That was Yola Tengo covering Bertha featured on Murder in the Second Degree, their second compilation drawn from their appearances during the annual fundraising marathon for the non commercial radio station wff, where for a pledge they'll perform any song by anybody without looking it up or really practicing it. Sure, your local Dead cover band can probably play Bertha better than that without practice, but what about hey Ya Slurf Song, Pay to Come or Some Velvet Morning? I wouldn't request weather reports Sweet, but Ibert did about as well as Weir sometimes does when tested with Truckin'. Chicago, New York, Detroit's all in street.

[Brian Kehue]

The same street your typical city involved.

[Narrator/Reader]

In a typical daydream Pack it up and see what tomorrow brings.

[David Lemieux]

Talk about an intersection of my interests. I should also mention here that besides being a DJ on wfmu, I also wrote a book about Yoha Tango called Big Day, Yola Tango and the Rise of Indie Rock. We've posted a link to some of their music and my [e-mail] deadcast we talked in more depth about the Dead's influence on Ira's high school band during our Playing Dead episodes a few seasons back.

[Ira Kaplan]

The group I was in in high school, one of our centerpieces was a much too long version of Dancing in the Street. I cannot recall if vintage Dead had anything to do with that. We must have known it and that included some ridiculous piano playing excursion into something.

[David Lemieux]

Despite the surprise, Ira stayed a fan.

[Ira Kaplan]

I have a couple of bootleg albums. I had a friend, a good friend who had a reel to reel player and he had some recordings. I remember I used to drive him nuts because I always wanted to hear Ain't It Crazy and he got very tired of finding it on the tape for me.

[David Lemieux]

Mama got the remote, sister got the.

[Narrator/Reader]

Tub they're going around doing the real.

[Brian Kehue]

Be real baby Crazy ain't it crazy ain't it crazy one D Keep on.

[David Lemieux]

Rubbing that thing that's now on Ladies and gentlemen, the Grateful Dead. Recorded in New York in April 1971.

[Ira Kaplan]

I had definitely filled out the Deadheads thing and I have the 7 inch samplers that got mailed to me.

[David Lemieux]

He caught a few more shows and even taped the band at Roosevelt Stadium in the summer of 1974, which we talked about a little more on the Playing Dead episode.

[Ira Kaplan]

It wasn't that long a period when I was going to Shows and listening to them, you know, punk rock kind of knocked them off the stereo. So I guess I just didn't have that much of a community of listeners to swap tapes with, you know, friends. So I'm not sure why I never did get more involved in it.

[David Lemieux]

In later years, as Yola Tango found their own voice and grew into one of the most beloved bands of the American underground, one flag to Dead Freaks in the audience might be this verse of their 1989 song Drug Test from President Yola Tango.

[Narrator/Reader]

I'm listening to the flood I'm listening to the flood High Smarter than Nobody.

[David Lemieux]

It's a Dead reference, but not exactly a Deadhead reference. To me, it conjures the feeling of listening to the Grateful Dead as a teenager from a faraway perspective.

[Ira Kaplan]

I was certainly happy to out myself as a Grateful Dead listener. That wasn't accidental.

[David Lemieux]

It certainly gets a cheer at almost any Yola Tengo show, and not just because it's a drug reference, but the bigger influence of the Dead on Yola Tengo. And one of the reasons I'll be going to see Yola Tango for eight consecutive nights this December during their annual Hanukkah shows is because of their incredibly varied set lists.

[Ira Kaplan]

I'm sure they're a direct influence to that. I mean, NRBQ also, but I always, from a young age, responded to that and negatively responded to the bands that didn't. I would go to multiple kink shows in a week and try to, like, pay attention to the minute differences. Like, oh, look, he did a second verse of Sunny Afternoon at this show, and they didn't. But wondering why a band with a repertoire that deep was just doing the same songs every night. It never made sense to me.

[David Lemieux]

In more recent years, Iris gotten a little more in touch with Dead music, playing an occasional Dead tune or adjacent cover with Yola Tengo and appearing a few times with High Time, a way fun New York Dead band who focused on the band's early years. If you listen closely to Yola Tengo's latest excellent record, this Stupid World, you'll even catch a Dead Easter egg in the song. Tonight's episode, though it's sung by James McNew, the band's other Dead freak.

[Narrator/Reader]

Ask me nice, whatever you like I'll.

[Brian Kehue]

Show you, you your truth Milk the.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Cow I can milk the cow all.

[Narrator/Reader]

Along I can mow the arms Steal.

[Brian Kehue]

Your face I can steal your face.

[David Lemieux]

Dead curious fans like Ira would have lots of chances to see the Grateful Dead in the fall of 1973. Here's manager John McEntire on WAER in mid September, just after the show. Ira the whole country will be covered.

[Brian Kehue]

Starting the 15th of October and going through the middle of December.

[David Lemieux]

The previous fall they'd been playing multiple nights at a few bigger theaters. By 1973, though, the dead had moved almost entirely into coliseums, civic arenas and the occasional stadium.

[Brian Kehue]

There'll be two tours. The first one will be mostly Midwest and Southwest and west coast, and then later on we'll back east, more like in the latter part of November. We want to give it a little rest. We've been here for a while now and we'll stay away for a couple months and then come back here.

[David Lemieux]

There's plenty more to discuss about Wake of the Flood, but let's follow the path of Letic Row first. After the shows at NASA Coliseum, the suite was pretty much sewn into place for a run of shows in late September. They were joined by opening act Doug Somme, who had saxophonist Martin Fierro and trumpet player Joe Ellis in his touring band. Over the course of the shows, they evolved a mini set with the horns almost always centered around the Weather Report Suite. The horn shows get mixed reviews from tape collectors, but to my ears they drive the band and let it grow, especially to some pretty wild heights. This is from September 21, 1973 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. You know, ask a taper, but the horns were a briefly lived experience experiment in the live setting. Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux when they.

Started playing it a month after recording it, it was pretty true to form as it would be through 1974, and unfortunately they dropped the first two parts.

As Weir later said he didn't really like the lyrics of the first part. So it goes. There are lots of great versions from 1973 and 1974. To me, and I know at least a few other heads, Weather Report Suite is unquestionably an autumn song, especially the first parts. The versions from fall 1973 in particular capture this. Before I even got Wake of the Flood, my first exposure to the full suite was Dix Picks 1, recorded at the very end of 1973. Hearing Garcia emulate the pedal steel with a regular slide guitar is a beautiful part of the live versions.

[Narrator/Reader]

Golden Hills Now Veiled in Gray.

[David Lemieux]

And.

[Narrator/Reader]

Summer Leaves are Blown Away.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

And what.

[David Lemieux]

Remind.

[Narrator/Reader]

The Wind and rain.

[David Lemieux]

After the band's touring hiatus in 1975, the first two parts of the suite fell away. But with second drummer Mickey Hart back in the fold, they found a new power and let it grow.

There's the version from Providence 5 1478. That show is on the 30 trips box set and yet at the time I think most Let It Grows came in around 12 minutes or so. And this one is. And I've listened to that version a hundred times. They don't do one specific thing to stretch it from the classic 12, 13 to 17. They just keep it going, keep the jams going, because that's what they were feeling. They didn't, you know, I don't think they put a lot of effort into let's do a 17 minute version right now. It's just the music played the band.

It was actually immediately following this version that the song underwent its most major change besides dropping the first parts, which in true Grateful Dead fashion was actually pretty subtle at first. Following the Providence 78 version, the song disappeared from dead set lists for over a year, returning in September 1979. Listen closely to what Bob Weir is playing as Jerry Garcia takes off on a jam that will eventually bring the song over the 20 minute mark. It's that part that Scott Metzger sang for us earlier. This little guitar figure would become more prominent and reshape the song's dynamics. Here's a version from almost exactly a year later in Springfield, Massachusetts. Now the Download Series, Volume 7. By now the rest of the band has picked up on the riff and turned it into a powerful new part of the jam, almost like something written in the arrow in Let It Grow was first conceived. Occasionally the song got played in the second set, but usually it was played near the end of the first. And it was one of the most reliable rippers in the band's songbook. Though they didn't play it again with horns, they could certainly surf the dynamics. I love the version from Alpine Valley 82 now on Dix picks 32, especially the detailing in the halftime section when they take it at this faster tempo.

[Narrator/Reader]

She comes with a town where they call her the woodcutter's daughter she's brown in the bank where she kneels down to gather her water she bears it away with the love that the river has taught her Let it flow, let it flow wide and clear.

[David Lemieux]

Followed by a soaring multi flare jam. In the mid-1980s especially, I hear Let It Grow is pretty much the platform for Power Dead. I adore the version from June 24, 1985 in Cincinnati. Now in the 30 trips around the Sunpines where the band seems to be flying free of graphic like the shifting chords in the 1973-1974 Eyes of the World jam The new pattern drove Letic Row to new heights.

I saw Bob with Wolf Brothers 2 months ago in October with the horns and the Prelude and Part one. I mean, it was so beautiful and. And it was interesting because the part after Prelude as they go into one and Jerry comes in with the big huge slide note. The way they did it with Wolf Brothers is they came in the horn section, the Wolf Pack, the horns came in on that and it was just spectacular.

[Gary Lambert]

Gary Lambert and of course now so gloriously he's doing that kind of stuff with Wolf Bros and the Wolf Pack and realizing this music he's had for such a long time in his head. And I think it's wonderful that, for example, when the Wolf Pack does Weather Report Suite, the woodwinds and the strings play Bobby's little guitar etude transcribed for their instruments. And it sounds so beautiful.

[David Lemieux]

This version is from the band's March 17, 2021 broadcast from Tri with Barry Sless's pedal steel, Jeff Clementi's piano and the full horn section both channeling the album, plus another half century of wisdom in Weir's playing. It's one of my favorite things I've heard the Wolf Bros do. And beyond the Wolf Bros. It's a piece that Weir is now doing with his ongoing symphonic project with Giancarlo Aqualente, which is to say whether a report suite remains an open question. Back in 1973 though, there were still some final pieces that the new record company had to get together to get the record out into the world. From Grateful Dead Records, please welcome back Steve Brown.

[Steve Brown]

We had this quality thing that Rackowl kept pushing on and stuff. We want high quality so that people will have a really good sense of what the Grateful Dead have done. You know, kind of thing there. Yeah, and that's, yeah, great. Most I could get on that was getting Rick Griffin to do the COVID which was nice.

[David Lemieux]

Rick Griffin was one of the so called Big 5 San Francisco poster artists. He designed the front cover of Oxa mak soa in 1969. Originally a poster for the band's January 69 shows at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom.

[Steve Brown]

I was a fan of his all my life because I was a surfer and he did all the surfing magazine stuff. And so it was a person that I really, really admired. And so it was like making him feel that they needed this as their first album to really get people to be interested in seeing this Grateful Dead new album come out.

[David Lemieux]

The Dead didn't have a concept for the COVID just the title, courtesy of Robert Hunter, title and theme of the.

[Steve Brown]

Different songs that were in it. And he went right to it and seemed to impress everybody that I showed it to when he came up with.

[David Lemieux]

The Test one in the early 1970s, between designing Oxamoxoa and the Dead, asking for his art on Wake of the Flood, Rick Griffin had become a Christian. An album called Wake of the Flood was a fantastic assignment that he definitely understood. Coming back with a wheat carrying reaper in front of a receding ocean. Or perhaps it's the receding waters of a massive flood. Please welcome back the fantastic Eric Davis, author of the very heady newsletter the Burning Shore, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast and the author of several righteous books, the most relevant today being high drugs, esoterica and visionary experience in the 70s, which we've also linked to.

[Brian Kehue]

He's a Christian by this point. And it's always a fascinating thing when just to imagine, how did the Christian Rick Griffin continue to interact with the Dead, which not just like a commercial entity that he occasionally produced art for, but his friends. It's a very interesting thing in his own kind of career, but one way of thinking about it is like if you go back to like his cover for Oxa Moxa, one of the ways of what is this? What's going on here? And you. It's kind of like a mandala of natural cyclicity where birth and sex and death are just constantly churning through each other, you know, and that life is this sort of wheel of birth and sex and decay and death, rather than over and over, like overlapping, interacting, consuming itself, feeding on itself. And it's a glorious vision, but from certain angles it's also kind of terrifying. It's the wheel you can't get off of. And part of the spiritual quest for some people, not for everybody. The spiritual quest for some people is like, is there a way out or is there another element that I'm missing here?

[David Lemieux]

The back cover of the album features a crow with its beak open amid a bushel of wheat and a sky that's mostly wide open, except for one certain cloud hanging there.

[Brian Kehue]

The elongated skull cloud is hidden in that image. It's an early kind of Renaissance gesture when you have like a stretched out image that comes together when you look at it from an angle. It's called Anamorphosis. It starts in like the 16th century and it's often a skull.

[David Lemieux]

Go on, get out your copy of Wake of the Flood and tilt it just slightly.

[Brian Kehue]

You'll see you look at a picture of Some captain of the world and all their goods and their amazing furniture and beautiful clothes and hot wife. And then you look at it and there's like. Oh, this is, like, skull, like, across the whole thing. You know, it's this sort of reminder. Yeah, this too. This too shall pass. You know, all the. All the kings and pawns go back into the same box at the end.

[David Lemieux]

Well, that fits right in.

[Brian Kehue]

It's something about the way, like, the recognition of death or that the death is always in the picture, I think, is kind of the idea. It's like one of those great sort of elements of the Grateful Dead mythos, of their name, of so much of their material, which is. So much of it just tragic or has to do with death or mortality. And the fact that it becomes an enlivening thing. Like, it's not a bummer. It's not a heavy metal doom move. It's a way of actually waking up to the situation and enjoying what's here even more. Loving what's here even more. And I feel like that's also kind of captured on the COVID art, at.

[David Lemieux]

Least on the original lp. There was no text on the back cover, besides a small copyright notice at the bottom.

[Brian Kehue]

There's originally a biblical quote that was supposed to be part of the album covered from Revelation. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hell gave up the dead that were in them. And they were judged, every man, according to their works.

[David Lemieux]

But it wasn't to be.

[Brian Kehue]

They removed it. But he. It was part of his original plan. Like, he wanted to put it. And they were like, sorry, man, you can't do it. Like, that's a step too far, Rick. Sorry, it's not going to work. But what you're left with then is this kind of enigmatic image of, you know, is the Reaper a horror to avoid, or is the Reaper a beautiful part of the loop? You know, don't fear the Reaper, right? Like, that's the kind of conundrum, and I think in general, psychedelic mysticism says don't fear the Reaper. Like, it's just were part of the loop. But there's this weird tension there.

[David Lemieux]

In September 1973, Rick Griffin told the British magazine Zigzag, the image was designed to show an alternative to that. I wanted to juxtapose that scripture with a loving image, an image of loving harvest. Maybe because it was slightly too on the nose, the Reaper never really became a part of the Grateful Dead iconography. Alongside the skull and roses and dancing bears, the Crow on the back cover, though, did enter the mythos somewhat. Steve Brown.

[Steve Brown]

The crow has its place. It's in there with everything that was in that album, I think. And there was something that he had to, you know, find something that would be out near an ocean somewhere and there's crows out by the ocean and it fits perfect for the Grateful Dead. Is it a good thing, a bad thing? Something in between?

[David Lemieux]

A professor of art history named Kenneth Hartfixon is working on a project about Grateful Dead iconography. We've posted a link to a survey about Grateful Dead related [e-mail] deadcast One of my favorite uses of the crow is in the center of the LPs and 7 inches produced by Grateful Dead Records, where the crow is seen to be literally grasping the spindle of the turntable.

[Steve Brown]

It was an open fill in kind of a situation where you could put stuff into it too. Also, when we put it out working.

[David Lemieux]

Together on Wake of the Flood, Steve became friends with Rick Griffin after I.

[Steve Brown]

Got to know him when I was doing this and stop at my place and when he got surfing. I've got a big decoration in my hall here of Rick Griffin and his whole life, you know, and I took it up to a burning man with me. And when they built this beautiful big castle there, you put in things of people that you have passed away and that you want to honor.

[David Lemieux]

The Crow is going to continue to circle us for a while. In the fall of 1973, the Grateful Dead were not only launching their first studio album in three years, but their very own record company. As we've discussed throughout this year, their label, Grateful Dead Records, wasn't like other artist owned record labels. It was designed to be genuinely independent, not just a subsidiary of a bigger label. What's more, it was a Grateful Dead record company done. The Grateful Dead way in charge was Ron Rakow, who is definitely unlike any other label boss in the business. For starters, he takes credit for the crow.

[Brian Kehue]

What happened with the Crow is really simple. That was in response to an interview between Joe Smith and Mo Austin and an industry trade paper, Record World, I think it was. They said, yeah, we lost the Grateful Dead and they think they're going to be able to duplicate us on their own. And they are going to fail so miserably when they can't get paid for their records. You won't believe it. Of course, I'm not an imbecile. That's the first thing I thought of is how to get paid for the records. But I was able to then Send out postcards with the crowd. So I just said in our mail out to the fans, the record industry is predicting our failure. So in order to make them happy, should we fail, I put a crow on the COVID Because if I have to eat crow, I want one. Convenient.

[David Lemieux]

It was a challenge, but a worthwhile one.

[Brian Kehue]

Our starting the record company turned out to be a way bigger deal than I thought. I didn't know that. It had never been done before. I thought for sure it had never been done before. And a lot of bands made label deals and had separate labels, but they were all distributed by the majors. There was nobody that took on distribution by themselves. That had never happened.

[David Lemieux]

There were many in deep reasons for the Grateful Dead to start their own label.

[Brian Kehue]

There was another thing that was going on, which was we had the right to audit Warner Brothers twice a year to see if we were getting paid for it. And we did it. We did it twice a year, and we never didn't come up with money. I don't know what other artists do, but it just seems to me that it just keeps everybody honest. But you could never scare those guys into being honest. They just paid.

[David Lemieux]

So when the Dead put crows on their record and razzed the Joe Smiths of the world in myriad ways over the next few years, it was a deep wink.

[Brian Kehue]

I was always having fun with those guys. I mean, those guys didn't buy records. They sold records. So they couldn't affect our market no matter what they said. And they tried everything. They didn't know how to sell Grateful Dead records, and I didn't either. Nobody did.

[David Lemieux]

Rakow had his own solution to the challenge, but it was only one of the issues the new record company was meant to tackle. Another problem they tried to solve was pressing their records on what they deemed to be high quality vinyl, a problem perhaps exacerbated by who they chose to come up with the definition of high quality vinyl.

[Brian Kehue]

It wasn't difficult. It was impossible. I don't know what you would do. I'll tell you what I did. First I went to the smartest guy I knew in this area. His name was Augustus Owley Stanley iii. And I said, I want to have records that play well. He said, so do I. I said, okay, here is every vinyl that they use in records. I bought a little bit from 25 different vendors. Do whatever you want to do to them. Tell me which I should specify as the only vinyl acceptable to us. So he comes back in a week and said, this vinyl is the best for storing musical information and he gave me a bottle that I had given him, and it had a number on it. So I wrote that into our contracts with every pressing plan that they had to use this kind of vinyl. They all signed it, all of them. Big companies. Columbia, this one, that one. You know, big companies. And nobody had that fucking vinyl. Only a couple of places could even use that vinyl because their system didn't allow for it. They just signed. Doug would sign anything.

[David Lemieux]

I've not gone down the Discogs rabbit hole of different Wake of the Flood pressings, but if you're a Hot Stampers type record collector, this album might liquefy your brain at some point. There was even a small run of the album on swirled green vinyl, personally overseen by Betty Kanter. Probably just for friends, family and close business associates, but memories are murky. Betty Cantor was also sent to the pressing plants to check out the issues with the vinyl.

[Brian Kehue]

And Betty Kantor went there. She's a top quality sound technician. She said, not only are they not using the specified vinyl, they can't. Their machines won't even accept it. They didn't tell me that before. So, believe it or not, as the record is being pressed in other places, I moved pressing plants in the East.

[David Lemieux]

The company developed its own quality control team.

[Brian Kehue]

I put a Grateful Dead monitor at every plant that made records. And there were some sophisticated people. Bob Matthews, Betty Kantor, Billy Wilf, all those guys went to pressing plants and stayed there and took random samples off the line. And we determined when the mothers were no good and the mothers were worn out. The parts were worn out. We made them toe the line. It was still impossible.

[David Lemieux]

The Grateful Dead might have had a huge audience of Dead freaks ready to buy new albums, but there was still a lot of message spreading and work to do for the new label to get their record into stores.

[Brian Kehue]

That was also one of my breakthroughs. The little square cards that were an album cover, they were five and a quarter by five and a quarter inches.

[David Lemieux]

Our friend Michael Parish received one and joined one of the earliest promotional street teams in rock and roll.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

I had gotten one of these letters that was like, we're starting our record company. We're looking for, like, boots on the ground to get the word out. And Steve Parrish is organizing it. And if you want to be involved, let us know. So I. I wrote back and. And then right before Wake of the Flood came out, I got this big package with a bunch of the brand new stuff. Posters and some flyers and things. And they said, please get these around. And I went to the Record stores in Santa Cruz and some of the dining halls on campus.

[David Lemieux]

The record company worked to raise awareness of the record.

[Brian Kehue]

We had six people and three or four of them were administrative people. We had three people that were responsible for selling this shit, you know. When the record came out, I personally went to every distributor and played it for their staff, you know. So I took a great sound system on the road the week an album came out. It was hard work because I personally went to 18 distributors and played the album for them. And I, I had to carry the sound system. Owsley put together a sound system for me that was un fucking believable. Nobody heard anything like it. But it was heavy. I had to carry it, you know, I didn't carry it far. I got help, but sometimes there was no help. There were two 60 pound aluminum cases, no turntable. I flew with a cassette recorder, a ewer set recorder made in Germany. And it was the smallest top flight tape recorder you could find. I went to all 16 distributors in three days, get everybody excited and split. It was 17. The one other one that I did was the First National bank of Boston. I catered to them because I was using them in so many different ways. I wanted them to feel important and they did. So I flew to New York and then worked my way back across the country.

[David Lemieux]

It gave Ron Rakow and Jerry Garcia a ground level view of the record business.

[Brian Kehue]

They loved us. They loved us. I gave a volume figure to the distributors of what my projections were for them. I broke up the whole country and gave them quotas. And there were no inducements or penalties for not making a quota. Except that if you made the quota, I brought Garcia to your office in.

[David Lemieux]

The Northeast especially not making the quotas wouldn't be a problem.

[Brian Kehue]

I took Jerry with me to some of the distributors. One in particular on the wake of the Flood one and later New York City. He was nameless. Harry Apostolaris. He was a terrific guy. And he and Jerry was love at first sight. They loved each other. It was amazing. I mean, Harry Apostolaris had been a record distributor for 25 years. He had survived some man. He was a great guy, a tough game. And Jerry got it. Jerry got it. And you know, in a second he really liked the guy and got comfortable with the guy and stretched out and told jokes and he, he found a lot of things to laugh about there. And he cackled when he left. The whole room laughed when he left. These guys are not fancy. They had their office in a warehouse. Jerry was an amazing Communicator. You can really trust Jerry to do his part, no matter what. The thing was, Jerry was an amazing guy, period, end of story. And a nice guy.

[David Lemieux]

When the album came out, Steve Brown got to work on radio promotion, mapping a route from the home office in San Rafael.

[Steve Brown]

It was fun to see a lot of people that were interested in what the Grateful Dead were going to be doing, and was nice to find the Deadhead of the crowd, as it were, to talk to. I tried to pick that out when I made the calls from the office first, you know, and set all these up because I didn't really want to talk to somebody. What is that band? Who is that? Their name.

[David Lemieux]

The album was officially out on Monday, October 15, which is a rare date in as much as it's early in the time frame of records being released on specific dates. And it seems like the band hit it. We spoke to Steve Moore about his radio promotion work during our Listen to the River 73 episode.

[Brian Kehue]

Me and another partner there at Grateful Dead Records were both involved with that.

[David Lemieux]

Getting into the radio people, especially the ones at the universities where they had radio stations playing that kind of music.

[Brian Kehue]

A lot, especially Grateful Dead.

[David Lemieux]

We were going around. I even traveled around for a while.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Going to these stations before the record was even completed. I did a lot of northeast travel where we had a real good backing already with Grateful Dead East Coast.

[David Lemieux]

So most of my stuff was done.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

There, and it was done in many.

[David Lemieux]

Cases with locals who knew who the.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

People were there, and I'd connect with them and we'd drive around and go to all these places and talk to the people at the universities as well.

[David Lemieux]

In early October, a few days before the album was out, he was dispatched to St. Louis and debuted the whole album over the airwaves. It was a treat to be able to hear it on the radio, because if it came out on the 15th of October, and this was a show.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

On the 29th and 30th, on the.

[David Lemieux]

Listen to the River 73 episode, we focused pretty closely on this very small window of late fall. 73. We've linked back to it at dead.net deadcast in October 1973, concurrent with the release of Wake of the Flood and Ron Rakow and Steve Brown's promotional trips, there was what some call the Yom Kippur War, some call the Ramadan War, and what we'll call the October War, a continuation of a fight over colonized and contested land that unfortunately remains topical for reasons that many other scholars, journalists, politicians, podcasts, and pretty much Everybody else continue to discuss. It's a fight with global ramifications, as Ron Rackow was reminded.

[Brian Kehue]

And I was gone for four days. When I came back, I was a wreck. I mean, I went to three cities a day. When I got home, I had to wait on line for an hour to get gas. A picture gas station in Stinson Beach. It's really funny because it impacted the shit out of me in my life, but I never even thought about it in terms of the record or the record company. I just went around and did what I planned to do.

[David Lemieux]

The subsequent oil embargoes would cause disruptions across the world for the Grateful Dead. It impacted the cost of making records, throwing any of their best laid plans about quality control straight out the window. It also greatly expanded the cost of keeping a rock band on the road with a still growing and very heavy speaker system. That was the grateful dead in St. Louis at the Keel Auditorium on October 30, 1973, playing through the giant system that was the immediate precursor to what's now known as the Wall of Sound. The next day was Halloween and we're going to throw in a tantalizing but unresolved Halloween 1973 story here. Many thanks to Alan Burshaw for recently surfacing a clip from downbeat published in December 1973. I'm just going to read it in its entirety. No tricks, all treats. Jim Schaefer, Downbeat Managing Editor, held a rather unique gathering at his 6,000 square foot Chicago loft on Halloween night. Approximately 425 people partied to the sounds of Great Lakes Express, a Michigan based group led by multi horn man Bob Stroop, a Woody Herman sideman of the 60s. Those present included Frank Zappa and his band, John McLaughlin, Stevie Wonder, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock and his new band, Bill Chase, Lou Rawls, the Allman Brothers, Bobby Hutcherson, Chris Jagger, the Grateful Dead, the moody blues, Steve McCall and sculptor Claes Oldenburg, as well as record company representatives and radio and TV personalities from Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. After the Great Lakes Express warmed things up, members of the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers played a set together leading up to the luminescent jam session that climaxed the by then early morning party. The two and a half hour session group McLaughlin, Hancock, Cobham, bassists Paul Jackson of Hancock's band and Jamie Colton of Great Lakes Express, and towards the end, percussionist schaeffer on conga. McLaughlin was later quoted on Triad radio as saying, this was the best Halloween I've Ever had. Okay. Wow. It seems like all those acts actually were around Chicago and free on Halloween, 1973. We've got some feelers out. Alan Paul queried Jamaux from the Allman Brothers, who remembers the party but says he wasn't there. We'll let you know if anything comes back. The next night, the dead were in Evanston at Northwestern University, a show that's now on wake of the flood. 50. The real thing wreaking havoc on Wake of the Flood's release wasn't the oil crisis, but bootleggers. As Ron Rackow and Steve Brown recall.

[Brian Kehue]

We were counterfeited.

[Steve Brown]

It was right at the beginning. It was like, holy shit. It's like, what? Somebody's bootlegging it already? That was so scary because when you pick up the phone and it's the federal government calling you, you know, the FBI, you know, it's like, what? Yeah, we've got this bootlegging going on that people are calling and reporting to them about. All of a sudden, they're on us and telling us that there's something that you got to check into here, and we're going to go check out if we can find the people that are doing it. And they did.

[David Lemieux]

Raquel remembers the FBI trying to stay out of it.

[Brian Kehue]

The FBI, they didn't give a. They called it a commercial dispute. I don't know how you could do that. But anyway, this lucky thing happened. I made an error selecting the plates that went on the printing press, and the bootleg was done without that error. So the price code on the spine came out white. I had the era. Mine came out orange. It's a small little number on the spine.0598. It was a 5.98 retail item.

[Steve Brown]

It was just in the square on the back that made the difference with the songs and stuff in it. And then there's the ones that we did and the ones that they did. And that was the only difference. Oh, except it didn't look quite as good as ours.

[Brian Kehue]

We sent out a postcard to all the people on the fan club list, and they went and checked all the record stores.

[David Lemieux]

The cards were ready to go.

[Brian Kehue]

I used them as postcards and sent a postcard out to the fans saying, the government doesn't realize that our survival is at stake. And I explained the difference between the good album and the fake album. And I asked them to go into the stores and if they found the fake album, buy it, keep the receipt, send it to me. And I would send them back a check for the money and Give them a backstage pass the next time we were in town, including two free tickets and one backstage pass. There was four kids from Harvard who immediately quit school, got in a Volkswagen van and gave me a written report on 1972 record locations. It worked. As a matter of fact, we hired the just retired district Attorney of Los Angeles county to head a suing operation to sue every record store that had these fake records in them. And if we would not press charges if they gave us where they got them from and made a financial offer of settlement. And so it got to be. We have small stores paid $5,000 and larger places paid $10,000. And everybody gave us the distributors they got them from, and we sued everybody. And then I worked my way up to the people that made them.

[David Lemieux]

Sometimes when you look behind the curtain of the record business, there are surprises.

[Brian Kehue]

And that's when I got a visitor. Guy came to my hotel room in the Nimbaro Hotel in New York with two other guys. And he said, you're really impressive. I don't know how you did this, but you got back to us and I want you to stop here and now. And I said, I'm sorry. Just for you to say stop is not going to do it. Because I think we've been fucked around and I think you owe us more than that. And he said, I'll tell you what. I will give you a guarantee that for as long as you're in business, we will never duplicate a Grateful Dead product ever again. And that was the deal I made with them, and that's what happened. And that helped me enormously one other time because I had a guy inside the mob that would vouch for the fact that I could keep my word. Because something else happened sometime later that was weirder. And the fact of how I acted during that time was what made the other one really easy to pull off.

[David Lemieux]

Maybe we'll get back to that one. Maybe not. In Steve Brown's estimation, it didn't eat into the profits too much.

[Steve Brown]

It seemed like it was cutting into us in the hundreds, not in the thousands.

[David Lemieux]

At some point, parts of the Wake of the Flood story got memory hold.

[Brian Kehue]

Ron Rakow the first album was Wake of the Flood. And Wake of the Flood was very, very profitable. Somehow the numbers got twisted. It was. It was one of our best selling albums, and it never got that credit.

[David Lemieux]

There's a rap that goes around sometimes that the Grateful Dead studio albums weren't important or that the Dead didn't care about them.

[Brian Kehue]

Everybody fought like hell to make good studio albums, and I think they made good studio albums. But the Grateful Dead weren't about one. Plus one is two. They're about how it feels. The Grateful Dead were playing to a place in the mind and body and soul of mankind that's different from other bands. They had a different goal. They really worked hard, hard, hard on that. They did not care about it. They weren't cavalier about it.

[David Lemieux]

Gary Lambert.

[Gary Lambert]

Another remarkable aspect of the album, that they put it out on their indie label incredibly efficiently. You know, between recording and getting it pressed and putting it out, it really happened fast. And at that point, it was their highest charting. Upon initial release. I think it got to 18 on the albums chart, and American Beauty had peaked at 19. So it did really well under the circumstances. It may not have had the legs that working manager American Beauty had in terms of sales, but it showed that they were really serious about being a fully independent record company. How long that lasted is another matter. But I was very impressed by that. I looked at things like Billboard and Cashbox in those days because I was kind of trying to get started in the music business. And I said, man did have a top 20 album that they put out themselves without Warner Brothers.

[David Lemieux]

We received an extremely thoughtful dissenting take on Wake of the Flood from listener Cary Coles, which we're going to include in somewhat edited form here.

[Cary Coles]

I'm an English follower of the Dead, and it's been a lifelong love affair from when I first saw them at the London Lyceum on the last night of Europe 72. My main reaction to Wake of the Flood was actually one of disappointment. I bought everything pretty much by then by 1973. And I also had the amazing Glastonbury Fair dark star from Wembley Empire Pool, which few people heard till Europe 72 came out. So I was really full of expectation when I put the record on. But what I heard was a series of tunes which all seemed to proceed at a kind of shuffle pace, sometimes either a little bit bouncy and sometimes just flat on the floor. The poetry just seemed to me to be whimsical or nonsensical or cartoonish. And it didn't open the doors for my imagination. There was nothing on the disc that rocked. There was no blues. There was no chance for Jerry to let rip and go high and wild, which we all love in his work. I've been looking back and thinking about why that record didn't speak to me. And didn't, I felt, speak to the moment. It was a moment when the London counterculture was really Going full steam. The Microdot Gang, pre Operation Julie were in full flow. Speed also rocked the concert scene. The free festivals were also just getting going in that period. The vibe and the fashion though, was kind of shifting away from Californian psychedelia and denim and it was heading for something more urban and more hard edged and more gender fluid.

[David Lemieux]

In the uk, it was an age of David Bowie and Brian Eno of Peter Gabriel era Genesis, and most of all, Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon. Carrie expected more out of the next phase of the Dead.

[Cary Coles]

Just think of the anger and kind of chaos that they'd captured and refracted in those gigs just the previous year. And that was all just gone. And in place was a sort of introversion and self absorption, or at least so it seemed to me.

[David Lemieux]

Carey would find more in the songs as the Dead continued to play them. Somehow the perception of the album being less than successful commercially spread around. In its initial run, it sold something close to 400,000 copies. Reviewers didn't always take to it though. Robert Hunter blamed himself in this 1978 interview with WLIR.

[Brian Kehue]

I didn't give him the material. Here we were all set up, ready to go, ready to rip. And if I had written albums like I'd been writing, fine. But you know, it's just one of those situations where you get this nice snazzy Cadillac area thing and the battery doesn't work. For some reason, my streak ended. I don't know what it was.

[David Lemieux]

I think that's unfair. There are plenty of ways to critique Wake of the Flood. I'm not sure I would have made all those production choices exactly, for example, but the material itself lasted. The band dropped Let Me Sing youg Blues Away quickly, probably because the chords were a pain to remember. And Weir dropped the beginning of Weather Report Suite that he wrote with Eric Anderson. But besides that, the band would continue to discover the power of everything else over the course of the next 20 plus years. But with Wake of the Flood, there's always that crow circling just overhead.

[Brian Kehue]

And my birthday in 1973 was on November 10th, which is what it is every year but the 9th, 10th and 11th. The Grateful Dead were playing at Winterland. They gave me a birthday cake that was a big crow.

[David Lemieux]

Which is to say that the November 10, 1973 show at Winterland that we focused on for our Prelude Tuesday Night Jam episode was also Rakow's 36th birthday.

[Brian Kehue]

Incidentally, at Sunday night when I went home, my house had burned down.

[David Lemieux]

No shit.

[Brian Kehue]

I walked out of the house could not be late for the show and I threw the Sunday paper on the pile of papers that was next to the fireplace, which was a standalone fireplace, and one section of the paper blacked open after I was no longer in eyesight and laid on the fireplace of one page of a paper and it burst into flames and it caught the other papers on fire and it caused a pretty serious fire.

[David Lemieux]

Not the whole house, but yikes. House fires notwithstanding, the grateful dead ended 1973 at a profit. Three months of solid tauren gave them a liquid cash flow, and the year end statement for their new record company showed a net profit of over $186,000, around 1.2 million, adjusted for inflation. They'd reached the point where having a lot of money started to become a tax issue. Or as Rakow put it, just after Wake of the Flood came out, they were taking measures to ensure that the debt are never financially secure. Garcia said that after he made his self titled debut, I found for a while I was rich so I started giving the money away and I found after a while that it cost me $1500 to give away $1000. So we're getting an institution registered to promote research in the arts, sciences and education so I can give my money away easier. They had a great name for it.

[Brian Kehue]

Too, the Neil Cassidy Foundation.

[David Lemieux]

It was an idea that would remain in progress for the next few years.

[Brian Kehue]

The Neil Cassidy foundation was what the Rex Foundation. Well, in the process of talking about the Neil Cassidy Foundation, Rex died, the.

[David Lemieux]

Chronology might have a few lumps, and it would take a decade for the Neil Cassidy foundation to turn into the Rex foundation, named for the late Rhodey Rex Jackson, who died in 1976. But in 1973, the world was theirs and getting not only bigger, but brighter. The floodwaters were receding and the Grateful Dead were on high ground, entering into their 10th year as a band.

[Guest Musician (e.g., Scott Metzger or Gary Lambert)]

Sun.

[Narrator/Reader]

Shine.

[Rich Mahan]

Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode, Eric Anderson, Ron Rakow, Steve Brown, Ira Kaplan, Gary Lambert, Michael Parish, David Lemieux, Brian Kehue, Eric Davis, Scott Metzger, Sean o' Donnell and Kerry Coles. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz, for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive. Thank you very much for taking this trip with us through Wake of the Flood. Please don't forget to like, subscribe and share an episode on your social media and give us your Grateful Dead related stories by recording yours over at Stories Executive Producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.