The Smokey Grass Boys (1966-67)

A poster for the Smokey Grass Boys at 40 Cedar Alley in San Francisco, December 29-31, 1966. Poster by and courtesy of Rick Shubb

Old And In The Way only played a few dozen shows in 1973, and they only released an album 18 months after their last show, and yet they loom large in the history of modern bluegrass. The principal reason for Old And In The Way's prominence was their banjo player, Jerry Garcia. With a legitimate rock star in the band, thousands of rock fans--this writer included--first paid attention to bluegrass with open ears. Old And In The Way was steeped in the bluegrass tradition, and yet they modernized it as well, with jazzy improvised interludes and covers of contemporary rock songs. To new listeners like me, bluegrass seemed vital and exciting, instead of staid and out-of-date. In fact, aside from Old And In The Way, there were similar moves towards progressive bluegrass all over the country at this time. Artists like John Hartford and New Grass Revival were carving out similar territory, and all sorts of younger, long-haired bluegrass groups were covering Bob Dylan songs and the like. Old And In The Way got more attention because of Garcia, but they were hardly alone in their approach to bluegrass.

In another way, however, a very dated way, Old And In The Way was distinctly different than other progressive bluegrass contemporaries. The world was a different place in 1973, and Old And In The Way didn't just have long hair, they sang songs about smoking pot. Back in '73, even popular rock bands were uneasy about actually recording songs about weed, for fear of not getting radio airplay. For example, Lowell George's widely covered 1970 trucker's anthem "Willin" ("Just give me weeds, whites and wine/And show me a sign") was daring indeed for the time, too daring even for most FM radio stations. I first heard Old And In The Way on a 10-watt college radio broadcast in 1973 (July 24, 1973 on KZSU-fm, 90.7 out of Stanford). I knew Garcia was in the band; that's why I was listening. As a 10th grade suburban California, I knew nothing about bluegrass. When I heard "Panama Red," not to mention "Lonesome LA Cowboy," I instantly decided that these guys were cool (hey, I was in the 10th grade). But with songs about weed, I was going to give the music a chance.

Looking backwards, many young bluegrass bands were marking the territory that Old And In The Way inhabited. However, few, if any, of those bands had the potent combination of the instrumental firepower of Vassar Clements and David Grisman and the quality songs of Peter Rowan, but none of them were singing songs about dope with an icon of psychedelia in the band. "Panama Red" plus Jerry Garcia put the group irrevocably on the side of long haired hippies, and that was what attracted attention to their music. Subsequent listening, by me and thousands of others, revealed the intricate beauty of bluegrass and the musical depth of Old And In The Way. However, it was Old And In The Way's mixture of weed and bluegrass that initially set them apart, putting a very 70s spin on the concept of pickin' and grinnin'.

Old And In The Way did have a predecessor of sorts, however, in the juxtaposition of bluegrass and vegetative recreation. If you look carefully at old rock posters and Bay Area club billings, you will find an obscure bluegrass band called The Smokey Grass Boys. The Smokey Grass Boys played in the Bay Area in late 1966 and early 1967. Despite their intentionally provocative name, as far as I know the band had no songs about weed, nor would that have been prudent at the time, but there is no question that the name was an intentional joke. The connection to Garcia and Old And In The Way isn't distant either: the group featured David Grisman on mandolin, Herb Petersen on guitar and Rick Shubb on banjo (scroll down for a 1967 photo). Just to be clear about this, that meant that the Smokey Grass Boys had a future member of Old And In The Way along with two other early 60s friends of Garcia's. Garcia had been friends with Herb Pedersen as early as 1962, and had met Shubb and Grisman subsequently. Shubb had even been Garcia's roommate when the Warlocks were formed in late 1965.

The Bluegrass Boys
Bluegrass is different than most musical sub-genres, since its genesis was the conscious product of one person, Bill Monroe. In the 1940s, many farmers from rural Appalachia ended up working in Midwestern factories, and found themselves missing what they had left behind, for all its privations. At a time when popular country music was becoming more modern and electric, Monroe chose to focus on acoustic music with traditional harmonies, yet played with a sophistication that approached contemporary music like be-bop. He called it bluegrass, and his band was Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass boys, a conscious evocation of the Kentucky bluegrass country.

By 1945, with World War 2 filling Midwestern factories with formerly rural residents of West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and elsewhere, bluegrass was a popular style of country music. Other bluegrass bands adopted similar names like The Clinch Mountain Boys (with Ralph and Carter Stanley) and the Blue Sky Boys (with Bill and Earl Bollick) and many others. Even if no one knew where Clinch Mountain was, it reminded fans of "back home," as did blue skies, which were probably in short supply in industrial Detroit. Ever since, a band with the appendix "Boys" was likely to be a bluegrass band. Younger, suburban bluegrass fans have been having fun with it ever since, with band names like Cambridge's Charles River Valley Boys (who did  bluegrass Beatles covers) and Jerry Garcia's own 1964 Asphalt Jungle Mountain Boys, with Eric Thompson and Jody Stecher (my personal favorite was the female Berkeley bluegrass band in the 90s called The All Girl Boys).

Thus, a 60s bluegrass band called The Smokey Grass Boys sounded very plausible to straight America, evoking both the Great Smoky Mountains and Kentucky bluegrass, encompassing the heartland of bluegrass music. Younger, hipper fans would of course instantly giggle at the name--particularly if they were stoned--but squares and grownups would not have noticed. Hiding in plain sight like this was common enough in the mid-60s. There was a Hollywood rock band called The Leaves, who had a modest hit with "Hey Joe," among other things, and their first album prominently featured a marijuana leaf on the cover. The album (a pretty good one, by the way) was on Pat Boone's label, but no one thought to find out why they had chosen that leaf. So illegal as marijuana was in the 60s, the Smokey Grass Boys had a convincing cover story for the squares, and a private joke for their friends. It's easy to laugh at what rubes the squares were back in the 60s, but of course as an old hippie, I had no idea what the references were on the covers of rap albums in the 80s and 90s, so what goes around, comes around.

Ralph Gleason's Dec 23 '66 SF Chronicle column mentions the Smokey Grass Boys

The Smokey Grass Boys
The Smokey Grass Boys were a bluegrass band, and bluegrass had few financial rewards, as all the jokes about banjo players attest ("What's the definition of optimism? A banjo player with a pager." "What's the most commonly used phrase by banjo players at work? 'Would you like fries with that?'"). Bluegrass in California in the 60s was a labor of love, not rewards, and Jerry Garcia and David Nelson, for their parts, had basically given it up, forming a jug band and then their own electric blues bands instead. Yet their few bluegrass peers were still sticking with it, forming The Smoky Grass Boys and playing what gigs they could find in the folk clubs, pizza parlors and coffee shops.

It's a bit murky when The Smokey Grass Boys actually began. David Grisman was out in California in late 1965, and it seems certain that was where he met Pedersen and Shubb, if he had not already met them on the bluegrass festival circuit, since the community of young bluegrass players was small and well-connected. As Garcia was living in a house with Rick Shubb on Waverley Street in Palo Alto at the time, I'm sure Garcia told Grisman where the best young banjo picker in the Bay Area--Jerry aside--could be found. The Smokey Grass Boys seem to have come about a year later, in late 1966. There were four members of The Smokey Grass Boys.

David Grisman came from suburban Hackensack, NJ, and had learned about bluegrass mandolin from his neighbor Ralph Rinzler. The talented Grisman picked up mandolin rapidly and got in on the Greenwich Village folk scene as a teenager. Grisman had met Garcia at a bluegrass festival in Sunset Park, Pennsylvania in the Summer of 1964.  Grisman, too, had been in a jug band, with John Sebastian, Maria D'Amato (later Muldaur) and others. The Even Dozen Jug Band album had been released on Elektra in 1964 to modest acclaim. At the end of 1965, Grisman visitied the West Coast. Grisman wrote the first published review of the Warlocks, praising their performances in the folk magazine Sing Out in late 1965.

Grisman had already recorded some bluegrass in 1966, although I don't think the material was released until somewhat later. Grisman also toured with Red Allen and the Kentuckains in 1966, filling the role of the great Frank Wakefield, pretty remarkable for someone from Hackensack. However, by the end of 1966 Grisman seems to have migrated back to California, apparently basing himself in Berkeley.

Herb Pedersen was from Berkeley. He had formed the Westport Singers with his friend, mandolinist Butch Waller. Pesersen and Jerry Garcia were the two of the hot young banjo pickers in the Bay Area, and while there is a gunslinger element to bluegrass, they were friends as well as rivals. According to writer John Einarson, Pedersen went with Garcia and many others to see Buck Owens and The Buckaroos at Forester Hall in Redwood City, in 1964, so Herb and Jerry went way back.

The Westport Singers evolved into the Pine Valley Boys in late 1962. The Pine Valley Boys made a real effort to make a living on the folk circuit, playing in Los Angeles and actually touring around some. When they played Southern California, they were joined by classically-trained-violinist-turned-fiddler Richard Greene. During the 1964 period, David Nelson joined Pedersen and Waller in the PVB. However, by mid-1966, the Pine Valley Boys had kind of ground to a halt.

Rick Shubb was from California, but he had moved to Palo Alto because he wanted to be where the folk scene was happening. Shubb was another hot young banjo picker, as well as an accomplished artist, and he rapidly became friends with the few other bohemian bluegrassers. In late 1965 Shubb took a lease on a big Edwardian house on Waverley Street in Palo Alto, a purple house with turrets, and many of his friends filled up the various rooms in the house. Among his co-tenants were Jerry and Sarah Garcia and future Magic Theater artist Gayle Curtis. David Nelson and other co-conspirators lived a few blocks away, in a house on Channing Avenue.

Jil Haber was the bass player, but I don't know that much about her. OK, I do know that she married David Grisman and guitarist Monroe Grisman is their son, so it's not hard to guess the connection, but I'm not sure where she was from nor how she ended up as a girl Smokey Grass Boy. I'm not even certain I have spelled her name correctly--hopefully someone who knows can sort this out.

Bay Area Bluegrass Music, Fall 1966
In the early 1960s, folk music was popular. Serious young musicians like Jerry Garcia or Jorma Kaukonen focused on the more serious forms of folk, like bluegrass or finger-style blues guitar, leaving the sing-alongs to would be members of the Kingston Trio. Still, there at least seemed like there was a chance to make it as a folk musician, and not to be reduced to getting a "real job." By 1965, a few critical events had changed everybody's perspective:

• In August, 1964, The Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night was released. Up until then, rock music had been trivial music for kids, but something changed. A future member of The Byrds said "I felt my hair growing longer in the theater." Garcia and the other future members of The Warlocks felt the same thing. A Hard Day's Night was a mass phenomenon only comparable to the Harry Potter books today. I saw A Hard Day's Night in the theater when it came out, and here I am writing a blog about music many decades later. Draw your own conclusions.
• In March, 1965, Bob Dylan released his Bringing It All Back Home album, with the electric and electrifying opening track, "Subterranean Homesick Blues." This was followed a few months later by the lengthy and even more electric "Like A Rolling Stone" single. The leading folk musician was unquestionably on board with the Beatles.
• Meanwhile, more and more people were hearing about something called LSD-25, and by late 1965, if you were hip enough or lucky enough, you could go to a party where everybody was taking the then legal drug, and certain doors of perception were opened very wide. 

In June, 1965, a Los Angeles group called The Byrds released an electric version of Bob Dylan's song "Mr. Tambourine Man," and folk-rock was born. By the end of 1965, folk music in California had largely dissolved in a cloud of funny-colored smoke. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as the rest of the country, folk musicians plugged in, found a drummer, converted someone to bass and turned up the amplifier. Outside of a few East Coast strongholds, folk clubs and coffee houses either closed or started booking rock bands. In many cases, of course, these rock bands featured the same people who had been playing folk music there a few months earlier.

When The Smokey Grass Boys started to play around The Bay Area in late 1966, they were among a relatively small number of players who had still not "gone electric." Actual gigs were few and far between, and I only know of two venues for certain where The Smokey Grass Boys actually played. Both of them were very hip, bohemian long haired places, and the band's name was partially intended as a clear indicator that although the music might have been traditional, its performers were up-to-date. Rick Shubb says there were performances at a few other venues, like pizza parlors (probably at the Straw Hat chain), but not that many. At this point, our knowledge of Smokey Grass Boys shows is confined to two hip little folk venues, both of them to close shortly afterwards, squeezed by the rock explosion.

Smokey Grass Boys Performance History

The first (and misspelled) listing of The Smokey Grass Boys, from issue 71 of the Berkeley Barb, December 1966

December 23-25, 1966  The Jabberwock, Berkeley: Smokey Grass Boys/Don Garrett
The Jabberwock, at 2901 Telegraph Avenue (at Russell), was Berkeley's leading folk venue from 1965 to 1967. The house band, The Instant Action Jug Band, who lived next door, evolved into Country Joe and The Fish. CJF rehearsed at the Jabberwock, although by Fall 1966 they were too successful to play there. The Jabberwock was a tiny place, but it was the center of Berkeley hip music.

December 29-31, 1966 40 Cedar Alley, San Francisco: The Smokey Grass Boys
40 Cedar Alley, the address as well the name of a San Francisco coffee house that presented music, was either ahead of or behind the times. 40 Cedar Alley is near the corner of Geary and Larkin, not far from the site of the Great American Music Hall. The little joint was connected to the Cedar Alley Cinema, which presented foreign and art films and the like. The Coffee House presented odd performers that would now be deemed 'World Music.' The little club missed the folk boom, and was too early for the diversity of musical styles that would follow some decades later. Nonetheless, some very interesting acts played there.

January 6-8, 1966 The Jabberwock, Berkeley: Smokey Grass Boys

January 19, 1966 The Jabberwock, Berkeley: Smokey Grass Boys

January 23, 1967 The Jabberwock, Berkeley: Smokey Grass Boys, The New Age, Larry Hanks and The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band Berkeley Free Press Benefit
All of the groups at this benefit were obscure, but they were all ahead of their time, in typical Berkeley fashion. Besides the Smokey Grass Boys, The New Age were pretty much the first to make 'New Age' music, whether or not the genre was named after them. The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, besides being the other group formed out of the melange of the Instant Action Jug Band, ended up making the infamous Masked Marauders album in 1969.

January 25, 1967 40 Cedar Alley, San Francisco: Smokey Grass Boys

January 26, 1967 The Jabberwock, Berkeley: Smokey Grass Boys
Most of the Smoky Grass Boys shows at The Jabberwock were on weeknights, which for a folk club meant that many of the patrons were simply dropping by. Performers who had built up a following usually played on weekends, so it doesn't seem like The Smoky Grass Boys had really jumped over that hurdle.

January 27, 28 or 29, 1967 The Jabberwock, Berkeley: Smokey Grass Boys/dozens of others
The Jabberwock held a three day benefit for itself, with over a dozen acts. Who played which night remains uncertain. Besides The Smokey Grass Boys, performers included Sandy Rothman and 'Blind Ebbetts Field,' namely Barry Melton in his solo bluesman mode. As a mark of the times, there was a light show (by Head Lights).

February 9, 1967 The Jabberwock, Berkeley: Smokey Grass Boys

February 15, 1967 40 Cedar Alley, San Francisco: Smokey Grass Boys
The last trace of The Smokey Grass Boys was at 40 Cedar Alley, on a Wednesday. The exact demise of the Smokey Grass Boys remains obscure. Most likely, they simply stopped getting booked. All the members remained around the Bay Area for a while. David Grisman was in the East Bay at least as late as June, 1967, performing at the Jabberwock as a substitute member of The Charles River Valley Boys. Indeed, Rick Shubb played the last public notes at The Jabberwock, joining Doc Watson on July 8, 1967. By that time, however, with the Summer Of Love in full swing, bluegrass music seemed passe indeed.

From what little I know, it appears that the Smokey Grass Boys played traditional bluegrass material. Typically, young 60s bluegrass bands played standard bluegrass songs and a few original instrumentals, albeit ones based on various bluegrass classics. Despite their undoubtedly fine musicianship and hip name, The Smokey Grass Boys were a traditional bluegrass band. If they had concocted a song about weed, things might have been different, but that barrier would be breached by one Smokey Grass Boy and a few of their friends about six years later.

Aftermath
David Grisman returned to the East Coast in mid-1967 and formed a psychedelic rock band in Cambridge, MA, like everyone else, with his friend Peter Rowan. Earth Opera recorded two albums on Elektra and were an interesting rock band, but they never made it. Grisman went into management, and returned to the West Coast about 1970. He went on to help found Old And In The Way with Peter Rowan and Jerry Garcia, revolutionizing bluegrass music. He then formed The Great American String Band, with some assistance from Garcia, which then evolved into the David Grisman Quintet, and they revolutionized American acoustic music. Plus he started his own label, and a million other things. When I saw Grisman and Rowan in Marin in 1997, Grisman mentioned The Smokey Grass Boys, and winked broadly at the crowd, just in case anyone thought the name referred to Kentucky.

I know a lot less about Jil Haber, but she does have a successful recording and performing career as Harmony Grisman. David Grisman had since remarried, but Monroe Grisman, the true progeny of the band, has had a notable musical career as well.

Herb Pedersen backed the great bluegrass duo Vern And Ray for a few years, and toured with them until about 1968. Pedersen then headed to Southern California, joining The Dillards. Pedersen also became a first call player in the LA session scene, recording with the likes of Linda Ronstadt and many others. Pedersen toured with Ronstadt as well. In 1987, Pedersen teamed up with ex-Byrd Chris Hillman and guitarist John Jorgensen in the Desert Rose Band, a very successful hybrid of bluegrass vocals and Buck Owens music. The Desert Rose Band's first hit in was the old bluegrass classic "Ashes Of Love," so in a manner of speaking Pedersen made it as a bluegrass musician after all. The Desert Rose Band had a successful run until 1994, when they parted amicably. They have had a few reunion shows in the 21st century. When Pedersen performs live these days, it's often with his bluegrass group, The Laurel Canyon Ramblers.

In 1996, when David Grisman reformed Old And In The Way, he invited Herb Pedersen to play the banjo as well as sing "Pig In A Pen" and "White Dove," Garcia's numbers with the band.  It was an appropriate choice, as Pedersen was a contemporary and friend of the band's first banjo player. Over the years, Pedersen has performed and recorded regularly with Peter Rowan, Grisman and others, as Old And In The Gray, finally singing the bluegrass songs about weed that The Smoky Grass Boys should have been singing in the first place.

Rick Shubb made the poster for the April 26-28, 1974 Golden State Bluegrass Festival

Rick Shubb, for all his friends and connections, never "went electric." He was definitely part of the 60s scene, making some great posters for the Carousel Ballroom, for example. With his friend Earl (Dr. Humbead) Crabb, Shubb drew the remarkable "Humbead's Map Of The World," which has to be seen full-size to be fully appreciated. Yet Shubb stuck to bluegrass and acoustic music. With his partner Bob Wilson, and his wife Markee Shubb, he put out some acoustic albums. He also continued to play bluegrass in a variety of bands.

Remarkably, however, defying every joke ever about banjo players, Shubb invented a capo for banjos, and has sold a million of them. Not a metaphorical million--an actual million. A capo is a fretting device, usually attached to a guitar, that allows a musician to play certain chords more easily (to quote Bob Weir "in common circles, it's called a 'cheater'"). For various reasons, there were technical and musical difficulties with capo for a banjo, but Shubb solved them. He had a machinist build his capo, and in 1979 Shubb sold the first one to his old roommate and friend Jerry Garcia, screwing it on Jerry's banjo himself. A million more followed. Shubb has had a remarkable career in many ways, too long to encapsulate here, but along with Garcia and Herb Pedersen, he showed that there was hope for banjo players after all.

The Smokey Grass Boys, whatever they exactly sounded like, were far ahead of their time. A few years later, when the music world was ready for hippie bluegrass, a band with that name might have gotten somewhere. As it was, they were confined to a few little Bay Area folk clubs and some distant, unclaimed memories. Apparently, a tape or two of the band does exist, not really of releasable quality, but at least the music is not fully lost.

Jerry Garcia Acoustic Bands 1969-1994

The 1988 Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band album over

Jerry Garcia was a largely acoustic musician throughout the early 60s. While he seems to have occasionally played electric bass or something for the odd paying gig, for the most part he was a true folk musician. This dynamic reversed itself in mid-1965, when the Warlocks formed and Garcia became a full-time electric musician. As Garcia's career became more professionally stable, however, and he had more control over some of his choices, it is notable that he kept returning to acoustic music. In particular, besides simply playing the occasional formal or informal session on an acoustic instrument, Garcia seems to have regularly taken on acoustic projects every few years. The timeline suggests that Garcia felt a musical need to have some sort of acoustic project periodically, independent of his other musical goals.

This post contains almost nothing in the way of new information. I am attempting to look at the arc of Garcia's acoustic projects from 1969 through 1995, with respect to their duration. This post is

• not a list of every Garcia acoustic appearance
• not a list of every Garcia acoustic configuration
• not a platform for discussing variant lineups or disputed or vague dates

Rather, it is an attempt to consider the ongoing arc of acoustic projects throughout Garcia's career, once they became truly optional. The focus here will be on the timeline and the output of the projects, such as it was, rather than the specific performances that comprised each configuration. In a recent interview, Sandy Rothman said

When you walked into Jerry’s living room, the banjo was always right there in the case, next to the TV set. Acoustic music was never far from Jerry – it was always like that through the years, no matter what else was going on. 

A careful analysis of the arc of Jerry Garcia's acoustic projects from 1970 through 1995 bears Rothman out. A closer look also suggests that Garcia's most focused acoustic projects were implicitly designed to produce an album. Once that album came out, Garcia seemed to largely drop the prior acoustic configuration, moving on to another one a few years later. Many, if not most Deadheads, myself included, often wished that Garcia would return to the music and arrangements of an earlier presentation, but clearly he had little interest in doing so, embodying the restless searching in his music as a whole.

The cover to the 1970 album Workingman's Dead

Jerry Garcia And Bob Weir (Late '69-Early 70)
First show: December 26, 1969-McFarlin Auditorium, SMU, Dallas, TX
Last show: March 1, 1970-Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA

Jerry Garcia-acoustic guitar, vocals
Bob Weir-acoustic guitar, vocals

In late 1969, Garcia and Bob Weir started performing a portion of Grateful Dead sets as an acoustic duo. This wasn't completely without precedent: Garcia had played acoustic guitar on stage with the Dead in early 1969 (on "Mountains Of The Moon"), the New Riders Of The Purple Sage had an acoustic feel even if they weren't acoustic, and there had been the mysterious "Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Show" from June 11, 1969, for which we have a setlist but no tape.

In late 1969, however, Garcia and Weir elevated some of these experiments to a regular part of Grateful Dead shows. Songs by Buck Owens and The Everly Brothers joined the many R&B and old-timey songs in the ranks of Grateful Dead covers. I believe that on occasion, other members of the Dead added instrumentation to the acoustic guitars, but in general the performances were just Jerry and Bob.

My limited understanding is that Garcia (and probably Weir) were unhappy with the ways that the guitars were amplified, and dropped the configuration by the end of February 1970. Nonetheless, I think the effort was fruitful. The very first instrumental performances of "Uncle John's Band" present a pretty spaced out jam, and yet the album version on Workingman's Dead is a melodic sing along in the style of Crosby, Stills and Nash. I'm not trying to make any argument about which was the chicken and which the egg, but given Workingman's Dead, I feel confident that Garcia and Weir's experiment as an acoustic duo was quite serious, and was not undertaken because a drummer was late.

The album cover for 1970's American Beauty lp

An Evening With The Grateful Dead (Mid-1970)
First show: April 17, 1970-Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
Last show: September 26, 1970-Terrace Ballroom, Salt Lake City, UT

Jerry Garcia-acoustic and electric guitar, vocals
Bob Weir-acoustic gutar, vocals
Phil Lesh-electric bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums
plus: John Dawson and David Nelson-vocals

An acoustic format returned to the Grateful Dead in the Spring of 1970. The basic configuration of the acoustic sets had Garcia and Weir on acoustic guitars, backed by Lesh on bass and Kreutzmann  on drums. Different members would join in sometimes, including Pigpen on occasional piano or harmonica and Nelson and Dawson on harmony vocals. I have never gotten a convincing answer on whether Kreutzmann or Hart played drums, whether they switched or shared, and so forth, but I believe that Kreutzmann played drums for the acoustic set and Hart played the New Riders sets.

Garcia has commented on occasion that he was greatly influenced by the fantastic English band Pentangle, who had opened for the Dead during the Live/Dead stand at Fillmore West. Similar to Pentangle, Garcia would play a little bit of electric guitar on certain numbers, but the basic frame was two acoustic guitars and a rhythm section. This acoustic configuration of the Grateful Dead appears to have been a significant influence on the sound of the American Beauty album, recorded in the Summer of 1970. While American Beauty is dominated by electric instruments, all but one or two songs seem rooted in the basic format of the acoustic Grateful Dead at the time.

However, the acoustic format that seems to have been the genesis of American Beauty disappeared in the Fall of 1970. Garcia had commented some years later that he was unhappy with the amplification, and I'm sure that was true, given that the Dead were playing bigger and bigger places. However, Garcia was not one to return much to his acoustic forays, so I don't think the band and its engineers made any effort in the ensuing years to actually solve the problem of acoustic instruments in a rock setting.

The album cover for the 1975 lp Old And In The Way, recorded in 1973

Old And In The Way (1973)
First show: March 2, 1973-The Record Plant, Sausalito, CA
Last show: November 4, 1973-Gym, Sonoma State College, Cotati, CA

Peter Rowan-acoustic guitar, vocals
David Grisman-mandolin, vocals
Jerry Garcia-banjo, vocals
John Kahn-acoustic bass
Richard Greene, John Hartford or Vassar Clements-fiddle

The acoustic Grateful Dead dropped out of the picture in late 1970, but Garcia seems to have been unable to do without acoustic music for too long. In late 1972, he started playing bluegrass music for fun with his neighbors David Grisman and Peter Rowan. By early 1973, they had decided to form a bluegrass band, and Garcia invited John Kahn to play with them. In the arc that I am considering here, it is worthy of note that there was neither a sound nor sensible reason for Garcia to start performing with a bluegrass group. The Dead were finally making a little money, and the Garcia/Saunders were developing into a popular club attraction, so Garcia could make a little money and have a little fun on the side without a bluegrass group.

The fact that Garcia formed a bluegrass band in early 1973 was a clear sign that Garcia had an artistic need to play acoustic music periodically. Bluegrass music, unlike electric music, can be played quite well in the living room, so Garcia clearly needed to play for an audience rather than just with his friends. I have detailed the history of Old And In The Way's formation at some length elsewhere, so I won't recap it here, but the variety of FM broadcasts and recording projects associated with the band was a clear sign that Old And In The Way was a serious and sincere enterprise for Garcia. However, at the end of 1973, Old And In The Way reached its end (notwithstanding a sort of 'reunion' show at the April 28, 1974 Golden State Country And Bluegrass Festival in Marin).

Great American String Band (Spring 1974)
First show: March 10, 1974-Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA
Last show: June 14, 1974-Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

David Nichtern-acoustic guitar
David Grisman-mandolin
Richard Greene-violin
Jerry Garcia-banjo
Buell Neidlinger or Taj Mahal-acoustic bass

Old And In The Way appears to have been a finite project, intended to only exist throughout 1973. Having spent '73 transforming bluegrass, Garcia and Grisman decided to spend 1974 transforming all American acoustic music. To that end, Grisman coordinated the formation of the Great American String Band. Garcia did not play every show with the group, who also used the name Great American Music Band. The group debuted on March 9, 1974, and Garcia's first appearance with them was the next day. Garcia's busy schedule only allowed him to stay in the group for a few months, and he left after June '74. Ultimately, the group evolved into the David Grisman Quintet and they indeed change American acoustic music.

Following his departure from the GASB in June 1974, Garcia went six years without a serious acoustic project. This interregnum was the longest period of Garcia's career where he didn't play acoustic music on a regular basis. Garcia did play banjo at two low-key performances in February 1975 by The Good Old Boys, his last performance on banjo until the 1990s. Garcia also played acoustic guitar on a few studio recordings, and there was the one-off benefit in Chicago in 1978, but Garcia had no serious acoustic outlet until 1980. I have read that Garcia was uncomfortable with the technical difficulties of amplifying acoustic instruments, so perhaps that was a significant factor. As both the Dead and Garcia had become a bigger attraction over the years, concerns that Garcia may have had over amplification would have been magnified.

The cover to the 1981 double lp Reckoning

Acoustic Grateful Dead (Fall 1980-Spring '81)
First show: September 25, 1980-Fox Warfield Theater, San Francisco, CA
Last show-May 22, 1981-Fox Warfield Theater, San Francisco, CA

Jerry Garcia-acoustic guitar, vocals
Bob Weir-acoustic guitar, vocals
Brent Mydland-grand piano, harpsichord, vocals
Phil Lesh-electric bass (John Kahn on acoustic bass for the two 1981 shows)
Bill Kreutzmann-drums
Mickey Hart-drums

To the delight of everyone, the Grateful Dead made an unequivocal return to acoustic performance in the Fall of 1980. Garcia commented that he was finally happy with the quality of the amplification and monitors of his acoustic guitar, and this presaged his general willingness to play acoustic guitar on stage for the balance of his career, if somewhat intermittently. In an early 80s Guitar Player interview, Garcia also commented on his appreciation for the band Pentangle, which is how I found about it.

The new acoustic Dead took the time to learn a variety of songs the band had not played in many years, as well as learning some numbers that had never been played acoustically, like "Bird Song." Their willingness to rehearse was a clear sign that the Dead took the acoustic project seriously. However, it's my contention that the band learned and performed the acoustic numbers in order to record and release  Reckoning, and never had any intention of going beyond that.

Although the Grateful Dead played a few dozen shows at the Fox-Warfield in San Francisco, the Sanger Theater in New Orleans and Radio City Music Hall between September 25 and October 31, 1980, they all but completely dropped the format afterwards. The Dead played at a children's hospital, and then opened their 1980 New Year's Eve show with an acoustic set, and a hybridized version of the band with John Kahn played two benefit shows in 1981, but no configuration of the Dead would play acoustically again until 1994.

One of the key lessons Garcia seems to have taken from the Fall 1980 acoustic Dead performances was the ease with which he could make an acoustic appearance without saddling up the entire cavalry. Following the Spring 1981 shows, Garcia made regular appearances at Bay Area benefits as an acoustic duo or trio, with Bob Weir and/or John Kahn and Rob Wasserman. Fascinating as those miscellaneous performances could sometimes be, they were not projects and thus are outside the scope of this analysis.

The acoustic Grateful Dead produced the 1981 double lp Reckoning, the band's definitive acoustic statement. Just about every song they performed in their Warfield/Radio City run was included, and while you can argue about performances, in general I thought the choices on the album were excellent. Sure, they left off the acoustic version of "Aiko Aiko," but I saw it (or one of them) and it was just a lark. I think the Fall 1980 shows were a conscious plan by Garcia and the Dead to get their acoustic selves on record and they did so. Having done it, they moved on.

In one way, Reckoning was very much a return to the American Beauty era "An Evening With The Grateful Dead" sound. Yet the 1970 acoustic shows had featured largely new and even unheard songs--they played an acoustic "Truckin'" one night--and the Reckoning version was mapping familiar territory, with no new originals and no covers that were truly new to the band. From one point of view, Reckoning could be seen as unfinished business. Now that the technology was in place, the Grateful Dead were recording the live acoustic album--unplugged, anyone?--that they should have recorded in 1970. Once the month of Reckoning shows were complete, however, acoustic shows were soon off the table for the rest of the band's career.

Joan Baez with the Grateful Dead (Fall '81)
First show: December 12, 1981-Fiesta Hall, San Mateo County Fairgrounds, San Mateo, CA
Last show: December 31, 1981-Oakland Auditorium Arena, Oakland, CA

Joan Baez-vocals, acoustic guitar
Jerry Garcia-acoustic and electric guitar, vocals
Bob Weir-acoustic guitar, vocals
Brent Mydland-grand piano
Phil Lesh-electric bass
Bill Kreutmzann-drums, percussion
Mickey Hart-drums, percussion

People mostly forget the Grateful Dead's relatively extensive collaboration with Joan Baez, and those people who saw the live performances know why. Mickey Hart and Joan Baez were a couple at this time, and Weir was always a big fan of Joan's, so the Dead actually recorded an entire studio album where they backed Baez on mostly original material. Most of it has remained unreleased. Baez and the Dead also performed together three times in December 1981. I have written about that at length, so I won't recap it here. In the context that I am considering Garcia's acoustic work, the Baez album was a serious, sincere project involving a lot of original material, not just a few old folk songs. It didn't work out, but Garcia made much more of a commitment to it than just a one-off benefit.

Jerry Garcia and John Kahn (1982-86)
First show: April 10, 1982-Capitol Theater, Passaic, NJ
Last show: November 14, 1986-Veterans Memorial Auditorium, San Rafael, CA

Jerry Garcia-acoustic guitar
John Kahn-acoustic bass

The acoustic pairing of Jerry Garcia and John Kahn presents an interesting conundrum in the context of this analysis. On one hand, Garcia and Kahn played many acoustic shows together over several years, possibly more than any other combination listed here. From another perspective, however, a good case could be made for the proposition that the Garcia/Kahn duo was not a project at all, just a sort of stripped-down version of the Jerry Garcia Band. The duo never recorded as such, and I am aware of no plans that were ever afoot to even attempt a live recording or release.

In the early 1980s, the Grateful Dead's finances were not good. At the same time, Garcia was interested in various film projects, and as a result his own performances had to be cash-positive. Apparently Garcia was told (correctly in my opinion) that his fans would see him endlessly as long as he varied his presentations. Thus Garcia played some East Coast shows as an acoustic duo with Kahn (I'm aware that the first show on April 10, 1982 was actually solo, but it's a tangent to this post), and it became a nice counterpoint to Garcia Band shows. When Garcia and Kahn came through a town after the Garcia Band, they played a different set with different interpretations, and Garcia's fans were always good for another go-round.

That being said, however, Garcia and Kahn's repertoire added nothing new to the Garcia canon. They played some Garcia Band songs, and some 'acoustic Dead' songs, but nothing really new turned up. Here and there a somewhat forgotten song like "Going Going Gone" made an appearance, but on the whole it was more of the same. By the mid-1980s, while Garcia/Kahn shows had a comparable number of songs to JGB shows, they were shorter, so there was some implicit dissatisfaction amongst Garcia fans. I know that for myself, while I enjoyed seeing the Garcia/Kahn duo, having seen them a few times I felt no need to go out of my way for them.

It's also true that shows by Garcia and Kahn must have been quite profitable. This was no small thing during a cash squeeze. With just two band members and a modest amount of equipment--and therefore crew--smaller venues were definitely in play, particularly if tickets could be sold to both early and late shows. On the other hand, Garcia was never without options, palatable or not, and he would not have played so many acoustic shows with Kahn if he had not enjoyed making music in that format. Garcia's next acoustic iteration proved this point. 

Ragged But Right, the second album by the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, scheduled for release in 1989, though it was not released until 2010

Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band (1987-88)
First show: March 18, 1987-The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
Last show: July 9, 1988-Frost Amphitheater, Stanford U, Palo Alto, CA

Jerry Garcia-acoustic guitar, vocals
David Nelson-acoustic guitar, vocals
Sandy Rothman-banjo, dobro
John Kahn-acoustic bass
with: Kenny Kosek-fiddle (Fall '87)
        David Kemper-drums (Fall '87)

In July of 1986, Jerry Garcia had a life-threatening episode, and he had to re-learn the physical aspects of playing guitar. He played some acoustic during this period, and even made a guest appearance at a Grateful Dead Thanksgiving party as part of an acoustic trio with Sandy Rothman and David Nelson. When Garcia was asked to play a benefit at the Fillmore for various 60s poster artists, he could have chosen to simply do the show with John Kahn, but he brought along Nelson and Rothman. The quartet played a brief set of old-time music, rather than the contemporary or original material that was part of the Garcia Band repertoire.

While I think that the Garcia/Kahn pairing of the early 80s had an element of financial convenience to it, I also think that Garcia genuinely liked playing acoustic. According to oft-told legend, Bill Graham was so impressed with the quartet's appearance that he said "I've gotta do something with this group!" and Garcia wryly said "take us to Broadway, Bill." Graham in fact did that. After a few Bay Area shows, the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band opened for the (electric) Jerry Garcia Band for 15 shows at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in New York on West 46th Street (a dozen subway lines converge on it).

in complete contrast to the Garcia/Kahn duo, the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band learned all new songs, or, more correctly, re-learned songs that the core trio had not played in many, many years. When they played Broadway, drummer David Kemper was added to the group playing a minimal kit, and legendary fidller Kenny Kosek joined as well. The JGAB went on to open some JGB shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and some of the best material was used for the excellent album Almost Acoustic. There were plans to release a second album, as well, although that was delayed about 23 years, when Ragged But Right was finally released.

According to a recent interview with Sandy Rothman, the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band trusted their memories and musical abilities:

Most everything we played during those shows, we’d played at some point – although in a couple of cases, they were songs we’d last played back in the ‘60s. We might’ve gone over them quickly backstage – not the whole song, but a verse and a chorus just to see if we knew it – and then we’d improvise on stage.

There was that telepathic thing going on between the original three of us – Jerry, David, and I – and Kenny fit right into that. He was really careful to not step on what we already had going on. Plus, John Kahn had played a lot with Jerry, so he knew what was going on there. There was also the telepathy thing going on vocally; we rarely worked out beforehand whether there was going to be another chorus or whether there was going to be another verse or repeat the chorus twice at the end … most often that was strictly on the fly.

Interestingly, as a marker of Garcia's approach to his more fully realized acoustic projects, having completed their enterprise by December, 1987, the Jerry Garcia Band disappeared. By the time the album came out in December 1988, the band had ceased to exist. The Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band did play an odd, one-off show at Frost Amphitheater in Stanford on July 9, 1988, but I am convinced that was a late minute addition because the University did not want an electric Garcia show.

The pattern of Garcia's acoustic projects seems to have been that the serious ones existed for a relatively brief period of time in order to create some kind of album, and then the configuration or band dissolved. Any configuration that existed intermittently for a long time, like Garcia's duos with Weir or Kahn, were not designed by Garcia with any particular intent. By that standard, the Garcia/Kahn duo was not a serious project at all for Garcia, however much fun he may have had actually performing. Conversely, the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band was a much more meaningful project for Garcia, but that very fact seems to have limited its tenure.

The cover to the Jerry Garcia/David Grisman album Shady Grove, released in 1996, and recorded from 1990-93

Jerry Garcia and David Grisman (1990-95)
First show: December 17, 1990-The Sweetwater, Mill Valley, CA
Last show: May 5, 1994-The Warfield, San Francisco, CA

Jerry Garcia-acoustic guitar, vocals
David Grisman-mandolin, vocals
Jim Kerwin-acoustic bass
Joe Craven-percussion, fiddle

The latterday collaboration between David Grisman and Jerry Garcia has a unique standing from the perspective of Garcia's acoustic projects. In retrospect, Garcia's partnership with Grisman provided an outlet for Garcia to record acoustic music in a relaxed setting with diverse accompanists, rather than existing as a primarily live vehicle. Since Grisman's excellent studio was in the garage of his Marin home, and Grisman was willing to coordinate sessions and even release the albums on his own label, all Garcia had to was show up and play. On some level, that was Garcia's goal, particularly with acoustic instruments: just show up and play. By the time the 80s ended, Garcia's appearance anywhere, even a recording studio, attracted enormous interest. Grisman's house was one of the few places he could hide out and just play, and with Grisman he had a rare partner who was on Garcia's own level as a player.

Garcia and Grisman had apparently had some kind of falling out in 1975 after the release of the Old And In The Way album on Round. As always--whatever people may say--it seems to have been about money. In a late 70s interview with BAM Magazine, Grisman complained that Vassar Clements was owed a few thousand dollars that he had never recieved, and (to paraphrase) "one member of the band owned the record company." Of course, Garcia probably lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Round/GDR debacle, but he had the Grateful Dead to fall back on.  Nonetheless, time wounds all heels, and by the end of the 1980s, the bridge between Garcia and Grisman had been rebuilt. They started to hang out and jam--there's reason to think that perhaps Garcia was just looking to get out of the house--and once Grisman realized that only the Dead, not Garcia, were contracted to Arista Records, the door was open to release Garcia/Grisman albums on Grisman's new Acoustic Disc label.

The actual performing debut of this ensemble was at Mill Valley's tiny Sweetwater club (at 142 Throckmorton) on December 17, 1970. For most people, however, the coming out party was on February 2 and 3, 1991 at The Warfield. To some extent, Garcia kept to the Pentangle-style configuration of two guitars and a rhythm section, although of course Grisman mostly played mandolin and percussionist Joe Craven mostly played well amplified tablas (and on occasion, himself). However, performances by the Garcia/Grisman band were few and far between, if rapturously received.

As it turned out, however, it seems that pretty much every time Garcia went over to Grisman's house, they went to the garage to play and the tape deck was switched to "on." While Craven and bassist Jim Kerwin were the most regular in attendance, all sorts of formal and informal configurations were in play. A wide variety of material was covered, too: James Brown, Miles Davis, Missisippi John Hurt, you name it. Grisman's studio and record company allowed Garcia to play the acoustic music he wanted to with some kind of intimacy. Since Garcia, by nature, was always "on," there weren't rehearsals, in that sense. The pair just played. If the take wasn't right, they played it again, but every take was for all the marbles. In that respect, although unfinished, the Garcia/Grisman canon on Acoustic Disc gives us the broadest and clearest perspective on what Garcia wanted to do with acoustic music, and we are the richer for it.

Since the Garcia/Grisman partnership was not conceived as a performance vehicle, they seem to have approached their musical projects differently. It appears that they worked on different thematic albums, such as children's music, jazz standards, old-time music and so on. Not all of these were complete before Jerry's departure, unfortunately, but Garcia and Grisman's music still points toward a tendency to organize his acoustic ventures into specific projects.

Some remarkable video was released in 2001 of Garcia and Grisman recording in the latter's  studio, as part of the video Grateful Dawg. Garcia is quite comfortable with both the audio and video recorders running, a mark that he was used to being the center of attention after a few decades. While Garcia was always guarded in certain ways, I don't think he was any different on camera than he would have been at Grisman's house in any circumstances, as Garcia had been the center of attention wherever he was since the late 60s.

The most revealing part of the video, to me, is where Garcia and Grisman stop picking for a minute and start talking about old bluegrass songs that they like, and for a minute they are fans like everyone else, talking about their favorite records. Garcia, whatever his other problems may have been at the time, is animated and excited like you or I would be when talking about our favorite music. Then Grisman says (approximately) "we should get all those [bluegrass] guys together and make an album." Garcia's shoulders instinctively sag and he turns his head--"then we'd have to make all these arrangements and everything," he says, dismissively. Grisman, hopefully, says "I'd take care of it." But Garcia shakes his head, and Grisman drops it. At least he tried.

By the early 1990s, I think Garcia wanted to play electric music to as large as audience as possible, loud and vibrant with sound ringing out from all sides. But acoustic music was chamber music to him, and there weren't any living rooms left for him to play in peace, nor even anything like The Boarding House (capacity under 500), much less the Stinson Beach Community Center (even smaller). All he had was Grisman's home studio. Garcia had started out as a professional musician practicing bluegrass in David Nelson's parent's living room, and he wound it up in his friend's garage, a final refuge from the legend he himself had created.

Phil Lesh And Friends (September 24, 1994)
September 24, 1994-Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA

Jerry Garcia-acoustic guitar, vocals
Bob Weir-acoustic guitar, vocals
Vince Welnick-piano, vocals
Phil Lesh-acoustic bass guitar, vocals

I'm not much for the counterfactual, trying to guess what might have been. Jerry Garcia died on August 9, 1995, and sad as it was, his health was not great, so it wasn't just bad luck. It's remarkable that the man created so much music in his time as a musician. Nonetheless this survey wouldn't be complete without a glance at the last acoustic Grateful Dead performance. Phil Lesh agreed to do something for the Berkeley High School music program, where he himself had learned music in the late 1950s. The Berkeley Community Theater was also the school's auditorium, and Phil packed the place with an acoustic show featuring Bob Weir, Vince Welnick and Garcia. As well as being the first Phil And Friends show, it was also the last glimpse of the acoustic Grateful Dead, since the ten song set featured some actual Grateful Dead numbers that had not been performed in a while.

Walking Blues
Lazy River Road
KC Moan
Dupree's Diamond Blues
Childhood's End
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Attics Of My Life
Cassidy
Bird Song
Throwing Stones

Did this lineup of Phil And Friends actually rehearse? If they did, I'll bet it wasn't more than once, in the dressing room. Nonetheless, the presence of "Dupree's Diamond Blues" and "Attics Of My Life" meant that the members had to at least discussed what they were going to play, a sign of a little more seriousness on Garcia's part than knocking off "Little Sadie" again. It's not farfetched to think that Garcia was ready for another acoustic Grateful Dead episode. The Grisman/Garcia partnership seemed to meet Garcia's need to create acoustic music, but they were never going to tour much. With all the improvements in live sound and monitors, Garcia might have been amenable to another Reckoning-type project, but like many other possibilities it was not to be.

Jerry Garcia's Acoustic Legacy
Jerry Garcia began the 1960s trying to be an acoustic "folk" musician, and from one point of view he failed. Of course, he has a well-deserved legend as both a guitarist and, for lack of a better term, a signpost to new space. Yet as a result of Garcia's status as an electric guitarist and San Francisco icon, he had a far larger acoustic legacy than is usually realized.

• The Grateful Dead were psychedelic legends by the end of the 1960s, even if they weren't that popular. Thus when "Uncle John's Band" lead off Workingman's Dead, the fact that a 60s guitar avatar was sounding a lot like Crosby, Stills and Nash was an invitation to many musicians and fans that it was OK to like that sort of stuff. Songs like "Friend Of The Devil" are now bluegrass standards, played in pizza parlors on Bluegrass Tuesday all over America.
• Old And In The Way only played a few dozen show in 1973, and only released an album 16 months after their last performance, but they were a profoundly influential band in modern bluegrass. Certainly John Hartford and many others were making progressive bluegrass in the early 1970s, but it wasn't reaching a wide audience. With Garcia on board, Old And In The Way opened the door to bluegrass to numerous listeners, not coincidentally including me. They were a great band, of course, but they were also the first bluegrass band to publicly sing songs about weed, a much more significant divide in the 1970s that is worthy of another post. Thanks to Garcia, Old And In The Way opened the door to long haired pot smokers liking bluegrass, and that is Garcia's biggest acoustic legacy and contribution.  The popularity of bluegrass music today is a testimony to the beauty and depth of the music itself, but Jerry Garcia had a huge role in getting young music fans to check it out in the first place.
• The David Grisman Quintet is one of, if not the, most important ensembles in American acoustic music. All credit due to Grisman and his cohorts, but they might have had a harder time getting off the ground without Garcia's participation in the early days of the Great American String Band. 
• David Grisman's Acoustic Disc label, separate from but including the Quintet, has been an important force in promoting everything good about both traditional and new American acoustic music (not to mention a few other countries). Without some best selling Garcia/Grisman albums to kick off the label, some of the more fascinating but less lucrative releases may not have been so viable. 

Paradoxically, Jerry Garcia's most serious acoustic music projects from 1969 onwards seem to have been finite. He had an idea, he worked with other musicians--inside or outside of the Grateful Dead--to do some live work in preparation for some recording, and then the configuration faded away. The longest running collaborations, the duos with Bob Weir or John Kahn, for example, were more of an expression of Garcia's enjoyment of playing acoustically while retaining some fiscal sanity. Garcia's formidable accomplishments and recorded legacy as an electric guitarist have minimized his remarkable contributions to popular modern American acoustic music.

Jerry Garcia Roots And Branches

Oakland Tribune ad, May 5, 1974

I recently came across an ad for Jerry Garcia with the Great American String Band at the Keystone Berkeley on Sunday, May 5, 1974.The Keystone Berkeley's regular display ad in the Sunday Oakland Tribune (of May 5) had the GASB at the top of their ad, since the show was taking place the very same night. The show itself has been known and listed on The Jerry Site for some time, so this was not new territory. However, some of my recent research has focused on the ways in which Jerry Garcia both tapped into and influenced American music in his time. Garcia's remarkable career after he became famous has been characterized by a wide variety of collaborations with numerous musicians, some brief and some substantial. I found myself looking at this ad for the first half of May at the Keystone Berkeley in the context of whether Garcia had a connection to the various acts that were booked. It was striking to see that of the other seven acts booked between May 6 and May 19, Garcia had a distinct connection to four of them.

This post is more of a meditation than analysis. One of the acts was a huge influence on Garcia, some of the acts are connected to Garcia over what would have been events prior to 1973, and some of them are connected to him through events that had not yet occurred, and some fall into more than one category. I am considering them all equally, however, from the perspective of our 20/20 hindsight, as a demonstration of how a seemingly random listing for the Keystone Berkeley offers up a host of Garcia connections.

Monday, May 6: Buck White and The Greenbriar Boys
The Greenbriar Boys were a tremendously influential bluegrass band, whose first album on Vanguard was specifically cited as an inspiration to the likes of Garcia and David Nelson. The Greenbriar Boys were from New York and New Jersey, not the South, and they inspired suburban bluegrass pickers everywhere with the idea that bluegrass could be learned, even if you weren't born to it. Supposedly, a promotional photo of The Black Mountain Boys (which no one has ever seen, to my knowledge) was modeled on the cover of a Greenbriar Boys album.

The Greenbriar Boys released four albums, the last in 1966, and toured up until 1970. The original band featured guitarist John Herald, Bob Yellin on banjo and Eric Weissberg on mandolin. Weissberg was replaced by Ralph Rinzler in about 1962, who in turn was replaced by Frank Wakefield in 1966. Rinzler, among many other things, was the mentor of his teenage neighbor in Hackensack, NJ, David Grisman. Wakefield, among many other things, was in The Good Old Boys with David Nelson, who released an album on Round Records in 1976, produced by Jerry Garcia.

The Greenbriar Boys broke up in 1970, but they apparently played occasionally anyway. Bluegrass groups aren't like rock bands, and can "reform" for a single gig in your living room, if they are so inclined. Presumably they were backing Buck White, a bluegrass artist who sang with his daughters. The Whites would become better known many years later for appearing in the film Brother Where Art Thou. Although the busy Garcia may not have stayed over at the Keystone the next night, I would be very surprised if David Grisman and Richard Greene did not drop by.

Thursday May 9-El Chicano/Friday May 10-John Lee Hooker
Although both of these acts are pretty good, there were no meaningful Garcia connections that I am aware of.

Saturday, May 11-Willie Bobo and Luis Gasca
Willie Bobo was a well-known percussionist and Latin bandleader who appeared on numerous great Latin and jazz albums throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Trumpeter Luis Gasca was mainly based in the Bay Area, but he was not only a well-known Latin jazz artist in the Bay Area in the 1960s, but a crucial bridge between Latin music and rock music in the 1970s. He was a few years older than some of the younger Latinos playing rock music in San Francisco, particularly Carlos Santana and his brother Jorge.

Luis Gasca was good friends with the Santana brothers and all their band members, and was instrumental in the formation of Malo (you recall "Suavecito"). Gasca also led a lot of late night North Beach jam sessions at places like Cesar's (named after owner Cesar Ascarrunz) and other clubs. Garcia was reputed to be a sometime visitor to these jams. I am even convinced that Garcia actually played an advertised date with Gasca in late 1972, but that is too long a tangent to get into here.

In any case, Luis Gasca and Jerry Garcia were at least  occasional jamming partners. As a footnote, Gasca played the trumpet part on the studio version of "Mexicali Blues," released on Bob Weir's Ace.

Sunday, May 12-Gideon And Power
Gideon And Power were a mostly African-American band from the East Bay, who played "Gospel-Rock." The lead singer (either Gideon or Power) had a church background, so he apparently sang rock in a kind of gospel style. The band worked the clubs in the Bay Area for much of the 1970s, mostly in the East Bay, without any huge success. I'm not aware of any album releases. However, I do know that in the latter '70s, the keyboard player for Gideon And Power was one Melvin Seals. I don't know if he was playing with them in 1974--probably not yet. Seals went on from Gideon And Power to play with Elvin Bishop, which is where Garcia first heard him.

Thursday-Friday, May 16-17-Stoneground
Although Stoneground was a San Francisco band, all the Garcia connections were at least one step removed.

Saturday-Sunday, May 18-19-Cold Blood
Cold Blood had been one of the first bands in San Francisco to play soul music with psychedelic overtones. The Loading Zone had been the ones to kick the door open, and Sly And The Family Stone were the ones who transformed music, but Cold Blood was right there amongst the originals, even if they weren't quite on the level of Tower Of Power, much less Sly. Still, Cold Blood was an enjoyable band, with a big horn section backing powerhouse vocalist Lydia Pense.

From about 1968 to 1971, Cold Blood was booked by Bill Graham's Millard Agency, who also booked the Grateful Dead for some of that period. As a result, Cold Blood had played on many bills with the Grateful Dead, particularly on the West Coast in the 1969-70 period. Also, while Cold Blood went through a lot of members, with Lydia Pense the only really constant member of the group, they had used Oakland's finest, Gaylord Birch, as their drummer in 1973 (he appears on the live cd release Vintage Blood, recorded in 1973 and released in 2001). Some years later Birch would be the drummer in Reconstruction (in 1979), with an encore appearance in the Jerry Garcia Band in late 1985 (Oct 85-Feb 86).

I am the first to concede that the scholarly value of this analysis is close to zero. It's interesting, however, to take a look at a typical Keystone bill and see Garcia connections all over the place. The branches of Garcia's musical tree are tangled indeed. Garcia touched bluegrass, jazz, rock and funk music in the Bay Area, and was a major rock star besides, and however lightly, his roots and branches spread much wider than one realizes.

April 10, 1974 Record Plant, Sausalito, CA: Peter Rowan demo with Jerry Garcia (Texican Badman)

Texican Badman by Peter Rowan, a 1980 Italian release on Appaloosa Records. 4 tracks were recorded with Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, David Grisman and Bill Kreutzmann in 1974, and six were recorded live in San Antonio in March 1979

An obscure Peter Rowan album called Texican Badman, released only in Italy on Appaloosa in 1980, features four tracks recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito on April 10, 1974. Backing Rowan on these four tracks are Jerry Garcia on lead guitar, David Grisman on mandolin, John Kahn on bass and Bill Kreutzmann on drums. The balance of the album features six Peter Rowan tracks recorded live in Texas in 1979, with none of the participants on the Record Plant tracks. Since the Record Plant sessions feature four songs recorded in a day, it must have been for a record-company sponsored demo session, never intended for release. I myself have never heard the tracks, but since I generally like Peter Rowan I'm sure they are at least worth hearing.

However, the aspect of the date that interests me is that the April 10, 1974 session features 4 out of 5 members of Old And In The Way, and indeed all the "permanent" members. Other than a reunion show a few weeks later at the Golden State Bluegrass Festival a few weeks later (on April 28, 1974), this would be the last time a quorum of the band played together until after Garcia's death in 1996. Although I am reduced to speculation about this event, that is after all one of the purposes of this blog, and my analysis is that the timing of this demo session says a lot about the demise of Old And In The Way and Garcia and Grisman's formation of The Great American String Band.

[update 20250819] substantial new information has surfaced about this recording. See below.

The Record Plant Demos, April 10, 1974
The Record Plant in Sausalito was perhaps the Bay Area's premier recording studio at the time. It was expensive to record there, and sessions would have had to be booked in advance, possibly long in advance. If Peter Rowan had recorded a demo at, say, Mickey Hart's barn, then perhaps it could have been a lark or done as a favor. Since the recording was made at the Record Plant, it had to be financed by a record company and scheduled in advance. Everybody playing or working the session would have gotten paid, albeit probably just union scale (probably $100-200 per man, depending on the length of the session).

In the days before workable home studios, record companies would pay artists to go into the studios for a session or two to lay down a sort of rough draft of their songs, so that the record company could consider whether an album might be worth making. Demo sessions were generally quick and dirty, with few overdubs. Since Rowan recorded four songs in one day, this had to be a demo session. Peter's brothers Chris and Lorin sang harmonies on some songs, so perhaps the vocal parts were dubbed, but generally speaking at a demo session the musicians ran through takes until they got a good one, and then moved on to the next song. Ideally, at least some of the musicians on the demo session would know the songs, since otherwise you have to work out arrangements and rehearse while paying for studio time, and that greatly decreases the chances for a promising demo.

The four Peter Rowan songs that featured Garcia, Grisman, Kahn and Kreutzmann were "Sweet Melinda,"  "While the Ocean Roars", "Awake My Love" and "On the Blue Horizon." Rowan has many albums, and I have no idea if these songs turned up on some of them. I have no idea what record company might have paid for the demo, but it was common practice at the time, seen as a way to get a look at what a songwriter's material might sound like with a full band. If you were a songwriter trying to get a contract and you got a chance to do a demo, you immediately rounded up the very best musicians amongst your friends, in order to make a killer demo and get signed. Rowan certainly bought an A-team to the session.

Other than the Old And In The Way event at the Golden State Bluegrass Festival three weeks later (well covered in detail over at JGMF), Rowan would not play with Garcia again, and I don't believe he played with Grisman again until after Garcia's death. Although I don't believe it was consciously planned by the participants, I think the Record Plant demo was a sort of "thank you and farewell" to Rowan, as Garcia and Grisman were forming a new acoustic band that explicitly cut Rowan out. Kahn was well taken care of with various Garcia projects, so Garcia and Grisman seem to have been trying to help Rowan get a record contract out of some combination of friendship and guilt.

A Peter Rowan track sheet for a demo reel from the Record Plant on August 21, 1973. Jerry Garcia is listed as electric guitarist on the unreleased tracks "Lazy Bones" and "Dragon On The Moon."

update 20250819
Thanks to correspondent Terry B, we know have clarification on the dates and circumstances of this recording, as well as evidence of two additional unreleased tracks. There is a detailed discussion in the Comments that suggested that the April 10, 1974 date was incorrect, and that the tracks were recorded the previous Summer. Peter Rowan himself recalled this. I would note that Italian "grey market" bootlegs of this era were notoriously inaccurate with dates, probably to forestall any legal issues.

In any case, our correspondent Terry purchased some reels from the Record Plant that include track sheets for some Rowan material. This confirms Rowan's memory that these demos were recorded on August 21, 1973, at the Record Plant in Sausalito, while the Grateful Dead were busy recording Wake Of The Flood. Garcia and Kreuzmann would have just walked down the hall to a different room to join Peter Rowan, John Kahn, David Grisman and Chris and Lorin Rowan. 

The actual reel for the Peter Rowan demo session at the Record Plant on August 21, 1973

Per Peter Rowan, the demo session was financed by Warner Brothers. The producer is Bennett Glotzer, and experienced rock manager from the 60s onwards (The Band, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, many others). I believe he had a connection to Rowan's former band Seatrain. The engineer is Grisman's old pal Bill Wolfe, who engineered many sessions for the Grateful Dead and others. The client is listed as "Glotzer Schuster." This may be a reference to saxophonist Steve Schuster, a friend of many of the participants.

The tracks listed here, "Lazy Bones" and "Dragon On The Moon," neither of them part of the Appaloosa release. Garcia is listed as playing electric guitar. I have not heard the reels, nor had Terry B at the time of this writing. 

Nice to get this sorted out. Thanks to Terry for sending it along.  

The first Earth Opera album, released on Elektra in 1968

Peter Rowan and David Grisman
Rowan and Grisman were both East Coast teenagers who discovered bluegrass music, and both had played with established giants as young professionals. The Cape Cod born Rowan had played with Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys, and Hackensack, NJ's Grisman had toured with Red Allen and The Kentuckians. In 1967, Grisman and Rowan left bluegrass and formed a psychedelic rock band, of sorts, in Cambridge, MA called Earth Opera. Earth Opera was a quintet, and they played sort of baroque semi-acoustic psychedelic folk-rock. Rowan was the main singer and writer, and Grisman was the principal soloist, often on odd instruments like the electric mandola (the other members were Bill Stevenson-keyboards, John Nagy-bass and Paul Dillon-drums). The band released two albums on Elektra. The albums weren't that great, but they were certainly interesting.

Grisman left Earth Opera sometime in 1969, when the equipment truck blew up in Los Angeles. Rowan continued touring with the group later on in the year, with Bill Keith probably taking over the role of principal soloist on pedal steel guitar, but Rowan finally gave it up and ended up joining the group Seatrain and moving to the Bay Area by the end of '69. However, whatever caused Grisman to leave Earth Opera, it doesn't seem to have ruptured his friendship with Peter Rowan. By the middle of 1970, Grisman and his partner Richard Loren were managing Peter's younger brother Chris and Lorin, and at the suggestion of Jerry Garcia they moved to the West Coast.

As I have discussed at length elsewhere, Grisman's presence in Stinson Beach led to informal  bluegrass jam sessions between Rowan, Grisman and Garcia. This in turn led to not one but two bluegrass groups: Old And In The Way and Muleskinner. There were album projects for both groups, on Reprise Records for Muleskinner and on Round for Old And In The Way, but neither came out the way they were expected. The death of Clarence White finished off any chance of a serious Muleskinner effort, and despite some fantastic live shows Old And In The Way never quite came to an agreement about how they wanted to proceed.

As JGMF has pointed out, according to McNally, the biggest barrier to continuing on with Old And In The Way after the end of 1973 was some sort of inability of Rowan and Grisman to collaborate. Clearly they were still friends, but given the complexity of building a band around Jerry Garcia's schedule, conflict between the other chief participants put an end to the group.

The Great American String Band
Garcia had expressed disappointment with how his rock star status had overwhelmed the relaxed, back porch nature of bluegrass music itself. Grisman seems to have been the instigator of a new group, The Great American String Band (aka The Great American Music Band), which seemed to be able to function with and without Garcia. The GASB took an improvised acoustic approach all styles of American music. Garcia joined in on banjo when he was available, singing an occasional tune as well. In one way, the GASB was the natural counterpart to Jerry Garcia's various electric ensembles, who took an improvised electric approach to all styles of American music.

However, there seemed to be no place for Peter Rowan in the Great American String Band. Grisman's guitar partner was David Nichtern, who among many other things had written "Midnight At The Oasis" for Maria Muldaur. Richard Greene, Rowan's old partner from the Monroe days and Seatrain, and a sometime member of OAITW, joined in on violin, and there were various bassists. Rowan himself was nowhere to be seen. The finest of scholars has determined that the Great American String Band debuted at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on March 10, 1974.

Jerry Garcia, Peter Rowan and David Grisman
Jerry Garcia was famously non-confrontational, so I can't imagine he told Rowan "me and Grisman are forming a group and you're not in it." Grisman and Rowan were long-time friends, so I doubt he put it that way to Rowan, either. Still, by April of 1974 it must have been pretty clear that something was happening and Rowan wasn't part of it. Rowan must have been working for a rock record contract all along, so when a demo session came up, of course he wanted the best available players. On top of that, he would have wanted to impress his record company by showing that two members of the Grateful Dead were playing on his demo.

For Garcia and Grisman, playing on Rowan's demo would have been a way to help him professionally, in a way that might assuage any guilt or tension they might have felt about cutting him out of their next project. I doubt anyone spoke specifically about any of this, but it must have been hanging around in the background. Old And In The Way did have a final reunion, at the Golden State Bluegrass Festival in Marin, on April 28, 1974. The event was recorded, and there was supposed to be an album, but it never saw the light of day.

Hayward Daily Review, April 5, 1974

David Grisman and David Nichtern, Freight and Salvage, April 10, 1974
One thing that has always interested me about April 10, 1974, was that David Grisman and David Nichtern had a singular booking as a duo at Berkeley's unique Freight and Salvage club. I have always hoped, however wishfully, that Garcia made an appearance that night. I still don't think he did, but it's interesting to notice that Garcia and Grisman must have been hanging out that afternoon at The Record Plant. In any case, the fact that Grisman had a gig with David Nichtern on the same day he recorded a demo with Peter Rowan was a clear sign that he was on to the next thing. And what a thing it was, since the Great American String Band would rapidly evolve into the David Grisman Quintet, which is still breaking new ground today.

Texican Badman-Peter Rowan  (Appaloosa Records, 1980)
All in all, it's hard not to get around the fact that the Texican Badman album by Peter Rowan is a strange release. 4 songs recorded on a single day in Sausalito with Garcia, Grisman, Kahn and Kreutzmann, and the six songs recorded live in San Antonio, TX in March, 1979. Even stranger, the six songs recorded in San Antonio include four by Lubbock, TX songwriter Terry Allen, and none by Rowan. One member of Rowan's band is saxophonist "Jack Bonus," known to Rowan fans as the author of "Land Of The Navajo," and known elsewise as Stephen Schuster, formerly a member of the Keith and Donna Band.

What little I do know about the Italian record industry back in the day is that copyright laws were very different. I couldn't say what they were in 1980, but n general albums could be released in Italy that were insulated from legal action from United States, UK or European entities. Thus many Italian releases were perceived as bootlegs by the rest of the Western world. It's entirely possible that the Texican Badman album was a straight up bootleg, released without the permission of anyone involved. It's also possible that the release was an early version of "self-bootlegging,' where artists provide the tapes and get some cash, leaving the record companies and publishing companies--with whom they often have no sympathy--to use the courts to get satisfaction. Generally speaking, American and UK entities were not going to sue in Italy over royalties, not for anything less than a Beatles album.

Prospective Conclusions
Given the obscure history of Italian albums, where details are often obscured to protect the guilty, it's not totally impossible that the April 10, 1974 date is fictitious in someway, as might be some or all of the personnel. Nonetheless, I am taking the stance that it was a real date, and the members of Old And In The Way felt they owed something to their compadre and made a demo with him at the Record Plant. Certainly, Peter Rowan went on to join his brothers as a trio and record for Asylum and has continued to have a flourishing career, so he wasn't left entirely stranded, but it's strange to think that the next-to-last stand of Old And In The Way was a rock demo at the Record Plant.

update: thanks to intrepid Commenter and scholar runonguinness, we find out the whole story from Peter Rowan himself. Almost everything we thought about the sessions was incorrect, but fascinating nonetheless:

Peter Rowan interviewed about this session by Ken Hunt in "Swing 51" No 6 from 1982 p 27-28

KH: Presumably some of those tracks on "Texican Badman" are from those demo sessions for Warners. Was it a whole album that you recorded?

PR: No, just four songs. It was during the time the GD were recording "Wake Of The Flood." Billy Wolf was the engineer. He had been engineer, kinda co-producer with David Grisman when they did "The Rowan Brothers" for Columbia Records. OITW was playing a lot around this time that Jerry was recording with the Dead. They had, like, reserved the studio for days on end, but weren't in there at certain times of the day, so I think we got a next to nothing rate for, like, three hours, and Warners put up $1000 or something like that. It was enough so everybody could get paid something - the players, that is. I didn't get anything. We cut those four tunes, had my brothers sing, had John Kahn play bass, Garcia lead guitar, David Grisman mandolin, Bill Kreutzmann drums. We did some tunes that I'd written around the time as demos. Warner Brothers thought it was too funky, too country, so they just passed on it. The tapes just sat around. Billy Wolf has the master tapes but they're impossible to find. They're lost in the great vaults of the GD you know, the Grisman/Rowan archives. I don't know where they are, but they could've ended up anywhere! I know that Vassar Clements has a lot of the master tapes of OITW at his house. So, I had a mix, a rough mix, and I thought it would be good to put out in Europe as a collection with the live stuff that I did at the Armadillo with Flaco. David was pretty upset about it, because he felt he wasn't in control of it. Sort of behind his back. They feel it was a demo, not a master session, as if that would make some difference as to how they would approach it. It's like a record of the times really. The sound isn't that great. I guess that everyone likes to think that their latest work is representative.

Earlier in the interview (p 25), regarding the Rowan Brothers demos "Livin' The Life" Appaloosa release, Peter said this among much else (basically, he was not happy the way his younger brothers had been treated)

PR: I think this album may set the record straight. I organised the deal with Appaloosa for them, because I think it's important that those guys get out the music that people were excited about before they were overproduced and turned into hot-house roses.

So Peter Rowan was definitely behind the Appaloosa Rowan releases and it looks like his demos come from the Record Plant in August 1973, shoe-horned into a gap in the Dead's WOTF sessions.

His interview certainly shows some prickliness towards Grisman although he does not come straight out and badmouth him.

And Vassar had (his estate still has, hopefully) some OITW master tapes. I wonder how that happened.