June 4-7, 1970 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Southern Comfort (San Francisco Evening)

In this century, fans reflect upon Grateful Dead shows as a function of the surviving recordings. Thinly attended shows in out-of-the-way places have become legendary thanks to an amazing recording, while powerful sold-out live events might have little resonance without a good tape. The Grateful Dead's four-night performance at the Fillmore West on the weekend of June 4-7, 1970 falls somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. There are decent recordings of fairly complete shows, so the performances haven't been forgotten. On the other hand, based on what came before and after, the tapes do not mark themselves as exceptional. As a result, while I'm sure these shows get some listens, no one really thinks about the events themselves. This post will consider what was interesting and important about the Fillmore West June weekend shows at the time.

June 4-7, 1970 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Southern Comfort (Thursday-Sunday)

• These June shows were the San Francisco introduction to the "Evening Of The Grateful Dead" concept. In May, the Dead had toured the East Coast and provided all the music, with an acoustic Grateful Dead set, then the New Riders of The Purple Sage and then the full electric Grateful Dead. San Francisco had seen bits and pieces of all these ensembles in various places and configurations, but not all in one show.
• The New Riders of The Purple Sage had not played at a Bill Graham show in San Francisco up until this time, strange as it may seem. This was the Riders first time opening for the Grateful Dead at a BGP concert in the Bay Area.
  
• Workingman's Dead had not formally been released, but it was already being played on KSAN. It may have also been available in a few hip record stores. So these shows were the first time that regular concert-goers may have come to the show with the expectation that the Dead were evolving from psychedelic adventurers to cosmic cowboys. 
• The group Southern Comfort opened the show. Their new album had been co-produced by one John Kahn. Kahn had been jamming with Jerry Garcia, Howard Wales and Bill Vitt on Monday nights over at the Matrix. He had probably jammed with Garcia about six times prior to this weekend. While its reasonable to suspect that Kahn had seen the Grateful Dead before, it's all but certain that this would have been the first time Kahn had seen the Dead since he had started jamming with Garcia. 

An Evening With The Grateful Dead
It is little remarked that in the early years of the Fillmore and Fillmore West, the Grateful Dead followed the performance patterns of every other band at the Fillmore. They played two sets, yes, but so did every other act listed on the poster. More distinctly, bands played in order, so the headliner would do the third and sixth set of the evening. Commercially, this meant that high schoolers and suburbanites could come early and leave early, and still see all three bands. Late arrivers, such as those who might work at a restaurant, could check in by 11:00pm and also see all the bands. So while some patrons stayed through six sets, most fans came, saw all three bands once, and went home, essentially allowing Graham to sell tickets all night.

The most famous Grateful Dead performances at the Fillmore West, possibly the best, and certainly the best-recorded, was four nights from February 27 through March 2, 1969. All eight sets were recorded in 16 tracks, and not only formed the core of Live/Dead, but were all released on the 2005 10 cd Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings box. All eight Dead sets are fantastic, but listening to them in sequence is misleading. Two other bands played sets in between each Dead sets, so the audience experience of a Grateful Dead concert was not at all the immersive experience it would be from the 1970s onwards.

The last time the Grateful Dead played the Fillmore West with a round-robin configuration was June 6-8, 1969, with the Glass Family and Junior Walker and The All-Stars. At some point in the Summer of 1969, the Fillmore West changed its rotation. Opening acts opened, and the headliner came on last, and no one came on after them. When the Grateful Dead had played Winterland with the Jefferson Airplane on the weekend of October 24-26, 1969, while they alternated closing duties, each band only played one set. Opening act the Sons Of Champlin played a set and did not re-appear later, as they would have in previous years. From what I can discern, this pattern was being followed by Graham at other Fillmore West concerts as well. The Dead returned to the Fillmore West in December of 1969 (December 4-7), supported by Humble Pie and The Flock, but due to the Altamont debacle, no one remembers those shows at all.

Prior to the June '70 shows, the Grateful Dead had played two weekend stands that year at Fillmore West. From February 5 through 8, 1970, the Dead had headlined Fillmore West over two Southern California acts, Taj Mahal and Big Foot. Taj Mahal doesn't seem like a major act now, but at the time he seemed to be a rising star. He had released three albums on Columbia, a major label, and he got regular airplay on KSAN. Mahal fronted a killer band, too, with Jesse Ed Davis on lead guitar. So from the point of view of a rock fan in February 1970, Taj Mahal was worthy of attention. The Dead came on after Taj and did their thing until the hall closed each night.

From April 9-12, 1970, the Grateful Dead headlined over Miles Davis and Stone The Crows. Once again, the Dead played one long set after Miles. While Miles Davis was already a legend by 1970, and the Grateful Dead certainly thought of him that way, from a rock concert point of view he didn't sell as many tickets as the headliners. Still, the event was treated as a sort of double bill of equals, even if the Dead were bringing more of the crowd. Throughout late 1969 and first half 1970, the Dead had played numerous other shows around San Francisco and the Bay Area, at various venues for various promoters. At pretty much all of the venues, the band had shared the bill with different acts, and played a single extended set, usually closing out the evening. 

The June Fillmore West shows would turn out to be different in another way, although the fans would not have known that until afterwards. Major Bay Area shows, at Fillmore West and elsewhere, typically had three acts on the bill. The June shows had Southern Comfort and The New Riders billed under the Grateful Dead. While Southern Comfort was a typical opening act--more on them below--after their no-doubt brief set beginning at 8:30 it was all Grateful Dead. There was a New Riders set, an acoustic set and an electric set. Garcia and Hart were part of the New Riders, and Dawson and Nelson periodically joined in for the acoustic set, so from about 9:30 pm onwards, the same 9 musicians were providing the music until about 2:00am. An evening indeed with the Grateful Dead.

Following the June shows, this became the pattern for the Grateful Dead in San Francisco, and ultimately elsewhere. Other than big outdoor shows, benefits or special events, if you went to see the Grateful Dead, the evening's entertainment was provided by the Grateful Dead. Sometimes, particularly in the early 70s, there might be an opening act for some reason, but once the Grateful Dead came on stage, they didn't leave. Initially, the Grateful Dead aura was expanded to include not only the New Riders but James and The Good Brothers or the Rowan Brothers, but those too faded away. The Dead themselves expanded from one electric set to two, or even three, and the need for any additional acts was remaindered. Like most Deadheads, once the Dead came on stage, I didn't want the spell broken by some other band, even if they were a band I liked. The "Evening With The Grateful Dead" concept had been tried in May out on the road, but at home it began in earnest in June 1970 at Fillmore West.

The New Riders Of The Purple Sage
Jerry Garcia, John Dawson and David Nelson had started the New Riders of The Purple Sage in the Summer of 1969. The New Riders had played the few little rock clubs around the Bay Area, and the Dead had experimented with having the Riders as their opening act. Yet for whatever reasons, the New Riders of The Purple Sage did not play a San Francisco Bill Graham show until June 1970. The Dead had gone on the road with the New Riders in May. Mostly they had played colleges. The New Riders of The Purple Sage were listed in a few local newspapers and the like, although no one in New York or Massachusetts would have had any idea who they were.

Yet the New Riders had never played a Bill Graham show in San Francisco. I don't think this represented any complicated conspiracy, rather just a matter of timing. Still, it's an oddity I hadn't considered until now. When the Grateful Dead had played the Fillmore East, however, on Friday, May 15, 1970, Graham listed the bill as "The Grateful Dead featuring the New Riders of The Purple Sage." There were early and late shows at Fillmore East, and the band did their three sets--acoustic, Riders and electric--two times over. It must have been OK with Bill, because he booked that lineup at Fillmore West. The New Riders, even without Garcia, would go on to play for Bill Graham many, many times. But it all started here in June, 1970. 

(Note: Some songs from the June 4 and June 5, 1970 New Riders' performances were released by the Owsley Stanley Foundation on the excellent 5-disc Dawn Of The New Riders of The Purple Sage box set)

Workingman's Dead
We tend to view the arc of the Grateful Dead's music through their live tapes, and that's an appropriate way to evaluate them. Very few Grateful Dead fans back in the 60s, however,  would have been able to have any such perspective. Even those few people in San Francisco lucky enough to have gotten to go to multiple concerts would have had only a few whiffs of how the Grateful Dead were evolving at any given moment. Even that would have depended on which shows they had happened to attend.  

From today's perspective, we know that the Grateful Dead's psychedelic adventuring in late '68 and early '69 was starting to be refined by some jangly country sounds. In late '69, going to a Grateful Dead concert and expecting "The Other One" must have led to some cognitive dissonance when you heard "Dire Wolf" or "Green Green Grass Of Home." The countrified Workingman's Dead material had started to appear in mid-69, and the band recorded the album in February and March 1970. From that point of view, the shift to acoustic or semi-acoustic music, the New Riders and the twanging guitars make a lot of sense. It still would have been a surprise to contemporary listeners. 

The official Warner Brothers release date of Workingman's Dead is generally marked as June 14, 1970. In those days, record release dates were generally more casual. Lots of stores probably already had Workingman's Dead by June 4, and would have been selling them to interested patrons. It's known that the Dead had shared a tape of an early mix of Workingman's with KSAN, so the album had been played on the radio. By June 1, KSAN would have probably had an advance promotional copy anyway. So hip rock fans listening to KSAN, at home or in their car, would have gotten a taste of Workingman's Dead already. Thus, kicking off an acoustic set with "Dire Wolf" or an electric one with "Casey Jones" wouldn't have been quite as unexpected as it might have been, even if the songs themselves weren't that familiar yet.

It is a truism of Grateful Dead culture that the definitive recording of the Summer of 1970 is the Pacifica Radio broadcast from SUNY Binghamton, recorded on May 2, 1970. It was widely bootlegged for decades, and the Grateful Dead portion was released in its entirety on the epic 1997 3-cd set Dick's Picks Vol. 8. It's one of the greatest nights of the Grateful Dead, and well deserving of the reverence in which it's held. In this context, however, it's critical to remember that the May 2 show was not broadcast on Pacifica affiliates--KPFA in Berkeley, WBAI in New York,  and so on--until later in June. As near as I can tell, the broadcast date was June 21, 1970. The important point here is that from June 4-7, even the most devoted of Deadheads would have had no awareness of the band's performance on May 2. Anything they heard in June would not have been compared to Binghamton until later.

Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia preparing for Hooteroll (from the back cover of the 1971 LP)

Southern Comfort and John Kahn
John Kahn was not just Jerry Garcia's bass player from 1970-1995, he was also his partner and musical Straw Boss, putting together bands and keeping them rolling. Garcia made it clear that the Jerry Garcia Band was really the Jerry Garcia and John Kahn Band. Without Kahn, Garcia could not have made the JGB the nearly full-time aggregation that it turned out to be, given Garcia's commitment to the Grateful Dead. Kahn, however, articulate and charming as he was, was rarely interviewed. When he was, it was almost always about his work with Garcia and the Garcia Band. As a result, many topics were never pursued, and are left to speculation.

One question that, to my knowledge, was never asked of Kahn was "when did you first see the Grateful Dead?" Now, Kahn had moved to San Francisco in Fall '66 to attend San Francisco Conservatory. He had known musicians ever since, and had been working professionally since mid-67. Musicians get around, so I figured he had at least seen the Dead somewhere, since they played so much. The really interesting question, also never asked of Kahn, was "after you had started jamming with Jerry Garcia, when did you next see the Grateful Dead?" 

I have looked into the chronology of Kahn's introduction to Garcia, and the best triangulation suggests that they jammed together for the first time at The Matrix on Monday, April 13, 1970. It looks like Kahn, Garcia, organist Howard Wales and drummer Bill Vitt had played the Matrix together six times by June 1, 1970. It's true that the June Fillmore West shows would have been the Dead's first local performances since the jamming had started, and Garcia would surely have invited Kahn. That's not the interesting part, though. 

Opening act Southern Comfort was a San Francisco band, who had just released their debut album on Columbia. The album had been assigned to veteran producer Nick Gravenites, but Gravenites had turned the project over to John Kahn. So for the June Fillmore West shows, not only had Kahn been jamming with Garcia, Kahn was co-producer of the band opening the concert. Although Southern Comfort had been around for a year, they too were debuting at Fillmore West, so you know their co-producer would have been there.

Pictures of Bob Jones, from his time as a guitarist in the We Five, to the 70s as a drummer with Mike Bloomfield, and finally in 2010 in retirement in Hawaii

Bob Jones, John Kahn and Southern Comfort
How Kahn became the producer of Southern Comfort and also Jerry Garcia's bass player are in fact two strands of the same story. I have dealt with both at some length, so I won't repeat every detail (follow the links for true journeys down those rabbit holes), but the June Fillmore West concerts turn out to be a convergence of different threads, so it's worth a brief re-visit.

Bob Jones (1947-2013) had played 12-string guitar and sang harmony vocals in a 60s group called The We Five. They had a huge, worldwide hit in 1965 with Ian and Sylvia Tyson's "You Were On My Mind," which sold millions of copies. Still, the We Five broke up, and Jones formed bands in San Francisco with John Kahn and a few others, first the R&B styled T and A Blues Band in 1967 and then the more bluesy Memory Pain in 1968. In the meantime, Kahn and Jones would go around to local jam sessions. Although Jones was a guitar player, Kahn would always ask him to bring a drum set (they shared a house with drummer John Chambers) and play it. Jones would complain that "he wasn't a drummer," but, as he told interviewer Jake Feinberg in the 21st century, he was "Kahned into drumming." 

At a jam session in Novato around late 1968, famous guitarist Mike Bloomfield stuck his head into the room, and enquired who was drumming and who was singing. When he found out that it was the same guy, Bob Jones had a new job. Jones considered himself a guitarist, but Bloomfield liked his drumming, and wanted to use him as a singer as well. Bloomfield had recently left the high-profile Electric Flag,just as he had left the high-profile Paul Butterfield Blues Band before that. Bloomfield was the first SF rock star to play regularly in smaller nightclubs, a practice later picked up by Jerry Garcia, Jorma and Jack, Van Morrison and others.

Bloomfield wouldn't rehearse. If a club date was booked, singer Nick Gravenites would call up a few players and they would back him up. The "first call" lineup for Mike Bloomfield would generally include Gravenites on vocals and rhythm guitar, Bob Jones on drums and vocals, and Kahn on bass. Sometimes keyboard players (such as organist Ira Kamin or pianist Mark Naftalin) might be included, or a horn player as well. If one of the regulars couldn't make it, a substitute was called in. No one was rehearsing anyway, so subs were no problem. Thus the original connection to Kahn and Bloomfield was through Bob Jones, because he had been "Kahned" into drumming at a jam session.

In 1969, San Francisco was the hottest place in the record industry, and a lot of records were being recorded at studios in town. Gravenites was a key producer, since he was well-known from having been in Electric Flag. Gravenites regularly called on Kahn and Jones, among others, for recordings (which incidentally is how they both ended up on the Brewer And Shipley's hit single "One Toke Over The Line," produced by Gravenites). It is a testament to Bob Jones' musical talent that he took so readily to professional drumming without any real background.

Around May, 1969, Jones and some other local musicians formed a band modeled on Booker T and The MGs. The idea was that they would be a complete studio ensemble, and also record and perform their own music. The name of the band was Southern Comfort. The band members were:

Fred Burton-lead guitar [aka Fred Olson, his given name]
Ron Stallings-tenor sax, vocals
John Wilmeth-trumpet
Steve Funk-keyboards
Art Stavro-bass
Bob Jones-drums, vocals

Ron Stallings had been in the T&A Blues Band with Kahn and Jones. He would turn up later with Kahn in Reconstruction in 1979. Southern Comfort was signed to an advance by Columbia Records, and Gravenites was signed up as the producer. At this period of time, Gravenites was also working with Mike Bloomfield, Brewer And Shipley and later Danny Cox (who shared management with Brewer And Shipley).

The Southern Comfort band members received modest advances (probably in the high 4 figures). Bob Jones told me in a private email that his parents persuaded him not to spend his advance on a car or new gear--typical musician choices--but instead to buy a house. As a result, Jones bought a two-story house in Fairfax. Jones and his family lived upstairs, and he rented out the downstairs flat to another musician. 

Bob Jones' tenant was drummer Bill Vitt, who had recently returned to the Bay Area after time on the road and as a Los Angeles session musician. Good drummers are always in demand, so Vitt was immediately popular. Not only did Vitt get studio calls from Gravenites, when there was a conflict between a local Southern Comfort booking and a Mike Bloomfield gig, Vitt was the "second call" drummer. As Southern Comfort played around more in 1969 and '70, Vitt got more calls for the Bloomfield band. 

In March 1970, when Bill Vitt and organist Howard Wales were running the Monday night jam sessions at the Matrix, Jerry Garcia--who had already jammed with Howard Wales--found he enjoyed dropping in. Vitt had invited a symphonically trained bassist (Richard Favis), but it hadn't worked out. So the next weekend--probably April 13--he invited John Kahn. It worked out. If Jones hadn't been in Southern Comfort, if his parents hadn't persuaded him to buy a house, if he hadn't rented it to Vitt, it's not likely that the Vitt/Kahn connection would have been made. But it was.

According to Jones, Nick Gravenites found himself over-committed in the studio, and turned the production of the Southern Comfort album over to John Kahn. Kahn and Jones were close friends, so this was fine with the band. Gravenites had been using the musically trained Kahn as an arranger and orchestrator anyway, so this was more like a promotion rather than a new assignment. Kahn was listed as co-producer on the Southern Comfort album, and he filled in a few gaps--co-writing songs, helping with arrangements, playing piano--but not playing bass.  Columbia released the Southern Comfort album in mid-1970. Opening for a major band at Fillmore West was exactly how big labels liked to promote their bands. I'm sure Kahn was there, probably multiple nights. It would have been a pretty interesting evening for him, hearing the band he had just produced, and then hearing the band with the guy he was jamming with.

You don't need me to listen to old Grateful Dead tapes. The Dead sets for June 4-7, 1970 are fairly intact, and seem pretty good, though not epic. When you're listening to them, however, imagine Garcia wailing away, and a guy on the side of a stage, with a mustache, nodding his head and looking on, thinking about how he might be able to work together with Garcia, if things played out right.

 

April 25, 1981 Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (SEVA Sing Out For Sight Benefit)

The Berkeley Community Theater as it looked in 2009. just across Allston Way from Provo Park

At first glance, the benefit concert at the Berkeley Community Theater featuring an acoustic performance by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and John Kahn on April 25, 1981 does not seem like a good candidate for this blog. There are some fine tapes circulating, people remember the show, and much of it seems pretty par for the course. When placing the show in its original context, however, the acoustic benefit turns out to have been a template for things to come. The show seems "typical" to us because so much of it was replicated throughout the rest of the '80s. Yet there were other aspects of that night at the Berkeley Community Theater that were not duplicated. This post will look at the acoustic benefit concert on April 25, 1981, and we will see how it was a tryout of a variety of new approaches for the members of the Grateful Dead, some of which became permanent and others that were rarely or never seen again.

April 25, 1981 Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir/Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann/Odetta/Country Joe McDonald/Rosalie Sorrells/Kate Wolf SEVA Sing Out For Sight Benefit

My notes from the April 25, 1981 Berkeley Community Theater SEVA Benefit

In September and October of 1980, the Grateful Dead had thrilled their fans with acoustic sets at the Fox-Warfield Theater, the Sanger Theater (in New Orleans) and Radio City Music Hall. While most fans, myself included, did not expect acoustic sets to be part of every Grateful Dead show going forward, many of us felt that such sets would be a recurring feature when the Dead played the appropriate venues. However, after the Fall '80 run of shows which provided the basis for the Dead Reckoning album, the Grateful Dead all but stopped playing acoustic. Yes, there were touching stories about the Dead performing at the Ronald McDonald Children's Hospital in San Rafael, and they did play an acoustic set on New Year's Eve at the Oakland Auditorium, but those were the only two such shows. As 1981 dawned, it was hard to get over the idea that maybe acoustic shows would be gone for another ten years.

So it was a pleasant surprise indeed when a show was advertised at the Berkeley Community Theater for April 25, 1981, featuring an acoustic appearance by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. The show was a benefit for Wavy Gravy's SEVA Foundation, for whom the Dead had played benefit concerts the previous two Decembers (Dec 26 '79 and Dec 26 '80, both at Oakland Auditorium). There were four other acts listed on the bill, so whatever the show was going to be, it definitely wasn't going to be a typical Dead show.

When we arrived at the Berkeley Community Theater, a 3500-seat civic theater that also served as the Berkeley High School auditorium, we were all given a little folded program that listed the acts in order of appearance (I have never seen one since--maybe one will turn up on the Grateful Dead Archive). Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann were listed as playing third, right before intermission. I assumed that this was because the Jerry Garcia Band had another show that night at The Stone, where they usually went on stage at about 11:00pm.

The show began with an introduction by Wavy Gravy, who repeated his SEVA bit word for word from the previous years' benefit concerts. After an opening set by local resident and resident legend Country Joe McDonald, and then a fine set by Sonoma folk singer Kate Wolf, accompanied by guitarist Nina Gerber, the members of the Grateful Dead came on stage, probably at about 9:00 pm. Garcia, Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann were announced by Wavy, but we were quite surprised to see John Kahn on stand up acoustic bass. There was no Phil Lesh, and no piano player.

No one had seen John Kahn play acoustic bass in public since the days of Old And In The Way, and the idea of a Grateful Dead set without Phil Lesh was thoroughly unprecedented. Almost immediately, people started to contemplate whether this actually "counted" as a Grateful Dead show. In any case, although the Berkeley Community Theater doesn't have great acoustics, to my ears, the group sounded terrific and did lively versions of nine songs. Unlike the Fox-Warfield, Garcia and Weir were on their feet rather than seated at stools, and it seemed to make the tempos more energetic. Weir said "we started out something like this. Then we went on to become the Rocky And Bullwinkle of Rock and Roll." There were even some surprises--an acoustic version of "El Paso," not seen at the Fox-Warfield, and a truly unexpected encore of Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy."

After 40 fun minutes, the band was offstage. A big segment of the audience left. For one thing, the program had said that Garcia and Weir were up third, and they were done. For another, many people wanted to follow Jerry's black BMW down University Avenue and across the Bay Bridge to The Stone, rather than sit through some folk acts. I did, too, but I didn't have a way to get to The Stone, so my friends and I stayed to see the balance of the show instead.

Hart and Kreutzmann came on after intermission and did a duet on tar and hand drum, respectively, OK, I guess, if you like that sort of thing. They were followed by Rosalie Sorrells, a more traditional folk singer (there's a chance that I have inverted Kate Wolf and Rosalie Sorrells' spots in the running order, but I don't think so), and finally Odetta. Odetta was a folk legend from the 1950s, who also fell into the category of "OK if that's what you like." The promised finale was just the evening's performers singing "Amazing Grace." Weir and Country Joe joined in on the chorus with everyone else, and Hart and Kreutzmann banged out a beat. Jerry was probably tuning up backstage at The Stone by that time.

Where Was Phil?
After the Berkeley show, the Grateful Dead set out on an Eastern tour, playing fairly large venues in many of their strongholds, like the Philadelphia Spectrum and Nassau Coliseum. Shortly after the Dead returned, most of them played another Wavy Gravy event, an Anti-Nuclear Benefit at the Fox-Warfield on May 22. Along with some of the same acts at Berkeley (support included Country Joe McDonald backed by what would become High Noon, and Kate Wolf), they were billed as Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, and the ads made it clear that they would play acoustic. When Wavy introduced the band, he called them "Captain JerryBobKreutzHart," not the Grateful Dead. Once again, John Kahn was on standup bass, but this time Brent Mydland had joined in on grand piano. Where was Phil?

People like me had all sorts of theories. Perhaps since Phil had no background in folk music, unlike Bob and Jerry, then maybe he wasn't interested in playing acoustic music. Maybe he didn't like Wavy Gravy. Maybe he hated the sound of his bass amp. In any case, Phil was still on tour with the electric Grateful Dead, so it didn't seem that it represented a crisis. About 5 years later, I met Dennis McNally, who took the time to answer some of my questions, and he told me why Phil didn't play the two benefits: because no on had asked him.

Jerry Garcia, Benefits and The Grateful Dead
In retrospect, the April 25, 1981 Berkeley Community Theater show was an interesting experiment for Jerry Garcia, and by extension the Grateful Dead. The Berkeley event and the Warfield event that followed the next month have no precise parallels, so it's easy to simply treat them just as exceptions. Yet a closer look shows how the ever-restless Garcia was looking for a way to meet his various obligations in a way that still make them reasonably fun. The clue to this is the funny detail that Phil Lesh was not asked to play at the two benefits.

Why would Phil Lesh not have been asked to play the two shows? The plausible explanation is that Wavy Gravy arranged the benefits, and asked Jerry Garcia to play acoustic. Garcia agreed, and asked John Kahn to join him, which of course he did. With Garcia on board, Wavy could safely book Berkeley Community and The Fox-Warfield, without having to worry much about ticket sales. I believe the primary reason for the acoustic benefit was twofold: firstly, acoustic performers need far less equipment, thus cutting down on expenses, and the simplicity allows for multiple performers. Secondly, from Wavy's point of view, asking Jerry to play 45 minutes or so as the highlight of a multi-act show was asking far less than requiring him to put on a mult-set show as the sole headliner.

Nonetheless, Wavy knows everybody, and once he started asking around I assume other members of the Dead wanted to be involved. However, once Garcia and Kahn had Weir and the drummers, they knew they had a band. Given what we know now about Garcia penchant for not rehearsing, Phil wasn't likely to have been excluded from any practices, since there probably weren't any. Garcia and Weir probably just talked a few minutes before they went on stage and told the others what they were going to play. Ultimately, Phil's feelings may have been hurt, and he was probably a little bit suspicious of Kahn's closeness to Garcia, but it was just for two relatively minor shows.

Prior to 1981, the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia had done many benefits for a wide variety of causes, almost always due to a personal connection to the organizers, rather than a passion for a specific cause. Yet from 1981 onwards, both Garcia and the Dead had a completely different approach to benefits. Garcia seems to have figured out that playing acoustic was a far better arrangement for him when he agreed to a benefit. Everyone would expect a shorter show, he didn't need to worry about sound and lights, and his "entourage" was probably just Kahn and Steve Parish. Over the next dozen years or so, Garcia and Kahn played numerous benefits, sometimes with Bob Weir or other guests, and sometimes just as a duo. But the acoustic setup allowed Garcia to agree to help whom he wanted without having to involve the rest of the band, and address touring schedules, arranging a PA, and numerous other distractions.

As for the Grateful Dead, after 1981 they largely stopped playing any benefits save for their Rex Foundation concerts. The Rex Foundation benefits debuted on February 16-17, 1982 at the Fox-Warfield. For the Dead, the advantage to the Rex Foundation approach was obvious. As Grateful Dead concerts required planning for lights and sound, the shows had to be part of a regular tour. At the same time, as Grateful Dead concerts were increasingly lucrative, it may have become a sensitive issue as to what causes the Grateful Dead might support. By funneling their charity through the Rex Foundation, the Dead and their associates could support a broad range of endeavors, rather than tying a single concert to a single charity.

Jerry Garcia had always had many requests to perform at benefits, and by playing acoustic he could fulfill them without complicating his own busy schedule. Bay Area Deadheads rapidly adjusted to the idea that a local benefit with Garcia generally meant an acoustic appearance by Garcia and Kahn, and everyone made their plans accordingly to attend or not  There were occasional exceptions, of course, (notably the January 23, 1988 show at the Kaiser Convention Center, featuring Garcia jamming away on stage for hours with Tower Of Power, Santana, NRBQ, Wayne Shorter and others), but no one in the Bay Area in the 80s generally expected Garcia to plug in at a benefit.

The April '81 Berkeley show was also one of the first in the Bay Area that featured an all-acoustic format, with well-known "electric" musicians like the Dead and Country Joe returning to their folk roots and playing shorter acoustic sets. I'm not saying that the Berkeley show was "the first," (the real predecessors were the "Bread And Roses" benefits, but that is a tangent here), but it was an early example of the sort of shows that were made a staple not only by Wavy Gravy in the next several years, but also by Neil Young at his Bridge Concerts. One reason that the Berkeley and Fox-Warfield shows in 1981 do not stand out so much in our minds was that they now seem very typical of 80s benefit concerts. However, when they were actually put on, they were fairly unprecedented.

Arinell's Pizza, on 2119 Shattuck, where I would have gone had Jerry Garcia played Berkeley Community Theater and Keystone Berkeley on the same night.

Roads Not Taken
Nonetheless, while the 1981 Berkeley show seems to have shown the way for events to come, in certain other ways, it had some experiments that were never seen again. Garcia would try all sorts of things, but if they didn't work he simply didn't repeat them. It seems clear to me that Garcia was asked to play the benefit acoustically, and by some process Weir and the drummers got invited. They played the Warfield as well, with Brent along. Yet a full group configuration was never repeated. Garcia didn't like to rehearse, so paradoxically it meant he could bring along anyone he liked to a benefit. However, in the future, Garcia pretty much limited himself to playing with Kahn and Weir (there was one show for Neil Young's Bridge on December 4, 1988, with Weir and Rob Wasserman). Once Garcia discovered the virtues of simplicity, he seems to have preferred to keep it as simple as possible.

The other memorable experiment that was not repeated was an electric Garcia Band show on the same night as an acoustic benefit. I knew a bunch of people who went to both shows, and they considered it a great adventure. Staid, pleasant Berkeley Community Theater for a folkie benefit, then hopping in the car for the half-hour run across the Bay Bridge to The Stone, and knocking back a few beers while the Garcia Band did their thing.

If Garcia had liked this experiment, he could have tried playing Berkeley Community and then the Keystone Berkeley. The two places were only three blocks apart, and that would have been an evening: catch the early Jerry set at a BCT Benefit, walk over to Keystone Berkeley by way of  Arinell's Pizza on Shattuck, and then drop into the Keystone Berkeley for watery beer and "Tangled Up In Blue" until the bar shut down. But that, too, was not to be, as for whatever reason Garcia eschewed two gigs in one night ever again, as far as I know.

If you listen to the April 25, 1981 tape on the Archive, though, it sounds pretty alive. Garcia is on the edge of a new thing, playing acoustic rock with John Kahn and a couple of members of the Dead, and finding out that doing a favor for a friend can still be fun if you keep it simple. The inexorable gravitational pull of Garcia meant that having fun at benefits rapidly became institutionalized as well, but for a night, before it got assimilated, Garcia was reminded of why he might have got into it in the first place.

update: fellow scholar @GratefulSeconds sends along the ad for the show

The flyer for Berkeley Community Theater on April 25, 1981. A benefit on behalf of Wavy Gravy's chosen charity, the first acoustic Garcia benefit, and--one last time--Owsley on the board mixing the sound (thanks @gratefulseconds)

"Reflections" Reflections (Round Records RX-107)

Jerry Garcias's solo album Reflections, released in February 1976 on Round Records

Jerry Garcia's third solo album Reflections was released on Round Records in February 1976. The album was well received when it was released, and on the rare occasions when I hear any of it, it still sounds pretty good. The album featured four songs recorded by the Grateful Dead and four recorded by what was the Jerry Garcia Band at the time, featuring Nicky Hopkins on piano, along with John Kahn and Ron Tutt. While a few connected people had some tapes in those days, most people didn't, and Jerry Garcia tapes were even rarer, so Reflections gave a contemporary picture of Jerry Garcia's music at the end of 1975 that wasn't available otherwise.

Of course, even at the time I knew that some of the songs had been floating around for a while. I  owned a bootleg Grateful Dead  lp with "Comes A Time" on it, and I knew "They Love Each Other" and "It Must Have Been The Roses" from live shows. Still, the recordings on Reflections were very well done, and they wouldn't have fit on Blues For Allah. There were two new songs as well, namely "Might As Well" and "Mission In The Rain," and they were pretty good. The three cover versions were excellent choices but suitably obscure ("Catfish John," "I'll Take A Melody" and "Tore Up Over You"), and the configuration of the record was typical of solo albums at the time. A few tracks with the parent group, some originals and some hip-but-obtuse covers--Reflections was an excellent specimen of a typical mid-70s solo album by the front man of a major group.

Reflections was released in February, 1976. Nicky Hopkins had already left the Jerry Garcia Band by that time, but the group had continued on with Keith and Donna Godchaux on board. Over the years, the genesis of the album has been described  by Bob Weir, John Kahn and others as a compromise. Kahn, quoted in Blair Jackson's book, said "the album was supposed to be a Jerry Garcia Band album, but it sort of fell apart in the middle, so it ended up being half that and half Grateful Dead" (Jackson, p. 270). Given Nicky Hopkins personal and health problems in the Fall of 1975, it makes a plausible story. And yet, an analysis of the recording information provided on the All Good Things box set leads us to some unexpected conclusions. I think the Grateful Dead were working on another album, and that work got sidetracked into a Jerry Garcia album out of financial necessity.

Reflections Sessions
According to the excellent Deaddisc site, the recording history of Reflections looks like this [my emphasis]

1. Might As Well (Jerry Garcia / Robert Hunter)
2. Mission In The Rain (Jerry Garcia / Robert Hunter)
3. They Love Each Other (Jerry Garcia / Robert Hunter)
4. I'll Take A Melody (Allen Toussaint)
5. It Must Have Been The Roses (Robert Hunter)
6. Tore Up Over You (Hank Ballard)
7. Catfish John (Bob McDill / Allen Reynolds)
8. Comes A Time (Jerry Garcia / Robert Hunter) 

(Tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8 recorded with the Grateful Dead, and the other tracks were recorded by the Jerry Garcia Band)

• Engineer (tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8) - Dan Healy
• Second engineer (tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8) - Rob Taylor
• Engineer and mix-down engineer (tracks 2, 4, 6 and 7) - Smiggy
• Second engineers (tracks 2, 4, 6 and 7) - Willi Deenihan, Joel Edelstein
• Production assistants - Steve Brown, Kidd, Ramrod, Steve Parrish
• Cover - Mike Steirnagle
• Art direction - Ria Lewerke
• Mastering - George Horn
• Special thanks to - Elliott Mazer, John Kahn, Zippy
• Tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8 recorded at Ace's Studio in August and September 1975
• Tracks 2, 4, 6 and 7 recorded at His Master's Wheels in October and November 1975
• Mixed at His Master's Wheels
• Mastered at Columbia Recorders

Kahn's description of the history of the album seems to be contradicted by the session history. The Grateful Dead recorded four songs in Bob Weir's studio (Ace's) in August and September 1975, before the Jerry Garcia Band was even formed. The studio sessions with Nicky Hopkins and Larry Knechtel (on electric piano, mostly) happened later. How did the Jerry Garcia Band sessions "fall apart," if the Jerry Garcia Band did not yet exist?

It's possible that the session listings are incorrect. However, a comment from Garcia seems to confirm the timeline, if somewhat implicitly (quote via Deaddisc):

A lot of the energy from that record [Reflections] is really a continuation of the Blues For Allah groove that we got into. We sort of continued the same energy because we were having a lot of fun doing it.

The work at Ace's on Blues For Allah had lasted from January through June. So it seems like the August sessions were following on the earlier Blues For Allah album. So what was the Garcia album that "fell apart?" Like many Grateful Dead stories, it has been repeated so often that even the principals seem to accept it. Yet the evidence doesn't appear to support it. What could really have been happening?

Some Considerations
Without additional information, I can only speculate on the actual dynamics underlying the recording of Reflections. Of course, speculation is my specialty, but even I am unable to rank any of these factors in order of importance. It is up to the reader to decide which factors may have been the most important. So, in no particular order:

A listing from the Fremont Argus of August 18, 1975, for the "Jerry Garcia Band" at the Great American Music Hall. In fact, Garcia played with the Keith And Donna Band (note Les Paul the next two nights)

Consider: Garcia Had No Band
In July, Garcia had stopped playing with Merl Saunders. This was quite a surprise to Merl, apparently, and John Kahn was deputized to deliver the bad news to his friend. Was there a planned Garcia album with Merl that got stifled? It's interesting to consider that in August 1975, Garcia was playing shows with the Keith and Donna Godchaux band while recording what would become Reflections with the Grateful Dead. It certainly causes me to re-think the timing of Garcia's dismissal of Merl Saunders, because if an album was imminent, I don't know what to make of it. If Garcia was planning a solo album, he must have had a greater urgency to dump Merl than he ever admitted. However, whatever Garcia's frustration with Saunders, I don't think he was thinking about a solo album in the Summer.

Consider: Round Records Had Dire Cash Flow Problems
McNally describes the difficult situation that Grateful Dead Records had fallen into in mid-1975. The band had spent a lot of money on the Wall Of Sound and the Grateful Dead movie, and they had stopped touring. The Dead had borrowed a lot of money from the Bank Of Boston, so Ron Rakow had gotten a cash infusion by signing a distribution deal with United Artists, along with an international distribution deal with Atlantic. However, the Grateful Dead had no income and they owed money all over the place. I have written at some length about how cash flow problems defined the history of Round Records.

Consider: Recording At Ace's Was Cheap
While recording in Bob Weir's garage was not completely free--there were expenses--there were no studio fees and the band did not need to be paid. Recording in a San Francisco studio with professional musicians would have meant laying out cash that the Dead didn't have. So if Round Records needed Jerry Garcia "product" to sell, recording with the Dead at Ace's was the quickest and cheapest way to go. Three of the four songs the band recorded already had established arrangements, so the recordings must have come easily.

The confusing part of my semi-hypothesis is the apparent conclusion: why did Jerry Garcia only record half a solo album with the Grateful Dead? Bob Weir had already recorded a solo album with the Dead as backing musicians, so it wasn't as if the band was ashamed of the concept. Sure, the restless Garcia was always anxious to do something different, but Round Records was a business. If Garcia had recorded half an album with the Dead, why couldn't he finish it up with them? Or do a few songs acoustic, and play with David Grisman or something? There were four original songs, which was plenty for a solo album that could be filled out with hip cover versions. If Round Records needed money, couldn't Garcia just knock out a musically superior collection of songs, and sell a few records? The next year he could focus on something special. Why would Garcia have recorded half an album at Ace's?

The Jerry Garcia Band At His Master's Wheels
The Jerry Garcia Band with Nicky Hopkins debuted at Sophie's in Palo Alto on September 18, 1975. A few shows had been billed at Keystone Berkeley as "Jerry Garcia" or "Jerry Garcia Band" for August, but those shows were played by Garcia and the Keith And Donna band. Whether this was a scheduling problem with Hopkins or had some other motive is uncertain to me. It is still interesting to note that while Garcia was playing the Keystone with Keith and Donna in August and rehearsing Hopkins for the band in September, he was recording with the Dead at Ace's.

His Master's Wheels was in San Francisco at 60 Brady Street, just behind the Fillmore West. It had previously been Alembic Studios, and prior to that it had been Pacific High Recorders. In 1974, Alembic sold the studio to producer Elliot Mazer. It appears that the Jerry Garcia Band went into His Master's Wheels in October 1975 to begin recording Reflections. The exact dates for recording are uncertain, but its easy to bracket the time frame. The JGB had played four dates in September, and they played about six dates in October between October 8 and October 22, when the band began an extended tour of the Eastern seaboard. So the recordings must have been done in the first half of October, in between the various shows in the Bay Area.

The Eastern tour ended November 1 in Washington, DC. The JGB began a Midwestern tour in Chicago on November 21, so it seems clear that the second sessions were in the first three weeks of November, interrupted by a few Keystone Berkeley shows. Outtakes from circulating tapes and the All Good Things box set show the Jerry Garcia Band trying out many of the rock songs associated with him, even if some of them hadn't been played in a few years, like "You Win Again" and "Hey Bo Diddley." Yet on some of the outtake tracks, the grand piano isn't played by Nicky Hopkins but by Los Angeles studio legend Larry Knechtel (check out Knechtel's discography).

Knechtel plays some electric piano in support of Hopkins on Reflections, possibly overdubbed to give more texture to the tracks. However, although participants seem reluctant to disclose details, it appears that Hopkins was not available for some or all of the November sessions, and Knechtel had to fill in. There's even a whiff that Knechtel did some overdubbing of Hopkins' piano parts. Hopkins was a studio legend, and rightly so, and thus it would have seemed that the environment would have brought out the best in him, but apparently the opposite was the case. Hopkins was a very nice man, so no one liked speaking ill of him, but he had serious health problems separate from his preference for drugs and drinking, and he seems to have simply failed to answer the bell.

Knechtel was a fine player, but obviously the opportunity to take advantage of Hopkins' live experience with Garcia was lost. Apparently, when Blair Jackson asked Knechtel about playing with Garcia, Knechtel didn't recall it. Knechtel had played with everybody, so I wouldn't read too much into that, but it does suggest that Knechtel's role was after the fact, cleaning up what Hopkins had muffed, possibly with just John Kahn in the studio.

Presumably, if Hopkins' health prevented his appearance, or if he was unable to deliver the goods in the studio, Garcia must have needed to fall back to a Plan B. Whatever exactly Rakow had promised United Artists, they plainly had to release something. Thus Garcia must have taken the four tracks with the Dead and the best four tracks with Hopkins, and made a pretty good album out of them. It looks like a few overdubs were done near the end of the process, with harmony vocals from Weir and Donna Godchaux, and a little percussion from Hart, as well as possible overdubs by Knechtel. Reflections was released in February 1976, and the Kingfish album was released in March, so UA got their Garcia and Weir albums.

What Was Plan A?
In retrospect, Kahn's overview of Reflections makes sense: "the album was supposed to be a Jerry Garcia Band album, but it sort of fell apart in the middle, so it ended up being half that and half Grateful Dead." Garcia, Kahn and Tutt seem to have gotten Nicky Hopkins in order to form the Jerry Garcia Band, and they had plans to make a Jerry Garcia solo album at His Master's Wheels. Garcia knew Hopkins from his Quicksilver Messenger Service days, and he was a living legend--The Kinks had written a song about Hopkins called "Session Man" 9 years earlier--so it seemed like a good plan. Yet Hopkins let them down, due to some combination of circumstances. As a result, 4 tracks were salvaged from those sessions, and four tracks from Grateful Dead sessions were used as well.

Yet why had the Grateful Dead been recording at Ace's in August and September? Garcia had a plan in place for his own solo album, so why were the Dead recording Garcia/Hunter songs? I think the Grateful Dead were actually beginning work on their next album, and the tracks got borrowed by Garcia. Although Rakow's words always have to be taken with a grain of salt, he told McNally that UA had been promised 4 Grateful Dead albums along with solo albums by Garcia and Weir. The band had the '74 Winterland shows in the can, although it would later turn out that those tapes were in poor shape.  

Blues For Allah would have been the first UA album, and the Winterland tapes would have accounted for two more (according to the contractual orthodoxy of the time, double albums could count as two albums). Weir was already working with Kingfish, and they had some original material. Garcia and Kahn had plans for the Jerry Garcia Band. That would still leave one album unaccounted for.

I think the August and September 1975 sessions at Ace's were meant for a forthcoming Grateful Dead album. "Might As Well" was a new song, but the other three had never been released by the Dead. Obviously, we'll never know what else might have been recorded had they continued. The increasing stress of record company business had made the Dead's own situation more precarious. According to Rakow, he threatened UA with bankrupting the Grateful Dead in order to get out of the contract if they did not receive more money. Whether or not Rakow actually voiced that threat to UA--he certainly could have--it was a sign of desperation. By December of 1975, when Garcia had returned from touring with Hopkins, Garcia would have needed to take over the songs for his own album, and any possible plans for a subsequent album were pushed aside.

update
Scholar and regular Commenter Light Into Ashes has a relevant quote from Garcia at the time, and an intriguing counter-narrative

Garcia had a bit more to say about the Dead sessions that ended up on Reflections. "It was a continuation of what we were doing with Blues for Allah. We were having fun in the studio is what it boils down to, and that's pretty rare for us. The energy was there, and I thought, 'I've got a solo album coming up. Let's cut these tracks with the Grateful Dead. I've already taught them the tunes.'" (Jackson p.271)

So by Garcia's account, the Dead-recorded tunes were meant for his next solo album all along. What Garcia doesn't mention is that he didn't have his own band when they started recording in August/September. So using the Dead would have been a necessary step, if he wanted to start recording right away. 

But the Nicky Hopkins JGB formed in mid-September - it seems no coincidence that the Dead stopped recording then, and the JGB sessions picked up where they left off almost immediately, in October.

I am not certain why the JGB had to head to His Master's Wheels when the much cheaper Ace's was available - except, perhaps it wasn't. Weir & Kingfish rehearsed & recorded their album at Ace's, probably around the same time (this should be checked), so the JGB would have had to find another studio.

There's also the unspoken issue that the Dead had already spent half the year in the studio recording Blues for Allah. As "fun" as Garcia says the sessions were - this was a guy who habitually spent months in the studio working on albums - I suspect that some of the other Dead members were probably getting burned-out by September and were happy to relinquish the sessions to the new JGB.

I would take Garcia's word that he was planning another solo album in mid-'75, right after finishing Allah. Weir would probably have been able to scrape up enough songs for half a Dead album, but I doubt anyone expected the Dead to record two albums in a row. Rather, Rakow would likely have been nudging Garcia for another solo album for Round, since a Garcia album would do well.

So on one hand, perhaps Garcia intended a solo album all along, which makes the timing of his firing of Merl Saunders even more significant. Of course, Garcia could have been making up a plausible story as to why Reflections was recorded the way it was. One point I would make about late 1975 would be to remember that the Dead weren't touring that year--why wouldn't they record a second album in a year? What else were they going to do? In any case, LIA's comments give us yet another angle to consider.

Maybe I'm overreaching by constructing a narrative of a lost Grateful Dead album from some fragmentary, after-the-fact interviews. But if my hypothesis is incorrect, what's the alternative explanation? The timeline doesn't particularly make sense. Now, it's possible that initially Round Records' finances were so dire that Garcia thought he would have to make his whole solo album with the Dead, and discovered he had a budget halfway through. Even so, it makes for a strange series of events that has been glossed over with an easy-to-digest explanation. For now, until someone can peel off another layer of the onion, I'm going to say that there were plans afoot for another studio Grateful Dead album in the Fall of 1975, and they slipped away with Nicky Hopkins' health and a hefty debt owed to the Bank Of Boston. 

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.

Reconstructing Reconstruction, January-February and August-September 1979

Reconstruction, with 'Special Guest' Jerry Garcia, playing at The Old Waldorf in San Francisco on April 23, 1979

Some research into other areas led me to focus on the genesis of the band Reconstruction, a Bay Area jazz-funk ensemble formed by John Kahn that featured Jerry Garcia on lead guitar and vocals. The group only existed in 1979, performing 57 shows with Garcia and a handful without him. As a result, the group is known as an iteration of the Jerry Garcia Band, rather than as a stand-alone ensemble.

In retrospect, this is not entirely unfair, given Garcia's prominence, but a closer look reveals that the group was conceived in a very different manner, where Garcia would have only been an ongoing, if important, guest star for a permanent band. Reconstruction was a fascinating, underrated band, whose music has held up very well to repeated listening over the decades. Nonetheless, for all the extant Garcia scholarship, the roots of the Reconstruction band have hardly been discussed. This post will look at what appears to have been the circumstances surrounding the formation of Reconstruction, with an emphasis on what it was planned to be, rather than what exactly turned out to happen

The Jerry Garcia Band album Cats Under The Stars, released on Arista in April 1978

Cats Under The Stars-Jerry Garcia Band (Arista Records, April 1978)
Somewhere around 1974, Jerry Garcia and John Kahn went from collaborators to partners. Kahn had produced Garcia's first solo album for Round (known now as Compliments Of Garcia), and Kahn's bass playing anchored the live performances of the Jerry Garcia Band. Kahn had had an ongoing career as a producer and session musician in San Francisco and Los Angeles studios, but he had largely put that aside to work with Garcia. The centerpiece for Garcia and Kahn's ambitions was Garcia's first album for Arista Records, Cats Under The Stars, attributed to the Jerry Garcia Band, and released in April 1978. Garcia and Kahn regularly spoke about how much effort they put into that album, and how its poor sales were a true disappointment to both of them. Whatever plans the pair may have had for the future of the Jerry Garcia Band, they must have had to re-think them after Cats was--in industry parlance--a stiff.

Parallel to the Garcia Band album's dismal sales, the onstage contribution of pianist Keith Godchaux had significantly declined. Since Keith and Donna Godchaux were members of both the Grateful Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band, this had multiple ramifications for Garcia and Kahn. I think that Keith's weaknesses affected the Garcia Band less than the Dead, and in any case I think Garcia's principal musical interest in Keith and Donna was, in fact, Donna Godchaux's vocals. Nonetheless, a change was gonna come, even if it took a while. I have made the argument elsewhere that Garcia had quietly spent 1978 thinking about replacing Keith and Donna in the Dead and the Garcia Band. From observing his opening acts, Garcia seems to have identified Brent Mydland, Ozzie Ahlers and Melvin Seals as future collaborators, and indeed they all played with the Dead and the Garcia Band over the next dozen years.

Meanwhile, what of John Kahn? Kahn had let his record industry career slip away in order to throw in his lot with Garcia. Kahn, like Garcia, had surely hoped that Cats Under The Stars would be like Fly Like An Eagle or Red Octopus, a radio friendly hit album by a band of Fillmore-era veterans, but the reality was quite different. Although in the relatively few interviews that Kahn did over the years he had a wry sense of humor about the dismal sales of Cats, it can't have been casual for him. Garcia had the Grateful Dead as a full-time activity--what did Kahn have, given that he had pushed aside his Hollywood career? According to Kahn, he organized Reconstruction, and it makes perfect sense not only because of the timeline, but because Kahn would have been returning to jazz, the music that made him become a professional bassist in the first place.

October 2-3, 1978: The Shady Grove, San Francisco, CA: Merl Saunders and Friends
Given Jerry Garcia's long friendship with Merl Saunders, the fact that he sat in with Merl for two nights at a tiny club on Haight Street seems perfectly plausible. The tiny Shady Grove was a club that featured bands playing original music, and when it got in financial trouble, not only did Merl play a benefit, he got Jerry to come out too, and it must have packed out the house both nights. However, a closer look makes Garcia's presence rather more curious.

Let me be clear and say that Garcia loved to play, and I don't doubt that on both nights at the Shady Grove, Jerry loved funking out with Merl, just like he had done a few years earlier. Nonetheless, why the Shady Grove, and why October 1978? Garcia had unceremoniously dumped Saunders in 1975, leaving Kahn the unpleasant task of telling his friend that he was no longer working with Garcia. The financial ramifications for Saunders would have been significant, too.

For much of 1974 and '75, Garcia had not only had a regular band with Saunders, he had regularly dropped in on Merl's smaller gigs (much to the delight of Merl, the club owners and the fans), and he had abruptly stopped all that. Saunders worked steadily in the Bay Area for the next twenty-five years, and yet the October '78 shows at the Shady Grove were the only time that Garcia took the opportunity to drop in, an opportunity that must always have been there.

In October 1978, Garcia and Kahn would have known that Keith and Donna Godchaux were leaving both the Dead and the Garcia Band one way or the other. I don't know how explicitly they talked about it, but Garcia and Kahn had to be thinking about their next move. What few remarks Kahn has made about Reconstruction suggest that he wanted to form a jazz group. I think Kahn wanted to form a group with Merl Saunders, and he and Garcia needed some confirmation that Saunders was still a willing and functional partner.

To this day, I do not know who called Garcia about dropping in at the Shady Grove--did Merl regularly invite him to gigs? Did Kahn or someone else act as a middleman? I don't even know who was in Saunders band in October 1978 when Garcia dropped by. Was Kahn with him those nights? In any case, since Garcia showed up for two shows, it wasn't any kind of accident. By 1978, Garcia's musical life was structured enough that there were no free nights by chance. By the time Garcia showed up at the Shady Grove on October 2 and 3, 1978, it was a plan and Garcia was sticking to it.

Without impugning any other motives--Garcia liked to play, Robert Hunter liked the Shady Grove and may have nudged him, and so on--I think Garcia's guest appearance with Saunders was a sort of reverse audition. Merl's musical sympathy with Jerry wasn't in question, but there may have been some unspoken issues about Garcia dismissing him from his circle. It does seem, however, that those unspoken issues remained unspoken, and Garcia implicitly or explicitly must have given Kahn the go-ahead to think about a jazz band.

What Was The Plan? 
Here is what I think the key issues were for Kahn and Garcia

• Cats Under The Stars' failure meant that the JGB would become primarily a performing ensemble, not a recording one
• Kahn needed something musically meaningful to do when Garcia was engaged with the Dead
• Although Keith and Donna Godchaux were short-timers in the Grateful Dead, the exact timing and nature of their departure was unknown, since no one in the Grateful Dead had even talked about it
• Given the ambiguity of Keith and Donna's status with the Grateful Dead, the least confrontational way to address the Jerry Garcia Band was to shut it down for a while, thus avoiding explaining to Keith or Donna that they were being 'fired' from the JGB and the Dead, since the band itself would be on hiatus
• Kahn would form a jazz band, and Garcia would play some gigs, bringing attention to the group while ducking any responsibility for explaining anything to Keith and Donna.
• Meanwhile, Garcia and Kahn would form a new Jerry Garcia Band, working in parallel with the jazz band
• The Jerry Garcia Band would focus on songs, and the jazz band would leave Garcia free to play some wild music in a more low-key context, similar to what he had done with Merl Saunders in 1975 in some under-the-radar shows 

Blair Jackson quotes John Kahn on the formation of Reconstruction (p.306), dating it to December 1978,and Kahn more or less confirms my outline:

"Reconstruction was going to be a band that would do more jazz, explore that avenue on a deeper level than the old Merl and Jerry thing," Kahn recalled. "It was supposed to be a thing where if Jerry was going to play in the band, which he ended up doing, we could still work when he was out of town with the Grateful Dead, which seemed to be more and more of the time. That was the point. In which case we'd have another guitar player. I actually did it a few times--I did some gigs with Jerry Miller of Moby Grape. He was a really good guy and a great player. I wasn't really planning on Jerry [Garcia] being in the band originally, and then when he was in the band it sort of changed everything from what the plan was."

What Was The Proposed Timeline?
Garcia sat in with Merl Saunders for two nights on October 2 and 3, 1978, effectively confirming that they could work together, even if that was hardly stated out loud, even by Garcia and Kahn. I think Kahn's timeline would have looked like this, even if it wasn't precisely written out

• Jerry Garcia saw Brent Mydland play with Bob Weir on October 26, 1978, and afterwards said to Weir "this guy might work"
• The Jerry Garcia Band with Keith and Donna was booked through November 4, 1978
• The Grateful Dead's Eastern Tour began November 11, 1978 on NBC-TV's Saturday Night Live, anticipating the release of their new album Shakedown Street on November 15, 1978
•  The Dead's Eastern tour continued throughout November and into early December.
• The Grateful Dead some December dates in Florida, and then a few late December dates in California, leading up to New Year's Eve at Winterland
• If it was implicitly assumed that Keith and Donna would be out of both bands after New Year's, then Kahn could get his jazz band together during the Dead's Eastern tour in November and December.
• If the stars aligned correctly, Garcia and the jazz band might slip in a few shows in December of 1978
• As the jazz band played around, Garcia and Kahn could get the new Garcia Band together, too

What Really Happened?
Events did not go as planned. They rarely do.

• Shakedown Street was released, and the Dead went on tour
• The Grateful Dead performed at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ on November 24, 1978, and the show was broadcast live on a network of FM radio stations
• After the Passaic show, Garcia's poor health got the better of him and he was checked into a hospital
• The Grateful Dead were set up at the Veteran's Memorial Coliseum in New Haven, CT on November 25, but Bob Weir and Mickey Hart had to come onstage and announce that Garcia was sick, and that the show would be rescheduled
• Garcia, amazingly, managed to recover in time for a Florida date on December 12, 1978 (at the Jai Alai Fronton in Miami), and played out the remaining booked Dead dates on the schedule.
• Sometime before the end of 1978--possibly January 1979--Brent Mydland got a call from Bob Weir, who told him there was a chance he could end up in the Grateful Dead
• The Grateful Dead ended up playing numerous East Coast dates in January of 1979 to make up the canceled shows. Whether every one of the shows in January and February of 1979 were cancellation makeups isn't clear to me, but in any case the Keith and Donna era lasted a few months longer than the Grateful Dead perhaps intended it to.
• The final show with Keith and Donna Godchuax was a wonderful show at the Oakland Coliseum Arena on February 17, 1979. At a band meeting in February, Keith and Donna quit the Grateful Dead. While they probably saw the writing on the wall, in any case they couldn't take anymore, saving Jerry or anyone else the stress of saying "it's been a good 7 years--you're fired."

Reconstruction, booked at the Rio Theater in Rodeo for March 11, 1979 (from the SF Chronicle Pink Section). The Goodman Brothers, from Northeast Pennsylvania, opening for Mickey Thomas on March 17, featured Steve Kimock on lead guitar.

Reconstruction Construction
Based on my presumed timeline, and Kahn's comments, when the Jerry Garcia Band stopped playing in November 1978, Kahn must have started talking to Merl about putting a band together. With Garcia's usual desire to avoid conflict while still getting his way, since Kahn was forming a new group, Keith and Donna Godchaux weren't 'fired' from the Jerry Garcia Band. No unpleasant meetings or phone calls were required. Based on Kahn's comments, it seems that Garcia may have been more enthusiastically involved from the very beginning that Kahn or Saunders had expected. This would have been a two-edged sword: on one hand, it would make Reconstruction well known immediately, but on the other hand it would lead fans to expect to see Garcia as a member of the band.

Nonetheless, Reconstruction debuted at the Keystone Berkeley on January 30 and 31, 1979 a Tuesday and a Wednesday night, in between legs of the Grateful Dead tour. These shows were followed some weeks later by Tuesday night shows on February 20 and 27. Reconstruction played a string of shows in the next few weeks, but they avoided playing weekend nights at Keystone Berkeley or other large clubs. The members of Reconstruction were:

Merl Saunders-organ, keyboards, vocals
'Reverend' Ron Stallings-tenor sax, vocals
Ed Neumeister-trombone
John Kahn-electric bass
Gaylord Birch-drums
special guest-Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals

Ron Stallings had played with Kahn back in his first rock group, The Tits And Ass Rhythm and Blues Band, and he had been in the group Southern Comfort, for whom Kahn co-produced an album. Gaylord Birch, a fine drummer from Oakland who had played with The Pointer Sisters, Santana and many others, was probably brought in by Merl Saunders. According to an interesting interview by Hank Sforzini, Ron Stallings called Ed Neumeister. Apparently, there had been some rehearsals, but another horn player was deemed desirable. Neumeister was an exceptional player. Beside playing in local jazz combos, he was in the house band with the Circle Star Theater as well as the Sacramento Symphony.

Given Garcia's revised schedule, as a result of the canceled shows, I suspect that Reconstruction was supposed to be put together without Garcia, but he made a few more rehearsals than was initially expected. Nonetheless, Neumeister refers to meeting Garcia in rehearsal before the first show, so there definitely were some rehearsals with Garcia. On the first night, January 30, 1979 at Keystone Palo Alto, the only song that Garcia sang with the band was the blues "It's No Use," which would have required little rehearsal, since Kahn and Saunders already knew it well.

Listening to the February 27 tape, the next one we have, seems to suggest that there hadn't been much if any rehearsal with Garcia between January and February. Garcia's playing is very muted for the first verse and chorus of almost every song, but subsequently Garcia steps up and plays with great confidence for the balance of each number. This sounds very much like an experienced player listening to the band's arrangement and then stepping up, a clear hint to me that while he may have jammed some with the band, Garcia hadn't formally rehearsed that much with respect to specific arrangements.

In an interesting interview with Hank Sforzini for Paste magazine,

Neumeister recalls how he became part of the band, “I think they rehearsed once or twice and they decided they would get another horn player, so Stallings recommended me, and actually Ron called me. He said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got a gig on Saturday and we’re rehearsing Thursday. It’s just a door gig.’” Neumeister knew who Garcia was but did not follow the Grateful Dead, “I had no idea to be honest the following that Jerry had. I showed up for that first gig and there were wall-to-wall people. It was at Keystone Berkley.”

Although the show was actually on a Tuesday, Neumeister's description suggests about a week of rehearsal, where he came through midway, and that fits Garcia's touring schedule. The previous Dead gig had been January 21, 1979, and the first Reconstruction show was January 30.

Early Reconstruction
After several weekday shows from January through March, the very first weekend show of Reconstruction was Friday, March 9 at the tiny Cabaret Cotati. The first true weekend booking for Reconstruction was not until March 30 and 31 at the Catalyst, the 16th and 17th shows for the group. Clearly the band was intentionally keeping a very low profile. By 1979, the Jerry Garcia Band and its predecessors had been headlining weekend shows at the various Keystones for eight years. The decision to stick to weekday shows was probably predicated on a number of factors

• The other members of Reconstruction, particularly Ed Neumeister, may have had a variety of conflicts with previously booked weekend shows
• Since Reconstruction had no intention of doing a "full Garcia Band," they may have wanted to tamp down expectations by staying away from the typical JGB weekend gig
• Given the complexity of Garcia's schedule, and the fact that Keystone dates were probably booked 30 to 60 days in advance, there may have been a residual concern that Garcia might not make every booked show, so Reconstruction didn't want to commit to a weekend, since they couldn't guarantee the Keystone a profit

Whatever the circumstances surrounding the establishment of Reconstruction, Garcia seems to have made every gig. Other than a tape from the debut on Tuesday, January 30, but we have only occasional setlists. On February 27, Jerry sang "It's No Use" and "The Harder They Come," another song that would have needed little rehearsal. The next list is March 7 (a Wednesday at tiny Rancho Nicasio), and it features "Struggling Man," the first known appearance of a Garcia song that would have actually required at least a run-through. The rarity of different Garcia songs suggests that rehearsals that included Garcia were pretty rare.

Reconstruction was initially intended as a sort of funky jazz project for Kahn and his friends, who of course included Jerry. However, the music was so good that the band started to take itself seriously. Once the band played some weekend shows at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz (March 30-31), they started to play more high profile events, including the group's occasional road trips (to Colorado, for whatever reasons). My own taste may be coloring my opinion here, but I find Reconstruction tapes to be extremely compelling 30+ years later, not true of every Garcia enterprise.

Ironically enough, I think the very power of Reconstruction's music blocked them from much success. Many Deadheads liked jazz, certainly including me, but most us were hardly any kind of experts. By 1979, I had just figured out how to make sense of Miles Davis's mid-60s music (like Miles Smiles) and his fusion efforts (like In A Silent Way), but I hadn't caught up to contemporary jazz itself. Knowing what I know now, a lot of late 70s jazz was following up on the Oakland funk of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, playing very sophisticated music over a funky but ever-changing beat. At the same time, Reconstruction still had a smattering of vocal numbers, shared between Merl Saunders, Ron Stallings and Garcia (with occasional backups from Gaylord Birch).

 In many respects, Reconstruction was very contemporary, but it didn't have an easy slot for the record or concert industry to package it. Reconstruction was too loose and and had too much improvisation to call itself a rock or funk band, but since it didn't sound like early 70s "Fusion Music" (like Return To Forever) it didn't have a commercial slot in jazz either. Jazz always takes a few years to sink into listeners' consciousness, and by the time I grasped how deep Reconstruction was, the band was ten years gone.

Merl Saunders 1979 album Do I Move You, featuring Edd Neumeister on trombone

Reconstructing Studio Traces
Reconstruction never made a studio album. Yet a few traces remain.  One curious legacy was the obscure Merl Saunders album Do I Move You. Released in 1979 on Crystal Clear Records, it was a "Direct To Disc" one take recording, cut straight into the vinyl, an audiophile treat at the time. Five of the six songs were regular parts of Reconstruction sets ("Tellin' My Friends," "Shining Star," "Long Train Running," "Another Star" and "Do I Move You"). Merl's backing group on the album consisted of players with whom he regularly played, including his son Tony on bass, Larry Vann on drums and Martin Fierro on sax. Carl Lockett played guitar. The only member of Reconstruction on the album was Ed Neumeister, who joined the horn section on trombone. Given that the album was cut on February 3, 1979, Neumeister would have just met Saunders. The material on Do I Move You, all sung by Merl, suggests that it was a typical set of the Merl Saunders Band circa 1978, and thus that Reconstruction's material was initially grounded in Merl's arrangements of his working repertoire.

Another curious tidbit were some demos recorded in Spring 1979 by Jerry Garcia, and released as bonus tracks on the All Good Things boxed set (on the Run For The Roses disc). There are three tracks recorded with John Kahn on bass and Johnny D'Foncesca on drums. One of them, "Alabama Getaway," which includes Dan Healy on guitar, was probably just a demo to get the song on tape. Yet why record "Fennario" and "Simple Twist Of Fate?"

There are a variety of possible explanations, the most likely of which was to test out new recording equipment at Club Front. It's important to remember, however, that Garcia wasn't interested in making a studio album at this time, having just had the disappointment of the Cats release. It's also important to remember that there were plenty of live tapes around of both those songs, if a reference tape was needed. However, in the context of Reconstruction, whatever Garcia's motives for the demos, he was working with drummer Johnny D'Foncesca. Johnny D had moved to Mickey Hart's ranch at about age 10, in 1969, and was probably not yet 20 at the time of these recordings. I think Garcia was quietly checking out Johnny D's playing, because Garcia and Kahn were thinking about the next version of the Jerry Garcia Band.

The most significant recording on the boxed set, however, was a version of "Dear Prudence," also recorded in Spring 1979. "Dear Prudence" first turned up in Reconstruction sets around April, 1979, so I assume the recording was from around then. Unlike many other songs, Garcia had never played the song live, so there would have had to have been some discussion and rehearsal to get the parts right. Yet the recording was not just a quick demo of a song. Not only was most of Reconstruction on the recording, with only Gaylord Birch absent (replaced by Johnny D--Birch probably had a session), but Marin veteran Mark Isham was on the recording as well.

In the Sforzini interview Neumeister recalled what must have been these sessions:

Neumeister recalls one specific instance of Garcia’s devotion to his craft during a recording session. Neumeister, who had written the horn arrangements for the session, was discussing the arrangements with Garcia, “He decided for the recording we would extend the horn section—trumpet, some trombones—and we actually double tracked some of it so it was six horns. Jerry sat in the recording studio and not in the booth, so he could hear the track being mixed with the horns. He sat in with the horns, and he was very, very focused and concentrated and extremely detail-oriented. You wouldn’t think this about Jerry sometimes, but he was looking for perfection. We were there until we got it absolutely perfect. He was really into it being really, really clean and tight. Of course that’s what you want but on the other hand you think of Jerry as being this loose improviser.”

I assume that the recording session was at Club Front, but what was Garcia up to? Why bring in an extra horn player, have a pro--Neumeister--write out charts, and then double track the horns, and do multiple takes? This wasn't a casual demo, whatever it was. Something else must have been afoot. An album demo, perhaps? In any case, no one ever asked Garcia or Kahn and they never brought it up.

The End Of Reconstruction
Reconstruction played throughout most of 1979. The final show by the band was September 22, 1979, at the Keystone Berkeley, where they had begun almost nine months before. Just two weeks later, on Sunday, October 7, 1979, the new-model Jerry Garcia Band debuted at Keystone Palo Alto, with Ozzie Ahlers on keyboards and Johnny D'Foncesca on drums. In fact, however, Reconstruction had played a few shows in August and September without Garcia.

Inexplicably, the first known booking without Garcia was at the Keystone Palo Alto on August 4-5. It was inexplicable due to the fact that the Grateful Dead were playing the Oakland Auditorium the same nights, so the potential audience for Reconstruction, even without Jerry, was otherwise engaged. The advertised guitarist was Carl Lockett, a local player who had played on Merl's Do I Move You album (I think Lockett played the August 3 booking at Keystone Berkeley too, but perhaps Jerry played or was supposed to play). JGMF managed to dig up some obscure Reconstruction bookings, although its not certain if the events ever occurred, or how they went down.

Reconstruction: August-September  1979
August 3, 1979: Keystone Berkeley
Garcia could have played this show, but I think Carl Lockett was advertised. On the other hand, maybe this was the show where Merl thought Jerry was booked, but someone unnamed didn't tell him about it (see below).

August 4-5, 1979: Keystone Palo Alto
The Grateful Dead were playing Oakland Auditorium. Carl Lockett was advertised as Reconstruction's guitarist.

August 10, 1979: Temple Beautiful, San Francisco
Garcia played this date, at the former Synagogue which had previously been known as Theater 1839 (where the JGB had played on July 29-30, 1977)

September 3, 1979: Frenchy's, Hayward
The Grateful Dead played Madison Square Garden from September 4-6, so it's unlikely Garcia was in town. This may have been a show with Jerry Miller. Incidentally, Frenchy's was the very same venue from which the Warlocks were hired for a three day booking and then fired, reputedly on June 18, 1965. A Monday night at Frenchy's would be a good place for the band to try out its "new look" without Garcia. The show was subtitled "Merl Saunders And Friends," I think as an indicator of fans as to what to expect.

September 4, 1979: Sleeping Lady Cafe, Fairfax
The Dead were in Madison Square Garden. Whoever played guitar the night before most likely played guitar this night. According to Kahn, the shows with Jerry Miller were quite good, if it was indeed him.

September 15, 1979: Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto
Garcia played this show.

September 22, 1979: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley
Garcia played this show as well, and I think this was the last performance of Reconstruction, with or without Jerry.

A listing from BAM Magazine, September 1, 1979, showing a Keystone Palo Alto date for September 29, 1979, found by JGMF. The ad would have had to have been sent to press before September 1.

September 29, 1979: Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto
JGMF found an ad for this show, but its not clear what happened. I don't think Reconstruction would have been booked for a Friday night without Garcia. On the other hand, the Dead were not playing, and Garcia could have played this show. At this point, we have to file this show as likely with Garcia if it happened, but 'unproven.'

However, Jackson quoted a bitter Merl Saunders on the demise of Reconstruction (p.307), when Garcia seemingly abandoned the band:

"..there was a night when he didn't show up for a gig., which was done purposely, I think. It was sabotaged [Saunders won't say by whom]. They didn't tell him there was a gig to get to. And shortly after that he and John started a different group and I sort of lost touch with him."

The September 29 Palo Alto show might fit the timeline for this, but the August 3 Keystone Berkeley show would fit even better. Of course, what does "shortly after" mean? A week, a month? The implication is that the rest of Reconstruction was there, and Garcia was not, so that would exempt Kahn from any subterfuge--but it remains mysterious who Saunders felt was threatened by Garcia's participation in Reconstruction.

October 7, 1979: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley: Jerry Garcia Band
The Ozzie Ahlers version of the JGB debuted this night, and there isn't any doubt about it.

According to Kahn, on at least one occasion, the guest guitarist was Jerry Miller, a fantastic player who was the once and future lead guitarist for Moby Grape. It was an intriguing idea, really--a far-out jazz funk band with a series of guest guitarists, who sometimes might be Jerry Garcia. Yet for whatever reason, Reconstruction sputtered to a halt without Garcia. I think the music was just too advanced to draw an audience without the natural pull of Garcia, and Reconstruction simply disappeared without a trace. I think there were three shows at the Keystone with Carl Lockett (August 3-5). and two more in September (3-4), possibly with Jerry Miller, and maybe another obscure show or two, but they didn't gain any traction. Garcia and Kahn would have been planning the next iteration of the Jerry Garcia Band, and it looks like Reconstruction just didn't take without Garcia.

Reconstruction was an inspired idea, a plan for a working jazz band with Garcia as a regular but not permanent guest, and a chance for Garcia to get some serious playing done. Garcia had sort of managed to pull that off with Merl Saunders in late '74/early '75, and this seemed like another chance. The music lived up to its name, the players were great and the inspiration was there, yet it never went any further. No one asked Garcia or Kahn about it, or Merl Saunders for that matter, so we'll never know exactly what was planned and whether the group's arc was satisfactory or not. We are left only with some fine tapes, a single studio track and a whiff of what might have been.