Jerry Garcia, The Top Of The Tangent, 117 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 1963-64 (Lost And Found)

Very likely the first ad for Jerry Garcia by name in any publication. Newly married Jerry and Sara Garcia open for Mike Cooney at The Top Of The Tangent on Friday and Saturday, May 3 and 4, 1963. From the Stanford Daily, Friday, May 3, 1963

In January 1961, Jerry Garcia was booted out of the US Army and relocated to the Palo Alto area. He hung out with various ne'er-do-wells, and after a while Garcia fell in with Robert Hunter, David Nelson and a few others. They were aspiring folk musicians, but there were hardly any places to play beyond the Stanford campus. By 1962 there were a few places on the Peninsula, but still none in Palo Alto. This changed in January 1963, when two bored doctors started to run a weekly folk club at a deli at 117 University Avenue called The Tangent. The music was presented in a room above the restaurant. The Top Of The Tangent held about 75 people, and they had shows on Friday and Saturday, along with a "Hoot Night" on Wednesdays. Jerry Garcia and his fellow aspiring Peninsula Folkies had a headquarters, and thus The Top Of The Tangent looms large in Grateful Dead history.

Early performances at The Top Of The Tangent have regularly been described in interviews by Jerry Garcia and others since the earliest days. Remarkably enough, relatively soon after trading Grateful Dead tapes became widespread, a few tapes of Garcia's aggregations playing at The Tangent turned up as well. Nonetheless, although the importance of The Top Of The Tangent was widely known, the venue itself remains clouded in myth.  Stanford University is Stanford, however, and while they digitized the archives of the student newspaper some years ago, it appears they have been recently upgraded. Suddenly the story of Jerry Garcia at The Top Of The Tangent comes into clearer focus. This post will take our newly-found information about Jerry Garcia and his friends at the Tangent and try and link it to other threads in Grateful Dead history.

The first ad in the Stanford Daily for The Top Of The Tangent, at 117 University, in the Friday, January 25, 1963 edition. "The Circle" was right across from the train station, and all locals and students would have recognized the location. Although The Tangent itself, a deli and later a pizza parlor, had been open for some time, the upstairs room had only opened as folk club that month.

Palo Alto, Stanford and Folk Music In The Early 60s
The city of Palo Alto was founded in 1875 on empty land to accommodate the forthcoming Stanford University, and the city and the campus have been intricately connected since the University opened in 1892. It is ironic, then, that downtown Palo Alto was quite far from the center of campus, and all but the sturdiest of undergraduates could not walk from school to the downtown area. As a result, by the mid-20th century, Palo Alto's downtown was far less of a university town than cities like Berkeley, Princeton or Chapel Hill.

However, one of the world's first shopping malls, the Stanford Shopping Center, had opened in 1955, triangulated between the Stanford campus and the downtowns of Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Businesses in downtown Palo Alto had suffered, and rents were cheap, so at least there was room for new ventures. McNally tells the story:

[Top Of] The Tangent started as an amusement for two bored young doctors, but it became, for two years, the home of folk music on the Peninsula. Stu Goldstein and David Schoenstadt were Stanford Hospital residents who knew nothing about folk music, but Max and Bertha Feldman's Palo Alto deli had a room upstairs, and it occurred to Stu and David to open a club there, using Pete Seeger's songbook, How To Make A Hootenanny, as their blueprint. They opened in January 1963, with open hoots on Wednesdays, and the winners playing weekends. The charge was a dollar fifty, and the performers got five or ten dollars. It quickly became Garcia's new musical home, [Garcia:], "a little community...a sweet scene." [p47]

In the early 60s, folk music appealed to college students. It's true, some non-college students liked folk music, too, but even those tended to be the sort of kids who were smart enough to consider college, but weren't particularly academically oriented. As far as commercial propositions went, then, if you were trying to make a dollar off folk music, there had to be college students nearby. So it's no surprise that the doctors chose a place that was at the end of University Avenue that was nearest to Stanford University. 117 University, at "The Circle," was at the foot of University Avenue, downtown Palo Alto's main street, and right across from the Southern Pacific Train Station.

The train station wasn't irrelevant either. Stanford, of course, had been founded by SP railroad magnate Leland Stanford, and the Palo Alto train station had been built to accommodate the university. Stanford students were always allowed to ride the SP trains for free, so Stanford always had a distinctly San Francisco orientation, since the students could get there so easily (to my knowledge, although the corporate parent of the SP Railroad was swallowed up sometime ago by the DRGW, Stanford students still ride the local trains [CalTrain] for free). The fact that the Tangent was in easy walking distance to the train station made it uniquely attractive to Stanford students.

The Stanford Daily was the campus newspaper. Since Stanford's central campus was at least a mile from downtown, the Daily was probably a primary source of information for the students. The Palo Alto Times was the town's daily paper, but it was a fairly stuffy publication, pretty good with state and national news but not exactly forward looking. It wouldn't have appealed to students, who had little contact with the town of Palo Alto anyway. The reputation of Stanford students, rightly or wrongly, was that they all preferred to go to San Francisco. Leaving aside how many of them had access to cars, if you were a student who was going to walk a mile to downtown Palo Alto, and you could stop halfway, at the train station, and go to San Francisco for free, what would you do?

The Daily appeared five days a week during the schoolyear, and one day a week when school was out. There was a certain amount of general news, mostly of the sort interesting to college students, and plenty of Stanford sports and reviews and previews of local events. The Daily was available on campus, and possibly a little bit around Palo Alto, but it was the best way to let Stanford students know what was up. So it's no surprise that Top Of The Tangent had a regular Friday advertisement, and that the Friday performance listings regularly described upcoming Tangent shows.

The Westport Singers, with Butch Waller and Herb Pedersen, and Janice Joplin, seem to have been the first performers advertised by name at the Top Of The Tangent, in the April 5, 1963 Stanford Daily. 

Jerry Garcia's official debut at Top Of The Tangent appears to have been on February 22, 1963, with The Wildwood Boys. I assume that The Wildwood Boys had demonstrated their prowess at an earlier Wednesday hoot night, but since we have tapes from both Friday (Feb 22) and Saturday (Feb 23), they appear to have been booked for the weekend. On the first night, the Wildwood Boys were just Garcia, Hunter and Nelson, but on Saturday, they were joined (more likely rejoined) by bassist Norm Van Maastricht. There was no Friday edition of the Stanford Daily, because school was closed for Winter break. In any case, up until April, the ads for Top Of The Tangent just advertised  "Folk Singing." The first ad I found with performers' names was on April 5, 1963.

Presciently enough, the performers on the weekend of April 5 and 6 were The Westport Singers and one Janice Joplin. Both acts had probably succeeded at hoot night, since they were otherwise unknown. The Westport Singers, who I think played a kind of old-timey/bluegrass hybrid, were from the Berkeley area. Banjo player Herb Pedersen was the hot young player in Berkeley, and when he first met Garcia, Palo Alto's hot banjo-man, they apparently circled each other like wary gunfighters. They soon became friends, however, and Pedersen ended up joining Old And In The Way when it reformed after 1995. As for Butch Waller, still the leader of the great bluegrass band High Country, his place in Grateful Dead history was assured on May 1, 1965, when he joined in on Jerry Garcia's first acid trip.

And as for blues singer Janice Joplin, from Port Arthur, TX, her most famous appearance at the Tangent was the time she didn't show up, per McNally. It may have been this occasion. When she didn't make it, her accompanist, guitarist Jerry Kaukonen, allowed that he could play a little blues. It turned out that, indeed, he could, and he became a regular at Top Of The Tangent himself.

The Top Of The Tangent did not advertise every single Friday in the Daily, but they seem to have had an ad most of the time. As you can see, the layout and size of the ad were always identical, and the text of the performers would change each week. This was typical of the way repeat advertising was handled by newspapers at the time. Given the ancient nature of these performances, what seems remarkable at a distance is that actually we have tapes of any Jerry Garcia performances at the Tangent, much less several of them. Reading the Daily, however, the explanation becomes clear: in 1963 and 1964, everyone who played weekends at The Tangent was probably broadcast on the radio.

Stanford had its own radio station, KZSU, broadcasting  on 880-am. FM broadcasts on KZSU began in the spring of 1964, with the commercials deleted, from a 10-watt transmitter on 90.1 fm (and still are today, although with 500 watts). However, KZSU-am was only audible in the Stanford dorms. Still, in the early 60s, KZSU-am probably got a good hearing on campus, as most students lived in those dorms. The Daily posted the nightly KZSU schedule, and there was a regular folk music show at 9:00pm on Friday nights, called The Flinthill Special, sponsored and run by The Top Of The Tangent. Throughout  1963 and '64, the 9:00pm Flinthill Special folk show was advertised as live music from the Top Of The Tangent. I doubt it was truly live--my assumption is that the shows were taped each week, and highlights were broadcast the next week--but it meant that Stanford students got a taste of live folk music every week.

In 1963, the host of the live folk show from the Tangent was Ted Clare, and in 1964 it was Phil DeGuere. Ted Claire was a Stanford student who was friends with Rodney Albin and others. He was a sometime member of The Liberty Hill Aristocrats, the old-timey band with Rodney and his brother Peter, and a decade later he was still playing with Rodney in a band called Roadhog, who were ultimately joined by Robert Hunter in 1974. So one host of the Friday night show was definitely a fellow traveler. Philip DeGuere, of course, besides being the producer of Simon & Simon and many other hit TV shows, was also the co-director of the legendary Sunshine Daydream movie, filmed in Veneta, OR on August 27, 1972. So both of the hosts of the KZSU show must have facilitated a few welcome tape transfers.

Naturally, anyone reading this will immediately think "hey! Are the tapes still at KZSU?" The answer is probably, yes, I expect that the tapes are still there, but they have something else on them. Tape was expensive in those days, and tape recorders exotic, so tape was probably re-used over and over again. Since I only know of Garcia tapes having survived the Tangent, I think Mr. Clare and Mr. De Guere (and producer Pete Wanger, about whom more later) are the most likely culprits, and we thank them for that.

Jerry and Sara Garcia got married on April 25, 1963, and took a honeymoon trip to Yosemite National Park. Just two weeks later, they were opening the weekend's show at Top Of The Tangent. We are fortunate to have a tape of some of it. I expect the source was ultimately KZSU, since the penniless Garcias could not have afforded either a tape or a tape deck. The May 5, 1963 Stanford Daily ad that shows "Jerry and Sara" opening for Mike Cooney (the ad is up top) is probably the first time Jerry's name--any of it--was published in an ad as a performer.

The 1963 Monterey Folk Festival
One of the crossroads of pre-Grateful Dead history was the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival, held on the weekend of May 17-19. The series of relatively large ads in the Stanford Daily indicate that college students were a primary target for the festival. The most popular act, in fact, was probably the Friday night headliners, the trio of Peter, Paul and Mary. Today, however, the resonant booking is on Saturday night, with The Weavers, Bob Dylan and The New Lost City Ramblers.

The infamous story of the Monterey Folk Festival was that the Saturday afternoon event, listed here as "Folk Talent Show." According to McNally, The Hart Valley Drifters (Garcia, Nelson, Hunter on bass and Ken Frankel on mandolin) won Best Amateur Group. There was also a banjo and fiddle contest, a staple of bluegrass festivals. Bluegrass is fast-paced, difficult music, and there is a gunslinging element to playing it well. Similar to a "cutting contest" in jazz, the best players like to show off their chops. At a high profile event like this, everybody's six guns were ready for shootin'.

The story, detailed by Blair Jackson, was that the ultra-competitive Jerry Garcia came in second. Worse, for Jerry, was that he came in second to a frailer, the same Mike Cooney that Jerry had opened for two weeks earlier at the Tangent. Frailing is "old-timey" banjo, tasteful but not nearly as difficult as the three-finger style pioneered by Earl Scruggs in Bill Monroe's band. For a three-finger picker like Jerry to lose to a frailer on a judge's decision had to seriously rankle. The "outtakes" to Blair Jackson's books include some dismayed comments from judge Rodney Dillard (an excellent bluegrass musician himself), cranky that he still had to defend his decision 35 years later. 

Garcia's disappointment aside, there was plenty of great artists at the festival that directly or indirectly influenced Garcia and the Dead over the years, such as Doc Watson, Mike Seeger and Lightnin' Hopkins (on Saturday afternoon, the "Country Boys" were actually the White Brothers, with Clarence White). However, the road not taken was described by McNally, as Garcia recalls leaving before Dylan had even finished his set. Hunter says the sound was lousy, and perhaps it was, but Garcia was a purist, too, and not interested yet in "new music." Neither Garcia nor Hunter had really heard or heard of Dylan at this time.

The Black Mountain Boys, with Jerry Garcia, David Nelson, either Eric Thompson or Sandy Rothman and an uncertain bassist (possibly Norm Van Maastricht), played Top Of The Tangent on February 7 and 8, 1964

By early 1964, Garcia's bluegrass band had evolved. Hunter had been unceremoniously fired, if "not being told that you weren't in the band when you came to rehearsal" counts as fired, and he had moved to Los Angeles. On board was Eric Thompson and/or Sandy Rothman, depending on availability. Bluegrass bands didn't make any money, so it was hard to make gigs, not least since both Eric and Sandy were actually based in Berkeley. On February 7 and 8, 1964, the Black Mountain Boys were headlining the Top Of The Tangent (along with "the blues of Kellery Powers"). Tickets were $1.25. There were shows at 9, 10:30 and 12:00. The assumption here seems to be that college kids would drop in on a date, or to hang out, stay for an hour and move on.

The Black Mountain Boys and Jerry Kaukonen are at the Tangent on March 6 and 7, and Jesse Fuller was at The Offstage. From the March 6, 1964, Stanford Daily.

A month later, the Black Mountain Boys headlined at Top Of The Tangent on March 6 an 7, 1964. This time, they were joined by "folk artist Jerry Kaukonen." We know Eric Thompson was in the band at this time, because he seems to have been responsible for the tapes that exist. Both Eric and Sandy are referenced on the extant tapes. However, its important to remember that bluegrass bands weren't rock bands, and performer could casually step on and off stage as they saw fit. Early 60s folk and bluegrass groups did not have nearly the fixed lineups that were engendered by electric groups such as The Beatles. With amplifiers and trap drums, a band had to be organized; with just one mic at the Tangent, and a tiny room, anyone good enough could be invited on stage, assuming they had brought their axe.

Mothe McRee's Jug Band opens for Ken Carter, on May 1 and 2, 1964, at the Top Of The Tangent in Palo Alto. The Stanford Daily ad (from May 1 '64) says "Minors Welcome," which implird a change in poicy

Sometime in early 1964, the Tangent had closed for a while for remodeling. When it reopened, they had pizza, at the time a fairly exotic food. Notice that the May 1, 1964 Daily ad now says "Folk Music and Pizza." In April, 1964, Jerry Garcia had let the Black Mountain Boys lapse, since they had no gigs. Garcia played the occasional bluegrass gig when he could find one, but there was no money in it and very few players of Garcia's caliber. Jug band music was a different matter. It was good music, but you didn't have to be an expert to play it. This weekend show at Top Of The Tangent may be the first advertised Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band show.

The Stanford Daily listing from May 1, 1964 for the Mother McRee show at the Top Of The Tangent

Like most newspapers, the Stanford Daily listed the shows of its advertisers in its roundup of local events. The May 1, 1964 edition includes some intriguing detail

The Tangent reopens this weekend with singer Ken Carter and Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions. New features are a pizzeria and room downstairs for people under 21. The same show will play in both rooms at 8:45, 10:30 pm downstairs, 9:30, 11:15 upstairs. Hoots and auditons will now be held every Wednesday evening. $1.25, 75 cents with discount card.

We learn a number of interesting things about the Tangent here. First of all, because of the timings, we know that the opening act would play downstairs and then upstairs, and would still be performing up there while the headliner was downstairs. Folk music was not particularly loud, so this was actually plausible, but it seems strange to modern fans.

More critically, it appears that the Tangent itself is trying to expand its market to include people under 21 as well as over. It's not clear to me why the insistence that there will be an upstairs and downstairs show is so critical. We know that Bob Weir and many others who were not 21--and certainly didn't look 21--had been regulars at the Tangent. It may be that after the remodel, the Tangent started to serve beer. Once there was beer, there had to be a distinction between upstairs and downstairs, at least officially.

Palo Alto has always had a peculiar relationship with liquor. Leland Stanford had originally wanted the town of Mayfield to host his university, but they refused his condition that they close all the saloons. Instead, Leland Stanford and his partner Timothy Hopkins bought up 75,000 acres between Mayfield and Menlo Park, and the dry town of Palo Alto was founded. Palo Alto laws required that there be no saloon within a mile of campus limits. When prohibition came, Mayfield merged with Palo Alto anyway (Mayfield's downtown was on California Avenue, the future and now-past site of the Keystone Palo Alto).

After Prohibition, bars opened a mile from campus--conveniently, the old Mayfield was just over the limit, and the county line was a mile away, in East Palo Alto. But downtown Palo Alto did not have a bar until--this is not a typo--1981. This helps to explain why decades of Stanford undergraduates were so anxious to go to San Francisco instead. Palo Alto residents like my parents were satisfied with this, because they did not want the sleepy downtown to become infested with sleazy bars that were open late. However, per California law, restaurants were allowed to serve beer and wine. This meant that a place like The Tangent, which served food, was one of the few places to get a beer in downtown Palo Alto, since they did not have to compete with any bars.

117 University Avenue, Palo Alto, as it looked in 2006. At the time, it was a dive bar (by PA standards) called Rudy's. The upstairs was only accessible by a door on the right (in the center of the photo), with the new address of 119 University. 

The Jug Band played a famous gig in July 1964 (The Daily did not advertise it), recorded and preserved by KZSU producer Peter Wanger, and rescued by his brother some years later. The live recording and subsequent interview with Jerry Garcia that was released is the only officially released trace of the folk music at the Tangent in 1963 and 1964, even though it appears that it happened every weekend.

In the end, it probably didn't matter. Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions went electric, as we know. The Tangent itself was open as late as 1969, after which it became The Full Circle. However, after January 1965 there were only periodic scheduled shows at Top Of Tangent, mostly improvisational theater. Casual hoot nights seemed to exist intermittently for the balance of the 60s, and indeed The Warlocks actually showed up at the Tangent a few times in Summer '65, because there was nowhere else for them to play.

However, by 1967, the action moved next door to a club called The Poppycock, at 135 University, but it too did not last beyond 1970. For many years, the building at 117 University Avenue was a pleasant, low-key bar called Rudy's, but it closed around 2013. The upstairs part now has a different entrance and a different address (119 University). Last I looked, there was some sort of high-tech startup there, but they had already moved to San Francisco, just like those who had come before them.

July 2, 1967, El Camino Park, Palo Alto, CA: Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival and Be-In (Early Palo Alto)

Fans at the Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival and Be-In at El Camino Park in Palo Alto, on Sunday, July 2, 1967. The photo by Bill Howell is from the Stanford Daily of July 4 '67.

It is a classic trope of Grateful Dead historians to recall and describe their first Grateful Dead show. I can recall my first Grateful Dead show, a little bit, but if I had not spent many years trying to track it down, it might have been largely forgotten until now. Over the years, I confirmed bits and pieces of information about the show, but other facts were contradictory or uncertain. Indeed, my research was more archaeological than historical, taking a few known details and attempting to construct a complete picture.

My principal effort was focused on the date. However, thanks to the Internet--if only Classical Archeologists had access to some sort of Ancient Roman Internet, but I digress--I am happy to report that while I wasn't far off, many of my suppositions were actually incorrect. A premier Grateful Dead scholar found a detailed review of my first show, in the Stanford Daily campus newspaper, and now the facts are clear: on Sunday, July 2, 1967 at El Camino Park in Palo Alto, the Grateful Dead headlined the Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival and Be-In.

Some Historiography
I will deal with the history of the history of the Palo Alto Be-In in my appendix, in the interests of college professors who care about such things. However, a few key points are worth making at the beginning of this post. In 1972, I got an FM radio of my own, and my musical world expanded. I promptly listened to all my older sisters LPs, and I rapidly decided that the Grateful Dead were my favorite group. Within a few months, I recalled that I had already seen the Grateful Dead. I remembered that when I was 9 years old, my family had gone to El Camino Park, Palo Alto's oldest park (ca. 1914) and seen the Grateful Dead at a free Be-In. I distinctly recalled the park and the psychedelically painted drumset, along with hippie girls painting people's faces. This wasn't really a recovered memory, since it had only been five years earlier. I asked my older sister about it, and she recalled that the Dead had played "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl."

Whenever a performance date in Grateful Dead history is disputed, readers reflexively cite existing sources. In this case, however, every single citation has me as a source, without exception. The first Grateful Dead list that circulated were from the Paul Grushkin Book Of The DeadHeads, which was based on Dennis McNally's current list at the time (and itself based on the Janet Soto list). More informally, a list compiled by John Dwork circulated amongst various people. I had told both Dennis McNally and John Dwork about having seen the Grateful Dead in Palo Alto in 1967, and that is why early lists say "June 1967" without a date. I also made sure that the editors of Deadbase knew about it, and that is why "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" appears in Deadbase setlists for the Palo Alto Be-In (dated "June-xx-1967").

Once the Internet was fully operational, I made an extended effort to identify the exact date of the Palo Alto Be-In. Indeed, in a lot of ways, searching out dates such as this was one of the reasons I started this blog. In any case, for reasons I will detail below I came to the conclusion that the likely date of the Palo Alto Be-In was Saturday, June 24, 1967. Subsequently, this date has been accepted as definitive and circulated in various sources, such as Dead.net. I can say confidently that I was the source, not just because I was the only person interested, but because since I now know the date was wrong, I can say with certainty that no one independently confirmed my research.

The July 4 1967 Stanford Daily had a relatively detailed news article about the Sunday July 2 Be-In at Palo Alto's El Camino Park (text reproduced below)

The Stanford Daily, July 4, 1967
The Stanford Daily was the campus paper for Stanford University. Per its name, it appeared 5 days a week during the school year, and once a week the rest of the time. Stanford being Stanford, and all, they have digitized their archives and seem to have continually improved their search function. As a result, a professionally trained researcher was able to find a news article about the Grateful Dead's appearance in Palo Alto, repeated here in its entirety.

Free Sounds, Free Snacks, Free Sun Highlight Be-InSunday the Free University and The Experiment staged their Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival and Be-In at Palo Alto Park from 1 to 6 p.m. The action started promptly at 1:00 with four bands, the Anonymous Artists, the New Delhi River Band, the Solid State, and the Good Word supplying entertainment for the crowd. Gradually listeners grew from a few hundred to a few thousand. Beads, flowers, headbands, bells, painted faces, and multi-colored clothing were in abundance on Be-In participants. Smiles and happy laughter came from all directions during the easy-going afternoon. Free oranges and punch were provided by the Free University and The Experiment, while wandering participants also gladly surrendered their refreshments to those around them. One incident which marred the pleasant atmosphere of the Festival occurred when a policeman found a young man with an American flag draped casually over his shoulder. He was beckoned aside by the policeman who took the flag away and inspected it for possible stains or tears. However, the flag-bearer ran away at the first opportunity, leaving the officer with the flag.  

The highlight of the afternoon came at 4:30 when the Grateful Dead stepped on stage. As the group launched into "Dancing in the Street," the crowd of 4,000 moved closer to the stage. After coaxing from the "Dead," some of the crowd started dancing in a large circle, holding hands and swirling around. Snake dance lines wound through the crowd while tamborines, marracas, kazoos, and bells kept the beat of the music. The "Dead" kept up the performance for about a half hour, and then promised to come back for more. After they left the stage, the audience settled down and listened to some blues and more psychedelic music from the other bands. At the Be-In, the Free University provided tables for class enrollment and sold copies of various underground publications.

If you click on the link, you will see some contemporary photos. One of the photos has an intriguing caption:

The typical Be-In crowd was on hand Sunday at El Camino Park. The crowd includes those who are seriously involved in the aims of FUPA and The Experiment and the clean-cut teenagers who wish they had the guts and don't.

A cryptical poster for the May 14, 1967 Be-In at Alma Park in San Jose, featuring Country Joe and The Fish, The New Delhi River Band, Sweet Smoke, The Anonymous Artists Of America and Wakefield Loop

What Do We Know?

El Camino Park was an athletic field across from both The Stanford Shopping Center and ‘El Palo Alto’ (the tall tree that gave the city its name). The Park (at 100 El Camino Real) was at the intersection of Palo Alto Avenue, Alma Street and El Camino Real at the Palo Alto/Menlo Park border, and within easy walking distance of downtown. It is Palo Alto’s oldest park, first open in 1914. As a metaphor for the history of the Grateful Dead, El Camino Park was perfect: it was within walking distance of both The Tangent (at 117 University Avenue in Palo Alto) and Magoo's Pizza (at 639 Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park), as well as Kesey's Perry Lane cottage, The Chateau and Dana Morgan Music, so the whole arc of the Grateful Dead's history was as near as could be.

Palo Alto and Stanford University were less politically explosive than UC Berkeley across the bay, but no less embedded in the 1960s. There were two main activist groups in the Palo Alto area. One was called "The Experimental Group", or sometimes just "The Experiment," based at Stanford University. There was also a group of people who founded the Mid-Peninsula Free University, known as the MFPU, and colloquially as "Free U." Both of these groups were trying to provide what they saw as a relevant, alternative education not constrained by the traditional boundaries of a University. While The Experiment was based on campus, and Free U off campus, many of the participants were the same people. The instructors for both movements included both University Professors and regular people in the community. By early 1967, The Experiment and MPFU had merged, and they decided to hold a Be-In in Palo Alto as a fundraiser.

The story of MPFU in Palo Alto is an interesting one, but outside the scope of this blog. Suffice to say, the notion that Universities should and could teach something other than just traditional disciplines came pretty directly from the Free U. On one hand, this opened up wide pedagogic vistas for professors from diverse disciplines to take new approaches to their classes. On the other hand, the idea that "Basket Weaving" was a legitimate subject for higher education--your mileage may vary--also came directly from the Free U, as a look at their earliest catalogs will tell you.

On January 14, 1967, the first Human Be-In was held at the Polo Grounds in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The name "Be-In" was both a play on and a distancing from the traditional campus events protesting Civil Rights and the Vietnam War: Sit-Ins, Teach-Ins, Do-Ins and so on. The Human Be-In was implicitly detached from politics, much to the dismay of the Berkeley activists like Jerry Rubin who spoke there. In a real but informal way, despite there being no Internet, Be-Ins caught on. By June of 1967, Be-Ins had been held in Los Angeles (Griffith Park), Vancouver (Stanley Park), San Jose (Alma Park), New York and elsewhere. San Francisco bands showed up wherever they could. In many cities throughout 1967, particularly those near college campuses, there would be a little "Be-In" with a local band, but it was no less real to the participants, even if it had no Fillmore groups.

Since the network news had covered the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, the music industry caught the wave, and it all led to the Monterey Pop Festival on the weekend of June 16-18, 1967. All of the San Francisco bands, with only the barest of record sales, if that, were high profile guests with hip acts from London, Los Angeles and New York. Attendance at the Monterey Fairgrounds was somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000, far more than anyone had anticipated. After Monterey Pop ended, the Dead's crew cheerily absconded with the rented Fender amps. According to Rock Scully and a few others, they used the amps to put on free concerts for a short while. The Palo Alto Be-In was clearly one of these events. After a while, Scully contacted Fender and told them in which warehouse their borrowed amps were located, and invited them to pick them up. Scully thoughtfully added, "if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to where flowers in your hair."

Just a few days earlier, on June 28, 1967, the New Delhi River Band had played a lunch time show at the ritzy Cabana Hyatt House on El Camino Real. History has no record of who was Miss Boutique

The Warlocks, The New Delhi River Band and Some Palo Alto History
The members of The Warlocks had lived in Palo Alto prior to 1965, even though many of the most famous events in band history took place in nearby Menlo Park. On December 18, 1965, the Grateful Dead had played the Palo Alto Acid Test at a then-new club called The Big Beat (the story of which is told in fascinating detail in David Browne's new book So Many Roads).  Still, The Grateful Dead had left Palo Alto behind in February 1966, leaving first for Los Angeles and then returning to the Haight Ashbury. The Dead had played Stanford University once, at Tressider Memorial Union deck on October 14, 1966, but they had not played Palo Alto proper. This isn't surprising--there were no venues in Palo Alto for them to play.

David Nelson, a co-conspirator of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter since early 1962, had "gone electric" a little later than his friend Jerry. However, in mid-1966, Nelson had founded the New Delhi River Band, which had sort of become the leading psychedelic band in the South Bay, however dubious and unremunerative an honor that might have been. I have made a study of the long-hidden history of The New Delhi River Band, and suffice to say by mid-1967 they were at the high water mark for a local band. The NDRB included bassist Dave Torbert and future Kingfish drummer Chris Herold along with Nelson (guitarist Peter Schultzbach and singer John Tomasi were also members). No recordings of the band have yet surfaced--Nelson says he has some--but all accounts say they were a fine psychedelic blues band.

Garcia, Nelson and Robert Hunter had formed the bluegrass trio The Wildwood Boys in 1962. Five years later, Hunter was in New Mexico, but both Garcia and Nelson were playing guitar in psychedelic blues outfits. The Dead had an album and were Fillmore and Avalon headliners. The New Delhi River Band were just headliners at the Fillmore of the South Bay, The Barn in Scotts Valley, an important and now-lost venue. Here they were playing for free in front of 5000 people, where it had all began. It had to seem like big things were just around the corner. And they were, although not in the way that everyone might have envisioned.

Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival and Be-In, El Camino Park, Palo Alto, CA: New Delhi River Band/Solid State/The Good Word/Anonymous Artists Of America/Grateful Dead
Although details about the Palo Alto Be-In have been hard to come by, quite unexpectedly several rolls of film turned up. Happily, they are in the safe hands of the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz, and can be viewed in detail by anyone so inclined. If only every Dead show had 145 photographs.

From the photos, we can see pictures of the Grateful Dead performing, along with another group, The Anonymous Artists Of America. According to an eyewitness from an earlier post of mine on this subject the AAA (as they were known) came on after the Dead. Given the newspaper article, it makes sense that the Dead played from about 4-30-5:00pm, and then the AAA came on to end the event. So it seems that the photographer arrived at the show with the Dead, and stayed until the end, which is why there are no photos of the earlier bands. [update: careful analysis from a Commenter shows that the photographer must have been there the whole time, but he seems to have focused on the Dead. There appear to have been several other bands, but not pictures of all of them performing. Two bands preceded the Dead, neither of them NDRB or Solid State. AAA seems to have been after the Dead, and there was at least one other band after that, but impossible to discern more than that. There was also a peculiar band playing ornate marching band instruments that performed from a flatbed truck). 

The Anonymous Artists Of America were formed by a bunch of Stanford University dropouts. They had an electronic music device, a sort of primitive synthesizer called a Buchla Box, designed by electronic music pioneer Don Buchla. The AAA lived in a giant, crumbling mansion in the San Bruno Mountains that used to belong to a railroad baron. The AAA weren't really very good at their instruments, by their own admission, but they focused on being creative. The AAA was very hooked into the Prankster/Underground scene, and indeed they had performed at the infamous Acid Test Graduation on Halloween 1966.

The AAA also played regularly at The Barn in Scotts Valley. Often the New Delhi River Band would headline Friday nights, while the AAA would headline on Saturday. The members of AAA are pretty obscure today, but one of the singers was Jerry Garcia's wife Sara. After Jerry and Sara had split up, Sara--a Stanford dropout herself--had left the Pranksters and joined up with the AAA. So it was no surprise to see them at the Palo Alto Be-In.

I have to assume that The New Delhi River Band and Solid State started off the Be-In. [update: a careful look at the complete photo set shows that the first two bands were neither New Delhi River Band nor The Flowers. So there must have been more groups, and those two might have come on at the end, after The Dead and AAA. It's plain that the Daily writer didn't really know, and was taking someone else's word for everything but the Dead performance he witnessed]. If it really started at 1:00, and the Dead came on at 4:30. something else must have filled up some time. Palo Altans who attended many of the El Camino Park Be-Ins have the traditionally vague memories, and they recall seeing Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver and others speaking at them. However, I don't know which events they might have been. More likely, speakers from the Free U filled up time between acts.

Solid State was the new name of a local psychedelic jazz rock band formerly called The Flowers (sometimes just Flower). They had been hooked in with Ken Kesey, not surprisingly, since tenor saxophonist Paul Robertson was one of Ken Kesey's attorneys. Another member of Solid State was bassist Gordon Stevens, whose family ran Stevens Music in San Jose (at 1202 Lincoln Ave in the Willow Glen neighborhood), where all the San Jose band like The Syndicate Of Sound got their gear. For much of the Spring, The Flowers had been the house band at The Poppycock, Palo Alto's first psychedelic club. Even I don't know anything about The Good Word.

So the Grateful Dead came on at 4:30, per the Stanford Daily. This makes sense to me, too. My family must have heard about it somehow, and while my Dad didn't really care about rock music he was interested in culture. If there was an interesting cultural event happening a mile from our house, then he was intetested. So it makes sense that we got there at 4:00 or something, and heard the Grateful Dead play, and then left. Based on the review, and my sister's memory, perhaps the Dead only played "Dancing In The Streets" and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl."

An MPFU newsletter that advertised a June 23, 1968 El Camino Park Be-In featuring The Sons Of Champlin, Charlie Musselwhite and Berkeley's Notes From The Underground

Aftermath
There were several more free concerts at El Camino Park. The Steve Miller Band and The New Delhi River Band headlined another Free U event on October 1, 1967. There were two more in 1968, one on June 23 that featured the Sons Of Champlin, and one on September 29 that featured Steve Miller (with guest Carlos Santana), Frumious Bandersnatch, Phoenix and possibly others. After that, however, even tolerant Palo Alto had had its fill, and there were no more free concerts in El Camino Park.

The MidPeninsula Free University had a tumultuous history, but it pretty well came to an end by 1971. David Nelson and then Dave Torbert had joined Jerry Garcia in the New Riders Of The Purple Sage. A close look at the Be-In photos shows John Dawson hanging out backstage, so he was there, too. So not only the Dead, but some other people at the El Camino Park Be-In went on to rock stardom, even if the AAA, the New Delhi River Band, The Good Word and Solid State are largely lost in the mists of time.

There were only two more rock events at El Camino Park. In 1972 there was a concert featuring the Indian Fusion group Shanti. And on June 8, 1975, Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders headlined at El Camino Park over Kingfish and the Rowan Brothers. The concert was not free, but it was a mellow event by all accounts. Did Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Dave Torbert recall that they had played before, for free, on a Summer's Day in 1967?

Appendix: Historiographical Error Log
Since all the information about the Palo Alto Be-In comes from me, I thought I would briefly parse out how I came to my earlier incorrect conclusions. In a post some years ago, I proposed that the correct date was Saturday, June 24, 1967, and the groups were the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and The Holding Company and The Sons of Champlin.

Because of Rock Scully's assertion that they borrowed the Monterey Pop amps, used them and returned them shortly after, I knew that the Palo Alto Be-In had to be soon after the Monterey weekend of June 16-18. There was a big event on Wednesday, June 21, the Summer Solstice, so it seemed logical that the Dead would play the next weekend as well.

One of my eyewitnesses said he thought that the Palo Alto show was the day before Jimi Hendrix played for free in the Panhandle, and since that date was known to be Sunday, June 25, Saturday the 24th fit nicely.

The same eyewitness, a Palo Alto resident who went to most of the Be-Ins, couldn't remember whether it was the Dead or Big Brother. He admitted that it wasn't such a big deal to him: Jerry Garcia had been his guitar teacher, so although he liked the Dead, he had already seen them a bunch of times. He did distinctly recall the Sons Of Champlin, but now I think he was thinking of the 1968 show.

Various other people on Facebook posts and the like said that Big Brother played El Camino Park, which made it seem like they played. Based on Big Brother's schedule, the Palo Alto Be-In seemed the only likely candidate, so I figured they both played. It now seems that Palo Altans who recall Big Brother at El Camino were just imagining it. Big Brother did play a very obscure show at the relatively nearby Foothill Junior College, but it would be hard to mistake one place for the other.

Grateful Dead Rehearsal Spaces, 1965-1995

A poster for an October 15, 1966 concert at the Sausalito Heliport on Bolinas St. Nothing is known of the concert, but the Dead ended up using the Heliport as a rehearsal hall for sevaral months in late '66-early '67.

The Grateful Dead were famous as a band who eschewed rehearsal, and yet in the early days at least their rehearsals were a critical source of discovery and innovation. I could find no comprehensive list of the band's rehearsal spaces over the years, so I made a list myself. There are some peculiar gaps, and the gaps may tell us a number of interesting things about the Grateful Dead's intentions and plans. The goal here is to create a list of spaces that were used primarily as the band's rehearsal space, where equipment was set up more or less permanently, at least if the band was not on the road.

This little project has been more slippery than it appears. No one writes the history of rehearsal halls, and there are no posters, ads or reviews to provide context or confirmation. There are the occasional tapes, of course, but even they offer almost nothing about the space itself. With no audience to talk to, any between song chatter says nothing about location, so any identifying details remain invisible. Thus this list is mostly sparse, lacking in color, and probably both incomplete and inaccurate. Anyone with further details, corrections, insights or useful speculation is encouraged to add them in the Comments or email me (note: thanks to some amazing Commenters, this post has been substantially updated since its original publication).

The back of what was Dana Morgan's music store on Ramona Street, as it appeared in 2009

Back Room, Dana Morgan's Music Shop, 536 Ramona St, Palo Alto, CA
According to McNally, members of Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions started fooling around on electric instruments as early as the Summer of 1964. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Pigpen  all worked at Dana Morgan's music store on Ramona Street, and they would play instruments in the back room, facing the alley. Per McNally, one of Garcia's folkie banjo students was dismayed to see Garcia playing electric back there as early as December 1964. Once Kreutzmann came on board as drummer, and the store owner's son was added on bass, the Warlocks were born.

Various suburban houses, Palo Alto and Menlo Park, CA
After a month of unsatisfactory performances by bassist Dana Morgan Jr, he was replaced by Phil Lesh. Owner Dana Morgan, who didn't like the band's sound anyway, reclaimed the instruments and shooed all his instructors away. Garcia and Weir, at least, found new students and access to equipment at Guitars Unlimited in Menlo Park, but the fledgling group had nowhere to practice. According to McNally, they rehearsed anywhere they could: at Sue Swanson's parent's house in Menlo Park, at Phil's apartment in Palo Alto and presumably other places.

2504 San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, site of the Questing Beast, where the Dead almost rehearsed in 1966. Don't google the site at work.

The Questing Beast, 2504 San Pablo Ave, Berkeley, CA
According to legend, the Warlocks new patron Owsley Stanley intended to move the band to Berkeley, where they were to rehearse at a place called The Questing Beast. The Questing Beast was a sort of psychedelic folk club, with suitably far out painting on the walls, and Owsley was reputed to have been at least a regular customer, if nothing else. 2504 San Pablo had formerly been the site of the Cabale, the folk club where Garcia and others had seen the influential Jim Kweskin Jug Band in March 1964, so it wasn't without history. And the history of The Questing Beast is indeed interesting, but whether or not Owsley truly intended to move the band there or that was just a fable, he led them to Los Angeles instead, and the Grateful Dead had no connection to the Questing Beast.

"Pink House" Los Angeles, CA
While in Los Angeles, the band presumably rehearsed in the large, pink house where they stayed. According to McNally, it was located just off Western Boulevard, in the North Adams District at 2511 3rd Avenue.

The Straight Theater, 1702 Haight St, San Francisco, CA
After several weeks in Los Angeles, the Grateful Dead and their friends moved to a crumbling mansion in Marin known as Rancho Olompali. McNally has them rehearsing at Olompali, and then moving rehearsals to the Straight Theater after that, but further research has revealed that to be out-of-sequence. Ace Commenter Yellow Shark sorts it out:

I think the proposed timeline for the Straight Theatre is a little out. I was always pretty certain that by the time of the May 19, 1966 Straight benefit the Grateful Dead were already using the Straight as a rehearsal hall and that the benefit (held at the Avalon Ballroom) featured those acts that were using the Straight to rehearse (The Grateful Dead, The Wildflower, Michael McClure (at that time working with the Wildflower as a lyricist) and The Outfit). So my view was always that The Straight rehearsals were much earlier than suggested here.

Anyway, after reading what is a great post I thought I would check with Reggie to see if he could help with the timeline, and if he could shed any light on way the Grateful Dead stopped using the facility to rehearse. This was his reply:

"When we got into the Straight in early April 66 the Dead began rehearsing almost immediately. They rehearsed as I ripped out the first 26 rows of seating. Soon due to a combination of things like building the floor during the day rehearsals were scheduled at night. Then the QMS, the Outfit, and others rehearsed at night. The Dead moved on due to other factors like scheduling freedom and certain members of the Dead moving out of the Haight to Marin." 

The Straight Theater, at 1702 Haight at Cole, was an old movie theater in the Haight Ashbury district that many of the local hippies wanted to turn into a Fillmore-style ballroom. The city was against it, for the usual variety of reasons. The Grateful Dead had played a benefit for the Straight at The Avalon on May 19, 1966--strange that the Avalon was putting on a benefit for a future competitor, but such was hippie paradise. 

I do not know why the Dead left the Straight, nor precisely how long they rehearsed there, but McNally just says the situation "fell apart" (p.152).  The locals considered the Straight a community resource, and probably were more than happy to hang out watching the Grateful Dead rehearse. That was probably not what the Dead wanted, however, and the security for their equipment was probably poor. Since Quicksilver and The Outfit were rehearsing there as well, it probably meant that equipment had to be moved around as well. Bands don't like to have to pack up their equipment each night at a rehearsal hall, as it cuts into time that could be spent rehearsing, which would have already been constrained by the shared rehearsal space. However, the fact that the Dead and Quicksilver shared rehearsal space so early in their career accounts for the extraordinary closeness of some of the members and crew over the years.

Rancho Olompali, CA
Yellow Shark: 

 I think it was the commute from Rancho Olompali that led the Grateful Dead to drop the Straight Theatre for rehearsals sometime in the summer. The well documented “party” on May 22 followed soon after the benefit and I suspect that by early June the rehearsals were shifted up to Rancho Olompali. The rental lease on Rancho Olompali ran out sometime over the summer and there was a move up to Camp Lagunitas – perhaps in July. I do not know how well it lent itself to rehearsals. Perhaps this is the time slot for 895 O'Farrell? 

In any case, by June 1966 the Grateful Dead were able to leave their equipment set up where they lived, on the grounds of the Rancho Olompali mansion. "Rehearsal" may have been an inaccurate description of the Summer's events, but the band could play without interruption, when they desired to do that.

895 O'Farrell St, San Francisco, CA
After the end of their idyllic stay in Olompali, the Dead migrated over to an unused Girl Scout camp on Arroyo Road in the town of Lagunitas. At the time, while towns in Eastern Marin, like San Rafael, were prosperous suburbs full of San Francisco commuters, Western Marin was still an empty, largely agricultural area, and there were plenty of underused spaces. However, while the camp could house the band and their friends, they were not allowed to rehearse there for noise reasons. McNally said that was the trigger for rehearsing in the Straight Theater, but they must have rehearsed somewhere else.

Over the years, a building at 895 O'Farrell Street (at Polk) has been identified as a former Grateful Dead rehearsal hall. The building was the former site of a Pontiac dealership, among other things. It is two doors down from the Great American Music Hall. I had never been able to figure out when the band would have used it, but Yellow Shark's unraveling of the timeline for the Straight Theater seems to sort it out. The Dead rehearsed at the Straight in April and May 1966, then Rancho Olompali in June, and sometime in July they had to find a new place. I think the bands rehearsal hall in July and August 1966 was at 895 O'Farrell.

Some time after the Dead rehearsed there, 895 O'Farrell had a brief and peculiar history as a competitor to the Fillmore. In July 1967, the original four members of the Family Dog re-established themselves as the Psychedelic Cattleman's Association. They put on a weekend of shows and ran into trouble with the police. The venue re-opened in September 1967, but it was only open for about six weeks. The venue is mostly only known to poster collectors (for a good look at the posters, see our write-up here).

The final promoters of rock shows at 895 O'Farrell were two brothers from Antioch, CA, Jim and Artie Mitchell. They discovered another, more profitable enterprise for the theater, however, and the venue has had a lucrative, sordid and sad history ever since. Don't google it at work.

Gale Garnett's second Columbia album Sausalito Heliport. The cover photo was probably not taken at the Heliport, however.

The Heliport, Bolinas St, Sausalito, CA
According to McNally, when the rehearsal space at the Straight Theater was no longer viable, roadie Laird Grant managed to get the Grateful Dead rehearsal space at the Sausalito Heliport. In the 1967-68 period, many San Francisco bands rehearsed at the Heliport. The noise caused by the helicopters insured no complaints from any neighbors about mere rock bands. Sausalito is right off the Golden Gate Bridge, so it wasn't inconvenient for San Francisco bands (or even Berkeley's County Joe And The Fish). Enough bands rehearsed at the Heliport that it was a sort of musicians hangout, with jam sessions occurring regularly. Singer Gale Garnett even entitled her second Columbia album Sausalito Heliport.

In late 1966, a very small number of concerts seemed to have been held at the Heliport, including one with the Grateful Dead on October 15, 1966 (the poster is up top). I think the Heliport was too hard to get to for 1966 hippies, as Marin was largely unpopulated in those days, and I don't think the Heliport was an appealing venue. My suspicion has always been that someone tried to put on a few concerts, which didn't succeed, but in so doing the bands figured out that they might have found a good rehearsal space instead, and the Heliport owners were happy to have paying clients. Based on what little information I have, the Grateful Dead seem to have been among the first bands to rehearse at the Heliport. Yellow Shark has some intriguing suggestions:

I believe that the band were already rehearsing at Sausalito Heliport by the time of the October 15, 1966 performance with the Transatlantic Railroad (I have never found out what the "TJ" stands for on the poster). The band had moved back to the City in early October and was living in 710 and the commute to the heliport was an easy one. Sausalito had by October 1966 a scene of its own growing with the Ark hosting regular performances, the No Name Bar which remains to this day and The Kingston Trio’s Trident – latter Horizons but now renamed to the Trident.

As far as I can tell, the Heliport is currently called The Commodore Center Heliport, and it is located on Bolinas Street, off Richardson Bay. about a mile Northwest of Gate 6, where the ferry boat Charles Van Damme was permanently docked (aka The Ark). Helicopters were supposed to be a big thing in the 60s--I firmly believed as a child that I would grow up to commute in a helicopter, and I'm still disappointed not to do so--so I think that when the Heliport was constructed in 1963 they anticipated considerably more traffic than they actually had, leaving numerous hangars free for other forms of aerial transport.

Reader Phil sent in this photo from the entrance to the Heliport, taken in June 2015

Another Commenter writes

The Heliport is just where you described it, clearly visible from 101 as you go north towards San Rafael. Although it no longer hosts band rehearsals to my knowledge, it seems to be much the same building as it was back when the Dead rehearsed there.

I believe the Dead rehearsed at the Heliport from the end of 1966 through about May 1967. There are a few famous Spring '67 Gene Anthony photos of Garcia, Mountain Girl and others at the Heliport. 

Warnecke Family Ranch, Healdsburg, CA
According to McNally, the Dead spent the month of May 1967 in Sonoma County: "Late in May, the band fled the city to John Warnecke's family ranch on the Russian River north of San Francisco near Healdsburg" (McNally p. 195). John Carl Warnecke Jr was a friend of the band, and he seems to be one of a number of people who worked with the band in trying to promote shows.  Canyon filmmaker Robert Nelson made a short film of the band in 1967, and parts of it were filmed at the Warnecke ranch.

That isn't even the interesting part. It seems that family patriarch John Carl Warnecke (1919-2010) became friends with John Kennedy at Stanford in the 1940s. Warnecke Senior trained as an architect, and did various commissions, including the 'Eternal Flame' at John F. Kennedy's gravesite. However, it also seems that Warnecke was the architect for the McHenry Library at UCSC, which was built in 1968. So that means while the Dead were at the Warnecke Ranch, the architect was working on the McHenry Library where the band's Archive ended up. Hey--Stanford, never head a chance, it was already implicit that UCSC would get the Archive.

In any case, as we know from the short film, the Dead built a platform on the Russian River where they could jam and rehearse, writing the song "Alligator" in the process. However, if the Dead had their equipment at the Warnecke ranch in May 1967, then it wasn't at the Sausalito Heliport. Thus I am fairly confident, though not absolutely certain, that the Dead gave up the Heliport as a rehearsal space in May 1967. Since they would spend much of the Summer of '67 on tour, this was probably a financial decision as much as anything else.

Members of the Dead hanging out at the New Ptrero, circa 1968 (via @Tripsntunes)

Potrero Theater, 312 Connecticut St, San Francisco, CA
In late 1967, the Grateful Dead got a  new rehearsal space, at the long-disused Potrero Theater, near 312 Connecticut St (at 18th St) in the Potrero Hill district. The theater had been constructed in 1913 as the Altair, but when it got sound equipment in the 1930s, it was renamed the New Potrero. It had closed in 1963, and had long fallen into disuse. The Potrero Hill neighborhood district was neither nor hip nor prosperous at the time, so it too was kind of forgotten (assuredly not the case today). Apparently, the theater was in terrible shape--according to Joel Selvin, Mountain Girl visited once, saw all the rats and never returned again. Nevertheless, the Grateful Dead rehearsed at the Potrero for about a year, and the rehearsals were in many ways the truest rehearsals that the band ever held.

Like all these things, it is difficult to parse out the timing, but it appears that the Dead moved into the Potrero shortly before Mickey Hart joined the band. Hart's arrival triggered an interest in actually working with difficult rhythms. Stories abound of the Dead rehearsing difficult numbers like "The Eleven" over and over, in order to get the feel for playing something that complex. In that sense, the work at the Potrero were true rehearsals, rather than just jamming or working on songs. The band was trying to get better as a band, and playing the same difficult parts over and over was a rare form of band discipline.

It was during the Potrero Theater period that the Grateful Dead went from Pretty Cool to Something Special. The psychedelic powerhouse shows of 1969 would not have been possible without endless rehearsal at the Potrero. After the Potrero, when they stretched out and jammed, the Grateful Dead were doing so from a foundation rather than a mere willingness to take a risk. Yet after the Dead left the Potrero, they never rehearsed that much again, and never in a disciplined fashion where they worked on developing as an ensemble. Once seems to have been enough.

warehouse, Novato, CA
The Grateful Dead officially moved out of 710 Ashbury in March 1968. Within a few months, every member of the band had moved to various locations in Marin County By the end of the Summer, rehearsing in San Francisco made little sense. Manager Bert Kagenson found them a warehouse near Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato, and that became the Grateful Dead's new base of operations. I do not know the exact location, and in any case it is probably a housing development now.

The principal function of the Novato warehouse was to store and work on the band's ever growing mountain of equipment. Owsley in particular liked to experiment. Fellow traveler Ron Wickersham was critical to these experiments, but Wickersham, unlike Owsley, was not on the Dead's payroll. Wickersham and his wife (then girlfriend) Susan started the Alembic Sound company. Alembic focused on live sound for rock and roll, modifying and creating instruments, amplifiers and other equipment for the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and ultimately many others. Alembic then moved out of the Dead's warehouse into their own facilities and studio.

I do not know how much the Dead rehearsed at the Novato warehouse. Honestly, I am not 100% certain that they rehearsed there at all. The one detailed description of a 1969 jam at their facility, by Fleetwood Mac road manager/soundman Dinky Dawson, actually desribes the location as Sausalito. Since Dawson had never been to California before, its entirely likely that he mistook Sausalito for Novato. However, it's also possible that the Dead had some other temporary facility in 1969--the Heliport?--in Sausalito.

My own feeling is that the Novato warehouse was used as a rehearsal facility at first, and ultimately got turned into a mad scientist workshop for Owsley. I think the Dead could rehearse there when they needed to, but for the most part they didn't. Around September 1968, approximately when they moved their equipment to Novato, the band also started recording at Pacific Recording in San Mateo. The Dead spent five months in the studio recording what was to become Aoxomoxoa. They spent over $100,000 recording in the studio, but the net result was that whatever 'rehearsing' they needed to do seems to have been done in the studio. Thus I believe the Novato warehouse was never really set up as a full-time rehearsal studio.

unknown building, Western Marin County, CA
Thanks to Commenters, it seems that Blair Jackson reported that the Dead abandoned Novato for an unknown place in Western Marin, near Pt. Reyes. Another Commenter makes the alert point that the band's office move to Fifth and Lincoln happens in April 1970, and it coincides with both the move to West Marin and the aftermath of the Lenny Hart debacle.

The Grateful Dead performed at the Santa Venetia Armory on December 29, 1966. By 1971, it appears they were rehearsing there.

warehouse off Francisco Boulevard, San Rafael or Santa Venetia Armory, 155 Madison Avenue, Santa Venetia, CA
When did the Grateful Dead abandon the Novato warehouse? It's unclear (update: see Comments). Where did they rehearse between 1971 and 1974? That too is unclear. Based solely on a Keith Godchaux rehearsal tape from September 1971, I am assuming that they rehearsed in the Santa Venetia Armory, at least at that time. According to Garcia's apocryphal story about meeting Keith and Donna Godchaux at the Keystone Berkeley, he invited Keith to the "rehearsal hall," and Keith was so good that Garcia phoned Bill Kreutzmann to come join them. According to McNally, the Dead's rehearsal studio was in a warehouse off Francisco Boulevard (p.411). This location would not have been far from the future site of Le Club Front on 20 Front Street.

What are we to make of the tape where Keith rehearses labeled "Santa Venetia Armory?" If the Dead rehearsed near Francisco Boulevard, why would they have worked with Keith at the Santa Venetia Armory? I see two possibilities:

1. the tape reference to Santa Venetia Armory is just incorrect. There is almost no way to check corroborating evidence for a rehearsal tape
2. The Dead rehearsed at the Warehouse, but they rented the Santa Venetia Armory to try out a new sound system. Touring with a grand piano was brand new for the Grateful Dead, and they had a substantial tour coming up. So perhaps they rented a genuine, if small, venue and tried out their stage setup

Santa Venetia is about 2 miles North of San Rafael (20 miles North of SF), but is almost a separate district of San Rafael.  The area is not incorporated, but it is a 'Census Designated Place,' a populated community without a government. It was conceived in 1914 of as a sort of luxury water-based community similar to Venice, Italy (hence the name--there is no "Saint Venetia"), but no serious development took place there until after WW2. The idea for canals was abandoned, but Santa Venetia had a seedy 60s bohemian history. Its most famous resident was the great author Philip K. Dick, who lived there from 1967-72.

The Santa Venetia Armory, at 155 Madison Avenue, was the National Guard Armory, and a regular site of “Teen” dances in the mid-60s.  It was used briefly for psychedelic rock concerts in 1966-67, before it was superseded by the Fillmore and the Avalon. The Armory itself may still be active, although it uses the address of 153 Madison.

NRPS Rehearsal Studio, San Rafael, CA
One of the intriguing gaps in this little history of Grateful Dead rehearsal spaces is the early 1970s. Other than the Godchaux tape, which may or may not be representative, I could only find one other reference to a rehearsal space.  It does raise the question as to how much the Grateful Dead actually rehearsed in the early 1970s. Perhaps they toured so much that they could just use soundchecks for rehearsal. In any case, any information about early 70s rehearsal spaces, however fragmented or vague, is of great interest.

The Grateful Dead were still writing a fair amount of material in the early 1970s--where did they learn to play each of those songs? I can imagine that some cover versions could be whipped up with some conversation and a quick run through at a soundcheck, but "Stella Blue" or "Eyes Of The World?" At the Maples Pavilion show on February 9, 1973, the Dead debuted seven new songs, and they must have practiced them somewhere.

Update: scholarly Commenter runonguinness made an important find, from an article by Charles Perry that was originally published in the Rolling Stone edition of November 22, 1973

Of course, any band needs a practice studio. Sometimes the Dead use the New Riders' studio, located in the San Rafael industrial neighborhood. The studio is rented, natch, from an old friend of the Dead's, Don Wrixman. He rents another part of the building to some woodcraftsmen, and yet another is the Dead's sound and lighting equipment warehouse. The original Dead warehouse, which the equipment has long since outgrown, is now a workshop for repairing electronic equipment and building speaker cabinets.
 
As for a practice hall for the Dead themselves, they might build one someday on a piece of land they own known as "Deadpatch". When Weir's home studio is complete,the band could fit there, though Weir built it - with some of the heaviest insulation ever put into a building - so he could practice by himself...

The pieces start to fall into place here. The New Riders were managed by the Dead, and they had a rehearsal studio, so the Dead could use it. However, they couldn't use it all the time, so the Dead periodically had to rent other spaces. At the time, the Dead's offices were on 5th and Lincoln in San Rafael, and Sam Cutler's Out Of Town Tours was at 1333 Lincoln, a few blocks North. I believe the NRPS staff offices were at about 2nd and Lincoln. (update: a Scholarly Correspondent [also the NRPS archivist] reports that the NRPS office was at 1212 Second St, between B and C. The band shared it [and management] with Commander Cody in the mid-70s, and finally gave up the building in 1981. It was an Old Edwardian house that got torn down in 2019).  I presume the rehearsal studio was across Highway 101, in the more industrial area where the Francisco Boulevard warehouse, and later Club Front, were located (update: our Commenter points out that the warehouse on Francisco Boulevard [above] may be the same as the NRPS studio. The Dead may have simply started sharing it with them) [update 2: the NRPS rehearsal space was on Irwin Street. It's not clear if it was the same one as referred to here].

[update 20230626: Jesse Jarnow figured out from interviewing Dead employees for the Deadcast that the "New Riders rehearsal studio and warehouse" was in fact 20 Front Street. Eventually the Jerry Garcia Band took it over and then the Grateful Dead.]

Stinson Beach Community Center, 32 Belvedere Ave, Stinson Beach, CA  
McNally alludes to the Dead having spent January of 1973 rehearsing, but he doesn't say where. He does mention a sad event in March, where Pigpen wants his picture taken with the band, and they refuse, as they are busy rehearsing for a tour. McNally identifies them as rehearsing at the Stinson Beach Community Center. 

Was this a temporary space, just for March? Had the band rented the Community Center earlier in the year, when they rehearsed the Wake Of The Flood material? Information about the Dead's rehearsals and rehearsal spaces in the early 1970s remains surprisingly scarce. I can imagine how the group might rent Stinson Beach Community Center for a few weeks at a time, but they can't have been using it as a permanent space, as it had too many other functions. Did the Dead still rehearse at the warehouse on Francisco Boulevard? The fact that they rented the Stinson Beach Community Center does hint that they did not have a permanent space suggests that the New Riders were busy at home, and that the Dead needed to use another space temporarily.


Stinson Beach is in isolated community in Western Marin. Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl lived there, and the Rowan Brothers lived nearby, which was responsible for the genesis of Old And In The Way. The Community Center's main assembly hall can accommodate about 200 people. The building seems to have been built in the 1960s. Since Stinson Beach is so small, it had to be be near Garcia's house. Old And In The Way even played a show here, one of their very last (on September 30, 1973), as a kind of warm up gig for their last few dates.

I am reliably informed that the Dead rehearsed the material for Mars Hotel in the studio, presumably as part of the recording process. I guess the unfinished feel to Mars Hotel songs comes from the fact that they learned and recorded the songs in a brief three-week stretch (March 30-April 19, 1974) at CBS Studios in San Francisco. This was a far cry from the ten days it took to record the mostly road-tested material for Wake Of The Flood (August 6-15, 1973 at The Record Plant in Sausalito). 

Ace's Studio, Bob Weir's house, Mill Valley, CA
Once the Grateful Dead gave up touring, any chance to sneak in rehearsals at soundchecks went away. It makes sense that the Dead needed their own space, and the studio above Bob Weir's garage seem to fit the bill. Nick Meriwether has suggested that the band encouraged the studio at Weir's for just this reason--without it they would have had nowhere to play. When the band moved into Ace's, it was as close a situation as they had had to the Potrero Theater. They weren't rehearsing to become a better band, as they had in 1968, but they weren't trying to record an album as quickly as possible, either. The many tapes that survive show a relaxed band exploring in a leisurely manner, another episode in the Grateful Dead's musical history that would not be repeated.

As everyone knows, the Grateful Dead worked up the material on Blues For Allah throughout the first several months of 1975, even if the final versions were recorded rather quickly. The Grateful Dead recorded four songs for the Reflections lp in August 1975 (I have a lot to say about that, but you'll have to wait), and the debut Kingfish album was recorded at Ace's as well, in late 1975. However, by 1976, Ace's studio seemed to retreat back to a personal studio for Weir, with few outside projects, even from within the Grateful Dead family. 

Keith and Donna Godchaux's house, Paradise Dr, Corte Madera, CA
A parallel story to the secret history of Grateful Dead rehearsal spaces is the even more murky history of Jerry Garcia's rehearsal spaces, such as they were. For one thing, I do not believe that the Jerry Garcia-Merl Saunders band, to the extent it was even a "band," ever had a fixed place to rehearse. It is interesting to think that Jerry Garcia's infamous preference to simply working things out at the Keystone Berkeley rather than in rehearsal may have been an economic decision as much as anything else. Since, as near as I can tell, the Grateful Dead had no fixed place to rehearse in the early 70s, Garcia and Saunders didn't either. Has anyone ever heard a Garcia/Saunders rehearsal tape? I don't think there was ever a rehearsal. It was cheaper to just work out the arrangements as they went along, and that fit Jerry's approach to his own band anyway.

There are a very few early Jerry Garcia Band rehearsal tapes in circulation. There is a rehearsal with Nicky Hopkins, dated to September 1975, a rehearsal with James Booker dated January 7, 1976 and then one with Keith and Donna Godchaux dated January 25, 1976. The last two are usually attributed to Club Front, but for reasons that will become clear over the next few paragraphs, that attribution seems unlikely. Rather, I think they were rehearsal tapes that were retroactively assigned to Club Front, since I think the Front Street Warehouse did not become the JGB rehearsal space until the end of 1976.

I think when the Jerry Garcia Band absolutely had to have some kind of rehearsal, they rented a studio. It might have been expensive, but renting a studio for a few hours a year was still probably cheaper than having a permanent rehearsal hall. For example, an otherwise inexplicable recording session at The Record Plant on May 31, 1974, with Michael Omartian and Ron Tutt (and Garcia, Saunders and John Kahn), includes a jam (released as "Cardiac Arrest") and the old standard "Some Enchanted Evening." The mystery of the recording session is partially explained if we look at it as a kind of getting-to-know-you jam for Tutt. It couldn't take place in a rehearsal hall, because neither the Dead nor Garcia/Saunders had such a place.

However, in a Blair Jackson interview in the Winter 1987 Golden Road, John Kahn had some interesting comments about how much the Keith and Donna Garcia Band liked to play together:

Keith used to live over on Paradise Drive [in the Marin town of Corte Madera], so we used to play over there all the time. He had a room set up so we could just go in and play. Tutt was out of town a lot, but that was OK. You could practice without a drummer. Plus, Tutt was so good that there was nothing that we could come up with that he couldn't figure out right away. I lived in Mill Valley, and Jerry lived in Stinson Beach, so it was real easy for us to get together. Anyway, we had this scene where we would get together just about every night and play. We'd do just about everything. We had Dylan songbooks and we'd do stuff like play everything from Blonde On Blonde. Then we'd do all sorts of Beatles songs. It was great. Most of it never got past that room.

Wherever the few recorded rehearsals of the Jerry Garcia Band had been held, most of the rehearsing seems to have been done at the Godchauxs' home. Keep in mind that until the middle of 1976, the Dead had no money from touring, and were hemorrhaging money on the record company and the Grateful Dead movie, so rehearsing at home was their only real option. The only band clubhouse was Ace's studio, but Weir wasn't in this band, so it's not surprising that the rehearsing didn't take place there.

Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market St, San Francisco, CA
The Grateful Dead officially returned to touring on June 3, 1976 in Portland, OR. Some rehearsal tapes exist from the previous week at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. On May 21, 1976, the Jerry Garcia Band had played a concert at the Orpheum (it was a great show, immortalized on the archival cd Don't Let Go). While the band could play together at Ace's studio, that wasn't a formal stage configuration. The band had also been off the road for so long they had no road set-up either.

It's my supposition that the Grateful Dead rented the Orpheum for a week not only to rehearse, which they certainly needed, but to try out their equipment and sort out any problems in advance of the road. They purposely rented a theater that was approximately like most of the refurbished old theaters that they would be playing on the forthcoming tour. In order to pay for the rental of the Orpheum, I think the JGB played the concert to foot the bill. It's important to remember that the Dead had no touring income, were working on an expensive movie and were about to lose their record company, so a Garcia concert was about their only choice.

I assume that the Garcia Band played the show on the Dead's prospective sound system, and they simply didn't load out the equipment. Rather, they just left it there for technical tweaking and band rehearsal until they left for Portland. From what I can tell, the show was not promoted by Bill Graham, but the Bill Graham Presents staff were hired to run the show. This would have meant that the Dead (or whoever financed the concert) took any financial risk or reward, but did not have to put together a staff to run the theater.

The Orpheum Theater was 1192 Market Street, near 8th, was built in 1926. It was in a seedy area, but not nearly so seedy and rundown as the Fox-Warfield a few blocks away (at Market and 6th). The Orpheum was typically used for 'legitimate' theater of various kinds, although it had originally been built as a movie theater. It was only rarely used for rock shows, although the Grateful Dead played six famous concerts there in July of 1976.

Sound City Studios, Van Nuys, CA
The Grateful Dead recorded Terrapin Station at Sound City Studios, Keith Olsen's facility in Van Nuys in the early part of 1977. Olsen made the Grateful Dead rehearse the material extensively, including 'section rehearsals.' meaning the vocals were rehearsed separately, the rhythm section was rehearsed separately and so on. Whatever the cost of this, it seems to have obviated any need for the Dead to acquire any kind of rehearsal facility.

With the enforced rehearsal, it was likely no accident that the Spring 1977 tour featured some of the tightest and most pristine Dead performances in many years, and arguably ever. This, too, was not a phenomenon that was repeated.

Le Club Front, 20 Front St, San Rafael, CA
By the end of 1976, with the Grateful Dead back on the road, headlining stadiums, and a new Arista contract, the cash flow situation would improve. In either late 1976 or early 1977, the Garcia Band rented an unused warehouse on Front Street in San Rafael as a rehearsal space. Initially, 'Club Front' was strictly the property of the Garcia Band. The Jerry Garcia Band didn't rehearse there, exactly--it appears they just played. Kahn described in Golden Road (Winter '87) what the band liked to do:

We had this trip where we'd call ourselves the Front Street Sheiks and we'd play dumb piano jazz and stuff like that. We did some recording down at the rehearsal place [what evolved into the Dead's studio] right after they got their 24-track. We'd be down there every night of the week playing these old songs like "All The Things You Are," and "Night In Tunisia, " things like that. Keith and Donna were always together, so Donna sang with us too.

It seems that the musical pallette of the mid-70s JGB was much broader than that which we saw on stage. Yet the Garcia Band used Front Street to explore, rather than to explicitly rehearse difficult music, since it appears that many or most of the songs they played at Front Street never appeared in concert.

In mid-1977, the Jerry Garcia Band were planning to record for Arista. They made some preliminary demos at Front Street, and Ron Tutt liked the drum sound so much, he persuaded Garcia to let Betty Cantor turn Front Street into a recording studio, and Cats Under The Stars was recorded there (as was the unreleased Robert Hunter album Alligator Moon, apparently). However, at some point later in 1978, the Front Street studio was transferred over to the Grateful Dead. Money changed hands on an accounting basis, but I do not believe the Garcia Band received any actual cash.

From late 1978 onwards "Le Club Front" was the Grateful Dead's recording studio, rehearsal hall and hangout. Although the band did a fair amount of recording there over the years, they did not do much rehearsing. Even when Brent Mydland, Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby joined the band, they learned far more songs by playing along on stage, rather than formally being rehearsed. The Jerry Garcia Band had even fewer rehearsals. Apparently, band members would receive the music for new songs at sound checks--the likes of Melvin Seals and David Kemper were experienced studio hands--and a quick run through at a soundcheck counted as "rehearsing" a new song.

It was a telling irony that when the Grateful Dead finally had full possession of their own rehearsal and recording facility, they used it only for occasional recording and very rare rehearsals. The development processes that took place at the Potrero Theater, or Ace's, or even at the undisclosed location where the Wake Of The Flood material was first practiced were mostly ghosts by the time Front Street was firmly in the band's hands.