Grateful Dead Tour Itinerary February 1970

(a scan of a poster for the Grateful Dead appearance in San Antonio on February 21, 1970)

I have been constructing tour itineraries for the Grateful Dead for brief periods of their history. There is so much information circulating on websites and blogs (including my own) that go beyond published lists on Deadlists and Dead.net that these posts make useful forums for discussing what is known and missing during each period. So far I have reviewed

• The Warlocks May-December 1965
• The Grateful Dead January-April 1967
• The Grateful Dead May-June 1967
• The Grateful Dead November-December 1967
• The Grateful Dead March-April 1968
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia July-August 1969
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia September-October 1969 
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia November 1969 
• Grateful Dead December 1969 
• Grateful Dead January 1970 

Rather than go in strictly chronological order, I am focusing on periods where recent research has been done by myself or others. Over time I hope to have the entire 1965-70 period. My principal focus here is on identifying which dates have Grateful Dead shows, which dates might have Grateful Dead shows, and which dates are in dispute or may be of interest. Where relevant, I am focusing on live appearances by other members--mostly Jerry Garcia, as a practical matter--in order to get an accurate timeline.

What follows is a list of known Grateful Dead performance dates for February 1970. I am focused on which performances occurred when, rather than the performances themselves. For known performances, I have assumed that they are easy to assess on Deadlists, The Archive and elsewhere, and have made little comment. As a point of comparison, I am comparing my list to Deadlists, but I realize that different databases may include or exclude different dates (I am not considering recording dates, interviews or Television and radio broadcast dates in this context).

My working assumption is that the Grateful Dead, while already a legendary rock band by 1968, were living hand to mouth and scrambling to find paying gigs. Even by 1970, most paying performances were on Friday and Saturday nights, so I am particularly interested  in Friday and Saturday nights where no Grateful Dead performances were scheduled or known.

In February 1970, the Grateful Dead were starting to reap the benefits of their great new album Live/Dead, released in November 1969, which was receiving plenty of airplay now that FM rock stations were all over the country. One interesting note about the month of January 1970 was the fact of only one scheduled show by the New Riders of The Purple Sage, and no guest live appearances by Jerry Garcia. Given the surprisingly numerous NRPS shows in November, I cannot think this was simply a coincidence. We have discussed possible reasons for the paucity of NRPS shows between December 1969 and April 1970 elsewhere, so I will not recap it except to say that it appears the Riders did not have a bass player.

February 1970 was a particularly momentous month for the Grateful Dead, notwithstanding the string of fantastic live performances. Sometime in the late January-early February period they recorded Workingman's Dead (the exact date has never been determined, to my knowledge), and while they toured madly throughout the month they realized that manager Lenny Hart was stealing from them. In late January 1970 Hart had proposed merging Grateful Dead operations with Chet Helms's struggling Family Dog on The Great Highway. This was actually a brilliant and intriguing idea, but while Helms may have kept somewhat casual accounts, he was no crook--when Lenny Hart refused to show him the Grateful Dead books, Hart had to scurry back to Novato. Sometime in February, per McNally, Ramrod told the band "it's [Lenny Hart] or me," and Garcia said "well, you know we can't do without [you]."

Lenny Hart had stolen $155,000, bankrupting the band for all intents and purposes. Throughout this, the Dead played absolutely remarkable music, and Hart's perfidy ironically condemned the Dead to endless touring, and their 1970 and '71 peregrinations produced legions of Deadheads.Yet somehow, in the midst of an irrational and ill-advised touring schedule--one of Lenny Hart's many failings as a manager--the Grateful Dead played epic performances throughout February 1970, while still finding time to fire their manager and record one of their classic albums.

I have linked to existing posters where available.

February 1, 1970: The Warehouse, New Orleans, LA: Grateful Dead/Fleetwood Mac Bust Benefit
The Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac and The Flock had played New Orleans on the weekend of January 30-31, and the Dead were busted after the second show.

After bailing out over a dozen people, the Dead were out of cash, a clear sign of the hand-to-mouth life of a touring band in those days. They added an extra show at The Warehouse on Sunday night. Fleetwood Mac agreed to play as well, as they did not have a show until February 5 in Boston (The Flock had to move on). The show was well attended, thanks to the local FM station.

According to Fleetwood Mac's soundman Dinky Dawson (in his fine book Life On The Road, 1998: Billboard Books, p, 121-124), although the New Orleans cops were out in force looking to bust pot smokers, buckets were passed around for people to drop money in to help the Dead, and in thanks the band passed around bottles of Cold Duck (a cheap champagne-like concoction). They announced from the stage "its Electric Duck, so only take a few sips," and the New Orleans police, used to 200 years of vice, somehow missed the reference. Peter Green, and probably other members of Fleetwood Mac, ended up on stage during "Turn On Your Lovelight" (and who does that strange rap at the end?).

February 2, 1970: Fox Theater, St. Louis, MO: Grateful Dead/Aorta
The Dead's next show after New Orleans was a Monday night show in St. Louis, 700 miles to the North, a sign of the irrational touring schedule that soon-to-be-fired manager Lenny Hart was responsible for.  With an unplanned Sunday night show in New Orleans, and dead broke, I have always wondered how the band got their sound system 700 miles up the road in time for the St. Louis show.

My original theory is that the equipment truck left New Orleans Sunday morning (February 1) and the Dead played their Sunday show on Fleetwood Mac's sound system. The Dead and the Mac were among the first two bands to tour with their own PAs, and Dinky Dawson and Owsley were good friends and professional peers. Expedience notwithstanding, the Dead would have known they could put on a quality show using the Mac's equipment. I'm assuming that the band members themselves were going to fly to St. Louis in any case, so their plans would not have changed.

Notwithstanding my theory, a thoughtful Commenter found an interesting review of the show in the February 3 St. Louis Post Dispatch. It seems the Dead's equipment did not even arrive until 7:00 pm the night of the show. This fact points against my hypothesis, although going 700 miles in a truck even in two days in February could be no picnic (update: another Commenter found some evidence that the Dead's equipment had been held by the New Orleans police, so they had to rent locally, which would have explained the delay).

The review also reveals that the show was part of the homecoming weekend of St. Louis University, explaining the sold out (3,000 capacity) show on a Monday night. We have an excellent tape of part of the show, and the newspaper describes some of the rest of it, so we have a relatively good picture of this hitherto obscure event.

One other footnote: the group Aorta featured guitarist Jim Vincent (aka Jim Donlinger), who ultimately moved to San Francisco and joined the group Lovecraft (different than but related to HP Lovecraft, but I digress). Vincent ended up playing in Howard Wales's band in early 1972, and thus played with Garcia when Jerry sat in with Howard Wales a few times.

February 4, 1970: Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Santana/Kimberly
This show was filmed by KQED-TV in San Francisco for Public Television. It has since been released more or less as broadcast (on April 27, 1970) as A Night At The Family Dog. From the vantage point of this century, it's a wonderful view of three of San Francisco's finest bands, looking young and strong and playing some of their best music, with a lively crowd. It's well worth viewing.

Nonetheless the TV broadcast gives a somewhat misleading picture. Santana never actually played The Family Dog and the Airplane were too big to play there except for unannounced stealth shows. The Dead played there regularly, but all three bands would never have played together in such a small place. The crowd at the Wednesday night show was all invited, and apparently there were considerably fewer than were usually let in to a sold out show (according to Ralph Gleason's February 6 column in the Chronicle). 

That being said, the musicians and audience are clearly enjoying themselves, so even if the bands played limited sets in a sort of artificial situation, its as good a picture as we are going to get of shows in those days. A local group called Kimberly warmed up the crowd (per Gleason), and the broadcast (and the video) included a jam with Jerry Garcia, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Michael Shrieve, Carlos Santana, Gary Duncan and Paul Kantner, and there's no doubt that the musicians were having a good time.

February 5-8, 1970: Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Taj Mahal/Big Foot
The Grateful Dead played a four night run at Fillmore West. In contravention to the practice of previous years, the Dead played one long set instead of two sets separated by the other two bands. Put another way, this was an early instance of a "modern" configuration where the opening acts did not come on after the headline act had played the first set.

Taj Mahal had an excellent live act who had never broken through beyond a certain level. His band featured the great, underrated guitarist Jesse Ed Davis (among many other accomplishments, Davis played lead guitar on the original recording of Jackson Browne's "Doctor My Eyes").

Big Foot was a power trio from Sacramento. Although hardly remembered today--outside of Sacramento--there is an interesting footnote to their story. Big Foot featured guitarist Mike Botham and drummer Reed Nielsen, and played original material in a manner similar to Cream. Nielsen went on to pair up with former Sanpaku guitarist Mark Pearson, and form the Nielsen Pearson Band, where he switched over to guitar and piano. Subsequently, Nielsen has become a successful Nashville songwriter for the likes of Vince Gill and Tim McGraw. A lot of Nashville songwriters used to be in a band, long ago--but I doubt any of the other successful ones were a drummer in a power trio that opened for the Grateful Dead at Fillmore West.

February 11, 1970: Fillmore East, New York, NY: Grateful Dead/Love/Allman Brothers Band
The Dead played a Wednesday at Fillmore East, and then skipped a night and played the customary Friday-Saturday weekend show. This was completely unprecedented in the history of the Fillmore East. No other headline band at Fillmore East broke up a run with a day off--much less to play a relatively small club uptown.

The reason, as we have ultimately determined, was that Warner Brothers wanted the Dead to play an industry "showcase" at Ungano's (see below), and a few shows at Fillmore East essentially financed the trip. Since the Fillmore East was among the very few venues were the Dead were willing to play on the house sound system, they could simply fly to New York (with their guitars) and play the Fillmore East without the equipment truck.

The Dead had met the Allman Brothers, but never heard them play (although Jerry and Duane Allman had jammed in Atlanta on July 7, 1969). February 11, 1970 was a truly legendary night. After a perfunctory, if enjoyable early show, most of the Allman Brothers and some members of Fleetwood Mac (in town with nothing to do) joined the Grateful Dead onstage for an epic rock jam that included an unforgettable "Turn On Your Lovelight."

February 12, 1970: Ungano's, New York, NY: Grateful Dead
I have written about this show at length. Contrary to some speculation, it was advertised in the Village Voice (scroll to the right). Thanks to a truly amazing Comment Thread, I now can state for a fact that the show occurred and also explain why the Dead played a mid-town Manhattan club (at 210 W. 70th Street) in the midst of a Fillmore East run.

This show was a Warner Brothers showcase for Talent Agents and other music industry professionals. The Dead were a great live act with a hot new album (Live/Dead), but not everybody knew that. It is worth noting that the Grateful Dead became big on the East Coast college circuit after this, and while I would not attribute that to this show alone, it had to be a factor. A commenter on an earlier post, who worked at Ungano's, makes a critical point

What we actually wound up becoming was a show case club for agents, record companies and managers.We we uptown and not far from most of their offices, so 210 West 70th turned out to be an ideal location.

The Fillmore East was in Lower Manhattan, while Ungano's was way uptown (near Central Park--Seinfeld territory), so it was not a competitor to Greenwich Village venues like the Fillmore East. At the same time, professionals working in mid-town at all the record companies could get to Ungano's easily, so the club made a great industry showcase that did not realistically compete with Village venues.

February 13-14, 1970: Fillmore East, New York, NY: Grateful Dead/Love/Allman Brothers Band
These epic shows have been well documented, and I could hardly add anything here.

February 20, 1970: Panther Hall, Ft. Worth, TX: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Grateful Dead
The Dead played a few Texas shows with Quicksilver Messenger Service. Quicksilver had not toured since late 1968 (they only played a few shows in 1969), but their first two albums remained staples of FM radio, so they were as big or bigger than the Dead. The 1970 lineup included not only the "classic" Quicksilver quartet (John Cipollina and Gary Duncan-guitars, David Freiberg-bass, Greg Elmore-drums) but Nicky Hopkins on piano and Dino Valenti on vocals. Although Hopkins was universally appreciated, opinion about Valenti was decidedly mixed and remains so to this day.

According to my analysis, since the Dead flew to Fillmore East, the equipment truck would have driven from San Francisco and met the band in Texas.

February 21, 1970: Convention Center Arena, San Antonio, TX: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Grateful Dead/John Mayall with Duster Bennett/Its A Beautiful Day
Both this show and the Houston show the next day were billed as kind of indoor rock festivals. John Mayall was a headliner in his own right, and Its A Beautiful Day had a popular debut album. The show started at 6 pm, a clear sign that patrons were in for a lengthy evening.

John Mayall's band was a variation on his Turning Point/Empty Rooms band, a quartet with an acoustic guitar, flute and electric bass, and no drums. The late, great Johnny Almond was the lead soloist on flute and saxophone (formerly of Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, with Andy Summers), Jon Mark played acoustic guitar and Alex Dmochowski played bass. People with too many albums will recognize Dmochowski under his nom du Zappa "Erroneous," playing on Waka Jawaka and Grand Wazoo. When Mayall ended this lineup in June 1970, Mark and Almond formed the excellent Mark-Almond Band.

Duster Bennett was a kind of "one-man band" who played the blues and toured with John Mayall. For Mayall's encore, Bennett joined in with Mayall's band.

Update: correspondent Gerard writes in not only with a description of the event, but photos of the Dead and Quicksilver

Here are photos of The Dead and QMS 2/21/70. These are blown up from slide negatives so they are kinda fuzzy. San Antonio had quite a few concerts back in the late 60's. Bands would play there rather than Austin because San Antonio had bigger facilities and a bigger population. Austin didn't become the music center it is now until much later. I was a fan of all the San Francisco bands and to be able to see all of these acts on one bill was amazing. I normally taped all the shows I went to with a little cassette recorder. I got all the preliminary acts but 3/4 of the way through the Quicksilver set the recorder ate my tape so I didn't have one left over to tape the Dead. You can go on SugarMegs and find the tape I made of Quicksilver. It is the one getting all the bad reviews about the sound. I wish there were better versions out there but beggars can't be choosers. I had a seat in the back so I had to stroll up the aisle to take photos and hurry back to keep my seat. I went up to take the Dead shot and right when I got to the front they broke into Turn on Your Lovelight and all of a sudden I was surrounded by dancing hippies. I had to stand on a chair to keep from getting crushed so that is why that photo is taken from a higher perspective, no pun intended. I wish I could find a set list of what The Dead was playing back then because I didn't recognize a lot of the songs and I had the first 4 albums.

The Grateful Dead at San Antonio Convention Center, February 21, 1970. Photo by and courtesy of Gerard Daily. Jerry on a Fender, Bob playing a Gibson

Quicksilver Messenger Service at San Antonio Convention Center, February 21, 1970. Photo by and courtesy of Gerard Daily. John Cippolina on stage left, Gary Duncan with the Gibson guitar on stage right, just in front of pianist Nicky Hopkins

February 22, 1970: Sam Houston Coliseum, Houston, TX: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Grateful Dead/John Mayall with Duster Bennett/Its A Beautiful Day
This show began at 1 pm.

February 23, 1970: Austin Municipal Auditorium, Austin, TX: Grateful Dead
The Dead played a Monday night in Austin. If there was anywhere in the South where the Dead might have gotten a good crowd on a Monday night in February of 1970, it was Austin, but I still wonder about the wisdom of this show. I'm not aware of a tape, review or eyewitness, so I have no idea how it was received or whether the show was well attended.

February 23, 1970: Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Santana/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Its A Beautiful Day/Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks
The Grateful Dead were busted in New Orleans, and still out on the road, but they were hurting for cash, since they had to bail out something like 19 people. The other San Francisco bands held a benefit for them, appropriate since the Dead had done so many benefits for others. According to Ralph Gleason's February 25 Chronicle column (above), the benefit raised $15,000 for the band. I believe this was the only time there was a benefit for the Grateful Dead themselves.

February 27-March 1, 1970: Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
The Grateful Dead ended the month with a three night stand at The Family Dog. Whatever the exact timeline of the month's events, Lenny Hart was surely fired by this time. It must have been odd for the band to play a weekend for Chet Helms, knowing that their former manager had booked the date as part of a dubious rip-off. The Dead were personally friends with Helms, so socially it was probably manageable, but it must have added to the strangeness of the weekend (and I'm not counting the fact that Lenny Hart was the drummer's Father).