Jerry Garcia Live on KZSU-fm, Stanford University, 1973-89 (KZSU II and FM XV)

The two May '73 Garcia/Saunders shows at Homer's Warehouse were broadcast on KZSU-fm

Jerry Garcia had a long and storied history as a performing artist, in numerous aggregations, the most famous of which was the Grateful Dead. One of the many innovations that the Dead popularized for rock music were live performance broadcasts. A few legendary radio stations, like KSAN-fm in San Francisco, KPFA-fm in Berkeley and WNEW-fm in New York, have a particularly legendary status amongst Deadheads for their historic and widely circulated  broadcasts of Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia concerts. Yet the first, seminal and arguably longest broadcaster of Garcia performances has gone largely unnoticed. KZSU, the Stanford University radio station, not only broadcast Jerry Garcia as far back as late 1962, they broadcast him regularly until 1988. The only comparable station in Garcia or Dead history might be KPFA-fm in Berkeley, which has an equally storied Jerriad saga, which I will get to eventually. I wrote an extensive post on Jerry Garcia's performance history on KZSU in the early 60s.  

Appropriately enough, Jerry Garcia's first studio recording was broadcast on KZSU in Fall 1962, and the Garcia Estate has released that long lost recording as Folk Time. The story of KZSU and Jerry Garcia, however, went far beyond the early 1960s, so in this post I will unravel the tale of Garcia's 70s and 80s performances on KZSU.

KZSU-880 AM and 90.1 FM
Stanford University radio station KZSU had been founded in 1947. Initially it was only accessible on 880-AM on the Stanford campus dorms and fraternities. Throughout the 1960s, however, almost all Stanford undergraduates lived on campus. Undergraduate women were required to live in campus in the dorms, as sororities had been closed some decades earlier. Thus, while KZSU had limited range, it had an outsized importance to campus life. In 1964, KZSU added an FM frequency. 90.1 FM was accessible to all, but since the transmitter had only 10 Watts, KZSU-fm was only audible in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. In the 1960s, however, FM receivers were rare, and usually confined to the type of guy--always a guy--with an expensive "Hi-Fi" stereo receiver (for more detail about KZSU, see Appendix 1 below). 

Two restless young doctors had started a Folk Club above The Tangent deli at 117 University Avenue in Palo Alto. It was near the campus, and serious folk music was usually directed at college students. Stanford student Ted Claire arranged to tape the weekend shows at the Top Of The Tangent for a weekly Tuesday night broadcast on KZSU called "Flint Hill Special." Although only audible in the dorms (and frats), the Flint Hill Special is why there were tapes of Jerry Garcia in various ensembles in 1963 and 1964 (some later released as Before The Dead). KZSU broadcast live tapes of folk music from the Top Of The Tangent at least as late as the Summer of 1964 (for a summary of the early days of live broadcasts on KZSU, see the summary in Appendix 2, and see my earlier post for more detail).

The July 4, 1967 Stanford Daily described the Grateful Dead's appearance at a Be-In at Palo Alto's El Camino Park on Sunday, July 2

Live Rock Music In Downtown Palo Alto
Folk music was popular at Stanford and in Palo Alto, but it disappeared in a cloud of funny smelling smoke. This happened in college towns and Universities all over the United States, particularly on the West Coast and the Northeast. In Palo Alto, however, unlike every other place, these strange influences weren't some mystery wind blowing in from out of town. The call, as they say, was coming from inside the house. The Top of The Tangent crowd were right in the thick of the psychedelic revolution. Ground Zero was Ken Kesey's cottage on Perry Lane in Menlo Park, within easy walking distance of the Tangent. The doors of perception were busted open a few miles South of the Tangent--but still in Palo Alto--at the Palo Alto Acid Test at The Big Beat on December 18, 1965.

In 1966, Stanford University held numerous rock concerts, featuring legendary acts in their prime. Yet the Grateful Dead had played the Tresidder Student Union on October 14, 1966 and there were no more concerts in Stanford facilities. Big Brother and The Holding Company headlined a "Happening" at the Wilbur dorm complex on December 3, 1966, and no such events were ever held again, at least officially. Good times were being had, very good times, and Stanford University was definitely not down with it.

Two things happened in downtown Palo Alto in the Spring and Summer of 1967, within a few blocks of each other. First, in April of 1967, a fish-n-chips joint at 135 University (at High Street), just two doors from the Tangent, added live bands and a light show. In 1967, Fish-and-Chips was exotic foreign cuisine (I swear I am not making this up--the competing shop was called H Salt), so that made the Poppycock suitably exotic for must-be-cool Palo Alto. Also, there were no bars in downtown Palo Alto (nor would there be until 1981), so a place that served foreign food and beer to hippies was enough for a hip music hangout. 

The second thing was that some rebellious University types started something called The MidPeninsula Free University, known locally as "Free You." Free You offered non-standard classes. All jokes about "underwater basket-weaving" for college credit can be traced back to Free You. To raise money, the MPFU had a series of free "Be-In" concerts at El Camino Park, just a few blocks from the Tangent and the Poppycock. How free concerts raised money has never been fully explained, but Palo Alto had six such events in 1967 and '68. The most famous one was July 2, 1967, when the Grateful Dead returned to town to headline the Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival on a Sunday afternoon. The musicians from the Tangent had returned, heavily armed with electricity.

Over at the Poppycock, the house band was The Flowers, who had changed their name to Solid State by the time of the Mary Poppins Umbrella Fest. The Flowers were mostly a jazz group, but they played electric instruments, loud, and they had the old equipment from the Merry Pranksters, so they were part of the new psychedelic rock world (you can read the entire saga of The Flowers in a different post). Initially, the Flowers, and later Solid State, played every weekend at the Poppycock, but over time the club booked different acts every weekend. It was the Bay Area in the late 60s--there were plenty of bands, and a lot of them were really good.

The Stanford Daily of April 19, 1968 mentions broadcasting then-unknown Creedence Clearwater Revival live (on KZSU-fm radio)

KZSU-fm Live Broadcasts
It's always fun to make fun of Palo Alto--I never tire of it--but the city has legs to stand on. There were lots of college radio stations in the 1960s, most of them fairly dormant until the 1970s. KZSU, however, started doing live remote broadcasts from the Poppycock as early as February 1968. At this time, KMPX-fm in San Francisco was quite literally the first "underground" rock radio station in the country, and they had only started doing live rock broadcasts in the Summer of '67. KZSU very well may have been the second such station. The initial broadcast (per the Stanford Daily) was a comedy trio called Congress Of Wonders. Congress Of Wonders is largely forgotten now, but their hip comedy was played regularly on the radio once their albums were released ("Pigeon Park" remains a classic).

The first real rock band broadcast from the Poppycock by KZSU was on March 22, 1968, featuring another local act: the newly-named Creedence Clearwater Revival. The band headlined the Poppycock on Friday and Saturday night, and the first set on Friday night was broadcast on the radio station. It would only be audible on the Stanford campus and nearby Palo Alto and Menlo Park, but who else was going to the Poppycock? No tape survives of this, to my knowledge, but the fact that it happened at all sets Palo Alto apart whether you like it or not.

As to other events, a tape has circulated of the Lafayette (Contra Costa County) band Frumious Bandersnatch, from May 31, 1969. The Stanford Daily mentioned a few broadcasts as well: The Apple Valley Playboys on November 26, 1969, and the bluegrass team of Vern And Ray on January 22, 1970. I suspect there were a few other live broadcasts from The Poppycock in '68 and '69 that for which we have no references. The Poppycock closed in Spring 1970, squeezed because its small size (capacity probably about 250) was not substantial enough to book popular local bands. I know that Miles Davis was broadcast on KZSU when they broadcast his Frost Amphitheatre show on October 1, 1972, but I have no idea if jazz broadcasts were rare or common.

In May, 1971, the site of The Poppycock became the club In Your Ear, which was sort of a jazz club, but with a much more eclectic booking policy. Besides jazz, In Your Ear featured blues, a little rock and some folk music, too, similar in many ways to what the Great American Music Hall would book a few years later. The intriguing club came to an abrupt halt when a pizza oven fire burned down the building on December 31, 1972. Live music pretty much disappeared from downtown Palo Alto after that. 

Homer's Warehouse, 79 Homer Avenue, Palo Alto, CA
Homer's Warehouse was an old quonset storage building next to the train tracks, at 79 Homer Avenue. It was in walking distance of downtown, although you had to take a pedestrian tunnel under the train tracks (for Palo Alto locals, Homer's Warehouse was behind Town And Country Village, and the site is now a parking lot for the Palo Alto Medical Center). The club was intermittently open in mid-1971, appealing to bikers and the like, and marginally tolerated by the police since it was not in downtown itself. In late 1972, the venue was taken over by local entrepreneurs Andrew Bernstein and Rollie Grogan. Bernstein wrote about his adventures at Homer's Warehouse in his 2018 self-published biography California Slim: The Music, The Magic and The Madness.

It is well-known that Jerry Garcia and Old And In The Way broadcast a set on KZSU on July 24, 1973. I myself heard that show. It was, quite literally, the first time I had ever heard bluegrass music. At the time, it was easier to read about new music than hear it. I had read that Garcia was playing banjo in a bluegrass group that played local clubs, but I was too young to go to any nightclub, and in any case I had no car and no money and lived in the suburbs. I knew that bluegrass was some sort of country sub-genre, but I didn't know what it sounded like. When I stumbled onto the KZSU broadcast that night--I used to listen to KZSU regularly--I knew it was Garcia playing bluegrass. It was the first time I heard "Panama Red" and "Lonesome LA Cowboy," among other things, as the New Riders of The Purple Sage versions had not yet been released. Andrew Bernstein describes booking Old And In The Way in some detail, including having Asleep At The Wheel as an opening act. 

Bernstein was a Palo Alto native, and had taken banjo lessons from Garcia back in 1963 or so, as a high school student. He knew Kreutzmann and Pigpen as well, and while he hadn't been in touch with the Dead once they moved to San Francisco, he had more of a connection than a regular club owner might. Old And In The Way had been booked at Homer's Warehouse for one of their very first concerts back on March 8, 1973, and Garcia and Merl Saunders had played a successful weekend in May, and then Old and In The Way again later in May, so it's no surprise that Old And In The Way returned. The first set was broadcast, and people were implicitly encouraged to come down to the club for the second set. I could have walked the dog over there, I guess--it was only a few blocks away from my house--but I didn't realize that while I was listening.

Homer's Warehouse and KZSU
Bernstein tells an unheard story about the link between Homer's Warehouse and KZSU, and how they came to broadcast Jerry Garcia. Most intriguingly, Bernstein says that the two Garcia/Saunders shows at Homer's on May 4-5, 1973 were both broadcast on KZSU. Per Bernstein, the Old And In The Way July broadcast followed from the initial ones in May. We don't have any airchecks of the May JGMS shows, which isn't surprising, as few people had cassette decks, and fewer still would have been in the range of KZSU's 10-watt transmitters. In any case, we have Betty Boards for both shows, so we don't need the FM broadcasts. But Bernstein's descriptions of the circumstances of the KZSU broadcasts have gone unnoticed, so I am inserting them here (please note that 30 years after the fact, Bernstein's memories are not particularly sequential and some details appear questionable. Decide for yourself how much corrective analysis is needed). Bernstein describes the May 4 set-up in detail:

Rollie's [Grogan, Bernstein's partner] biggest triumph to date came on the afternoon he booked Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders for a weekend show. Joining them on May 4th and 5th, 1973 would be John Kahn on electric bass and Ron Tutt, Elvis's old drummer and famed Nashville studio percussionist...[note: Tutt would not join the band until 1974, and Bill Vitt was likely the drummer]

There was yet another surprise waiting in the wings. Lobster [Paul Wells], one of our regulars, was part of the FM radio scene in the Bay Area at the time. He was big, loud and both a DJ at KSJO in San Jose and the musical director of KZSU, the Stanford radio station. One afternoon, he approached Rollie and me about broadcasting the Merl and Jerry shows live from Homer's on KZSU. Rollie and I both thought it was a great idea, so Lobster connected us with Mike Lopez, the student manager of the station. Lobster had told us that we would reach the whole Northern California market [note: this was completely untrue], but Mike had even bigger plans than that. It seems that Stanford had access to a transatlantic phone cable that had been dormant for many years, so Mike decided that what several Iron Curtain countries needed was a heavy dose of Jerry--via pirate radio from Homer's!

Mike's plan called for Hungary, Belarus and parts of East Germany to receive the feed. However, first we needed to get permission from Jerry, which meant going through Sam Cutler (more blow, please!). When Sam gave us the green light, it was full speed ahead. Of course, the university would know nothing of this little international broadcasting caper....

Around 10:00am on the day of the show, our Purple Room started to take on the look of a command center, overrun by cables and wires with crazy-looking guys from Stanford hooking up 20,000 watts [the Warehouse sound system]. Both shows would be taped on a gigantic Memorex reel-to-reel. It was a fuck-all, balls-to-the-wall extravaganza... 

Around 3:00pm, the sound truck arrived with the road crew, and out stepped the lead technician for the night--Owsley Stanley.

Because of his eccentric and unpredictable character, Owsley didn't know how to finish a project on time, so he was banned from any involvement with sound when the Dead were on tour. However, for Jerry shows, he was "the man." His first task, when he got to Homer's, was to make sure the broadcasting guys from Stanford knew who was running the show. General Patton had arrived. Sound mix, PA levels, acoustics, tape speed, the whole shebang was under his direct control. The packed Purple Room was known that night as The Command Center.
Sam Cutler showed up around 5:00...by this time Owsley was like an obsessed woodpecker. He was a pain in the ass, but a perfectionist, eventually, with only fifteen minutes before the doors were scheduled to open for the Friday night show, we got the sound up and working to his desired metrics.

The music for the show started at 7:30pm sharp. Lobster was the live DJ, operating the radio control board for the broadcast out of the Purple Room. He was hyped, as we all were. I did the stage intros. 

This is history in the making, I thought as I introduced the band. 

Then I ran out to Rollie's car and turned on the radio...There we were coming through loud and clear. I tried to imagine some Hungarian family puzzled by what the hell they were listening to. I hope they enjoyed it.

According to Bernstein, not only was there a broadcast on May 4, the entire process was repeated the next night:

Once Owsley, Sam Cutler and their wild-eyed sound crew arrived, the madness set in once again. Unlike the day before, however, all the gear was already in place, so all they had to was push some buttons and turn some knobs

So Garcia apparently broadcast from KZSU three times in 1973, even though we only have the tape for the July Old And In The Way show.

Jerry Garcia and KZSU: Encore
Keystone Berkeley owner Freddie Herrera had opened a sister club in Palo Alto in early 1977. The Keystone in Palo Alto was at 260 South California Avenue, in a commercial district that was distinct from downtown and University Avenue. The commercial district (formerly the downtown of the town of Mayfield, which had merged with Palo Alto in 1925) was adjacent to the Stanford Campus, but not particularly near any student housing. In late 1977, the Keystone in Palo Alto started having regular Monday night broadcasts with the local "alternative" country station KFAT, in nearby Gilroy. The Monday "Fat Fry" broadcast the first set at the Keystone, to publicize the band and the club, and to encourage listeners to drop by for the second set. The second Fat Fry, in fact, on December 5, 1977, featured Robert Hunter and Comfort, with Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor mixing the sound for the radio.  A similar effort was tried on one occasion with KZSU with Garcia.

On December 23, 1977, KZSU broadcast the first set of the Jerry Garcia Band from Keystone Palo Alto. Per an eyewitness, the dj started up the second set and then cut it off. I believe they didn't realize the concept was just to broadcast the opening set, to encourage late arrivals. While the KFAT Fat Fry continued to be broadcast from Keystone Palo Alto every Monday night for several more years, I'm not aware of other KZSU experiments. Of course, since KZSU was not a commercial station, their imperatives would have been different than KFAT's. In any case, we got a good tape of the first set from December 1977, at a time when quality JGB was not in circulation. How appropriate that Garcia was returning to where he had first broadcast, although I'm sure he was unaware of it at the time. 

Final Homage
The Grateful Dead had an appropriately rocky history with Stanford University. The Dead's concert at Tressider Union on October 14, 1966 was the last concert there--good times I'll bet--and the Dead did not return until February 9, 1973 (when they played the Maples Pavilion basketball arena). When the Beta Theta Pi fraternity arranged to book Robert Hunter and Roadhog in May 1976, they were told the Grateful Dead were banned from campus. Of course, Bob Weir had played Frost Amphitheatre by that time, but there was at least some voodoo associated with the Grateful Dead name.

Nonetheless the Grateful Dead finally headlined Frost Amphitheatre in 1982, and played several weekends at the venue through 1989. By the time the Dead stopped playing there, the band was much too popular to play the 10,000-capacity bowl, and huge crowds congregated outside the venue. Stanford did not like the atmosphere, and unlike a commercial establishment, they did not really need the revenue. For the 1988 shows, however (Saturday and Sunday April 30 and May 1), I know that the shows were broadcast on KZSU to allow the huge parking lot crowd to hear them. [update 20231226: Commenter and former KZSU staffer reports that:

My KZSU friends have confirmed that we did broadcast the Grateful Dead Frost shows from 1985 to 1988 at least, with interviews of Healy in 1985, Mickey in 1986, and Jerry & Bobby in 1987 or 1988. 

I'm not sure if this was done again on May 6 and 7,1989. After that there were no more Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia concerts at Frost, anyway.

Update 20240109: Correspondent Geoff Reeves weighs in with the 411. All the Dead shows from 1985-89 were broadcast on KZSU, and there were numerous interviews too:

My name is Geoff Reeves and I was a staffer at KZSU for much of the 1980s. I kicked off the live broadcasts of the Dead at Frost in 1985 by calling up Dan Healey and convincing him we weren’t looking to score free tickets and were legitimately from KZSU. Dan helped get permission to broadcast live and figure out how to connect us to the board. A 5-year tradition began. And, yes I can confirm we broadcast live from 1985 through 1989. I’ve got board tapes of all 10 shows (with custom art on the labels :-) In addition to any broadcast recordings, we also made copies of the boards available to anyone wanting them so they should be in pretty wide circulation.
Around that time Dan started mixing ambient audience sounds into the board so the board tapes and broadcast had a much better live feel than the more ‘sterile’ boards from earlier times. More like audience tapes but mixed intentionally.
In 1986, we started recording interviews before the shows and during breaks to be broadcast after the live show ended. The ‘interviews’ with random deadheads were some of the most entertaining (when edited down) but over the years we interviewed Dan Healey, Dennis McNally, Wavy Gravy, Bill Graham, Mickey Heart, and, (eventually) Mickey, Jerry, & Bobby.
It may also be of interest to know that KZSU broadcast a program called Dead to the World during those years. The name poked fun at our still weak transmitters (100 W) but, hey, they could hear us as far away as Berkeley (sometimes).

Live Jerry Garcia music was first broadcast from the May 3, 1963 show at the Top Of The Tangent (probably broadcast on Tuesday, May 7). It was last broadcast on May 1, 1988, (or maybe May 7, 1989 from the Frost Amphitheatre, about a mile away. In between, Garcia was broadcast a surprising number of times, with a variety of ensembles, covering the arc of his career from struggling folk musician to rock guitar legend.

Appendix I: The Roots Of College Radio
One byproduct of the massive expansion of American higher education after World War 2 was the rise of radio stations associated with colleges and universities. In the Post WW2 universe, college was seen as more than just a degree factory where future employees were produced, and schools had a host of activities that were meant to broaden both the college community and the individual students themselves. In the case of Stanford University, radio station KZSU started in 1947 as part of the Department of Communication. KZSU facilities were used by the speech and drama department, although unlike some smaller schools, Stanford was not providing a professional program for future broadcasters. KZSU was only broadcast on 880 on the AM dial, and the station could only be heard in campus buildings, like dorms and fraternities.

By the early 1960s, radio played a more important part in student life, but KZSU was still a campus-only station. As far as I know, all Stanford freshmen and all women were required to live on campus. There was not enough housing for all undergraduates, so some Stanford men lived off campus, but I do know that the majority of undergraduate students still lived on campus in any case. All women students and all Freshman males lived in campus dorms. Some men also lived in fraternities, but the sororities had been shut down some decades earlier. KZSU broadcast to the dorms and fraternities.

Although KZSU was only audible on campus, it had an outsized importance to Stanford students. FM radio was exotic, and little was broadcast on it, and regular AM stations in San Francisco and San Jose were the only other options. There were a few Top 40 stations (KYA-1260 and KFRC-610 in the City, and KLIV-1590 in San Jose), a country station (KEEN-1370) and various news-talk-music stations for adults (like KSFO-560, KNBR-680, KCBS-740 and KGO-810). So Stanford's student-run-for-student-listeners station was a good choice for a dorm resident.

KZSU producers, announcers and disc jockeys were all students, or at least University-affiliated. The programs were a mixture of Stanford sports, news updates, documentary-type specials and lots of music. A wide spectrum of music was covered, including jazz and classical. It being the early 60s, when folk music was popular with college students, there was folk music on KZSU as well. Certainly more folk was broadcast on KZSU than was heard on any commercial station, and that is how the connection to The Top Of The Tangent came about.

Appendix II: "The Flint Hill Special" and The Top Of The Tangent
It is a well-known piece of Garciaography that Garcia and his folk pals really made their bones at a tiny folk club called The Top Of The Tangent in Palo Alto. What has remained under the radar is how critical KZSU was to the modest success of The Tangent. Without KZSU, the Top Of The Tangent might not have thrived, and thus the whole story of Garcia, Weir, Pigpen and Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band Champions would have taken some different, unknown course.

I have discussed the history of The Top Of The Tangent at some length elsewhere, so I will only briefly recap it. Two restless young doctors, Dave Schoenstadt and Stu Goldstein, decided to start a folk club in eary 1963. Their only guide was a Pete Seeger book called How To Make A Hootenanny. There was a delicatessen at the end of University Avenue that was nearest Stanford, with an extra room above it. The two doctors arranged to have shows there on Friday and Saturday nights, as well as a "hoot night" on Wednesdays. The little room held about 75 people. Sometimes there were touring folk acts, but more often the performers were from the Bay Area folk scene. Locals who shined at hoot night got a chance to play on the weekends, and could build their own followings. The Tangent deli was at 117 University, and the folk club was above it--hence "The Top Of The Tangent." In reality, however, everyone just called the folk club "The Tangent," so I will do that hereafter. 

Here's the reason we have those early Garcia tapes--throughout much of 1963, every weekend Tangent show was taped, and parts of all those shows were broadcast on KZSU. I'll repeat that, just so you don't think I mis-typed--almost every Tangent show through at least June 1963 was taped, and parts of most of them were broadcast. So there's no mystery why we have prehistoric Garcia tapes. Don't forget, by the way, that everyone else who played the Tangent in '63--Pigpen, Peter Albin, Jorma Kaukonen, Janis Joplin, Herb Petersen and many others--would have been broadcast on KZSU as well.  And yes, before we go on any further, I assure you that the Garciaological equivalent of SEAL Team 6 has been on the case for some time. If there's anything new to uncover, they'll get it.

The two good doctors who ran the Top Of The Tangent knew that Stanford students would be a key component of the audience of any folk club. Since KZSU featured weekly shows of many different types of music, The Tangent sponsored the Tuesday night folk show. The host was either (Stanford student) Ted Claire or (Dr. and Top Of The Tangent co-founder) Dave Schoenstadt. The hour long show was aired at 9:00pm Tuesday nights. A sample description, from the Tuesday May 14 edition of the Stanford Daily (clipped above), says

9:00: Flinthill Special- An hour of authentic American folk music, records, tapes, live talent (Dave Schoenstadt)

"Flint Hill Special" was the name of a famous Flatt & Scruggs bluegrass standard, and in the code of the time, "authentic American folk music" meant "serious" folk music, like bluegrass or old-time music, not "popular" sing-alongs like the Kingston Trio.

Ted Claire's deal with the doctors was that he would tape the weekend Tangent shows, and broadcast some highlights over the air on Tuesday nights. So the boys and girls in the Stanford dorm who liked folk music could listen to KZSU and hear what they missed at the Tangent that weekend. Little did they know that a few years later they'd be seeing Jerry, Janis and Jorma at the Fillmore, playing many of the same songs just a little bit louder.

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.

Album Economics: Round Records 1974-76

Robert Hunter's Tales Of The Great Rum Runners, the first album released on Round Records (RX-101) in June 1974

Round Records was the record company formed by Jerry Garcia and Ron Rakow to release solo albums and other material by Garcia, other members of the Dead and other musicians. The venture was an adjunct to Grateful Dead Records, which had been born once the Dead became free of their Warner Brothers contract in March, 1973. Per the legend, certain members of the Grateful Dead were uncomfortable with the risk associated with expanding the record company, so Garcia took on that risk himself. The label released ten fascinating albums in its two year existence, finally folding in early 1976.

Since Ron Rakow was a partner in Round Records, and Rakow ultimately absconded with a few hundred thousand dollars of the Grateful Dead's money in 1976, no one wanted to talk about Round afterwards. What has made the historical record confusing, however, was that no one had really wanted to talk about Round Records even while it existed. Back in '75, many rock artists had their own record labels, and although Round was a very different animal, it didn't seem that way at the time.

The public face of Round was of course Jerry Garcia, but in those days, journalists were still busily asking Garcia about LSD and Woodstock. There might have been a few generic questions about Round, but the ever-engaging Garcia simply answered the questions he was asked, and the conversation would spin far away from his own record company (Rakow did give an interview about Round to Record World, accessible on the indispensable Grateful Dead Sources blog, but it was more about the mechanics of distribution).

What happened with and to Round Records? More importantly, what was supposed to happen? To the extent we know what happened to the label, it was sunk with the financial morass that finally squeezed out Grateful Dead Records. In the end, Round released ten albums, but many of them were released quite some time after they were recorded. This post will attempt to unravel some of the financial underpinnings of Round Records. Once the cobwebs have been removed and the framework becomes visible, we will get some picture of what Garcia may have had in mind for Round. As in many other ventures, Garcia and the Grateful Dead had very imaginative ideas, but once again seem to have fired up the locomotive before the railroad tracks were finished.

Looking backwards, however, the timeline for Round Records releases makes no sense at all, and bears little relationship to Garcia's musical efforts at the time. One reason for that may be that Round was poorly run, by a partner who was neither organized nor reliable. Of more interest to me than Ron Rakow's business practices, however, is an analysis of what music Jerry Garcia was interested in making outside the Grateful Dead from 1973 to 1975, and how Garcia may have seen Round as fulfilling those ends. Without suggesting a narrative for Garcia' side projects, the history of Round Records would make no sense whatsoever.

A Round Approach
The evidence of Round Records' birth and passing is maddeningly non-specific. Given the lack of direct evidence, I have tried to analyze Round Records as an institution, rather than focusing too much on the particular actions of individuals, which may remain forever unknown. My institutional analysis points towards some interesting conclusions:

• Round Records was conceived as an independent record company that would release a wide variety of material, much of it not likely to be popular
• Round would be a platform for experimental  or unheard music
• Most of Round's projects were to be recorded in-house, at either Mickey Hart's ranch studio (The Barn), or Bob Weir's garage studio (Ace's).
• Inept business practices insured that the Round venture floundered, and almost everything released on the label was well out of date by the time it came out
• Almost everybody involved with Round was unhappy with the music and the finances, and thus only talks about Round in an indirect way

To explain my conclusions, I will present the following:

• A brief overview of the beginning of Round Records
• An institutional analysis of the likely explanation for Jerry Garcia Round album Garcia inexplicably having the same name as the previous Garcia solo album on Warners
• A timeline of the Grateful Dead finances in conjunction with Round releases

The Birth Of Round Records
The Grateful Dead informed Warner Brothers that they would not be renewing their contract, nor signing with anyone else, in the Fall of 1972. This was unprecedented for a rock band. Because of contractual obligations, they would not be free of Warners until March 1973 and the release of Bear's Choice. Perhaps Warners or another company thought they could talk the Dead out of independence--the record companies certainly tried--but the Dead stuck to their quixotic plan. The resulting entity was called Grateful Dead Records, financed by a large loan from the First National Bank Of Boston, organized by the always ambiguous Ron Rakow, who had been in and out of the Grateful Dead's finances since about 1966.

The first public corporate mark of Grateful Dead Records was in fact a notation on the liner notes for the Garcia/Saunders album Live At Keystone. That album was released in January 1974, some months after Wake Of The Flood, the initial GDR release. However, the Keystone album was recorded before Wake, in July, 1973, so when Garcia was listed as "Courtesy Of Grateful Dead Records," it was a corporate indicator of Garcia's primary affiliation. The album was released on Saunders' label, Fantasy Records. There is reason to assume that Fantasy may have hoped that even if the Dead were going it alone, Garcia might have been available to record as a solo artist. Fantasy was used to working with jazz artists on a project by project basis, so there might have been some synergy there, but this is only speculation. In any case, Garcia seems to have had bigger plans.

Wake Of The Flood was recorded in August, 1973 and released in October. Despite some difficulties getting paid by distributors and some counterfeit pressings that cut into sales, the album was pretty successful. McNally said that it sold about 400,000 copies, a healthy number for those days. Since the Dead weren't sharing profits with a parent record company, the money for Wake was still pretty good. The band's concert receipts had improved as well. By Grateful Dead standards, the group was fairly flush with money at the beginning of 1974.

McNally describes the formation of Round Records as fraught with conflicts of interest (p.452). The Dead's lawyer, Hal Kant, objected that Grateful Dead finances shouldn't have been co-mingled with a solo project, and Garcia blew up, so Kant was replaced as Round's lawyer by Rakow's personal attorney. McNally does not put a precise timeline on the formation of Round, but it seems to be sometime after the formation of Grateful Dead Records. By the beginning of 1974, despite or perhaps because of their success, the Grateful Dead's self-contained empire was full of strife. Booking agent Sam Cutler was let go, and McNally describes a period of conflict and confusion (p.468-469).

Yet the first Round Records project, Jerry Garcia's second solo album, got under way in February 1974, with John Kahn producing. Presumably, Kahn and Garcia had already been working on the concept for some time. The solo album, mysteriously titled Garcia, just like the first one, was released in June, 1974. Even so, it was not the first Round release. That honor went to the first solo album by the hitherto ghost-like Robert Hunter, Tales Of The Great Rum Runners. Both albums were released somewhat simultaneously in June, 1974. Yet, then as now, no one can give a plausible explanation for why Garcia's solo album used the same name as his 1972 release for Warners. Garcia II would have made some marketing sense--but just calling it Garcia, like the first one? The silence accompanying this choice shouts dysfunction, and that dysfunction appears to be at the center of the Round universe.

Seastones, by Ned Lagin, credited to Ned Lagin and Phil Lesh (Round RX-106), released March 1975

What Might Have Been The Plan?
Round Records was formed in late 1973, as a vehicle encouraged by Garcia for releasing projects outside of the Grateful Dead proper. Garcia and the other members of the Grateful Dead had a wide variety of projects underway: live R&B with Merl Saunders, electronic music, bluegrass, new songs from Robert Hunter and perhaps more. They also had access to their own studio, namely Mickey Hart's own facility in his barn at his Novato ranch. Thus the more esoteric projects could be recorded at a more realistic price than the high rates of professional studios like The Record Plant in Sausalito.

I think Garcia wanted to run an independent record label that released his own music and the music of his friends, whatever it happened to be. Some of it might be somewhat commercial, like the Jerry Garcia Band or Kingfish, but some of it might be outmoded country subgenres or unfathomable experiments. At the time, major record companies were good at making money on music, but they were hit machines that depended on artists who toured heavily behind popular music. Warners or Columbia had too much overhead for bluegrass or something equally obscure. A low-overhead independent label would have been a different matter.

In theory, while the Grateful Dead rode the big horse, Round Records could have made creative music cheaply at Mickey's Barn in Novato and sold a modest amount of records to Deadheads and people of discriminating taste. Without much overhead, the players would get a little money, and there would be enough left over to make the next album. All sorts of friends and allies could get a chance to make the music they wanted to, not the mandated 10-songs-per-lp-of-rockin'-hits that the industry demanded.

The idea of Round Records as a self-sustaining, independent label, run by artists for artists, would have been a great idea--if it were 1990. David Grisman's Acoustic Disc was built on that model, and it has generally been very successful. While some of Grisman's albums, particularly those with Garcia, have sold quite well, some of the releases are specialist projects recorded for a modest, discriminating audience. No matter: they were usually recorded in Grisman's (high-tech) garage, and they are sold in limited runs to those who want them, via mail-order and the internet. None of this was plausible in 1974.

Many rock artists in the early 70s had "private labels," called "imprints" by record companies: the Jefferson Airplane had Grunt (for RCA), Frank Zappa had Bizarre/Straight (Warners), ELP had Manticore (Island), and so on. Certainly, those artists got to release albums by their friends: Zappa released albums by his best friend in high school and his daughter's nanny, for example. However, the big record companies still exerted a lot of control on the imprints. Their real interest was in using the artists to find new hitmakers. All of Warners' investment in Zappa paid off when he signed and civilized some crazies from Phoenix, AZ called Alice Cooper. When Zappa left Warners, they dropped all the acts on Bizarre/Straight except Alice, and they made millions on the band. That was what they had really wanted. Warners could not have channeled Alice Cooper as they were in 1969, but Zappa could, and the payoff for Warners a few years later was huge.

I don't doubt Warners or Columbia would have (and probably did) offer Garcia his own imprint if the Dead would sign. However, Garcia was dismissive of Grunt, the Airplane's label, so I don't think he had any interest in having a corporate entity under his control. In typical fashion, Garcia seems to have chosen to go it alone, but he chose it at a time when an independent label had no way of getting distributed or paid, and any unique music they made would never be heard on the radio, rendering it permanently obscure.

A careful look backwards shows a plethora of album projects by members of the Grateful Dead, most of them recorded at Mickey Hart's Barn studio: albums by Hart himself, Old And In The Way, Roadhog, Barry Melton and Jim McPherson were all recorded there, none of which saw the light of day (some of the McPherson material was released in 2009). There were ongoing experiments with electronic music (that would become Seastones) and radio plays (the mysterious radio play "Insect Invasion"), and numerous live ensembles like Garcia/Saunders, the Great American String Band and The Good Old Boys. Yet none of this came to light during the brief tenure of Round Records, and only bits and pieces surfaced in succeeding years. It stands to reason that all the recording going on was intended, ultimately, for release, and I think that Round Records was intended to be that vehicle. 

Jerry Garcia's second solo album (RX-102), inexplicably entitled Garcia, just like his first album two years earlier

Why Call The Album "Garcia"?
Although Garcia's 1974 solo album bore the number RX-102, ceding RX-101 to Hunter's album, the Round Records enterprise would not have gotten underway without the promise of an album that would actually sell. Jerry Garcia's first solo album had been released by Warners in January, 1972. The album was titled Garcia. More so than many people, Jerry Garcia was someone often addressed by his last name, even by old friends, so it was almost like a nickname.

It was common in the 1960s and 70s for record companies to title the first solo album after the artist: Neil Young, Stephen Stills and Jackson Browne's first albums were named after themselves, for example. The naming of Garcia's first album was particularly appropriate, since he played most of the instruments (all save the drums), and sang and wrote all the songs, save of course for Hunter's lyrics. In that sense, Garcia was very much a solo album. The Grateful Dead were rising in popularity in 1972, and Garcia was quite successful (I think it went gold). Radio friendly songs like "Deal" and "Sugaree" certainly helped.

There was no fathomable motivation to name Garcia's second album the same name as his first. The naming was so unfathomable that Grateful Dead Records themselves dropped it. Promotional copies of Garcia were imprinted with a stamp that said "Compliments Of", and people started to informally call the album Compliments Of Garcia, partially just to distinguish it from the first album. Informally, the album has been called Compliments Of Garcia ever since. The Dead.net Store now lists it as Compliments. It's not a bad title--but why couldn't they have thought of it before? Some artists with long, complex recording histories sometimes end up with the same or similarly titled albums, but usually they are a result of two different Live In Concert albums a decade apart. In 1974, Garcia had had only released two solo albums, but they both had the same name.

What had to happen for Garcia's first album on Round to have the same name as his only other solo album? There have to have been three culprits--poor planning, a failure to communicate and arrogance. On a business basis, Round Records was run by Jerry Garcia and Ron Rakow. Garcia was busy making music, however, so that meant that Rakow effectively ran the label. McNally quotes Dead attorney Hal Kant on Rakow's supposed professional credentials: "Rakow is supposed to be a serious businessman? He doesn't have a clue." Events seemed to have borne out Kant's assessment.

I have to assume that as Kahn and Garcia worked on the album, the name on the tape box or studio sheets was 'Garcia Project' or just 'Garcia.' In effect, I assume this was the working title for the album. A very fine Byrds album, Untitled, was called that because it was the name on the tape box, and when it came time for the release, the Byrds liked Untitled better than their planned name Phoenix. However, Untitled was a clever, ironic title, attracting attention to an excellent album.  So it's not hard to see how the solo album had a working title of Garcia, but still hard to see how it really got released with that name.

Garcia himself was never someone who liked to name things. Indeed, for all his eloquence, Garcia didn't even write lyrics. One of Robert Hunter's lesser duties, apart from lyrics, was as the designated Namer Of Things. If Garcia had had a little foresight, he would have asked Hunter to come up with a name. Hunter would have listened to the tape, and thought of something appropriate--perhaps even Compliments Of Garcia. Once Garcia had accepted Hunter's title, that would have carried the day. But what with recording Mars Hotel, touring, playing with Merl Saunders and numerous other things, Garcia seems never to have asked Hunter, nor made any other plans to name the album.

What commentary there is about Ron Rakow mostly concerns his alleged dubious business practices. Those alleged practices aside, Rakow seems to have kept his own counsel (literally, with respect to the Round attorney) and not let anyone outside of Garcia know what was planned. It would be conventional even in a small record company to ask what the title of a forthcoming album might be, but I don't think Rakow had those conversations with people. I suspect he wasn't very direct with anyone about it, actually, but at the very least if the subject had come up, almost anyone in Grateful Dead circles would have mentioned that the first album was called Garcia.However,  I don't think anyone had those kinds of conversations with Rakow, even casually.

Finally, however, the most likely explanation for the Garcia title was Ron Rakow's arrogance. Rakow, for all his big talk, probably didn't know or didn't remember that the first album was also called Garcia. Rakow had probably taken steps that committed Round to an album title of Garcia, such as printing the cover. Rakow took great pride in saying how he had found a way to print extra copies of the Wake Of The Flood album cover cheaply (and then sold the records as cut-outs, another tangential subject), so it's not far-fetched to think that Rakow had a "deal' on the covers. Rakow does not seem to be a person who would admit a mistake or listen to reason, nor would he have had any interest in spending extra money to change the album title. If you've ever worked in a place where the boss doesn't listen, all sorts of stupid decisions are confirmed merely to insure that the boss never has to admit that he has wrong.

The strange history of the Garcia album title suggests that Rakow ran Round Records as a sloppy, private kingdom where he listened to no one save Garcia. Since Garcia wasn't interested in details, that left Rakow to manage Round Records unchecked. It looks like Garcia was working on numerous projects, with the idea that Round would be the vehicle for releasing them. Yet Round only intermittently released anything, often long after the musicians had moved on.

Old And In The Way, Round Records greatest legacy, recorded in October 1973 and released in February 1975 (RX-103)

Round Records Timeline 1973-1974
A detailed look at the chronology of Round Records shows how the label was dependent on money borrowed against the Grateful Dead. When Rakow found a source of cash, a few albums popped out out of the pipeline. However, each cash infusion obligated the Dead to more pressure from either their creditors or the record company, and the cycle repeated itself. What I believe to be Garcia's inspired vision for an independent record label turned into a tool for Ron Rakow to use Garcia as a fulcrum to leverage the Grateful Dead for cash. The Wall Of Sound and the Grateful Dead movie were also a huge cash drain on the band, leaving Round begging for scraps. The history of Round releases is intimately tied to cash infusions to the Dead, each time indebting the band further. No one seems to have gotten paid for a Round release, because the label was a financial house of cards in the first place.

• March 1973: Warner Brothers releases Bear's Choice: Grateful Dead become independent.
• April 1973: Grateful Dead Records launched, funded by a loan from the First National Bank Of Boston and an overseas distribution deal with Atlantic Records (for $300,000).
• April 1973: Old And In The Way (founded in March) records at Mickey Hart's Barn studio in Novato. The tapes have never surfaced
• May 1973: Ned Lagin moves to California, and begins working on what will become Seastones at The Barn with Garcia, Hart, Phil Lesh and others
• July 1973: Jerry Garcia records at Keystone Berkeley with Merl Saunders, for Fantasy Records
• August 1973: Grateful Dead record Wake Of The Flood at the Record Plant
• October 1973: Wake Of The Flood released on Grateful Dead Records
• Summer or Fall 1973: Round Records established
• January 1974: Live At Keystone, by Garcia/Saunder/Kahn, Vitt, released on Fantasy
• January 1974: The Dead start making plans for The Wall Of Sound, which will ultimately eat up all their increased concert revenue
• February 1974: John Kahn begins producing the Garcia album in Southern California
• April 1974: The Grateful Dead begin recording Mars Hotel at CBS Studios in San Francicso
• Spring 1974: Robert Hunter records Tales Of The Great Rum Runners at The Barn. It's possible that a Roadhog album of Hunter songs was recorded just before this
• June 1974: Round Records releases Rum Runners and Garcia
• June 1974: Grateful Dead Records releases Mars Hotel
• Late 1974: Garcia pays David Grisman $1000 to make an album out of Owsley's Old And In The Way live recordings. Neither Grisman nor any other band member receive another cent from the record, and Grisman and Garcia do not speak for the next 14 years.
• October 1974: Rakow and Garcia impulsively decide to make a movie out of the band's stand at Winterland (McNally p.478)
• Late 1974: Grateful Dead Records is effectively bankrupt, and Rakow arranges a distribution deal with United Artists Records

Whatever the grand plans of the Dead at the beginning of the year, they collapsed under the weight of the Wall Of Sound and poor financial management. Round Records had only released two albums in June 1974, and had been silent since that time. The Dead were rescued by the UA deal, but UA in turn demanded product from the Dead. However, early 1975 saw a flurry of releases from Round. UA probably didn't care, one way or the another, but accepted the releases as a condition of signing the Dead. The implication, however, seems to have been that any Round releases after the first two were throttled by a lack of cash.

The Old And In The Way album was released 16 months after it was recorded because there was no money to release it earlier. The fact that Grisman, nor any other band member, was not paid for the record is another implicit sign of poor fiscal management by Rakow.  Lagin has complained as well that the released Seastones was just a small piece of what they were trying to accomplish musically, and he has alluded to pressure from the record company. Whether that was directly from Round or indirectly from UA, it's another clue that despite attempting to provide musical freedom, Round's artists ended up unhappy.

Keith & Donna (RX-014), released February 1975 (RX-104)

Round Records Timeline 1975-1976

• January 1975: Jerry Garcia and Dan Healy record The Good Old Boys, with David Nelson, Frank Wakefield, Chubby Wise and Don Reno, at Mickey Hart's Barn. The Pistol Packin' Mama album will not be released for another 13 months.
• January 1975: Work is completed on a studio above Bob Weir's garage in Mill Valley. The studio is called Ace's. Per McNally, the band Heroes are the first to record there (McNally p.482). Garcia actually played on some sessions, which were released decades later on the Bill Cutler album Crossing The Line, but I have to think that a Round release was at least contemplated.
• February 1975: Round releases the Old And In The Way album (RX-103). With financing from the UA distribution contract, Round could release a flurry of albums
• February 1975: The  Grateful Dead, with Mickey Hart back on board, began playing at Ace's
• March 1975: Round releases the Keith And Donna album (RX-104)
• March 1975: Round releases Tiger Rose, the second Hunter album (RX-105)
• April 1975: Round releases Seastones, the Ned Lagin project (RX-106). A sticker on the album credited to Lagin and Phil Lesh, because UA wanted a member of the Grateful Dead's name on the record.
• June 1975: Under pressure from UA to deliver product, the Dead record Blues For Allah in two weeks at Ace's
• August-September 1975: Jerry Garcia begins recording Reflections at Ace's. There is a distinct whiff that Garcia needs to produce a salable album for UA, both to finance the Dead's operations and also the Grateful Dead movie.
• September 1975: Blues For Allah is released on Grateful Dead Records, but with a United Artists record number. 
• October-November 1975: Jerry Garcia records the other half of Reflections at His Masters Wheels in San Francisco, formerly Pacific High Recorders (and then Alembic Studios). He records with John Kahn, Ron Tutt and Nicky Hopkins, although Larry Knechtel is brought in to help on keyboards.

There were no Round releases between April 1975 and February 1976, when Reflections was released. The spurt of releases in early 1975 came via a cash infusion from UA. When that dried up, Round was dormant. What cash there was seems to have been absorbed by the movie, but once again Rakow's cash management can hardly be respected. Rakow made another deal with United Artists in early 1976, which provided another spurt of releases on Round. However, once Rakow wrote himself a check for  $225,000 in Spring 1976, the Dead found themselves broke and owing United Artists a Grateful Dead album. The regrettable Steal Your Face was the result.

Diga, by the Diga Rhythm Band, produced and led by Mickey Hart, the final release on Round (RX-110)

Round Records Timeline 1976
February 1976: Round/UA releases Reflections (RX-107)
March 1976: Round/UA releases Kingfish (RX-108). Weir was a member of Kingfish at the time, and the album was recorded at Ace's. Reflections and Kingfish were the sort of albums that UA would have hoped for when they financed the Grateful Dead.
March 1976: Round/UA releases Pistol Packin' Mama by The Good Old Boys (RX-109). UA cannot have been interested in this record, and it sank quickly. UA probably saw it as a rock star indulgence, like letting Frank Zappa release an album by a group that included his daughter's nanny.
May 1976: McNally details how Rakow had allowed the Dead's finances to become disastrous (pp.488-492). Rakow writes himself a huge check that bankrupts Grateful Dead Records, but Garcia refuses to insist on prosecution.
June 1976: Round/UA releases Diga, by the Diga Rhythm Band. This too was probably seen by UA as a rock star indulgence.
June 1976: Grateful Dead/UA release Steal Your Face. The whole record company experiment comes to an end. With few other options, and a movie to finance, the Grateful Dead have already returned to the road.

Looking Backwards
I will admit that I have drawn some very specific conclusions from scattered, fragmentary evidence. Nonetheless, any serious consideration of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead's musical goals have to account for Round Records. There are so many things that are hard to explain: the title of Garcia's solo album, the strange, intermittent pattern of releases and the numerous unheard projects demand an explanation that hangs together as a plausible narrative. If someone can come up with a better explanation for the strange history of Round Records, I would be more than willing to try it on for size. For now, I'll have to stick with my own explanation of events.

In the early 1970s, Jerry Garcia, other members of the Grateful Dead and their fellow Marin musicians found themselves working on a wide variety of music, only some of which had any commercial potential. With Mickey Hart's studio, and then Bob Weir's, it seemed like all this music could be recorded and produced. Jerry Garcia and Ron Rakow hatched a plan to start a self-funded, independent record company to put out those albums. Garcia himself was the star attraction, but the door was open to bluegrass, electronic music, songwriters, drummers and many other kinds of weirdness. A record company not run for some corporate suits, but one run by and for the musicians themselves. It was a great idea, and some very good music got recorded.

Overrreach and a cash squeeze got the better of Round Records. Some ill-advised management decisions, possibly connected to some very dubious business practices, required that Round was beholden to the vagaries of the Grateful Dead's own very-difficult finances. The Round recording artists found themselves unhappy with both the released material and the lack of money forthcoming, making Round very similar to a regular record company. When Grateful Dead Records evaporated under the weight of its obligations to United Artists and Ron Rakow's self-dealing, Round Records disappeared with it. Such grand plans were not undertaken again, and rarely spoken of.

Old And In The Way FM Broadcasts, 1973 (FM VI)

The cover to the March, 1975 Old And In The Way album on Rounder Records, recorded in October 1973

The bluegrass band Old And In The Way only existed for about 9 months in 1973, and they only released an album in February 1975, a full 15 months after they stopped performing. Because Jerry Garcia was the banjo player, Old And In The Way received an inordinate amount of attention for a bluegrass group. Yet, as a result, the album was hugely influential in the worlds of bluegrass and modern acoustic music in general. Garcia's presence caused a wide spectrum of fans and writers to pay attention to the unique synthesis of traditional bluegrass, contemporary songwriting and flashes of jazzy improvisation that Old And In The Way were performing. Other progressive young bluegrass musicians were exploring the same territory at the time, but only Old And In The Way had a bona fide rock star in the group. Garcia may have brought attention to the band, but it was Old And In The Way's music that has made them a touchstone of bluegrass and acoustic music from Spring of 1975 up through today.

However, there is another fascinating component to Old And In The Way that has been hiding in plain sight the entire time. Relatively few people think about the fact that while Old And In The Way was actually performing in 1973, the audiences they were playing for knew almost nothing about bluegrass music. Given Jerry Garcia's status, he of all people would not have wanted fans to see a show with him on the bill when they expected jammed out electric guitar solos instead of high lonesome picking and singing. Old And In The Way's solution to this problem seems to have been to play a number of relatively high profile FM broadcasts, to make sure that local rock fans knew what Old And In The Way with Jerry Garcia would sound like, and at the same time publicizing the group. The remarkable part about a strategy of promoting Old And In The Way via radio broadcasts was that it was how bluegrass music had originally been promulgated in the 1940s and 50s, a fact that Jerry Garcia and the other members of Old And In The Way would surely have been aware of.

Bluegrass And The Radio
Bluegrass music, unlike most genres, had a single and very self-conscious inventor. Bill Monroe had been a popular country singer in the late 1930s and early 40s, often along with his brother Charlie Monroe. Many rural people from Appalachia and other parts of the South had moved to industrial cities like Detroit to work in factories during the war. Their employment choices were few, and the factory money was good, but those transplanted Southerners still missed their old homes. Bill Monroe designed bluegrass music to appeal to rural people in a period of transition, and bluegrass music looked backwards and forwards at the same time.

On one hand, at a time when country music was becoming more orchestrated, electric and modern, bluegrass music was played on acoustic instruments, like the kind that had been played for decades in the mountains. The harmonies and sounds were resonant of old-time string band music, yet the instrumental breaks were sophisticated forays that were at times not far from be-bop jazz, a contemporary development on both coasts. Many of the lyrics longed for the good old days, yet the song topics were often about current subjects.

Like all new music, bluegrass had to get heard before anyone would pay to see it. The solution to this was radio. Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys would play Saturday nights on the Grand Ole Opry radio program on WSM-am in Nashville, and the rest of the week they would tour around in Bill Monroe's bus, playing local auditoriums and theaters. People had heard Monroe on the radio, so they knew what to expect in concert. Bill Monroe had been performing on the Grand Ole Opry since 1940, but when Earl Scruggs joined the group on banjo in December 1945, Bill Monroe And The Bluegrass Boys fully evolved into what we now recognize as bluegrass music. Since Monroe was on the radio every Saturday night, audiences knew all about it and the band was an instant concert sensation.

The pattern of using the radio to become a popular concert attraction was a common theme in the history of bluegrass music. Since bluegrass bands were acoustic and self-contained, they could easily perform live on the radio when larger, more electric bands could not consider it. The Stanley Brothers, for example, among the first bands to follow the trail blazed by Monroe, started performing at radio station WCYB in Bristol, TN on December 26, 1946. Typically, groups like the Stanley Brothers would 'host' a 15 or 30 minute spot under the aegis of a sponsor. The sponsor was usually a local business, such as a feed and seed company that wanted to appeal to farmers. In between performing bluegrass songs, a group like The Stanley Brothers would perform ads and make announcements. Typically, the groups were not paid for their performances, but they would become regionally famous and could make money performing around the radio station's listening area.

Bluegrass was popular country music in the 1950s, but it waned in the 60s. Nonetheless, the musical sophistication of bluegrass generated a continuing cult of adherents, who often lived far from Appalachia. Teenagers like Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Peter Rowan and David Nelson discovered the likes of Bill Monroe, Flatt And Scruggs and The Stanley Brothers from records. Hoping to learn the music, they started to search for live performance tapes that were passed from hand to hand by bluegrass aficionados. The best of those tapes were radio airchecks, often from obscure radio stations in the South, including not only unadulterated performances, but flour commercials, farm and weather reports and corny jokes. Thus the core members of Old And In The Way--Peter Rowan, David Grisman and Jerry Garcia--were fully aware of the foundational tradition of bluegrass bands playing on local radio to introduce themselves and generate interest for performances.

March 2, 1973: Old And In The Way, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA
San Francisco's KSAN-fm, 94.9 on my fm dial (The Jive 95), was the successor to KMPX-fm, which had been the first 'free form' FM rock radio station. KSAN was among the most popular stations in the Bay Area, in all formats, but it still made a point of staying ahead of the curve. While KSAN was not the first commercial station to broadcast rock concerts live on the radio (KMPX probably holds that distinction), they made a point of making live rock performances a regular part of their broadcasting week. In the early 1970s, KSAN regularly broadcast live performances from The Record Plant in Sausalito. The Record Plant was the most prestigious studio in the Bay Area at the time, and had top-of-the-line facilities. There was usually an invited audience of a few dozen, and the studio setting allowed KSAN to insure that the broadcast had top-notch sound quality, not at all always a sure thing, given the technology limitations of the time.

Old And In The Way made their performance debut on KSAN-fm on the afternoon of March 2, 1973, from the Record Plant. Their public debut would be that night at the tiny Lion's Share at San Anselmo, but they previewed it with a performance that had the potential to reach every rock fan in the Bay Area. Given that Jerry Garcia was already a major rock star by that time, debuting his new band on the radio was completely opposed to rock music orthodoxy at the time. However, Old And In The Way was a bluegrass group, not a rock group, and debuting a new bluegrass band on the radio hearkened back to the birth of bluegrass music itself. Of course, recorded bluegrass was hardly played on the radio anymore, and bluegrass bands other than Bill Monroe had not had regular spots on the radio for at least 15 years. Still, using unpaid radio shows to promote local performances was essential to bluegrass history, and old tape collectors like Grisman and Garcia were perfectly aware of it. As for Rowan, he had actually played on the Grand Ole Opry with Bill Monroe, so he needed no lessons on the power of radio.

At the Record Plant, Old And In The Way appeared as a quartet: Peter Rowan on guitar, David Grisman on mandolin, Jerry Garcia on banjo and John Kahn on bass. Rowan handled the lead vocals with help from Grisman and Garcia on the harmonies. They played about 40 minutes, playing 9 songs. 8 of them were traditional, and the one original was an instrumental which would not have sounded out of place. There were no contemporary songs about dope, Indians or moonlight.

Hippie Bluegrass: 1973
By early 1973, Jerry Garcia was an established attraction in Bay Area clubs. He wasn't a huge draw, particularly, but Garcia and Merl Saunders could draw a few hundred people to a nightclub, even on a weeknight, and given the number of beers that could be sold, that was no small thing. Unless you had actually seen the Garcia/Saunders aggregation, you might not have a good idea of what a show was like, but there were plenty of clues. Merl Saunders had released two albums (Heavy Turbulence and Fire Up) where Garcia played an important role, even singing a few songs. Also, the Garcia/Saunders group had played on KSAN at Pacific High Recorders (actually Alembic Studios by that time), and KSAN regularly replayed tracks from the show on the air, so regular KSAN listeners had probably heard bits and pieces of the February 6, 1972 Garcia/Saunders performance. Thus, if you had a chance to see Garcia and Saunders, you had some idea of what you might be getting into.

The Bay Area rock community barely knew anything about country music, much less bluegrass. There was a vague idea that country music was unhip and popular with people who didn't like long haired hippies, but that was about it. A few open-minded listeners may have liked Johnny Cash or some other artists, but that was as far as it extended. As to bluegrass music, it meant nothing to Bay Area rock fans, and probably precious little to most country fans as well. I myself was aware that bluegrass was some sort of sub-genre of country music, but I had literally no idea of what it actually sounded like.

Jerry Garcia, to his credit, was actually doing something quite radical and unexpected with Old And In The Way. Garcia had defied music business orthodoxy by working in the New Riders Of The Purple Sage as a sideman, on the pedal steel guitar. His penchant for playing local bars with Merl Saunders was equally unprecedented. For the most part, Dead fans had learned about the New Riders by seeing them open for the Dead, and the Riders sound was in line with the then-current Workingman's Dead. The Garcia/Saunders group, while a stand-alone entity, still featured substantial doses of extended electric guitar playing by Jerry, so it was still only one standard deviation away from the Dead. Old And In The Way? Garcia played banjo, a decidedly unhip instrument in rock circles, and the band had a traditional bluegrass sound, and almost no rock fans in the Bay Area knew a thing about bluegrass. If they did, they probably dismissed it as 'hick music.'

By debuting Old And In The Way on KSAN, Garcia and the boys could both promote their new endeavor while making it clear what kind of music they were playing. Anyone who expected 13 minute versions of "Expressway To Your Heart" would be disabused of that notion quickly. KSAN promoted themselves by playing tracks from their recent live shows in the following week, so Old And In The Way probably got some airplay throughout the week. Thus when Old And In The Way started showing up in club listings in the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook (the 'Pink Section'), rock fans would have had some hint as to what to expect.

I don't think that Old And In The Way had a strategy meeting to discuss how to "brand themselves." However, I think Garcia had a standing offer from Tom Donahue, the founder of KSAN (and KMPX before it), to appear on the radio, and the band realized they could capitalize on it. Old And In The Way's debut broadcast was probably a convenient accident, but once it was scheduled, there was no way that Garcia, Grisman and Rowan didn't know they were following in the footsteps of The Bluegrass Boys, The Stanley Brothers and dozens, if not hundreds, of other bluegrass bands.

Old And In The Way Radio Broadcasts
March 2, 1973: The Record Plant, Sausalito, CA
Old And In The Way debuted on the radio, playing 9 songs in the afternoon at the Record Plant to an invited audience of a few dozen. The quartet was playing the Lion's Share in San Anselmo that night, so the broadcast was implicit advertising for the event. The band played eight bluegrass standards and an original instrumental, which would have sounded like a traditional number. There were people in the Bay Area who were knowledgeable about bluegrass, but they weren't necessarily listening to KSAN in the afternoon. Most KSAN listeners were oblivious to country music, much less the specialized acoustic tangent that bluegrass represented. Fans who may have expected some laid back, funky guitar jams in the mode of Garcia/Saunders must have been pretty surprised.

April 21, 1973: The Record Plant, Sausalito, CA
Any doubts about Old And In The Way's strategy to popularize themselves like the Stanley Brothers are erased by this broadcast. In an approximately hour long show, the band plays 15 numbers. Fiddler Richard Greene is along for the broadcast, filling out the band's sound the way the members intended. Included in the set along with traditional material are four contemporary numbers: "Panama Red, " Wild Horses, " Lonesome LA Cowboy" and "Land Of The Navajo." To any bluegrass fans, this signaled that the group was not bound by convention; to the larger audience of regular KSAN fans, it signaled that Old And In The Way weren't some kind of museum piece. In fact, contemporary bluegrass bands were doing Bob Dylan songs and the like, so doing a Rolling Stones song ("Wild Horses") fit right into that, but it seemed pretty contrarian to the typical Bay Area rock fan at the time.

Once again, the band was playing The Lion's Share that night (it was even announced by the dj). In that respect, this performance was like some old Stanley Brothers tape, announcing their night's performance at the local Grange Hall. Only the lack of commercials for a flour company set them apart from old time bluegrass radio broadcasts. Well, and songs about dope.

A handbill from Homer's Warehouse in Palo Alto, from May 1973. Homer's Warehouse was located at 79 Homer Avenue, across the train tracks, as the inset map accurately depicts

July 24, 1973: Homer's Warehouse, Palo Alto, CA
Old And In The Way did not play that many shows. One of their regular gigs, however, was a quonset hut in Palo Alto called Homer's Warehouse, at 79 Homer Avenue. It's my belief that Homer's Warehouse was the site of a mystical venue called The Outfit, but in any case it would have been near it. Old And In The Way had played Homer's Warehouse right after their dual debut at The Record Plant and The Lion's Share (Lion's Share had been March 2-3, and Homer's was March 4). After a May 18 show, and a number of Garcia/Saunders shows, Old And In The Way returned to Homer's Warehouse on July 24.

The July 24, 1973 Old And In The Way was broadcast on the Stanford University radio staion, KZSU-fm (90.7). Stanford had plenty of financial resources, so their little student-run facility had the technology to broadcast live, albeit probably in mono. KZSU was only a 10-watt station, so the broadcast area was only Palo Alto and parts of some neighboring towns.

10 watts was enough for me, however. My personal introduction to bluegrass music was listening to Old And In The Way broadcasting their first set from Homer's Warehouse on a warm July night. I believe I anticipated the broadcast, since I used to listen to KZSU all the time, being just a few miles from the station itself. Thus I would have known that Jerry Garcia was performing on the radio, but I had no idea what the music sounded like until I heard it. I recall tuning in to hear "Panama Red" and "Lonesome LA Cowboy"--both songs mentioned dope, and that was cool to my 10th grade self--and it was fascinating to hear those songs turn up on a New Riders album later in the year.

In one sense, the Homer's Warehouse broadcast succeeded as intended with me. Before I heard it, I only had a foggy, unheard notion that bluegrass existed. Afterwards, I thought bluegrass was hip and cool, albeit mainly because Jerry played it and there were songs about weed. However, after the album came out in early 1975, it turned out that many people had the same experience, and like me, with more listening they came to appreciate the depth and complexity of bluegrass music.

Old And In The Way only broadcast their first set from Homer's Warehouse. All listeners were within driving distance, and they were all invited to come on down for the second set, to hear not only Old And In The Way but opening act Asleep At The Wheel, another fine band. Knowing what I know today, since it was about 11:00, I could have told my parents I had to walk the dog, and walked him over to Homer's Warehouse and hung out outside. I am reliably informed that Jerry and the gang hung out in the parking lot with some visitors, and me and my dog (RIP Xerox, wherever you are) could have been there. Since I didn't have a driver's license yet, however, I didn't realize how near Homer's Warehouse actually was.  No matter--I had become an Old And In The Way fan, even though I would not hear the group again until the album came out 18 months later.

October 5, 1973: Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA
This Friday night show has a weird manuscript history which I won't belabor here. The essence of it is that it was on Dennis McNally's original list, and I rejected it for various reasons which I no longer recall, which seemed logical at the time, so it did not make the list in Deadbase IX. I have since changed my mind, and decided that the show must have happened.

As confirmation, I have since been in touch with a fellow blogger who actually attended the show. More importantly, he recalls that Old And In The Way's performance was broadcast on the radio station KUSP, and it was announced from the stage [update: and now said blogger has his own amazing post about the show, complete with poster].

It's my contention that Grisman, Garcia and Rowan put together Old And In The Way for a single project, an album to be released on Round Records. That doesn't mean, incidentally, that they wouldn't have all been happy to get together again, but most bluegrass bands are more like film projects, a group of like minded souls who get together for a fixed period of time in order to produce something. In many cases, like the American Pie movies or Old And In The Gray, they may get together many times over a period of years, but each project is a separate iteration. Thus the band must have known that the Santa Cruz Civic show would be their last in a while--I'm leaving aside the Sonoma reschedule--and yet they still broadcast the show. I think Old And In The Way was committed to using the only free medium available to them, FM radio, to get themselves heard in anticipation of their album, even if the record itself turned out to be further away than anyone thought.

Aftermath
Old And In The Way finally released an album on Round Records in February, 1975, recorded by Owsley at the Boarding House in October 1973. Although the band was gone, the presence of Jerry Garcia caused a wide variety of fans to listen to the album with open ears, and Garcia rather unexpectedly had the sort of influence on bluegrass that he may have originally hoped for. All sorts of unexpected musicians found inspiration from the album. To name just one example, singer Mary Chapin Carpenter, not a performer one typically associates with bluegrass or Jerry Garcia, said that she heard Old And In The Way in college and it changed her mind about traditional music. For awhile, the album was reputed to be the best-selling bluegrass album of all time, although no doubt it has long since been eclipsed by the likes of Alison Krauss and Ricky Skaggs.

Why didn't any other bluegrass bands try this? The answer is simple: in order--no Jerry, and no KSAN. Many bands would love to play on the radio, but without a bona fide rock star in the lineup, that wasn't going to happen. Major rock stars did not play in bar bands in the 1970s, save for Jerry, Jorma and Jack, and Jorma and Jack only had Hot Tuna. On top of that, while many FM rock stations broadcast live shows in the early 1970s, few of them were as committed to the format as KSAN. I can only think of one other station (WLIR-fm in Hempstead, NY) who were so willing to give up air time to live broadcasts to hip but not necessarily commercial music, much less bluegrass on a rock station.

Old And In The Way was put together in late 1972 so three hippie pickers could play real bluegrass with a few twists that made it interesting for them. With no chance of playing for the all-but-nonexistent California bluegrass audience, and an uninformed rock audience, the band chose to follow the lead of their bluegrass forefathers and use the radio to promote their music. We're fortunate they did, since it left us a bit more of a legacy than we might have had otherwise, but it is yet another remarkable way in which Old And In The Way managed to change bluegrass and acoustic music by looking forward and backwards at the same time.