Thursday, June 6, 2013

February 1973, unnamed bar, Stinson Beach, CA: Old And In The Way

One of my principal research enterprises has been tracking down lost dates and venues for the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia and other members of the band. Most of the time, the references are scattered and contradictory, and any recollections by band members range from vague to unavailable. This one is a little different, however, since it is based on a single data point. It is a very convincing data point, in that it was an interview with John Kahn about the founding of the bluegrass band Old And In The Way. By the very nature of the comment, however, it is very difficult to confirm.

In Blair Jackson's definitive 1999 analytical biography, Garcia: An American Life, he quotes Kahn on the founding of Old And In The Way:
"Old And In The Way was basically David Grisman's trip," John Kahn recalled. "There was no fiddle player in the group at first. It was me, Peter Rowan, Grisman and Jerry. We'd get together and play at Jerry's house in Stinson Beach, or my house in Forest Knolls, and then we started playing some real gigs informally, like at the bar in Stinson Beach. It was this tiny place and the audience was louder than the band. It was all these big hippies dancing with these big hiking boots and the big flaps bouncing up and down. They'd start clapping and you couldn't hear us at all. Even we couldn't hear us (p.240, emphasis added).
So it seems that for all my research into the roots of Old And In The Way, I missed the fact that they initially played some apparently casual performances at a bar in the tiny West Marin town of Stinson Beach.

David Grisman added a similar thought
"You know Jerry-if he thinks something is worth doing, he'll just take it out there right away, which is good," Grisman said. "He said, 'Let's play some gigs,' and he had the gigs lined up! We started playing in clubs and then he booked a tour. It was a real informal thing."
I have already discussed the timeline of the formation of Old And In The Way, and its relation to the group known now as "Muleskinner." I have even wrestled with the peculiar, murky subject of fiddler John Hartford's participation in Old And In The Way, itself very hard to define (I think Hartford played on the unreleased studio album, but never performed live with the band). For this post, I am going to go back to what I missed the first time: Old And In The Way's quiet debut at an unnamed bar in Stinson Beach.

The Formation Of Old And In The Way
I have an entire post on the lengthy backstory of how Peter Rowan and David Grisman came to be staying in Stinson Beach in 1972, just down the hill from Jerry Garcia, Mountain Girl and their little family. Although the Dead were busy touring in '72, Garcia found time to pick and hang out with Rowan and Grisman. Their bluegrass prowess rekindled Garcia's interest in playing the banjo. I don't think it was a coincidence that Garcia's renewed focus on the banjo came just after he completely dropped the pedal steel guitar. Since bluegrass has a traditional repertoire, it was easy for the little trio to play together, since they all knew the same material.

Garcia had nearly lost his other band in the Spring of 1972, when John Kahn and Merl Saunders had joined the Butterfield Blues Band. Fortunately for Garcia, financial issues soured Kahn and Saunders on Butterfield's group, and they returned to San Francisco, so Garcia could return to regular club shows with them. When the Grateful Dead weren't playing, the Garcia-Saunders group played numerous gigs throughout early 1973. I have to assume that much of the formation of Old And In The Way took place in January of 1973, as the Grateful Dead were not touring, and Garcia/Saunders just played local clubs. I assume that Garcia played with Rowan and Grisman during the day that January, before going out to club gigs with Merl Saunders in the evening. Of course, it's worth noting that Garcia would have spent at least some of his time in January 1973 rehearsing brand new material with the Grateful Dead, so he seems to have been particularly busy.

When Old And In The Way needed a bass player, Garcia asked Kahn to join the group. Although Kahn had never played bluegrass, I know from an old musical friend of Kahn's (drummer Bob Jones) that Kahn had always liked bluegrass and been interested in it. From Garcia's point of view, he would have been looking to include rather than exclude Kahn from any extracurricular activity, if only to insure that no one else poached his bass player. As for Grisman and Rowan, Kahn was a nice guy and a fine player, and if a condition of having Garcia in the band was that he brought his bass player, that was probably fair enough.

Stinson Beach, CA
Stinson Beach is in West Marin. From an aerial view of a Google Map, it seems not so far from the suburban Marin of San Rafael or even San Francisco. In fact, West Marin is separated from San Rafael and the other suburbs by a mountain range, and the only route to San Francisco is the twisty, windy and slow Highway 1. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, Stinson Beach was only accessible by boat, except for a difficult mountain trail. By the 1920s there were a few roads, and the area became a sort of resort. For the most part, however, Stinson Beach was just a tiny community where the principal industry was dairy farming.

By the 1960s, West Marin wasn't as isolated as it had been, thanks to the automobile and improved roads. However, the Western part of the county was mostly agricultural and kind of empty. Stinson Beach--named after its most prominent landowner back in the 1920s--had a presence as a local resort area, the kind of place where San Franciscans might rent a cabin and take a weekend. Although Western Marin and Sonoma have wildly beautiful coastlines and beaches, most normal people find the beaches to be strkingly windy and cold. Thus Stinson Beach was only really attractive to Northern Californians (and of course surfers) who thought that a cold, windy beach was a desirable vacation destination.

Californians are generally tolerant of newcomers, since there are are so few natives. Western Marin did not seem to object to an influx of hippie types in the late 1960s, since those hippies mostly wanted the same quiet, semi-rural life as the locals. Many San Franciscans had second homes in the area, and as long as they were detached and friendly, they fit in fine with the existing population. Western Marin was San Francisco's little secret--why share it? The residents of the town of Bolinas, not far from Stinson Beach, were famous for stealing all the road signs on Highway 1 that pointed to Bolinas, thus discouraging any casual tourists. This insularity was typical of Western Marin.

When Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl moved to Stinson Beach in 1971, they weren't atypical of a lot of West Marin newcomers. Garcia had made a little money, but not that much--he had only made his first solo album for the $20,000 advance that allowed him to buy the house for Mountain Girl. Garcia didn't really commute in the normal sense of the word. The only useful way out of Stinson Beach was  South on forbidding Highway 1 to Highway 101. There you could turn right to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, or left to San Rafael and North, and thence to Keystone Berkeley to the East. When Garcia was not on tour, which wasn't that often , he didn't have to roll out of bed at the crack of dawn and fight the fog, so his drive--in a Volvo Sportwagon, from what I know--was probably fairly pleasant.

All of the California Coast from San Luis Obispo to the Columbia River in Oregon feature a ragged cliff that drops steeply to the beach. Thus beach towns in Northern California tend to be somewhat isolated. Highway 1 runs North and South along the California coast. It is the only through road in Stinson Beach. I do not know Garcia's exact address (nor would I publish it if I did), but I know he lived on a little hill above town, a very typical arrangement in California coastal towns. Typically, there is a beach, and above it a road along the cliff above the beach--often Highway 1 itself, as at Stinson--and then some houses rising behind a matrix of little streets above the coastal road.

Garcia and Mounatin Girl lived above Stinson Beach in a house that had a sign that said "Sans Souci" outside (French for "Without Care"). Chris and Lorin Rowan and their producer David Grisman had a house lower down, nearer to Highway 1. Older brother Peter Rowan took to hanging out with his old friend and his younger brothers. Stinson Beach is a tiny place, and even if Garcia was on the road alot, there is no way they couldn't run into each other, and so they did. Bluegrass followed.

Timeline
The story seemed to be that Garcia, Grisman and Rowan enjoyed playing bluegrass when the opportunity struck. Given Garcia's schedule, that can't have been too often. Grisman's remark suggests that the band fell together rather quickly as an actual band, and Garcia pulled the trigger on playing actual gigs very quickly. Here is a brief timeline of Garcia's availability for some stealth gigs in Stinson Beach:
  • Fall '72: Garcia, Grisman and Rowan play bluegrass in Stinson Beach when the opportunity arises
  • December '72-January 73: The Grateful Dead and Garcia play gigs only in California. Although Garcia gigs at night with the Dead and Garcia/Saunders, Kahn is invited to join, and the bluegrass quartet can practice during the day. 
  • January 12-February 6: Garcia/Saunders plays 15 nights during this stretch (out of 26 days).
  • February 9: The Grateful Dead play Maples Pavilion at Stanford
  • February 15-28: The Grateful Dead tour the Midwest
  • March 2: Old And In The Way make their public debut on KSAN in the afternoon, and then at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo that night.
Combining Kahn and Grisman's remarks points pretty clearly towards early February. The quartet probably started rehearsing in earnest at the end of January, and played a few times at a local bar in Stinson Beach in early February. When Garcia agreed to start playing, his manager Richard Loren--who was also good friends and former partners with Grisman--would have had two weeks to book shows at the Lion's Share, Homer's Warehouse and Keystone Berkeley in early March, before the Grateful Dead would go back out on tour.

If I am correct about the timeline, then the few weeks between gigs at the Stinson Beach bar and the first announced show at the Lion's Share was when they thought up the name. A local bluegrass quartet playing the bar in their town doesn't need a name. A band playing a club does. So the group must have settled on naming themselves after Grisman's song of the same name, probably on the spur of the moment. They could just as well have been the Midnight Moonlighters--not a terrible name, actually--but they surely never reflected on it.

Bars In Stinson Beach
Stinson Beach was and is the sort of town where no one would make a fuss about a local celebrity in their midst. There weren't many businesses in Stinson Beach, so while I don't think Garcia went to the grocery store much,  people still must have bumped into Jerry buying gas or cigarettes back in the day. Garcia was a San Francisco celebrity, as his picture had been published in the Chronicle often enough, and he was very distinctive, so people must have known. Yet the locals must have enjoyed ignoring him, and I'm sure Garcia liked it, too.

Kahn's phrase "at the bar in Stinson Beach" is telling as well. Back then, and possibly still, Stinson Beach was the type of town where you could say to a friend "I'll see you tonight at the bar," and the friend wouldn't ask "which bar?" In a tiny beach town, there aren't that many place to go, and the hippies all surely went to the same one. Also, use permits often stay in effect for decades, so though establishments may change their name, they may remain a bar and restaurant for a long time. Thus, it's not impossible that "the bar in Stinson Beach" where Old And In The Way debuted is still there. Without further information, I can't know where they played. However, to give you the flavor of Stinson Beach, I have identified two plausible places, one of them still open.

A poster for the New Tweedy Brothers booking at the bar Farallon East, at 3785 Highway 1 in Stinson Beach, on the weekend of September 9-11, 1966
Farallon East, 3785 Highway 1
The New Tweedy Brothers were a band from Oregon who temporarily relocated to the Bay Area in 1966. An otherwise obscure poster was immortalized in Paul Grushkin's book The Art Of Rock, featuring a gig the Tweedys played at a joint in Stinson Beach. A leading historical site tells us
Skip Lacaze recalls "Farallon East had for many years been the "Surf Club," a bar and restaurant with a sort of dinner club feel at one end (red banquettes and dim lighting), a family-style dining room at the other end, and a main room with a long bar, a shuffleboard table, and a dance floor. The owner, Friday, tended the bar all day in the 50s and early 60s. It was used to house a military unit during WWII (Coast Guard or Navy) and was supposed to be haunted by an enlisted man murdered by a mess boy with a butcher knife. It was also called the Red Whale for a while - after it was Farallon East, I think. I vaguely remember that there was some friction with some of the locals after rumours circulated that the Red Whale was owned by gays or was seeking a gay audience." 
The restaurant was eventually demolished and the new office for the Stinson Beach County Water District was built on the site. Their address is 3785 Shoreline Highway, so the restaurant probably used 3785 Highway 1. There was no mail delivery in town, so some people were sloppy with street addresses. Note that "The Farallons" are uninhabited islands 25 miles off the Marin coast.


The Sand Dollar, 3458 Shoreline Highway (Highway 1)
The Sand Dollar has a colorful history in its own right, and it's still there:
The Sand Dollar Restuarant was built in 1921 in Tiburon as three barges. The Barges were floated into Stinson Beach and fused together to form the historic restaurant you can come visit today.
Temptingly, the site mentions "Bluegrass on Sundays, so perhaps there is a tradition.

In any case, whether it was one of these two bars or some other tiny dive, there must have been a bar where the hippies hung out. They all probably recognized Garcia, and Rowan and Grisman too, for that matter. They'd probably seen them around town. But local musicians had probably always played the local bar, so in one way it was no different. Just like their fellows in Bolinas, however, the last thing the locals wanted to do was to let a newspaper or Rolling Stone know that Jerry Garcia sometimes played bluegrass at the bar. Then you'd have pushy hipsters from San Francisco or who-knows-where, and who wanted that? So no one seems to have mentioned it.

But I think it happened. I take Kahn at his word. They played a few times at "the bar" in Stinson Beach for the local hippies, and then became a "real band." I think enough of the tiny crowd must have known who Jerry Garcia was, and knew what they were hearing. They just haven't said anything about it. West Marin is a kind of paradise, if you're ok with wind, so a lot of people never leave. I think some of the people who saw Old And In The Way are still in Stinson Beach, just a little older and greyer. They are probably hanging out at the Starbucks now, rather than the bar, and their doctor insists they have to have skinny decaf frappucinos, but they are still there.

If we went to the Stinson Beach Starbucks and asked the old hippies if they ever saw Jerry Garcia play in a bluegrass band in a bar in Stinson Beach, most of them would say, "I wish" or just "no." But I think some of them did, and they just aren't talking about it.

30 comments:

  1. When interviewed at the March 2 Lion's Share show by Rolling Stone, Garcia said, "We got together a little over a month ago, started playing and then decided, Shit, why don't we play a few bars and see what happens? And John Kahn is working out beautifully on bass... We're thinking about finding a fiddle player and then doing some of the bluegrass festivals this summer." (from the "Splendor in the Bluegrass" article)

    Interviewed at the 3/13/73 show, Pete Rowan said, "There’s no pressure to produce on a schedule. We’ve already recorded an album but I’m not sure when we’re going to release it... We’re gonna do a few bluegrass festivals with Bill Monroe."

    http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/09/reading-notes-tolces-todd-1973-jerrys_04.html
    http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/09/march-2-1973-old-and-in-way.html

    Jerry's comment would place the creation of OAITW roughly in Jan '73 - as Grisman said & we saw with the birth of the New Riders, once Jerry wanted to start playing something, he would do it immediately, so it's possible the Stinson Beach bar show(s) happened in January.
    It's thought that the OAITW studio album was recorded in the first week of March, which still makes sense - given his need to get his banjo chops back with some more practice, I don't think Garcia would have hopped into the studio right away in January, though it's possible.
    Since OAITW were still without a fiddler, and had very few live shows under their belt at the time, clearly they soon came to realize that the studio sessions had been too rushed and were best put away, not to be released.

    Kahn's comment about the noise at the bar shows is interesting ("even we couldn't hear us") since it echoes Garcia's complaint that the audience at OAITW shows could be too noisy when clapping along & such. (Garcia wasn't used to the crowd being louder than him!) I forget if there's an OAITW show where Garcia actually asks people to be quiet, but I know he mentioned the issue in an interview.

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  2. According to Kahn, Richard Greene played his first OITW show in Stinson Beach.

    That Kahn quote in "Garcia" originally comes from "The Golden Road" No 13 Winter 1987 page 28. It continues

    "We played a benefit once at the Stinson Beach firehouse, which was really small - smaller than this living room - and somehow (fiddler) Richard Greene ended up playing with us. And then we all went out on the road and played at a couple of bluegrass festivals. It was at that time that we got Vassar Clements to join the band. He was the best of all of us, I thought, and easily one of the best players I've ever worked with. He could've played jazz with Coltrane. He could play anything.

    "Having Vassar in the band gave us some credibility with bluegrass people, but, basically, at these festivals nobody had any idea who we were. I don't remember anything special about those shows. They seemed like dumb scenes to me, with these announcers who told bad jokes. Most of the bands were half-comedy acts and the bass player was always the dumb guy.

    "Somewhere along the line we acquired Owsley as our soundman and that was interesting. I remember once being real late going on because Owsley had wires all over the stage. It looked like a whole zoo full of snakes had escaped. Snakes all over the floor. But it always worked out. He taped the shows we did at the Boarding House for the album we put out, and I think he still has a lot of stuff left. That album came out about the same time as the record I did for Garcia (Compliments)."

    So according to Kahn they played 'the bar in Stinson Beach' early on, then later they played the 'Stinson Beach firehouse' which was Greene's first appearance. My guess is this was early April after the Dead March tour but it could have been early March. Was 'the firehouse' a real fire house or was it the name of a bar?

    Another Stinson Beach event early in 1973 was the abortive Pigpen photo shoot. According to McNally page 446

    "Early in March they (the Dead) were rehearsing at the Stinson Beach Community Center when an old friend, photographer Bob Seidemann, stopped by with Pigpen. Pig was extremely sick with a damaged liver, and he had asked Bob for a ride so that he could have his picture taken with the band. In Seidemann's view 'They coldly put him down, turned him away...' ...the band didn't want to be distracted, and Pig went on home."

    Does anyone know anything about the Stinson Beach Community Center? Could it have had a medium to large sized hall where the Dead could rehearse and a smaller bar where OITW could play, the hall being too big for them?

    Here's a wild thought. The Muir Beach Acid Test was relocated from Stinson Beach at the last minute. There can't be many possible venues in such a small place. Could Jerry have played the first OITW public performance in the same venue he almost played one of the first Dead performances?

    I wonder why Kahn didn't like bluegrass festivals where the bass player was always the dumb guy.

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    1. guinness, these are intriguing points as always. The Stinson Beach Community Center is well-known. See the post here:
      http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/community-center-32-belvedere-ave.html

      However, the Firehouse is another matter. It's not impossible that the Firehouse was also a bar, or acted like a bar--that is, it sold beer to the locals, perhaps as a private club. A lot of Volunteer Fire Departments in small towns serve a lot of social functions as well.

      I love the speculation about the Muir Beach Acid Test. It practically had to have been scheduled for the Stinson Beach Community Theater. What a great thought.

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    2. Ok, it turns out that the Stinson Beach Firehouse and Community Center are basically the same place.

      http://www.stinsonbeachfire.com/about.html

      More and more intriguing. If we're all correct, than the Dead nearly played an acid test there, OAITW's first gigs in January or February 73 may have been there, the Dead rehearsed there, Richard Greene had his first OAITW gig there (probably April) and there was a final gig on Sep 30 '73.

      I'm hoping someone from Stinson Beach in the '70s knows if there was a hippie bar.

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  3. "We played a benefit once at the Stinson Beach firehouse, which was really small - smaller than this living room - and somehow Richard Greene ended up playing with us."

    Assuming Kahn is saying that Greene played at that particular Stinson Beach show, there seems to be a pattern here.
    It's often been noted that Garcia would 'break in' new band configurations by shows in out-of-the-way places, and local Stinson Beach spots would certainly qualify. It would make sense to warm up Greene & the band with a small local show before playing elsewhere.

    I think JGMF has noted that Greene's first known show was April 12 in Santa Barbara. Greene is present for most (but not all) of the subsequent April shows, presumably having other commitments.
    (I wonder if OAITW switched to Vassar Clements because he wasn't so busy?)

    I am wary of attaching too much dating speculation to Kahn's casual comments made many years later; he may not be remembering in a specific order. OAITW may have played little Stinson Beach shows throughout '73 - in fact there's the 9/30/73 Community Center tape. (Which may indicate there were also other undocumented shows there.)
    Kahn's saying that the Firehouse was "smaller than this living room" is also troubling...
    It looks like there were three buildings on the Community Center grounds - the Hall (which looks fairly spacious, said to hold an audience of 200), the Firehouse (big enough to hold three firetrucks), and a chapel (where presumably OAITW did not play).

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  4. There are a couple small pieces of counter-evidence that OAITW might not actually have played any public shows before 3/2/73.

    The "Splendor in the Bluegrass" article describing the 3/2/73 Lion's Share show pointedly starts out:
    "Jerry Garcia gave it away: It was their first time out. He had gone into his banjo solo before he realized he wasn't plugged into an amplifier. He grinned and quickly took a long step up to the microphone so the folks in the back could hear."

    Interviewed for Robert Greenfield's Dark Star book, Pete Rowan remembered the same moment at the same show:
    "I remember Garcia's first solo at our first gig at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. I don't know if it was a sight gag or what, but he was looking for knobs to turn on his banjo... He was standing there turning knobs on his banjo that he did not have."

    So - given that both a contemporary article, and Rowan's memory, call the Lion's Share show their first gig, the Stinson Beach bar show Kahn remembered might have been from March/April, not earlier.

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    1. I can see your point here. All of the evidence points to shows at Stinson Beach in little tiny places, but not necessarily before the putative debut on March 2 '73.

      I have a gigantic piece on Richard Greene almost ready to go, but I don't know when it will come up in the queue. It turns out he left OAITW because he got offered real money to play with Loggins And Messina.

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  5. Yeah, I have been thinking that the 9/30/73 gig may be what's being referred to, albeit with some confusion.

    There's a very obscure set of tapes called "Bluegrass at Grisman's" that actually captures Jerry urging the guys to call up a bar and take it public right then and there.

    Corry, I have evidence that Richard Greene was doing sessions for Rowans in December 1972, which is also when Garcia and Grisman do some sessions for Doug Sahm. Not sure it matters, but it might be some hard proximate evidence to all of this stuff.

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    1. (Good to have you back from hiatus)

      At best, I've got 2/3 of it right. The question is, which thirds? There were some early gigs at Stinson Beach, whether at a bar or at the Firehouse, and it remains hard to say whether they were in February or March. Nonetheless, there was a pre-history to OAITW, even if it was only a few weeks worth.

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    2. I do think the evidence supports that claim, yes.

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  6. I just found a listing for an 8/27/71 show by Driver at the Red Whale in Stinson Beach. Not sure that clarifies anything, but there it is.

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  7. The Red Whale was the "bar" in which they played. It was sort of a roadhouse type joint, just on the northern edge of Stinson. There was another bar in Stinson back then, also on the north end of town, I forget the name -- maybe Elwood's -- but it catered to the "straight" folks. The Red Whale was for rock & roll and hippy stuff. I lived in Stinson back then and although I didn't see them play there I remember friends talking about it.

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  8. Wow, that is so cool. Thanks for sharing!

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  9. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  10. I just moved to Stinson Beach and apparently Phil Leah was a prior owner (owned before the people we bought from). I'm trying to figure out of there is any Dead history at the house. Would be great to know. Was thinking of taking a pic of the place with me and my kids and a dead head flag and sending it to Phil to ask him.

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  11. I was at the show at the Red Whale, end of 72 or beginning of 73. I'm Harry Branch. Using my wife's gmail account. The Red Whale was run by a couple of gay guys and not open for very long. A dilapidated building with sloping floors. The toilets drained directly to the tide flats which stunk. I don't remember the crowd as being more than a dozen locals but it could have been more. I lived down the hill from Jerry Garcia. Most of what I'm reading above is right on. A group of locals drove sports cars. We all sort of raced either along the coast or over Mount Tam. I drove a Sprite. Jerry Garcia drove a Volvo roadster, maybe a p1800. I helped him tune the carbs. He drove the roads a lot.

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    1. Harry, thank you so much for the eyewitness report. Garcia had a Volvo P1800 in those days, good for navigating highway 1 while still having room for some guitars in the back.

      I assume the Whale Bar was off Route 1?

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    2. Well, I wish I could remember more. A lot going on then. I remember being blown away by David Grisman and a little surprised too that Jerry Garcia played the banjo so well. The Red Whale was near Del Arroyo but access for cars might have been on Shoreline Hwy. I lived at the end of Calle del Mar next door to John Bassarion and Lisa Kindred who played local clubs under their band name Ascension.

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    3. Harry, thanks so much for adding to this. I can see that Calle Del Arroyo is just off Highway 1. I can see from Google that "The Red Whale' was later known as "The Brig." There is a knowledgeable Stinson Beach "music timeline" that describes some events
      http://stinsonbeachhistoricalsociety.org/history/pop-music-since-1960s

      while some rock history details are muddled, there is no question that the author is very familiar with Stinson Beach. The Aug 27 71 date included above is referenced here.

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    4. According to the link above, The Red Whale (and The Brig), later the Over The Hill Bar And Grill, were in the building that is now the Stinson Beach Water District. If so, that would be 3785 Highway 1, which would be the same site as Farralon East, cited above

      Now, while 3785 Hwy 1 is right on Calle Del Arroyo, it isn't necessarily the same building. Still, the nature of Use Permits in CA suggests that once a bar, always a bar. Very intriguing

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  12. my name is richard crookham. my grandfather, lewis nye ran the old stinson ranch that we changed the name to rancho las baulinas just north of stinson beach. lewis also ran the stinson beach water company which was part of the ranch. my great uncle, douglas nye bought the ranch with lucien marsh back in 1945. marsh developed the stinson beach highlands where jerry garcia lived. i have a picture of those trees before there was a house there. my aunt had a house close by. i used to change irrigation pipe with my cousins on the adjacent 100 acres next to the 40 acres they built houses on. my cousins used to take me into the surf club when i was a little boy on the way back home from the beach. they were used to doing that because their dad was a cowboy. so i remember the shuffle board and the long bar and the curtains. all the boys in town knew my cousins, the nye girls. they sold the ranch in 57 after the flood in 56 ruined one of the barns when the creek ran out of its bed. but my grandparents just moved down the road to just before the audoban ranch until my grandma moved away in 1966. my cousin penny nye was still living up in the highlands when i started going to the avalon ballroom. i parked my car in back of the avalon one night and wound up giving jerry a ride home. he was so happy and excited about his band. he didn't stop talking the whole time. i went to the avalon for the first time around october 66. i saw janis for the first time. i don't know if it was me but i never saw anyone bare their soul like that that night, even her when i saw her about 20 times thereafter. then quicksilver came out who i was there to see greg elmore the drummer who i had played drums with in high school and who i used to jam with lee michaels in 62. greg was on speed and looked really bad but quicksilver laid down a good set. then the dead came on. like suddenly there is 50 more people in what was at best a 100 person audience. the shift in energy was palpable. they played better that night than i ever have in the 30 or more times i saw then later. i was 18 in those days, when most of that crowd was pushing 30. the poster artists, the guy they called the beast. the great tuna sandwiches on black russian rye bread that they made upstairs. i got to give the light show people upstairs bathroom breaks. even gave the doorman bathroom breaks. it was only two bucks and i almost charged michelle and john phillips when they came up the stairs to check it out but the guy came back and let them in for free. in the stinson beach rock history, they say clive davis discovered janis at the red whale or surf club in 1966. they say janis had her ashes spread at stinson beach. they say the only time jerry met john lennon was at his home in stinson beach. so i knew where jerry lived. i used to ride the old army jeeps with my grandfather up through the ranch past that upper pasture all the way to road on top of mt tam to give the cattle salt blocks. the view up there was incredible. lee michaels had one of his album covers taken from our fence line looking south toward the city next to the road that runs north along mt tam. greg and quicksilver lived near olema back then where our rancher friends the trutmans had their ranch. les lesama, greg parle, lee michaels and almost everyone from my town moved to marin mostly mill valley to play music. i'm only sharing this because i loved the stories on this thread that i've read so far.

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  13. Thank you so much for sharing these stories. They really paint pictures for those of us who weren't there!

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  14. It had to be either 11/13/66 or 11/13/67. The only dates the three bands shared a bill at that venue.

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  15. The Owsley Stanley Foundation has supplied information about Old And In The Way at The Brig, formerly the Red Whale, 7/15/73. It notes there was no fiddle player, but Jack Bonus sat in for some bluegrass saxophone (!).

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  16. I helped out at the "white whale" in Stinson Beach for a while...I went there once and Jerry Garcia was having a birthday party with Commander Cody playing...they were slammed and so I started to help pick up emptys...I was camping on Mt. Tam...I was underage...I hitched from camp to Mill valley for breakfast, then to Sausalito for lunch then to Stinson to hang at the bar, then to my campsite....it was insanely fun.
    I don't think I'm wrong about the color of the whale though it is not impossible...a few times I was seeing colors that weren't there.,,,I revisted once many years later...maybe that is why I transposed colors...

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    1. Definitely the Red Whale. There's a piece in the I-J 7/4/72 talking about the new place called the Brig, replacing the Red Whale restaurant.

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  17. Whoa, that's pretty incredible! Any idea the year of that birthday party?

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  18. I’m afraid that I am responsible for an error in your original post here. I’m Skip Lacaze. I grew up in Stinson Beach, living there from 1949 to 1989. We owned the property across the creek from the Community Center—close enough so Garcia and his band kept me up several weekend nights—from 1956 to 2020. I never met Garcia or Mountain Girl, even though we picked up their garbage at Sans Souci. I did see him commuting in his Volvo—a P1800 ES two-door station wagon, I think—and remember being surprised to see him wearing a coat and tie.

    Long ago, I saw the Farralon East handbill on a website with a request for more information. The host was compiling information about all Bay Area rock bands and venues. I replied that Farralon East was in the building that had been The Surf Club, a roadhouse on the edge of town where the new SB County Water District office is located, but it was actually the downtown bar and restaurant that had been The Breakers for 50 years and has been The Sand Dollar for most of the last 50 years, after a brief period when local Johnnie Walker operated it as Farralon East. There wasn’t enough room in the building for a band, but Walker had live music on the patio in the afternoons during the summer. The most frequent act was Quicksilver, I think.

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  19. When Old and In the Way played at Farallon East it was called the Red Whale. Great show. Maybe 20 people in attendance all of whom agreed they needed to run with it. I lived in a cabin up the hill from the store. Jerry Garcia's P1800 had SU carbs like my Sprite.

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