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| Round Records RX-104, released March 1975 |
Keith and Donna Godchaux released their album on Round Records in March of 1975. After the Grateful Dead had stopped touring in October of 1974, their concept was that the band itself would still be a recording entity. The Dead would continue recording, as would all the constituent members. Thus, Keith and Donna had their Stinson Beach living room set up as a recording studio, so the Keith & Donna album was mostly recorded at home. On the album, Keith Godchaux played keyboards, of course, while both Donna and Keith sang, and Jerry Garcia played guitar (and doodled on the cover photo of Zion Godchaux). I believe that some of the bass and drums was overdubbed in a studio, but that is a topic for another post.
The Grateful Dead had a serious cash flow problem in 1975. Band members were probably receiving a small salary, more like a stipend, but every band member still had to fend for themselves. As for the Keith & Donna album, Round Records didn't have any real promotional budget, so it was up to the Godchauxs to attract attention to it. In the Spring of 1975, Keith and Donna Godchaux formed their own band to play their music. At this time, Jerry Garcia was playing regularly with Merl Saunders in The Legion Of Mary, and Bob Weir was playing Bay Area clubs with Kingfish. After a few months, Bill Kreutzmann would join the Keith & Donna Band on drums.
Around a dozen years ago, I wrote up a post on the known performance history of the Keith & Donna band. It was the first, and so far only, attempt to capture a chronology of the band's activities. Many people have contributed--and are still contributing--to the Comment Thread there, and I have made a modest effort to keep it updated. Now, with so many more digital sources available, it's time to revisit the history. Thanks to everybody who found new dates over the years and sent in artefacts. If anyone has any additional insights, corrections, useful speculation or recovered memories, please add them in the Comments. Flashbacks welcome.
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| The Lion's Share, at 60 Red Hill Avenue, in San Anselmo, sometime in the 1970s. The Keith and Donna Band debuted at this Marin County musician's hangout on April 17, 1975 |
San Francisco Bay Area Rock Nightclub Economics, 1975 Edition
By 1975, the rock music audience had aged, and nightclubs were a big part of the equation. The Bay Area concert industry was bigger than ever, of course, but it was concentrated on a relatively small number of venues, mostly controlled by Bill Graham Presents. When groups like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or the Rolling Stones came to town, these were huge events in the largest venues in the region. But if people wanted to go out and rock a little on Friday night, those over 21 were just as likely to go somewhere they could get a beer rather than hang out with several thousand teenagers. If they were going on a date, or hoping to meet someone they could date, that was even more true. So there were plenty of options.
The Keith & Donna Band mostly played nightclubs in the Bay Area. Thus my detailed review of their performances also becomes a snapshot of Bay Area rock nightclubs in the Spring and Summer of 1975 (I have posted quite a lot about this topic). From our distant perspective, we think of Keith and Donna Godchaux as members of the Grateful Dead, and everything associated with the Dead today seems to print money. But the situation was quite a bit different in Spring '75. The Grateful Dead were huge rock stars, and local heroes, sure. But the Godchauxs were only a modest attraction in the clubs.
While Jerry Garcia was at the top of the tree in Bay Area rock nightclubs, in comparison of things to come he wasn't that dramatic an attraction. The Keystone Berkeley, his principal booking, only officially held around 500. Sure, more people were let in on occasion, but it wasn't giant. Other places he played around town weren't any larger. Also, since Garcia and the Dead had been Bay Area since the beginning, even staunch Deadheads hardly considered driving far to see Garcia. Palo Alto fans who would drive to Berkeley or San Francisco to see the Dead wouldn't think about it for Garcia, figuring he'd show up nearby eventually. Bob Weir had joined Kingfish in November, 1974, and while he was a draw as well, he was a step lower that Garcia.
The Godchauxs, in turn, found themselves below Garcia and Kingfish in the nightclub pecking order. Deadheads who thought they might like to catch a Grateful Dead member were most likely to try and catch Garcia and Weir before Keith and Donna. Such is rock and roll--the only thing the Godchauxs could do is get out there and play music, build an audience and make a little money. For all their Grateful Dead pedigree, Keith and Donna started fairly low on the nightclub heirarchy.
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| Donna Godchaux on stage at Winterland, October 4, 1975 |
The Keith & Donna Band, April 1975
Keith Godchaux-electric grand piano, Fender Rhodes electric piano, vocals
Keith had been playing a Yamaha Grand Piano with the Dead, but with Keith & Donna he played a smaller instrument. I believe it was a Yamaha Electric Grand Piano. He also played a Fender Rhodes electric piano, and handled a fair amount of lead vocal duties along with Donna.
Donna Godchaux-vocals
Donna was front and center on stage with the Keith & Donna band. She shared a fair amount of songs with Keith, but she was the dominant singer and the center of attention.
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| Ray Scott playing guitar with the Keith & Donna band at Winterland, October 4, 1975 |
Ray Scott-guitar
Scott had been a friend of Keith Godchaux from the Walnut Creek area since their teenage days. Jesse Jarnow uncovered the curious detail that Scott and Keith rehearsed an electric band in a garage in 1964. Sandy Rothman and Scott had played electric guitars, along with Keith on electric bass, plus a drummer. That ensemble never performed live. Scott was a music store employee, I believe, but I'm not certain what his performing history was up to 1975. Scott does appear in the List Of Population in Humbead's Map Of The World, which was no small thing.
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| Steve Schuster blowing some tenor sax on stage at Winterland with Keith and Donna, October 4, 1975 |
Steve Schuster-tenor saxophone, flute, congas
Schuster had the most fascinating pedigree of anyone in the Keith & Donna band, even more than the Godchauxs. Schuster had gone to High School in New York and was an accomplished jazz saxophonist as a teenager. He went to UC Berkeley around Fall '62 but soon dropped out. In 1963, he had shared a house in Venice Beach with David Crosby, David Freiberg and Paul Kantner. By 1965, with most of them in the Bay Area (save Crosby), Schuster was hanging out at the Top Of The Tangent, seeing Mother McRee's Uptown Jugband Champions and trading quips with Ken Kesey.
By the end of 1966, Schuster was the chief roadie (or "Qwippie") for Quicksilver Messenger Service, with his old pal Freiberg. Schuster was involved with all the mutual adventures of the Dead and Quicksilver from 1966 to 1968. He regularly sat in with Quicksilver on tenor sax and flute, and jammed with the Dead and everyone else. He also co-wrote the QMS classic instrumental "Gold And Silver."
By 1975, Schuster was the musical transcriptionist for both the Jefferson Starship and the Grateful Dead. At the time, music could only be published if it was transcribed into formal notation, so bands had to hire someone with musical training to write out their publishable songs. The chords were often used in songbooks, too. Schuster had the gig for both bands, since he went back forever with all the main characters. It's no surprise that Schuster popped up on albums like Sunfighter, Rolling Thunder, Tales of The Great Rum Runners and Manhole (Grace Slick's 1974 solo album). Schuster even had a co-production credit on Manhole, and had arranged some orchestrations.
I assume that Schuster had continued to play jazz locally, but save for a few Starship credits he had no backstory in 1975. It was a surprise to find out later that he was one of the most connected people in the Marin music world. On stage, Schuster played tenor and flute, and when he played congas, he really played them, not just marking time.
Hadi Al-Saadoon-trumpet
I don't know much about Hadi Al-Saadoon, but I believe he was from Marin. He seemed to drop off the music radar after leaving the Keith & Donna band in mid-1975, only to turn up twenty years later in Zero.
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| Jellyroll, released 1970 on Kapp Records. Lead singer/bassist Roger Troy got his nickname from this album, even though it wasn't any sort of hit. |
Roger "Jellyroll" Troy-bass
Roger Troy was from the Cincinnati area, where among other things he had worked with Howard Wales while backing guitarist Lonnie Mack. Troy had been the bassist and lead singer of a band called Jellyroll,who had released an album on Kapp in 1970. Somehow the nickname stuck, even when Troy moved to the Bay Area. In early 1972, Troy re-united with Wales in his band, playing on tour with Jerry Garcia in early 1972.
By 1973, Troy had moved permanently to the Bay Area. He played regularly with Mike Bloomfield, often acting as the lead singer for his ever-shifting ensembles. Troy played with Howard Wales, and sat in with Garcia and Merl Saunders on occasion as well. Troy recorded as part of the ill-advised Electric Flag reunion in 1974. I'm not aware of Troy singing with the Keith & Donna band, but we only have one tape from his time in the band.
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| The Chicago-based Aorta released Aorta 2 on Happy Tiger Records in 1970. Most of the band-members ended up in the Bay Area, including Jim Vincent, Tom Donlinger and Micheal Been. Not a bad band, by the way, by any means. |
Tom Donlinger-drums
Tom Donlinger (1949-2012) was from Chicago, where he had played and recorded with groups such as Rotary Connection, the Cryan Shames and Aorta. By 1975, Donlinger had moved out to Marin County. His brother James was already a well-established guitarist, using the name Jim Vincent. Vincent had also toured with Wales and Garcia (and Roger Troy) on the brief 1972 Hooteroll tour. After Donlinger's brief stint in the Keith & Donna Band, Donlinger would play with many other artists, including a year with Brian Auger (in 1980) and five years with Van Morrison (1981-85)
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| The San Francisco Examiner of Thursday, April 17, 1975 listed Keith & Donna's debut, opening for the Rowan Brothers at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo |
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| The Marin Independent-Journal listed Keith and Donna opening for the Rowan Brothers on the second night (Friday, April 18, 1975 |
April 17-18, 1975 Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Rowan Brothers/Keith and Donna Godchaux (Thursday-Friday)
The Keith & Donna band debuted at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo on Thursday, April 17, 1975. The Lion's Share was at 60 Red Hill Avenue in San Anselmo, just about 10 minutes from downtown San Rafael. It only held about 250 people, and ultimately was too small to survive the Bay Area club market. For obvious reasons, it was a popular musician's hangout, and thus a safe place for a band to debut. The very first performance of Keith & Donna was taped, and while it was ragged, it wasn't terrible. The band played two sets, totaling about 85 minutes of music. The music was definitely rehearsed, with some instrumental jazz numbers mixed in, and the Godchauxs duetted on Percy Sledge's 1966 hit "Warm And Tender Love," which Donna had sang on many years earlier. There appears to have been a decent sized crowd for a Thursday night, based on the applause.
According to the taper, Rex Jackson took away the reels once he found out that the show had been taped. He later returned them, however. This suggests that Rex Jackson had some management responsibility for the band. Jackson was more or less formally the manager of Kingfish, however, so it leaves open the question of who might have been in charge of Keith & Donna's operations and in particular their booking (if anyone has any insights on this esoteric topic, please share them in the Comments).
The Rowan Brothers, at the time, featured Peter Rowan along with his brothers Chris and Lorin. They could play as an electric trio or as a full electric band. The one tape I know of with the electric lineup includes the elusive Jack Bonus on saxophone (he wrote "Hobo Song"), but I believe he may have stopped playing after 1974. Sometime in 1975, The Rowans would release their first album (as a trio) on Asylum Records. The Lion's Share was a tiny hangout, but it was such a musician's joint that most bands who played there either had records or members who had played on records.
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| The Chateau Liberte club in the Santa Cruz Mountains (at 22700 Old Santa Cruz Highway in Los Gatos) was once a resort. The club painted a ZigZag Man at the bottom of the swimming pool. |
April 25, 1975 Chateau Liberte, Los Gatos, CA: Keith & Donna (Saturday)
The next known booking for Keith & Donna was at the Chateau Liberte in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The tiny club was nestled deep in the hills, very hard to get to, and mainly patronized by locals, who included bikers, loners, pot dealers and recluses. Musicians liked to play there to work things out in front of a crowd, without a lot of attention. Bob Weir had played his first advertised gig with Kingfish there (after playing the Lion's Share, I should note), so Keith & Donna's appearance fit right in.
May 11, 1975 Kresge Town Hall, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA: Keith and Donna and Friends/Eric Andersen (Sunday) 7:30pm & 10:00pm
Some students at the University of California at Santa Cruz booked Keith & Donna for two shows in the main room at one of the colleges (Kresge College). The students negotiated the booking with no less than Jon McIntire, one of the very few details about Keith & Donna management that I have been able to uncover. Conveniently, the student promoters created a poster, identifying the band members (for an eyewitness account, see CryptDev's great blog post here).
Eric Andersen, a transplanted East Coast singer/songwriter, was also on the bill. Andersen had released eight albums already on various labels since 1965. He would soon release his ninth album, Be True To You, on Arista. Andersen was also Bob Weir's neighbor, which is how he had come to write the lyrics to "Weather Report."
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| San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, May 11, 1975 |
May 12, 1975 Yellow Brick Road, San Francisco, CA: Keith & Donna Godchaux/Maltese Turkey (Monday)
The Keith & Donna band played the Yellow Brick Road in San Francisco's North Beach (2215 Powell near Bay Street). Like many clubs in the Bay Area at the time featuring live music, on most nights the Yellow Brick Road featured a band playing popular hits for patrons to dance. The goal was to sell drinks to thirsty, sweaty dancers. On certain nights, however, these clubs had bands playing original music. So for this week, Yellow Brock Road had a cover band called Shake. On Sunday, however, they had a band called Source, and on Monday they had Keith & Donna.
The opening act for Keith & Donna was Maltese Turkey, a band led by guitarist James Ackroyd. Ackroyd had been in the Canadian trio James and The Good Brothers, who had relocated to the Bay Area and recorded an album for Columbia. The trio was associated with the Grateful Dead, having met them on the infamous Canadian Train Tour (Festival Express)), and had opened a few Dead shows. When the Good Brothers had returned to Canada, James Ackroyd had remained in the Bay Area, playing with David Rea's Slewfoot and James And The Mercedes (with Frankie Weir).
A consistent theme of Keith & Donna's bookings throughout the Summer of 1975 was a careful strategy of shared bookings. As we will see, Keith & Donna were booked with other bands associated with the Dead. At the same time, other bands lower in the club heirarchy were consistently booked to open for the bands featuring members of the Dead. This can't have been an accident, but I don't know who was booking Keith & Donna. Richard Loren was probably the main booker for Garcia, and apparently Richard Hundgen was the booker for Kingfish, but I don't know about the Godchauxs or Robert Hunter. One possible figure behind the scenes may have been Chesley Millikin, formerly of Sam Cutler's Out of Town Tours, and by 1975 working for Grateful Dead Records (if anyone has insights into this, please include them in the Comments).
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| Hayward Daily Review, Friday May 9, 1975 |
May 15, 1975 Long Branch, Berkeley, CA: Keith and Donna Godchaux (Thursday)
The Long Branch was at 2504 San Pablo Avenue (at Dwight Way) in West Berkeley, about 2 miles South and West of campus and the Keystone Berkeley. The Long Branch tended to have the same bands over and over, and their clientele mostly lived nearer to the club, unlike the Keystone, which was more of a destination. To some extent, the Long Branch (capacity 350) was almost like a feeder club for bands to move up to the more prominent and lucrative Keystone (capacity 500+).
Grateful Dead offshoots had occasionally played the Long Branch, but for the most part it was not Deadhead territory. Long Branch bands tended to rock a little harder and play songs a little shorter than the endless guitar solos that were prominent at the Keystone. Singer Eddie Money, playing the Saturday night before Keith & Donna, played the Long Branch almost every week for years before he hit it big. Thursday night was sort of a tryout night at the Long Branch, giving East Bay fans a chance to check out Keith and Donna. Admission was likely $1.00.
May 16-18, 1975 Golden Bear, Huntington Beach, CA: Keith and Donna Godchaux and Friends (Friday-Sunday)
Keith & Donna's first out of town booking was at the legendary Golden Bear, on the Pacific Coast Highway (CA SR-1) in Huntington Beach. The club had been open in some form since the 1930s. The room only held a few hundred, but the Golden Bear was a well-known place to expose new groups to the Southern California music industry. Note that for an out-of-town show, the band is booked as "From The Grateful Dead: Keith & Donna Godchaux & Friends." In the Bay Area, particularly Marin, Keith and Donna's affiliation was known, but that wasn't so true elsewhere. Also, by calling them "& Friends" it made it clear they had a band, rather than just being a duo. Keep in mind, singer-songwriter duos were pretty common in the record industry at this time.
Jerry Garcia had played a number of shows at the Golden Bear in late 1974, and Kingfish had already played the Golden Bear in February '75.
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| Marin Independent-Journal, May 23, 1975 |
May 23-24, 1975 Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage/Keith and Donna Godcheaux (Friday-Saturday)
The next weekend, Keith & Donna were booked to open for the New Riders of The Purple Sage. This weekend would let lots of Deadheads hear the Keith and Donna band. By this time, the Riders had not been professionally tied to the Grateful Dead in nearly two years, but they were inextricably linked in the minds of fans.
Truthfully, the New Riders were beginning a long decline. In December 1973, the band had headlined two nights at Winterland, above Jesse Colin Young and Linda Ronstadt. At that time, they had had a hot album, too, and the title track of "Panama Red" became an immediate underground classic. Yet Dave Torbert had left the band, and the the next year the Riders had released a standard live album (Home, Home On The Road) and a studio dud (Brujo). By 1975, almost all Deadheads had seen the New Riders a few times and weren't that interested in seeing them again. They were still fairly popular on the Eastern Seaboard, but old news in San Francisco. The Great American Music Hall, at O'Farrell in Van Ness, held about 500 and was one of the premier clubs in the Bay Area, featuring jazz, folk and blues as well as rock. Garcia played there regularly. But for a band like the New Riders that had headlined Winterland previously, it wasn't a step up.
Note that this listing misspells "Godchaux" as "Godcheaux," just like May 12 listing ( at Yellow Brick Road) had. Jesse Jarnow has pointed out that the proper pronunciation of the name was "God-show" not "God-shaw," so the "Godcheaux" spelling was phonetically correct.
River City was a relatively tiny venue, basically a bar that booked music in sleepy Fairfax (at 52 Bolinas Avenue). River City booked mostly Marin musicians, so various members of the Grateful Dead played there during the 1975-76 period. River City, like the Lion's Share, was one of the clubs that Marin musicians used for trying out new lineups. By inductive reasoning, I suspect Bill Kreutzmann's public debut as Keith & Donna's drummer was at this show. Note the two week gap since the last gig. The first ad for Kreutzmann was for June 13 and 14 (below), but that ad would have had to be submitted by June 1.
June 7, 1975 Long Branch, Berkeley, CA: Keith & Donna (Saturday)
Keith & Donna returned to the Long Branch, this time on a Saturday night. The Thursday gig in May must have gone well enough.
June 11, 1975 Sophie's, Palo Alto, CA: Keith & Donna (Wednesday)
Surprisingly, there were no clubs in the South Bay or the Peninsula that exclusively booked original rock music. Silicon Valley was just starting to bubble up, and ultimately there was going to be a thriving market in live music. Ken Rominger, owner of The Bodega in Campbell (see below), opened a club at an accessible location in Palo Alto. 260 S. California Avenue was near the intersection of two of the town's biggest thoroughfares (El Camino Real and Oregon Expressway), with plenty of parking at the nearby County Courthouse.
Initially, Sophie's mostly booked Top 40 bands, as well as local bands that mixed danceable original music with covers on weekends. On Wednesdays, however, Sophie's booked bands playing original music. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir had already played Sophie's a few times. Later, the club would become the Keystone Palo Alto. We can be pretty certain that Bill Kreutzmann was in the band by this time, as he brought his little sister to the show (she had to sit outside).
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| The Bodega was in The Pruneyard in suburban Campbell. The Pruneyard Towers (at 1875 S. Bascom Avenue) remain a familiar sight on CA-17 on the road to Santa Cruz. |
June 12, 1975 The Bodega, Campbell, CA: Keith & Donna (Thursday)
Campbell was a suburb of San Jose, and the Pruneyard included the tallest building in that section of Santa Clara County. The Bodega had initially opened in 1970 as The Prune Pit, but show tunes gave way to rock and roll by 1971. There was still a lot of manufacturing in Silicon Valley in those days, and a lot of workers got off shifts at 5, looking for a beer and a dance. Mostly cover bands played The Bodega in 1975, but Thursday nights was for original rock bands. It was common for the same band to play Sophie's on Wednesday and The Bodega on Thursday (no one in the Bay Area knew what a Bodega was, by the way, or at least no Anglos).
June 13, 1975 Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Keith & Donna/Heroes (Friday)
June 14, 1975 Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Keith & Donna/Osiris (Saturday)
On this weekend, Keith & Donna headlined the Keystone Berkeley. This was a graduation of sorts. The Keystone, along with the Great American Music Hall, was the top of the local nightclub tree, and topping both weekend shows meant the club thought you were a draw. Presumably the club felt that Keith and Donna had been exposed enough to draw their own crowd now.
Heroes and Osiris, the two opening bands, were both connected to the Dead. Heroes was led by guitarist and singer Bill Cutler. He was recording an album in Bob Weir's home studio, and Garcia had played on it. Osiris, meanwhile, was a Palo Alto band that included Kevin "Mickey" McKernan on organ and vocals, Pigpen's younger brother. Bookings like these weren’t accidental--someone at the Grateful Dead office was trying to build up bands by pairing them with Grateful Dead members.
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| The Keystone ad for the Sunday, June 8 Chronicle included Bill Kreutzmann |
The San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, widely known as "The Pink Section," was eagerly awaited by every rock fan when it came out at midnight on Fridays (two days before the Sunday publication date). The deadline for ads was the Tuesday prior. This display ad for the Keystone Berkeley from the June 8 paper had to have been submitted June 1. This tells us that Kreutzmann was implicitly on board as drummer by then, and thus I have assumed River City (June 6, above) was his debut. There's every reason to assume that both Roger Troy and Tom Donlinger had been replaced.
Michael Larscheid was the new Keith & Donna bassist. Larscheid was from Green Bay, WI and had moved to the Bay Area in the late 60s. He often played with other Midwestern transplants, of whom there were quite a few in the Bay Area. In 1973, Larscheid had played in a transitional version of the Elvin Bishop Group (which included members from Chicago and Iowa).
Bill Kreutzmann had hardly played since the Grateful Dead had stopped performing in October 1974. He had done some recording around January of 1975 with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but those sessions had gone nowhere for the usual internal reasons.
Most Deadheads did not carefully scrutinize the Pink Section every week, so they were likely unaware that the Godchauxs had a band. Yet the Bob Fried Memorial Boogie, a benefit for the late artist Fried's family, held at Winterland on a Tuesday night, billed "Jerry Garcia and Friends," Kingfish and Keith & Donna. Of course, the Grateful Dead were Jerry's friends, and everybody heard about the show. Surprisingly, there is no tape of Keith & Donna's performance that night. A friend reported that Mickey Hart sat in with Keith & Donna.
The Mirrors were a sort of Marin soul band. One of the three lead singers was Trish Robbins, better known in the Bay Area as a dj and radio executive. The keyboard player was David Kessner, who was an important player in the Marin music scene. Kessner owned a recording studio (The Church) and co-owned Marin's popular Prune Music store, patronized by many professional musicians.
Santa Cruz County, meanwhile, was also expanding from a tiny beach resort community to a growing University town. The University of California at Santa Cruz had opened in 1965, and as the school had expanded the town had thrived alongside. Margarita's, at 1685 Commercial Way, off of Soquel Drive and a few miles from downtown, had opened earlier that year and almost exclusively booked rock bands playing their own music.
Jerry Garcia had played a stealth gig at Margarita’s, one weekend in February, playing bluegrass banjo with Frank Wakefield and The Good Old Boys (our friend CryptDev attended one of the shows, and described the show in detail). Kingfish had played Margarita's a few weeks before Keith & Donna. From this point onwards, Kingfish and Keith & Donna often had paired bookings, where one band and then the other would play in a short period of time.This was another indicator that Grateful Dead associated bands had a booking strategy that was not just haphazard.
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| San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, June 22, 1975. Girls free, Tuesday thru Thursday. |
June 23, 1975 Yellow Brick Road, San Francisco, CA: Keith and Donna Godchaux /Fiends On The Loose (Monday)
Keith & Donna returned to the Yellow Brick Road a month after their debut, which means things must have gone alright. This time the opening act was Fiends On The Loose, led by saxophonist Snooky Flowers. Flowers, while ultimately better known as a professional photographer, had toured with Janis Joplin. He has also played a little bit with Grateful Dead members, overdubbing horns on the Ace sessions and sitting in with Garcia and Saunders at least once on baritone sax (September 2, 1974).
Keith & Donna were back at the Lion's Share, this time as weekend headliners.
Toulomne County wasn't far from Yosemite, nestled in the Sierra Foothills. One byproduct of the Grateful Dead's performing hiatus was that Kingfish and Keith & Donna, separately and together, played a lot of places in California where the Dead hadn't played. In some cases, they were places where the Dead hadn't played since the 60s, and also in places like Sonora, where they had never played at all.
The Lion's Share was a popular Marin hangout for musicians and their friends, but it was too small to thrive in the Bay Area market. The Lion's Share would close by the end of July.
The Orphanage, at 807 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, in between the Financial District and North Beach, had a somewhat different economy than other rock clubs. During the week, it served lunch and after-work drinks to the stock market crowd. Keep in mind, in those days the stock market closed at 1:00pm in San Francisco (as it was 4:00pm at the NYSE), so drinking could get started early. While the Options Floor would not open for another year, even retail brokers know how to hoist one. As a result, the Orphanage tended to have bigger acts on weekdays rather than weekends. Still, some cool bands played The Orphanage.
The Odyssey Room, at 799 E. El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, between San Jose and Palo Alto, was another Silicon Valley beer joint that mostly booked Top 40. The proprietor, to my knowledge, was Gary Bender, who had been a colleague of Oakland promoter Bill Quarry. The Odyssey Room booked original acts on Monday night, which fit in nicely with Sophie's (Wednesday) and The Bodega (Thursday).
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| San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, July 29, 1975 |
August 5, 1975 Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia Band (Tuesday)
Since Keith & Donna kept returning to clubs they had played before, they must have drawn alright.
August 11, 1975 Slade's, Mendocino, CA: Keith & Donna (Monday)
August 14-16, 1975 Slade's, Mendocino, CA: Keith and Donna (Thursday-Saturday)
Keith & Donna returned to the Keystone Berkeley on a Monday night. Of course, we know nothing about this show. Since Garcia played with them the next several nights, we can't hope but wonder if he didn't drop by, but that's only speculation.
August 20-21, 1975 Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia Band (Wednesday-Thursday)
"In fact, Garcia played the Great American Music Hall on August 20 and 21 with the Keith And Donna Band... We do not actually have eyewitnesses from either show"
You do now. I was at both. I was 19, had just arrived in San Francisco the day before (August 19), was staying in Mill Valley, and read in the Marin Independent-Journal that the JGB would be playing at the GAMH. I'd never heard of the venue, ha no idea where it was, but of course I said, "I'm there!"
And I was, phony ID in hand, only to find the show was sold out. With half a dozen dedicated Heads, I hung around on the sidewalk, clustering toward the door whenever it opened and the music came spilling out. The band took a break, and a few people left, and the doorman eyed us and said: "OK, come on in, but you gotta pay full price!" and we happily did.
Same exact scene the next night. I remember two guys with us on the sidewalk who got tired of waiting out in the cold (August in SF, you know) and decided to go to a place called Bimbo's to hear a new band called "The Tubes." :-) The rest of us dismissed them as wimps, and again got in for the second set.
I remember K&D were auditioning a new guitarist for their band [sic--it was Ray Scott], and the first night he was clearly intimidated by sharing the stage with Jerry. Garcia being Garcia, of course, he kept encouraging the new guy to play, and by the second night they were both rocking out. I mentioned this to Keith about a month later when we were at the River City bar in Fairfax, and he was pleased someone had noticed. I do not remember the younger guitarist's name.
Anyway, as a young Deadhead's introduction to the "Scene," those two shows were about as unexpectedly sweet as it could get!
August 29-30, 1975 The Orphanage, San Francisco, CA: Keith & Donna (Friday-Saturday)
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| Marin Independent-Journal September 5, 1975 |
The Lake Tahoe area, straddling California and Nevada, had been a premier resort area for the Bay Area since 1899. In the late 1960s, there had been a thriving rock scene, too, a sort of satellite of the Fillmore scene. That moment had passed, but there were still rock shows in Lake Tahoe, at least intermittently. I think the Sundance Lodge was on Highway 50, near the Nevada border, but I'm not certain of that. A Tahoe gig would have been a four to six hour drive from San Francisco, depending on the exact location, so I have assumed that Garcia would not have dropped by.
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| San Francisco Examiner, Wednesday September 10, 1975 |
Cotati was the site of Sonoma State University, in the heart of wine country and absolutely beautiful. The Inn Of The Beginning, at 8201 Redwood Highway, was pretty much the only rock gig in town. It had been open since 1968. For a tiny place, it had amazingly high profile and high quality music. Marin bands liked to play there on weeknights, even for little money, because it was fun and easy for band members to reach.
September 12-13, 1975 River City, Fairfax, CA: Keith & Donna (Friday-Saturday)
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| Marin Independent-Journal, Thursday, September 18, 1975 |
Keith & Donna returned to Cotati for another Thursday. Bluesman J.C. Burriss appears to have opened the show. Burriss had moved to the Bay Area from North Carolina in 1959, but he had released his debut album on Arhoolie Records in 1975.
September 19-21, 1975 Golden Bear, Huntington Beach, CA Harvey Mandel/Keith and Donna Godchaux Group with Bill Kreutzmann (Friday-Sunday)
Here's to hoping that the great Harvey Mandel plugged in his guitar for a few numbers with Keith and Donna. Mandel was from Chicago and had moved to San Francisco to play with Charlie Musselwhite in 1967. Mandel had gone solo by '68, and was well regarded by other guitarists, even though his records weren't big hits. Mandel had also played with Canned Heat, John Mayall and Sugarcane Harris, among others. (Thanks to JGMF for this citation.)
September 26, 1975 Acker Gym, Cal State Chico U., Chico, CA: Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Friday)
September 29, 1975 Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Keith & Donna (Monday)
The weeknight gigs at Keystone Berkeley tell us that Keith & Donna could draw a crowd on a weeknight, which befitted their status as members of the Grateful Dead. Because Keith and Donna were on the bill at Winterland that weekend, a Keystone gig had to be below the radar in order not to incur Bill Graham's wrath.
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| San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, September 28, 1975 |
October 4, 1975 Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Kingfish/Sons Of Champlin/Keith and Donna (Saturday)
Fall '75 was kind of slow at Winterland for Bill Graham Presents. A lot of bands were too big or too small for the crumbling old ice rink. A lot of mellower acts attracted people who wanted to pay for reserved seats, and maybe bring a date, rather than stand up all night. Thus Graham booked a couple of Dead spinoffs along with the Sons, since Deadheads at least liked Winterland. I know someone who went, although I don't know what the attendance was like. My friend reported that Keith & Donna were great.
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| The Hidden Valley Trail, and the entire San Francisco Bay, as seen today from Mission Peak in Fremont. The development just below the trail is mostly from the last few decades. |
October 12, 1975 "Oktoberfest" Hidden Valley Park, Fremont, CA: Keith & Donna/David LaFlamme/Collected Works/Ron Thompson/Scott Hall (Sunday)
Fremont, CA, is a thriving Bay Area suburb 45 minutes South and West of Berkeley. Its population quadrupled between 1960 (43,790) and 2020 (230,504). Fremont had a big Ford plant in the 1970s, and it was full of teenagers, but with Berkeley and San Francisco so near, and even San Jose, no real rock scene ever developed there. Still, some promoters made the occasional effort. Fremont was fairly undeveloped back in '75, but the Hidden Valley Preserve had been protected parkland since 1944. The Preserve provided access to the Mission Peak Trail, which led to spectacular mountain top views of the Bay from Mission Peak. I don't know if this event was in the Preserve, or just outside of it.
This was a two-day outdoor weekend event (The Sons headlined the day before). I can't identify the exact location, but the listing says "off Mission Blvd, behind Weibel Winery." That would put the site on Stanford Avenue. Leland Stanford had established one of California's first wineries in 1869, ultimately sold to Weibel. Today there is an old brick building marking the California Historical Site, but most of the old winery property now has multi-million dollar homes on it. The land near the Preserve, at least before it was developed, was probably a nice place to hold an outdoor show. Given the "Oktoberfest" name, I wonder if they sold beer?
David LaFlamme had been the leader of It's A Beautiful Day. Ron Thompson was a blues guitarist.
October 17, 1975 Concord Pavilion, Concord, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Friday)
With three bands featuring Grateful Dead members playing around the Bay Area, it was surprising that all three of them hadn't appeared together before October. Garcia/Saunders had played with Kingfish in Palo Alto (June 8 '75) and Kingfish and Keith & Donna had played Winterland, but the full trifecta finally played Concord Pavilion. It is an interesting subplot that the new Garcia Band had not played yet for Bill Graham Presents. There were some rocky, yet unstated, crosscurrents between Garcia's managers and Bill Graham that have largely been politely forgotten since both principals passed on.
The Concord Pavilion, at 2000 Kirker Pass Road, on a hill outside of town, was originally conceived as a home for the Concord Symphony and the Concord Jazz Festival. It was also designed to house musicals, so rock concerts were almost an afterthought. The Pavilion was broadly modeled on Eastern venues like Tanglewood, with reserved seats under a covered pavilion. A steep, grassy hillside allowed general admission patrons to see the stage, which wasn't always true for symphonic venues. Initially, full capacity was about 8000. With favorable traffic, Concord Pavilion was only 25 miles and 40 minutes from Berkeley, although most Berkeley residents did not even acknowledge the existence of Contra Costa County.
The initial season at the Concord Pavilion had very few rock events. Of course, they were competing directly with Bill Graham Presents, and Bill didn't like to share. Thus it was a surprise when the Jerry Garcia Band headlined the triple-bill at Concord Pavilion to end the outdoor concert season. The Jerry Garcia Band was a brand-new entity, and the first with Garcia's name prominent. On board was Rolling Stones' piano legend Nicky Hopkins, too. The Garcia Band had only debuted in mid-September. Since then they had played some tiny bars, a few South Bay concerts (Santa Cruz and Cupertino) and then the Keystone Berkeley.
When Garcia played the East Bay, he generally just played Keystone Berkeley. Thus, paradoxically, as a freshman in the UC Berkeley dorms, though I could walk to the Keystone I couldn't get in to see him. A Garcia Band concert just 40 minutes away was huge, even if I'd never heard of the venue, because I could actually get in. At this time, I had already seen Kingfish twice, but I hadn't seen Keith & Donna, nor heard them in any form. It was pretty exciting to go.
We finally got inside Concord Pavilion during Keith & Donna's set. I recall that they were doing "Ain't That Peculiar," and being struck by the power of Kreutzmann's drumming. Donna Godchaux had a magnetic presence in front of the band, far different form her unassuming persona onstage with the Dead. The Concord Pavilion was about 2/3 full, a pretty good crowd. The Concord area wasn't nearly as populated as it is today. We were up on the hillside bowl, and most of the people around us seemed to be casual rock fans, with the hard-core Deadhead types in the more expensive pavilion seats. Keith & Donna probably played about an hour, followed by the Jerry Garcia Band. Garcia let the more rocking Weir and Kingfish close, even though he was the headliner.
Grateful Dead Status Quo: Fall 1975
The Grateful Dead had stopped performing, officially, after October 1974. Most fans, myself included, figured they had basically broken up. Fortunately, we were all wrong. The Grateful Dead had continued to write, rehearse and record. By September 1975 they had released a brand new studio album and performed four times. In the Bay Area, regular appearances by Garcia, Weir and the Godchauxs meant that we still felt in touch with the Grateful Dead as a performing entity. That wasn't so true in the Northeast. Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders had done tours in November '74 and April '75, and Kingfish had played a rock festival at Trenton Speedway (it was quite a debacle), but the Dead themselves were only on their home coast.
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| The TAKRL Make Believe Ballroom double-lp was a bootleg of the Grateful Dead at the Great American Music Hall on August 13, 1975 (syndicated broadcast on FM radio nationwide September 1) |
Not only had the Dead released Blues For Allah in August 1975, in September the nationally syndicated King Biscuit Flower Hour had broadcast a live performance of the Grateful Dead recorded at the Great American Music Hall on August 13. The exceptional performance made it clear to any worried Deadheads that the band was alive and well. Of course, the broadcast was widely bootlegged, so the show spread beyond even the initial broadcast.
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| Lots of great bands played Elting Gym at SUNY New Paltz in the 1970s |
November 6, 1975 Elting Gym, SUNY, New Paltz, NY: Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Thursday)
New Paltz was about 80 miles north of Manhattan, in between Manhattan and Albany. In the 1970s, a lot of good bands played Elting Gym at SUNY New Paltz. There must have been a sharp booking agent and a good entertainment budget at the University. For whatever reasons, a lot of board tapes seemed to have leaked out of New Paltz. The Kingfish/Keith & Donna tour opened in New Paltz on a Thursday, before higher profile shows at the Beacon in Manhattan and SUNY Stony Brook (in Long Island).
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| Jimmy Cliff, Jerry Garcia, Commander Cody, Kingfish and the New Riders were all playing in the Fall of '75 at the Beacon Theater |
November 7, 1975 Beacon Theater, New York, NY: Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Friday) early and late shows
The Beacon Theater, at 2124 Broadway (at 74th Street) was originally built in 1929 as a movie palace. It has a capacity of 2894. After the closing of the Fillmore East in 1971, the Beacon started being used for rock shows. In October 1974, the Beacon was re-opened with newly renovated seats, and it regularly booked rock concerts. The fact that the Kingfish/Keith & Donna shows were booked for Friday night early and late shows was a sign that there was a lot of pent-up interest in the Dead. The Jerry Garcia Band had recently played two shows on a Tuesday night (October 28 '75) and sold them both out.
Farewell Jack
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
[True Love?]-unidentified
Can't Turn You Loose
My Love For You
River Deep, Mountain High
Strange Man
I Got Jesus
Scarlet Begonias
Showboat
November 9, 1975 Pritchard Gym, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY: Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Sunday)
The Grateful Dead were hugely popular in Long Island, and they had been playing SUNY Sony Brook since 1967. The Dead had been far too big to play there after 1970, of course, but this was a return of sorts. The bands were booked at Pritchard Gym, capacity about 2000, where the Dead had played in '67, '68 and '70 (the Jerry Garcia Band would play there in '77, '80 and '83). Of course, colleges being what they are, likely no one would have been enrolled in school in 1975 who had seen the Dead before at Stony Brook.
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| The restored Trenton War Memorial Auditorium (now Patriots Theater) at 1 Memorial Drive |
November 10, 1975 War Memorial Auditorium, Trenton, NJ: Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Monday)
Trenton, NJ, on the Delaware River, is 30 miles Northeast of Philadephia and 60 miles Southwest of Manhattan. It is in commuter-train reach of both cities. Its suburbs thrive, but the city of 100,000 has been squeezed by its proximity to two giant American metropolises. The Trenton War Memorial Auditorium was an 1800-seat theater built in 1930, near the Delaware, at 1 Memorial Drive (at W. Lafayette St).
Trenton was another of the sort of places that was too small for even Garcia, much less the Dead, but a prime opportunity for Kingfish and Keith & Donna. A review tells us that the auditorium was about 2/3 full, not bad at all for a Monday night in New Jersey. If the band hadn't played Trenton, they would have had about the same expenses anyway, so it was good money.
November 12, 1975 New Century Theater, Buffalo, NY: Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Wednesday)
The tour hit Buffalo on a Wednesday night. This show was at the Century Theater at 511 Main Street, later known as the New Century Theater, capacity 3,076. It had been called the Shea's Theater, but not the same Shea's Theater that the Dead would play later in the decade. That Shea's Theater was across the street (at 646 Main Street).
November 14, 1975 Whitman Auditorium, Brooklyn College, New York, NY: Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Friday)
Brooklyn College, on Bedford Avenue, is part of the CUNY system. It
currently has 15,000 undergraduates, although I don't know if it had
that many in the 1970s. Whitman Auditorium, built in 1955, seats around
2,300. The Garcia Band had played Whitman Auditorium a month earlier. As a peculiar historical footnote, this show was the last live appearance by a member of the Grateful Dead in a New York City borough other than Manhattan until after 1995.
Thiel College is a tiny Lutheran college between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, but pretty far out in the country. It was established in 1866 and has under 1000 students. This show was held in the main auditorium on campus, the Passavant Center, which held about 2000. A commenter on my earlier post gives a good feel for how much seeing members of the Grateful Dead meant to them:
Somewhere between Nov 22-29 [sic], 1975, Kingfish & Keith & Donna played a small college (Thiel Coll) in rural western PA. And for our little coterie of Deadheads adrift in northeast Ohio at the time, it WAS A BIG DEAL! We showed up expecting a Dead show type crowd experience but instead were greeted by a practically deserted sleepy college town and equally sparsely populated theatre!
This hitherto forgotten event serves as a nice reminder that when a band
featuring a member of the Grateful Dead came to a smaller city or a
more out of the way place, it was still a memorable event for those in
attendance. Deadheads lucky enough to live in the Bay Area or New York
City could be casual about regular Dead shows and accessible Garcia
appearances, but part of the Dead's magic was their relentless
journeying to unconquered territory.
On Tuesday, November 18, Kingfish played at My Father's Place in Roslyn, NY, on Long Island. The next afternoon (Wednesday November 19), Kingfish played a free outdoor concert at Nassau Community College in Garden City, NY. Although the Community College show was free, Kingfish very likely got paid. In any case, the Grateful Dead had pretty much written the blueprint for popularizing your music by playing for free. Although Keith & Donna did not play these gigs, the cash helped cover expenses for the tour, one of the benefits of shared bookings and a shared crew.
David Kramer-Smyth uncovered the existence of this show from eyewitnesses. I had thought that the Sullivan County Community College (now SUNY Sullivan) had moved from South Fallsburg HS to Loch Sheldrake as of 1973, but perhaps they were still using the Fallsburg gym for events. Sullivan County is 100 miles Northeast of Manhattan, the heart of the "Borscht Belt," and has been prime territory for jam bands for many years. This booking was probably another school-sponsored event.
November 21, 1975 Loews Theatre, Syracuse, NY Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Friday)
The bands played Loews Theater (now the Landmark), at 362 S. Salina St . The theater had opened in 1928 and had a capacity of 2,908. The Dead had played Central New York pretty steadily since 1970, and they had a pretty good audience in that region.
November 22, 1975 Masonic Temple, Scranton, PA Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Saturday)
I know a Scranton native who attended this show, then a high school student, and he recalled that it was a very big deal for any Grateful Dead related bands to play in Scranton. The Dead had played Scranton back in 1971, but everyone knew that if they ever toured again a place like Scranton would be too small. My friend, with no other Grateful Dead show to compare it to, thought the bands were just great.
The tour was angling to a big booking in Boston on a Sunday night. The Orpheum was a 2700-seat theater at 1 Hamilton Place, and was principally booked by Don Law Jr. Law had started booking concerts in the Boston Tea Party in 1968 when he was still a graduate student, and had booked the Dead a few times. Law did not book the Dead again until 1974. By 1975, Don Law was the dominant promoter in the Boston area, and he would present the Dead and Garcia there until 1995.
We have a tape of the Keith & Donna set at the Orpheum, and Ray Scott's guitar is not present. We know that he was out of the band by the next night, and my friend doesn't recall if there was a guitarist in Scranton. Somewhere around this time, in any case, Scott was out of the band. On the Boston tape, we an hear the other 4 instrumentalists stepped up to cover the holes left by the guitar, and thus the band takes on a pronounced Leon Russell-ish feel. Matt Kelly joined in to play a nice harmonica solo on "My Love For You," and Robbie Hoddinott stepped up to let it rip on "Can't Turn You Loose."
November 24, 1975 Palace Theater, Albany, NY Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Monday)
Albany, approximately 150 miles due North from Manhattan, was and is the Capital of New York State. Albany is straight up the Hudson, and the epitome of "Upstate." Although the city itself only has a population of about 100,000, the suburbs have become much larger. By virtue of being the state Capital, the importance of the city far outstrips its size. The Palace Theater, at 19 Clinton Avenue in Albany, had opened in 1931 as an RKO movie palace. It seats about 2,800. It had closed in 1969, but it was purchased by the city of Albany and re-opened soon after. Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders had played the theater on November 10, 1974.
The Albany show was reviewed in the November 30 Troy (NY) Record. The reviewer (Donald Wilcox) was mainly bothered by terrible sound problems. Most interestingly, he says that Kingfish guitarist Robbie Hoddinott tried to sit in with Keith and Donna for several numbers, but was inaudible. If Hoddinott played with the band--and was audible--it would have probably sounded pretty good. The sit-in makes sense if Scott had been fired a few nights earlier.
Don Wilcox wasn't the only critic to review the Albany show; I reviewed the show for the Albany Knickerbocker News (a Hearst afternoon paper, now long defunct), and interviewed Keith, who I knew a bit from prior associations. Ray Scott wasn't there. I asked Keith why; he said he'd fired Ray, at Jerry Garcia's suggestion, "because he just didn't have any moves" (Keith also said that Ray had taken lessons from Jerry, but that the teacher was not impressed with this particular pupil).
I have no idea whether Keith was right; I never heard Ray Scott play live. I'm just recounting Keith's perspective.
Robbie Hoddinott sat in with Keith and Donna for a few songs, and yes, he wasn't amplified properly. Steven (not Stephen) Schuster's sax was the main lead instrument and provided the only memorable moments during the show. The band's performance was very lackluster, to put it politely, and Keith was one step short of comatose. Kingfish, by contrast, rocked, albeit politely.
November 25, 1975 Student Union Ballroom, U Mass-Amherst, Amherst, MA Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Tuesday) 6:30 & 10:30 shows
A Commenter tipped us to this show. A Tuesday night gig at a college student union was another routing gig that helped pay the bills. The Student Union Ballroom, at 41 Campus Center Way, had been built in 1957 when the University had 4800 students. In 2020 it was substantially remodeled (the University now serves 30,000 students)
Per another Commenter, Robbie Hoddinott fell ill and passed out at the beginning of the late show, and Keith came out and sat in for the balance of Kingfish's set.
ANovember 29, 1975 Tower Theater, Upper Darby, PA Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Saturday)
This was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. A Friday show somewhere seems likely, but I can't find any. The Tower Theatre was in the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby (at S. 69th and Ludlow St), and seated about 2000. Jerry Garcia had already been booked three times there. The show was presented by Midnight Sun Productions, a competitor to the Electric Factory. The Electric Factory ultimately took over booking the Tower Theatre, once their 1973 feud with the Dead was settled.
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| Thanks to reader Sdwinkler for finding a (signed) flyer for the Dec 2 '75 show at GWU |
Kingfish and Keith & Donna played another Tuesday night college show. It's easy to see the booking pattern, aiming to play bigger cities on the weekends, and filling in with college gigs during the weekdays. A brief review said the venue was "half-empty," but remember that otherwise the bands were just cooling their heels.
George Washington University was founded in Washington, DC in 1822. It currently has 26,000 students, although I don't know how many it had in 1975. Lisner Auditorium (at 730 21st NW) had been built in 1946, and seated around 1500. The show was probably an end-of-term event.
Northampton, PA is near Allentown, and about 80 miles North of Philadelphia. This show was recalled on a Facebook group, and uncovered by the incredible David Kramer-Smyth. The bands played The Roxy Theater on 2004 Main St. Originally called the Lyric Theater, it had opened as a Vaudevulle House in 1921. It closed and was re-opened in 1933 as The Roxy, with a capacity of 650. After various ownership changes, the Roxy started putting on rock shows regularly in 1970. Northampton's location between major rock and roll cities made it a good stop to keep a tour rolling, which was just what was happening with this one. The show was promoted by WSAN radio in Allentown. A commenter on the group said
Kingfish with the Keith and Donna Band opening occurred on December 4, 1975. The entire three tractor trailer Dead equipment trucks showed up. The small venue stuff was in the front of one of the trailers, so we had to empty that trailer into the Roxy parking lot to get to it and unload it, then reload all the big stuff back in. I had to head back to the station just before midnight to do my show so I don't know for sure whether or not they just loaded the gear into the back of that truck or went ahead and unloaded the big stuff so the small venue stuff could be put back in the front of the truck where it belonged.
This fascinating recollection tells us how much equipment the bands were touring with, and also a hint that they didn't realize The Roxy stage would be so small.
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| The December 3, 1975 Paramus, NJ Shopper News liated the start times for upcoming shows at the Capitol Theater in nearby Passaic |
December 5, 1975 Capitol Theater, Passaic, NJ Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Friday)
The culmination of the tour was at John Scher's Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ. The Capitol, at 326 Monroe Street, had been built in 1921 and had a capacity of 3,200. By late 1970, it was showing "adult" films. Scher and his partner Al Hayward booked their first rock show at the Capitol on December 16, 1971 (J. Geils Band/Humble Pie). Scher would go on to dominate the New Jersey rock concert market for several decades. The New Riders and Jerry Garcia had already played the Capitol a number of times, and Scher was booking Garcia's East Coast dates, so he already had a good working relationship with the Grateful Dead office.
December 6, 1975 My Father's Place, Roslyn, NY: Kingfish/Keith & Donna (Saturday)
The real end of the tour was Saturday night in Long Island. Kingfish and Keith & Donna played My Father's Place, a prominent rock club in Roslyn, Long Island. My Father's Place is best known today, and fondly remembered, for numerous live FM broadcasts on local station WLIR. My Father's Place was a great place for a record company to get their rising bands heard all over Long Island (in order to be broadcast, the band's record company bought out the advertising time). The tour had in fact already stopped at My Father's Place, when Kingfish played two sets there on Tuesday, November 18.
It is an oddity of Grateful Dead scholarship that we have Kingfish tapes from both November 18 and December 6, but no trace of their booking. There was no listing for Kingfish in November, and the December show was only listed on the day of the show as Keith & Donna. Sharp eyes will note (in the Daily News listing above) that there were two shows in Roslyn, at 8:30 and Midnight, so surely another band was playing. Given that Kingfish had played Capitol Theater the night before, it didn't take a genius to figure out they would show up.
The otherwise inexplicable absence of booking information for Kingfish makes sense when we learn that Roslyn was only 45 miles from Passaic. Kingfish's contract with Scher would have mandated that while he could play My Father's Place, the show couldn't be advertised. The Saturday show (December 6) could only be advertised after the December 5 show, so it was only listed on the day of the show. Keep in mind that WLIR probably announced Kingfish over the air on the day of the show, so local Deadheads probably knew about it, but these contract riders were no trivial thing.
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| Bill Graham Presents had it cooking for December 1975. I saw Garcia (Dec 19), Zappa (Dec 27) and The Tubes (NYE). We won't pass this way again. |
December 19-20, 1975 Winterland Jerry Garcia Band/Kingfish/Keith & Donna/Clover (Friday-Saturday)
A Poco/Kingfish/Keith & Donna bill scheduled for Winterland on Thursday, December 18 had been converted to a Garcia Band/Kingfish/Keith & Donna bill for two weekend nights. The bookings underlie a certain tension between the Jerry Garcia operation and Bill Graham Presents. I phrase it that way since there never seems to have been a problem between Jerry and Bill personally, nor the Grateful Dead and BGP, but the corporate Garcia had chosen to side with Keystone proprietor Freddie Herrera. This Garcia booking was his first with Bill Graham since the "retirement," and really back to 1973 (excluding the Dead, of course).
Graham always made a big deal of New Year's Eve, and in 1975 he had shows at four venues. I'm sure he asked the Dead, I'm sure he asked Jerry Garcia to share a booking at one of the other arenas (Santana at the Cow Palace, for example). Yet Garcia played the Keystone Berkeley. Good payday? Sure. Better than Garcia would have gotten at the Cow Palace, even 2nd billed? Probably not. Now, Garcia was never that into New Year's Eve, either, but it was notable that the initial booking was just Kingfish and Poco, before the Garcia Band ended up headlining two nights in December.
I attended the first night. Marin stalwarts Clover opened the show, with a lively set of what could be called Marin Funk. Clover had released two albums on Fantasy back in 1969 and '70, but had gotten dropped. Still, they were soldiering on (for a taste, here's video of Clover from December 20). Lead guitarist John McFee was one of the top pedal steel session men in the Bay Area, about the only other player rock producers could call since Garcia didn't play steel sessions anymore. Besides records like Van Morrison's "Saint Dominic's Preview," McFee had played the pedal steel guitar part on “Pride Of Cucamonga.”
Clover had originally been a quartet, but around 1972 they had added keyboardist Sean Hopper and singer Hugh Clegg. Nick Lowe discovered them in 1976, which is how Clover got to London and backed Elvis Costello (on My Aim Is True) and recorded two more albums for Mercury. Clegg and Hopper would hit it big a few years later in Huey Lewis and The News, while McFee would join the Doobie Brothers in 1979 (he's still a member).
It was a surprise to me that Ray Scott was not a member of the Keith & Donna band the night I saw them, and that the group played without a guitarist. There was never news about Grateful Dead side bands in the paper, so Scott's termination from the group was unexpected and unexplained. On the 19th, the Keith and Donna band played a brief but excellent set, joined by Matt Kelly of Kingfish on harmonica for the set closing "Scarlet Begonias." The Jerry Garcia Band followed with a great set, continuing the pattern they had set where Kingfish rocked out to close the show (which they did).
On the second night, for the last performance of the Keith & Donna band, Jerry Garcia joined them to for their set, much to the delight of the crowd. In this final, momentary incarnation, Keith and Donna went from a sort of Leon Russell knock-off to a version of the Jerry Garcia Band with a new lead vocalist--a pretty interesting place, if only for one concert. For the last song of what was probably the last set of the Keith & Donna band, Garcia sang "Scarlet Begonias' to a rapturous reception from the crowd. The Keith and Donna band showed their chops by cruising along nicely with Garcia on an extremely difficult song. A nice way to go out.
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| By early 1976, Keith and Donna Godchaux were touring hard with the Jerry Garcia Band. On February 21 and 22, they were booked for four shows in Encinitas, near San Diego. |
Aftermath: The Jerry Garcia Band
No Keith and Donna shows seemed to have been booked for January of 1976, although that was as likely a holiday as anything. Meanwhile, the Jerry Garcia Band was losing its footing. Nicky Hopkins, for all his talent, was in no shape to tour regularly. After a shambolic New Year's Eve show, Kahn and Tutt pushed him out of the band, only for Kahn to hire New Orleans legend James Booker, perhaps the only guy who was both better than Hopkins and more or a personal mess. After two strange shows at Sophie's in Palo Alto, Kahn and Garcia rehearsed some obscure keyboard players--Larry Muhoberac, for one (Jan 20-23), and Randy Wallace (Jan 24).
The Jerry Garcia Band was booked for three shows at the Keystone Berkeley, however (January 26-28), and cash flow was such that the gigs needed to get played. Garcia and Kahn went with the Godchauxs, apparently at the last minute, because they were available. Friends of mine went to the Keystone on January 26, and no one had any idea who would come on stage and sit at the piano until Keith and Donna walked out with the band. It appears that the Garcia Band had one rehearsal at Le Club Front on January 25, and toured together for the next three years. Keith and Donna Godchaux were part of the Jerry Garcia Band, and the Keith & Donna band went away.
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| Marin Independent-Journal, February 7, 1976 |
February 12, 1976 El Verano Inn, Sonoma, CA: Keith & Donna/Six Easy Pieces (Thursday)
Coda
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| Michael Larschied, from Green Bay, WI 1944-2017 |
Michael Larsheid (1944-2017) returned to Green Bay, WI, where he was a lifelong musician.
Steve Schuster went on tour with Sly and The Family Stone in 1976, but after that he seems to have confined his performances to the Bay Area. He recorded with the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia Band and the Jefferson Starship, among many others. He also co-wrote a song with Robert Hunter that appeared on a Starship album ("Come To Life" on Dragon Fly, with David Freiberg). Schuster has continued to record, perform and teach in the Bay Area to the present day.
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| Steve Schuster playing saxophone with the Donna Jean Godchaux McKay band at the Sweetwater, Mill Valley, CA, July 25, 2012 |
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