Jerry Garcia>1978>Keyboards (Jerry Garcia-Bandleader)

A backstage pass from the October 27, 1978 show at Eastern Washington University

It is a conventional trope of Jerry Garcia scholarship that he deferred any responsibility for leading the Jerry Garcia Band. By the time the JGB was formed in 1975, Garcia was already a famous rock star, if in fact a famous rock star with a serious cash flow problem. After some brief flirtations with difficult geniuses like Nicky Hopkins and James Booker, Garcia seems to have spent the next twenty years working with low-key professionals who did not challenge the strange hegemony of Garcia and John Kahn's lucrative but part-time enterprise. It fits a certain narrative to say that Garcia was both compulsive and passive, wanting to play all the time, but seemingly refusing to exert any influence upon the band that bore his name. From that point of view, it would seem that it was remarkable that the Jerry Garcia Band was worth listening to at all.

Yet quite the opposite was the case. The Jerry Garcia Band played around a thousand shows, and a very high percentage of them featured exceptional music. Quite a few of them were exceptional from beginning to end. Of course, much of the excellence of the Jerry Garcia Band's various performances has to do with Garcia himself. If Garcia was on, then even the 200th version of "How Sweet It Is" would be emotionally powerful and musically inventive. Was this random chance? I accept that even a stoned out player with no plan can have a good gig now and again, but hundreds of great shows over the course of twenty years? Garcia wasn't very forthcoming with his plans to his own bandmates, and he certainly had his problems with drugs, but I will make the case that he was a very good bandleader, and it was no accident at all.

The cover to Miles Davis' groundbreaking 1969 album, In A Silent Way

Miles Davis, about whom I can make a very good case for being the greatest bandleader of improvised music in North American history, was a famously difficult bandleader from the point of view of his band. Miles typically had the greatest players in modern jazz history, and yet he always made things extraordinarily difficult on them. One famous Miles trick was to give sheet music only to the piano player, and to force the other musicians to simply guess what the guy was improvising off of, and thus have to struggle to make music out of it. Miles thrived on the tension, and he felt the lack of certainty added to the creative process, allowing him to achieve the collaborative synergy he was seeking. Yet his own band had mixed feelings, at least until afterwards, when they heard the tapes played back of the fine music that they had made.

Jerry Garcia was benign where Miles was acerbic, and talkative where Miles was silent. Yet I think he consciously led the Jerry Garcia Band in a very similar way. Garcia assembled the different pieces of the Jerry Garcia Band, and chose and sang the songs. Yet he never really told most of the band members what he was striving for, and seems to have exerted little direction beyond counting off the songs at very slow tempos. Descriptions of what few rehearsals there were, from David Kemper at least, describe a charming, talkative Garcia, discussing absolutely everything but the music that they were actually playing.

Yet a close look at the timeline for Jerry Garcia in 1978 reveals some fascinating insights into how Garcia asserted his influence on his own band. It's true that John Kahn took care of most of the musical business of the band, and was probably privy to some or most of Garcia's concepts, yet Garcia's hand was firmly on the tiller. Garcia seems to have exerted a firm grip on who was in the band, and by definition selected the songs he wanted to play at his own slow tempos. Nonetheless, that was part of Garcia's quiet method--having chosen whom he felt to be the right musicians, he wanted them to participate as they saw fit, rather than take direction. This post will look at Garcia's timeline for 1978, and how it foretold the next dozen years of Garcia's music, even though his handprints could hardly be seen later.

Jerry Garcia's 1978 Arista album Cats Under The Stars

Jerry Garcia 1978
1978 was a transitional year for The Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia. The Dead had had high hopes for their first Arista album, Terrapin Station, released in 1977, but it had been somewhat of a disappointment. Still, the first tour of 1978 featured some fantastic music, even if the January and February swing through the West and Midwest may not have been a great financial success. Garcia and Bob Weir also had high hopes for their Arista solo albums, but both of those made little impact. The dominant event for the Grateful Dead that year was their historic trip to perform in front of the Egyptian Pyramids during an Eclipse, so 1978 was a memorable year in the annals of the Dead.

By the end of 1978, however, the Grateful Dead's music seemed to be in a stagnant state, a situation mostly blamed on piano player Keith Godchaux. Keith's piano playing had been brilliant when he first signed on with the Dead, and he had held down the same chair with the Jerry Garcia Band. Yet by 1978, Keith had serious health problems, and his marriage to Donna Godchaux was shaky as well. In retrospect, all the members of the Grateful Dead, Donna included, have said they were planning on Keith and Donna's departure, even if no one actually spoke about it. The Dead generally, and Garcia particularly, were notoriously non-confrontational over personal and financial issues, and the music of the Dead generally suffered throughout the balance of 1978, even if there were still some great shows on occasion.

I have written at length about a show in Portland, OR, on October 26, 1978, where the Bob Weir Band opened for the Jerry Garcia Band. That show was the first time that Garcia heard Brent Mydland play, and apparently after the show Garcia told Weir "this guy might work." Apparently unspoken was the context, that Keith and Donna would need to be replaced. In a certain way, the exchange between Garcia and Weir was a profound insight into the inner workings of the Grateful Dead. With a relentless touring schedule, the Dead were not going to undertake the messy business of forcing out Keith and Donna Godchaux without a batter in the on-deck circle.

Upon further reflection, however, Garcia talent-spotting Brent Mydland in Weir's band turns out to be a hidden narrative of Jerry Garcia's 1978. Most of the shows that Jerry Garcia would play between 1979 and 1990 featured keyboard players in bands that opened for Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead in 1978. In that sense, Jerry Garcia defined some essential paths for his future music in 1978, even though it would not become obvious until later. What you think of those paths depends on how much you like the musical contributions of Ozzie Ahlers, Melvin Seals and Brent Mydland, but all of them were spotted by Garcia in 1978. In that sense, 1978 can be seen as a watershed year in the history of both Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. This post will look at how Garcia appears to have spotted and chosen his keyboard players throughout that year.

Former JGB keyboard player Ozzie Ahlers with another great American

Ozzie Ahlers: February 18, 1978: Marin Veteran's Memorial Auditorium, San Rafael, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Robert Hunter and Comfort
Ozzie Ahlers was from the Woodstock, NY, area, and he had been in a band called Glory River. Ahlers relocated to Marin County partly for the opportunity to work with former Woodstock resident Van Morrison. The mercurial Morrison mixed and matched band members, and was uncomfortable in many performance contexts, so Ahlers probably didn't play that many shows with him. Ahlers also ended up being a regular in Jesse Colin Young's band, alternating tours and recording dates with Scott Lawrence. In early 1978, Ahlers joined Robert Hunter and Comfort, replacing Richard "Sunshine" McNeese.

At the time, Hunter and Comfort were planning to release an album called Alligator Moon, although in fact it was ultimately never released. Probably in anticipation of this effort, Hunter and Comfort were to join the Jerry Garcia Band on several dates on their March, 1978 Eastern tour. Both Comfort and the Garcia Band played some warmup gigs on the West Coast to get ready for the tour. In a break from normal practice, the Jerry Garcia Band headlined two small concerts in the Bay Area, instead of only playing the Keystones. Robert Hunter and Comfort opened both shows. I assume that one reason for the concerts was for the JGB/Comfort team to get road ready, with a concert sound system and equipment.

In any case, Robert Hunter and Comfort opened for the Garcia Band on Saturday, February 18, at the 1900-seat Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael. Even if Garcia had heard Ahlers in rehearsal with Hunter--unlikely--this would have been Garcia's first opportunity to see Ahlers in concert. Even if Garcia missed the set, it wouldn't have mattered, since the same bill played the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium the next night (Monday was President's Day, so Sunday night was like a weekend). While I don't think Garcia usually hung out backstage and watched other bands, the circumstances were a little different. Robert Hunter was one of Garcia's oldest and closest friends, and Garcia's opportunities to see him perform were rare, so there's every reason to think Garcia was hovering around with an open ear.

The Jerry Garcia Band opened their East Coast tour on March 9, 1978, in Cleveland. Hunter and Comfort were added to the bill in Long Island on March 12, and in the end Comfort opened for eight Garcia band shows (over six nights). Thus all told, Garcia had ten opportunities to hear Ozzie Ahlers play, and he must have liked what he heard. Keith and Donna Godchaux remained part of the Jerry Garcia Band through November, 1978, but Garcia put the JGB on hold after that. However, when the Jerry Garcia Band was re-established in September, 1979, Ahlers was in the keyboard chair.

No one inside the band has ever commented on Garcia's choice of Ahlers, to my knowledge. Based only on our knowledge of Garcia's comment to Weir, I have to think that Garcia and Kahn had some sort of moment where they listened to Ahlers and said to each other "this guy might work." Then they filed his name away. Ahlers didn't get a call until nearly 18 months later, but Garcia didn't get out much or socialize with outsiders, so there's scant chance that he bumped into Ahlers somewhere later, or checked him out at some local club. It appears that Ahlers played in Garcia's best friend's band, and as a result Garcia had confidence that Ahlers could be worth a phone call in the future.

Musical skill aside,  I think there's another factor in the Garcia Band that made choosing people from shared concert bills desirable. By 1978, although Jerry Garcia was not the icon he would become, he was still a figure that radiated an immense gravitational pull backstage at his own shows. There was also a weird, insular history to the Grateful Dead that could be difficult to penetrate. Even if Garcia had very little direct contact with Ahlers backstage, after an East Coast tour he would have known that Ahlers was not overwhelmed by Garcia's presence, and that he had a personality that suited Garcia. If Ahlers had been personally difficult, Garcia would have heard about it from Hunter.

In a BAM Magazine interview in 1978 (by either David Gans, Blair Jackson or both), Garcia said that his band and the Dead had different personalities. Garcia said that (to paraphrase) "the Dead were about dissonance, and his own band was about consonance." The key members of the Dead were great musicians, but they were opinionated and forthright, to the point of being difficult. Certainly the strong personalities of Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart were what made the Dead so vibrant. The Jerry Garcia Band, however--including Garcia--was historically full of fine players who had a reputation amongst other musicians for being a pleasure to work with: John Kahn, Ron Tutt, Maria Muldaur, and so on. This seems to have been borne out in interviews over the years.

Thus the Jerry Garcia Band not only had a musical profile, but a personality profile as well. Someone like David Crosby would have made a plausible member of the Grateful Dead, but he was too forthright for the low-key Garcia Band. After giving an ear to Ahlers' tasteful playing with Hunter, Garcia and Kahn would have also had a chance to see that Ahlers was a low mainenance band member, and that would have counted for a lot.

The Jerry Garcia Band had had episodes with Nicky Hopkins and James Booker, where they chose genius over professionalism, and they regretted it. Indeed, from one point of view, it appears that Garcia's frustration with Keith Godchaux in the Garcia Band seemed to have as much to do with Keith having become high maintenance, rather than direct criticism of his playing. It's also worth noting that when the JGB flirted with genius by hiring Hopkins and Booker, Garcia wasn't touring with the Grateful Dead. Yet Garcia seems to have realize that he could only have one band of jagged edges. As one scholar has observed, given how much Garcia had accomplished with the Dead, and how much effort Garcia still put into the Garcia Band, its not at all surprising that he wanted compatible band members as a prerequisite.

 

In this 1977 episode of The Midnight Special, Melvin Seals can be seen playing some funky piano as Van Morrison leads Mickey Thomas, Reni Slais and the rest of the Elvin Bishop Group through "Domino"

Melvin Seals: June 4, 1978: County Stadium, Santa Barbara, CA: Grateful Dead/Elvin Bishop Group/Wha-Koo
Even if Terrapin Station hadn't been a big success, the Grateful Dead nonetheless had become a bigger live attraction than ever. In the early Summer of 1978, they headlined an outdoor show in Santa Barbara. I believe that the approximately 20,000-capacity stadium would have been the biggest venue that the Dead had ever headlined in Southern California up through that time. To fill out the bill, however, and sell a few more tickets, the Dead were supported by their old friends The Elvin Bishop Group. The Elvin Bishop Group had a much higher profile than they had ever had, thanks to a big 1976 hit called "Fooled Around And Fell In Love," featuring vocalist Mickey Thomas. After that hit, Bishop expanded his group to a much larger ensemble.

Deadheads remember Elvin Bishop's performance in Santa Barbara mainly because Jerry Garcia came out and played a little bit, taking a solo on the song "Fishing Blues." As a result of being invited onstage to jam, which had to have been planned (for logistical reasons), we know that Garcia was hovering around the stage. In a 1991 interview with Scott Muni, Garcia recalled

;.... somewhere there in the '70s the Grateful Dead did a show with Elvin Bishop. I was standing behind this guy on the stage. He was the second keyboard player in Elvin's band. This big guy, he was just playing a Fender Rhodes. But he was playing so tasty, I'm just standing behind him. It's a pretty thick band, so figuring out just how to get in there was, I thought, the work of a good musician. He was just playing the tastiest little stuff. I thought, 'This guy is just too much!' 

I asked him what his name was. He said, 'Melvin Seals'. Melvin Seals. So years later I got Melvin. I don't remember exactly when he started playing with us, but right around the late '70s, early '80s, Melvin started playing with us, and he was just a monster. He's turned out to be the guy that we were looking for all along.

It seems pretty clear that the June 4, 1978 show in Santa Barbara has to be where Garcia heard Seals. Garcia had the foresight to ask Melvin's name. There has always been a tendency to think of Garcia as this sort of stoned genius, who let other people handle everything for him. That may have been true with respect to his personal life and finances, but Garcia was his own man as a musician. He heard a guy he liked, and knew he'd be looking for a keyboard player some day soon, so he filed the name away, even if Melvin Seals would not play with Garcia until 1981. Once again, it appears that the restless Garcia was looking for keyboard players where he could find them.

Intriguingly, Seals has a different memory

I did some gigs with Maria Muldaur. Her boyfriend at the time was John Kahn. He [came to] the gigs, and he admired what I was doing so he asked me if I'd be interested in jamming with another band sometime. He never really went into the details of what it was. Nobody even told me he played with [Jerry].

[Kahn] called me up one day [and said] we're trying to put some rehearsals together to get some gigs. I went up to the address and there's Jerry Garcia and John Kahn and all these other musicians. I didn't even know what was going on. Really, it still didn't hit me until the end of the rehearsal.

I have to presume that Seals was playing with Maria Muldaur in 1979 or 1980, and got scouted by Kahn (Seals was in the Elvin Bishop Group until at least mid-1979).  In fact, Garcia may have already given Kahn the heads-up, who passed the name to Maria. In any case, Seals' little story hints at the dynamic between Garcia and Kahn. Garcia finds a likely candidate, and the low-profile Kahn is able to check out prospects without attracting attention.

Merl Saunders 1979 album Do I Move You, on Crystal Clear Records, recorded Direct-to-Disc in early 1979

Merl Saunders: October 2-3, 1978: The Shady Grove, San Francisco, CA: Merl Saunders And Friends
I realize that the two guest appearances by Jerry Garcia with Merl Saunders at a tiny Haight Street club don't quite fit the narrative here. Ahlers, Seals and Mydland were all new to Garcia, while Saunders was an old pal. Garcia was present at the other shows, and simply listened to his opening acts, whereas Garcia made a conscious effort to drop in twice to sit in with Merl. However, Merl Saunders had been an active working musician since Garcia had stopped working with him in 1975. Garcia could have sat in at any time--why October of 1978, at a club where Garcia had no direct connection, and was nowhere particularly convenient? And why two nights?

In the context of this analysis, it seems pretty clear that Garcia knew he had to find replacements for Keith and Donna Godchaux, even if he was personally dreading any actual confrontation. Garcia, unlike the rest of the Dead, had to find two replacements for two bands, not just one. Of course, it would be theoretically possible for Garcia not to have a second band, or to only play acoustic, or something, but that clearly wasn't Garcia's plan. It seems that Garcia went to some effort to play some funky jazz for two nights with Merl Saunders to see if it was still musically viable. It clearly was, as John Kahn put together the Reconstruction band, and Garcia debuted with them on January 30, 1979.

From what we know, John Kahn had put together Reconstruction with the idea that it would be a working jazz band with or without Garcia. Garcia was almost always booked as a "special guest" with Reconstruction for this reason. Thus when Kahn and Garcia re-activated the Jerry Garcia Band in late 1979, it was originally with the idea that it would be parallel to Reconstruction, rather than replacing it. The reality didn't work out that way, more's the pity. From Garcia's point of view in 1978, however, the jams with Merl made it clear to him that Saunders was still a good interim partner, even if the longer range plans didn't work out. Once again, the seemingly casual Garcia was merely taciturn, and appears to have a much more organized plan for his bands than anyone gave him credit for.

Brent Mydland: October 26, 1978: Paramount Northwest Theater, Portland, OR: Jerry Garcia Band/Bob Weir Band
When Jerry Garcia saw Brent Mydland play and sing with the Bob Weir Band, his remark to Weir that "this guy might work," turns out not to have come out of the blue. We can see that Garcia was filing away keyboard players for future reference, but Mydland was finally the one he needed to allow the band to move past Keith and Donna Godchaux. Interestingly, I think it was Brent's harmony vocals that helped put him over the top, since he could replace both Keith and Donna, which Ahlers, Seals and Saunders could not have.

Once Keith's replacement was lined up, the Godchauxs could be moved out of the band, and touring could continue accordingly. Garcia had some candidates lined up for his own bands as well, so to the extent Garcia ever wanted any kind of confrontation, he would have been finally willing to take such a step. Fate intervened, however, when Garcia fell ill in November, 1978, canceling a  slate of Grateful Dead shows. Those shows were re-scheduled for January and February 1979, so the Godchauxs had to remain in the band. After a tour that was apparently very difficult personally but produced some fine music, the Godchauxs simply resigned at a band meeting on March 1. They may have seen the inevitable coming--Garcia had already started playing with Reconstruction--but it hardly mattered, as they needed out. It was unfortunate that having taken some control of his life, Keith Godchaux died in an auto accident in 1980.

Jerry Garcia's Other Choices
While it's fascinating to note that Garcia picked most of his future keyboard players from some opening acts in 1978, its important to at least think about what other alternatives Garcia may have been able to consider. For one thing, while the Grateful Dead were a pretty popular touring act after 1976, they generally headlined shows without having an opening act in support. The band played long enough for promoters to avoid having to have an opener to fill time, but the group was big enough to not need another band to help sell tickets. The Marin show with Comfort and the Northwest shows with Weir were consciously promoted as double bills featuring two Dead spinoff acts.

The June, 1978 show in Santa Barbara was one of the very few shows after 1976 where the Dead played with an opening act. Among those few were a number of bands without keyboard players (The Who, the New Riders and Marshal Tucker, for example), so the universe of players for Garcia to observe from backstage was pretty small. The only ones I can find would be Tom Coster (Santana, Cow Palace 1976), John Farey (Soundhole, Cow Palace 1976), Bill Slais (Elvin Bishop's other keyboard player, 1978) and Bobbye Nelson (Willie's sister, Giants Stadium, 1978). So while Garcia made some good musical choices, he didn't get a chance to observe a lot of players live.

On the other hand, Garcia knew a lot of keyboard players from the Bay Area, such as Mark Naftalin, Bill Champlin or Geoff Palmer, all of whom were quality musicians who would have been available for the long-term part-time employment of the Garcia Band. And Garcia would have known or been able to find out who was low-maintenance and who was difficult. Yet he passed on all the locals. John Kahn and Maria Muldaur knew their way around the Los Angeles studio scene, and Garcia had always done well with studio guys like Ron Tutt, Paul Humphrey and Larry Knechtel. In many ways, the Garcia Band was ideal for a Hollywood session guy: total freedom in an inherently half-time gig, leaving them free to make real money and live their life in Los Angeles. Yet Garcia made no effort that we know of, via Kahn or anyone else, to find an LA player.

So even if Garcia stuck to some players he had seen from backstage, and he hadn't seen many other candidates, Garcia wasn't completely boxed in. By 1978, the Jerry Garcia Band made good money, and it had a schedule that suited a lot of pros. Garcia's penchant for not rehearsing was generally a convenience for experienced musicians, too, as they didn't need the rehearsal nor have time for it. Yet Garcia passed on any old San Francisco hands or Hollywood studio regulars, and chose who he wanted.

For all the problems the Grateful Dead had in 1978, and there were a few, Garcia seems to have spent the year thinking about how he was going to move forward musically, even if he did it in his typical insular style that made no sense at the time.The fine music made in ensuing years by Reconstruction and the Jerry Garcia Band--not to mention the Grateful Dead--was hardly some kind of happy accident.

Jerry Garcia Album Economics Spring 1978 (Tour Itinerary February 1978)

The cover of Cats Under The Stars, by The Jerry Garcia Band, released on Arista Records in April, 1978

In late 1977, the Jerry Garcia Band recorded Cats Under The Stars at Club Front. The old warehouse had been the Garcia Band rehearsal hall, but Ron Tutt liked the drum sound so much that Garcia had Betty Cantor-Jackson convert the room into a recording studio. The album was released in April of 1978 on Arista Records, and it sold very poorly. Garcia often recounted how much effort he put into the album, and how disappointed he was that Cats did poorly:

• "[Cats Under The Stars] had everything - chops, production, songs"
• "Cats Under The Stars is my favorite one. That's the one that I'm happiest with, from every point of view in which I operate on that record. We did all those tunes on tour right after the album came out, with John and Maria, Keith and Donna"
• "The record I worked hardest at and liked best was Cats Under The Stars. That was kind of like my baby. It did worse than any other record I ever did. I think I probably gave away more copies than I sold. It was amazingly, pathetically bad. But I've learned not to invest a lot of importance in 'em, although it's nice to care about your work."

John Kahn concurred

"We put so much blood into that record. That was our major try. It was all new material and we did it ourselves. We spent so many hours in the studio" (all quotes via Deaddisc)

After the financial debacle of Grateful Dead Records and its sister, Round Records, the Grateful Dead signed with Arista Records at the end of 1976. For the first time since 1967, the Dead had worked with an outside producer who was not a friend of the band, as Keith Olsen had produced 1977's Terrapin Station. After the greatly disappointing sales of Cats, Garcia seemed to lose interest in studio recording and writing original material. He continued to play fantastic live music with both the Dead and his own ensembles throughout the remainder of his career, and he did write the occasional fine song with Hunter. Garcia also participated in some fine studio projects as well, such as In The Dark and various records with David Grisman, but compared to the first 10 years of his rock career, it was plain that Garcia wasn't really interested in the studio after Cats Under The Stars.

Garcia was such an engaging and articulate interview subject that it was easy for him to hide in plain sight. No one ever really inquired what he expected from Cats Under The Stars, and how he saw the future playing out. I cannot divine how Garcia felt personally, so I won't attempt it. However, I think I can construct a reasonable picture of of how Garcia felt that the economics of the Arista Records contract would have worked to his and the Grateful Dead's advantage, allowing him and his friends and bandmates to make the music they wanted to and live the lives they chose. It didn't work out that way, but I will argue that the 1977-78 period represented a "Plan B" to replace Grateful Dead Records. It was a "Plan B" that failed, by and large, and I think that accounted for much of Garcia's musical retreat towards emphasizing live performance.

What Did Jerry Want?
In a 1971 Rolling Stone interview, Keith Richards was asked about John Lennon' stature, and Keith said "no one gets to be John Lennon by accident." This was not a jealous snipe; indeed, Keith was very much implying the same about himself. It's no less important to apply Keith's dictum to Jerry: no one gets to be Jerry Garcia by accident. Some of the byproducts of being Jerry Garcia may have been unintended, but Garcia worked incredibly hard for decades to achieve his stature as a musical giant and an iconoclastic rock star who became rich and famous almost entirely on his own terms, while breaking most of the written and unwritten rules in the music industry.

Garcia ultimately may have wished that less attention would have been paid to his non-musical utterances, but with a guitar in his hands he was a gunslinger. He wanted the maximum reach for his music, and he didn't want to get it by giving away the challenging edge that made him appealing in the first place. At any time, he could have taken a year or two off from touring and hung out, as so many others did, but instead he did the opposite, starting new bands and touring and recording just as much outside the Dead as with them. For all Garcia's uniqueness, he was still an ambitious rock star. Gracious as he generally was, he had to have quietly enjoyed the Dire Straits song "Money For Nothing" because he was actually the object of the song, not the subject. Garcia wanted three things from rock stardom, in this order:

1. Freedom to play the music he wanted, regardless of the cost of sound systems or any equipment
2. Financial security for his fellow musicians, including their families
3. The material trappings that go with stardom: black BMWs, rare comic books, recreational substances, money for nothing and chicks for free

For all these things, Garcia and the Grateful Dead needed money, lots of it. By the mid-70s, they were touring successfully enough to make a living, but they couldn't do just anything they wanted. They had tried that with Grateful Dead/Round Records, and they had taken a huge bath. To compound the problem, Garcia had spent two years working on the Grateful Dead movie, and that project had sucked up enormous amounts of cash in its own right. Garcia and the Dead may have needed the money when they finally signed with Clive Davis and Arista Records in late 1976, but I think Garcia looked at his peers and he had a plan. I don't think that Garcia and the band sat around the office and had a meeting about strategic branding, but I think with some nudges from Arista, Jerry saw a way he could still get what he wanted within the confines of the late 70s record industry.

The cover to the Grateful Dead's Terrapin Station album, released on Arista in July, 1977

The Grateful Dead and Arista Records: Plan B
Touring was profitable in the mid-70s, but not nearly as profitable as it would become in the late 1980s, once concert sheds like Shoreline Amphitheater ruled the land. The real money was in record sales. Grateful Dead Records had sagged because distribution was inferior--the band could sell records, but they couldn't get paid. However, by the mid-70s the record industry was so lucrative that independence wasn't absolutely necessary. Many of the Jerry Garcia's peers were becoming extremely successful, much more so than they had been in the 1960s. I think Garcia's plan for success was modeled on the Jefferson Starship, the Steve Miller Band and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, all of whom (in various forms) were more successful than they had been when they were 60s legends. What the three bands had in common were both commercially successful albums and a financial house in order.

I don't think Garcia and the Dead were sitting around reading Billboard Magazine, but Arista surely was, and they must have helped to persuade Garcia of the value of this approach. Many of the big bands in the mid-1970s had been slugging it out on the Fillmore circuit in the 60s, but were only reaping the rewards 5 to 10 years later. By 1977, for example, The Jefferson Starship had had huge hits with "Miracles" and many other songs, and the Steve Miller Band had had a gigantic album with Fly Like An Eagle. Many of the most popular English bands that were headlining baseball stadiums in 1977 had members that had been in bands that had opened for the Dead at the Fillmores, like Peter Frampton (in Humble Pie), Robin Trower (in Procol Harum), Foghat (in Savoy Brown) and, of course, the new edition of Fleetwood Mac.

The quietly competitive Garcia can not have been happy to see guys in bands who had opened for the Dead several years ago now headlining stadiums, even if he didn't begrudge them personally. Some of the professional decisions that Garcia and The Grateful Dead made in 1977 make sense if we consider that Garcia was looking to emulate the success of his peers in order to play the music he wanted.  I am going to consider the various peers Garcia was probably thinking about, and consider the Grateful Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band in comparison.

The cover to the Jefferson Starship album Red Octopus, released on Grunt/RCA Records in June, 1975

Jefferson Starship
The Jefferson Airplane had been a very successful band in the 1960s, and they sold a lot of records and made a lot of money, most of which didn't go the Airplane members themselves. Even through the 70s, most of the members were tied up in litigation with their former manager Matthew Katz, and the usual poor judgement of 60s musicians had made the band members perpetually cash poor. By 1974, however, Paul Kantner had righted the ship by renaming the band Jefferson Starship. The band's creative but notoriously diffuse talents were harnessed by professional production, and albums like Dragonfly and Red Octopus made money hand over fist. The story is too long to tell here--read Jeff Tamarkin's fine Airplane biography Got A Revolution for the whole tale--but by the late 1970s the Starship were hugely successful, and keeping the money.

By 1977, the Dead had resolved their management issues and settled their debts, but they didn't really have any cushion beyond their touring income. Garcia had always been personally and professionally close to Paul Kantner, Grace Slick and David Freiberg, so he had to be acutely aware of the Starship's triumphs. The Starship was less adventurous live than the Grateful Dead, but there were fewer restrictions on a popular band in the 1970s concert environment. I think Garcia saw the economic benefits of Red Octopus, and felt that if the Dead could emulate that, it would finance the music they wanted to make. I don't for a second mean to suggest that Garcia wasn't trying to make great music with the Dead, just that he was trying to make that music in live performance, and let a producer make the studio album.

Keith Olsen had been a 60s musician himself (surely you recall "Talk Talk" by The Music Machine), and he had produced the hugely popular Fleetwood Mac album for that band. The Mac were old pals of the Dead, albeit in a different configuration, so I think Garcia hoped that Olsen could make Terrapin Station into Red Octopus. The resulting windfall would have allowed Garcia and the Dead to make whatever music they wanted on stage while insuring financial security. Another comparison would have been Santana, who had recently released some commercially successful records, with singles like "Well Alright" and "Winning," while still playing exciting, improvisational music on stage. Garcia had helped produce the Dead's last three studio albums, but the band hadn't really had a studio success since 1970's American Beauty, and even that had been produced by a semi-outsider, ace engineer Stephen Barncard.

The cover to Fly Like An Eagle, by The Steve Miller Band, released on Capitol Records in May, 1976

Steve Miller Band
Although Garcia had deferred production of Terrapin Station to Keith Olsen, Garcia's creative goals remained intact. Having written a few songs for the Dead's Terrapin Station album, he seemed to have focused his efforts on his own band. Garcia's music had its own internal dynamic, but I think on a business level Garcia modeled his approach on the Steve Miller Band. The Steve Miller Band had been peers of the Grateful Dead in the 60s, a little less popular, but more or less on the same tier. The Steve Miller Band had released some fine albums in the 60s, but they had treaded water in the early 70s. Although there was a continuity in the group's sound, the "Band" was just Steve Miller and whoever he was playing with. In 1973, Miller had had a surprise hit with "The Joker," but he then confounded orthodoxy by not releasing an album for the next three years.

The Steve Miller Band returned in 1976 with the stunning Fly Like An Eagle. Eagle took all the virtues of Miller's previous records and distilled them into a radio friendly format. The sound on the album was spectacular, and it was even more so on the widely available high fidelity FM radios in so many new cars. The blues, space and swagger of Miller's previous albums was smoothed out to make them more accessible, and in return, the Steve Miller Band had a giant, multi-platinum album, along with some giant singles (the title track, 'Take The Money And Run," and "Rock 'N' Me"). It was followed in 1977 by the equally huge Book Of Dreams album. Whether you like Fly Like An Eagle better than 1968's Children Of The Future is a different question. From Miller's point of view, after Fly Like An Eagle, he could do whatever he wanted. I think Garcia noticed.

By the end of 1977, the Steve Miller Band was one of the best selling bands in the world, and they weren't even a band. By the mid-70s, Miller had a rotating cast of players, many of whom had toured with Miller at one time or another, and they were used on different tracks as appropriate. So while the Steve Miller Band wasn't a group in the traditional sense, the players had a collective consciousness that lent the albums a cohesive feel. While Miller and Garcia weren't close like Garcia and the Starship crowd, they had certainly played together a number of times and shared backstages often, so Garcia can't have been unaware at Miller's ability to take his own music and make it a commercial success.

I think Garcia planned Cats Under The Stars as his Fly Like An Eagle. It was all Garcia music, but it was designed to have the craziest edges rounded off. The songs were five minutes long instead of fifteen, and the production had that FM sheen that sounded good on the highway. The Garcia Band would still have been free to play "Don't Let Go" for as long as they wanted on stage, but the album was aimed towards a more general audience. By choosing the name Jerry Garcia Band, Garcia and Kahn were not tied to specific collaborators. Besides Keith and Donna Godchaux, Ron Tutt and Maria Muldaur, old friends Merl Saunders and Steve Schuster each played parts. Looking forward to future albums, the Garcia Band name would have allowed Jerry and John to use whomever they wanted as the music dictated.

The cover to the CSN album by Crosby, Stills and Nash, released on Atlantic Records in June, 1977. The original lp had a different cover photo, although from the same photo shoot.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
In 1978, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were not an intact band, but I still think they were influential. The quartet were peers and friends of Garcia as well, to differing extents, so I think Garcia would have felt that their experiences could provide an adequate comparison to the Dead. Back in 1970, CSNY had been one of the biggest acts in the country, but the band disintegrated soon afterwards. However, all of the band members released fairly successful solo albums, and when CSNY re-united to tour in 1974, they were an even bigger attraction than when they had broken up, and this was without a new album.

An abortive 1975 reunion album devolved into a pair of duos (Stills/Young and Crosby/Nash), both of which toured successfully (1976 live tapes of the Stills/Young Band are amazing, by the way). In 1977, Crosby Stills and Nash gave up on the mercurial Neil Young, and recorded the CSN album. Released in June, 1977 the album reached #2 and the trio toured successfully without Young. The lesson that the record industry took from CSNY was that music fans were sophisticated enough to understand that artists had many facets. Solo success by Stills, Young and the Crosby/Nash duo only added to the luster of CSN and CSNY. Successful albums and tours by Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir would only add to the success of the Grateful Dead.

Arista must have pointed this out to Garcia, figuring that between the Dead, Jerry and Bob they had tripled their chances for a hit. From Arista's point of view, other companies were making a pile of money on old Fillmore bands: Captiol (Steve Miller), Columbia (Boz Scaggs), RCA (Jefferson Starship) and Warners (Fleetwood Mac) were all cashing chips big time, and Clive Davis and Arista probably felt that the Dead were as good a bet as any of those bands. Thus Garcia's focus on his own album would have been pitched by Arista as financially good for the Dead, rather than a threat, and I think rightfully so. Even if Grateful Dead Records was no more, Garcia still had a vision where he could get where he wanted to go in the way he wanted to get there. If Cats Under The Stars (or Heaven Help The Fool) had been a big hit, the Grateful Dead as a whole would have benefited enormously.

The cover to Bob Weir's Heaven Help The Fool album, released January 1978 on Arista.

Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia/Bob Weir/Robert Hunter Tour Itinerary, February 1978
The remarkable flurry of activity in February 1978 makes more sense in the context of the band's multi-faceted assault on rock stardom. Terrapin Station had been released in July of 1977 and had not been a huge success, although it hadn't completely tanked. In January of 1978, Bob Weir had released his Heaven Help The Fool album, also produced by Keith Olsen. It was designed to make Weir a star along the lines of someone like Boz Scaggs, ironically enough a former member of the Steve Miller Band himself.

Meanwhile Garcia was still finishing up Cats Under The Stars. Since the Jerry Garcia Band would tour the East Coast in March, the month before the album came out, I think there was a disconnect between the plans of Garcia and Arista, but in any case Garcia Band tours were inherently profitable. At the same time, Robert Hunter had recorded an album at Club Front, recorded by Betty Matthews and probably financed by Garcia. While success for Hunter was less critical to the grand scheme--except to Hunter, of course--it fit in with the CSNY concept that success for any component strengthened the whole edifice.

None of it happened. Terrapin Station did OK, but it was no Red Octopus. Cats Under The Stars and Heaven Help The Fool were--in industry parlance--stiffs. Hunter's album was never released. Garcia and Hunter stepped away from recording in the studio, and Garcia narrowed his focus to live performance. Time kept slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, however, and ironically, with the growth of the concert industry in the 80s and 90s, the Dead finally made the money they had been hoping to make, long after Garcia had given up on flying like an eagle.

That's not how it seemed in February of 1978. Every band was on tour, everything was happening, and after the disappointments of Grateful Dead Records and Blues For Allah, it seemed like success was finally just around the corner.

January 30-February 1, 1978: Uptown Theater, Chicago, IL: Grateful Dead
I have discussed the Grateful Dead's unique tour itinerary for January 1978 elsewhere. The band played California and the West Coast and made some great music, but the tour may not have made financial sense. Fresno was thinly attended--really thinly--and Bakersfield was problematic as well. The Dead's peculiar touring scheduled suggests that a show or shows on the weekend of January 27-28 were canceled. That is the only explanation I can find for the Dead taking an eight day break after Eugene, OR (January 22) and then playing three weeknights in Chicago in the Dead of winter.

The Uptown Theater in Chicago, located on 4816 N. Broadway, was built in 1925 and had a capacity of 4,381. The Dead played Monday through Wednesday nights. Tapes suggests that the band played terrifically well, as they had throughout the tour.

February 3, 1978: Dane County Coliseum, Madison, WI: Grateful Dead
On Friday night, the Grateful Dead played the Dane County Coliseum in Madison, WI. Madison was the home of the University of Wisconsin, and I have to assume it was prime Deadhead territory. I also think that not too many bands came through Madison in the Winter, and a rockin' good time must have been had by all. Dane County Coliseum was a typical Midwestern hockey arena, built in 1967 with a capacity of 10,231. The Dead always played well in places like this, possibly because venue operators were used to crazy hockey fans, and found Deadheads harmless. The venue is now known as the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

I had this tape many years ago, and much of the second set was released on Dick's Picks Vol 18. If I recall correctly, there was no drum solo in the second set, an indicator that the dreaded "format" was not fully locked in yet. 

February 4, 1978; Milwaukee Auditorium, Milwaukee, WI: Grateful Dead
On Saturday night, the Dead played the much smaller Milwaukee Auditorium, capacity 4,086. It was built in 1909 and located on 500 W. Kilborn Avenue. It is now known as the Milwaukee Theater. Even though Milwaukee is a bigger city than Madison, the Dead played a smaller venue, a clear sign to me that the band's primary audience was over in Madison. Also, back in '73, the Dead's sound system was so big it took two days to set up, but now the band could roll in and out of a venue in a night. A few songs from this show were released on Dick's Picks Vol 18.

February 5, 1978: Uni-Dome, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA: Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead's winter mini-tour ended in the far-flung outpost of Cedar Falls, IA, at the University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls is 275 miles East of Milwaukee, 125 miles Northeast of Des Moines, and not really near anywhere. Football is a Fall sport, and yet the newly-constructed (1976) Uni-Dome at the University of Northern Iowa provided a domed venue for football games. This tells you how cold the area was in the Fall, much less in February. The capacity of the Uni-Dome ranges from 10,000 for basketball, to 16,000 for football to 22, 000 for special events.

I don't think a lot of major touring bands get up to Cedar Falls at all, much less in February. A commenter on the Archive says it was the coldest night of the year--which in Iowa would be pretty darn cold--but it didn't matter. The house must have been rocking, and I have to think mostly with students who had nothing else to do on a cold Sunday night. I wonder what the actual attendance of the show was? There were probably only about 12,000 students in the school at the time.

Some of the show was released on Dick's Picks Vol 18 as well. I had a tape of the second set for many years. If a casual concert goer wasn't persuaded by that night's show, they definitely weren't Deadhead material. The Dead's strange ability to blow the big ones while delivering a knockout blow in the middle of nowhere remains one of their most emblematic traits. 

February 7-8, 1978: Shady Grove, San Francisco, CA: Robert Hunter and Comfort
Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, various Grateful Dead entities were preparing to go out on tour, beginning their multi-pronged assault on America. I have written about the touring history of Robert Hunter and Comfort at some length, so I needn't recap it all here. However, by February of 1978 they had finished recording their album, though it isn't clear to me whether Hunter already knew it wasn't going to be released. Indeed, it remains obscure what label it was intended for, and why exactly it has never seen the light of day.

Nonetheless, in early 1978 Comfort pianist Richard McNeese had left the band, and was replaced by local pianist Ozzie Ahlers, a transplant from the Woodstock, NY area. Ahlers had played with Van Morrison and Jesse Colin Young, among many others. Hunter and Comfort played two weeknight shows at one of their regular haunts, The Shady Grove, presumably to get ready for some high profile touring with the Jerry Garcia Band. The Shady Grove was at 1538 Haight Street, between Ashbury and Clayton. The club featured mostly local bands. I believe Comfort had played there regularly before Hunter had even joined up with the group.

February 14-16, 1978: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia Band
Less than 10 days after returning from the Grateful Dead's winter tour, Jerry Garcia and Keith and Donna Godchaux were back on stage at Garcia's home court, the Keystone Berkeley. Garcia must have still been finishing up Cats Under The Stars, if only to approve final mixes, album art and so on. The Jerry Garcia Band was gearing up for a 9 date East Coast tour, which included a number of double shows and some very high profile bookings. I have to think the tour was planned with the idea that Cats Under The Stars would already have been released, but presumably something held it up. As was his custom, Garcia seems to have minimized rehearsal and preferred to play shows at the Keystone Berkeley instead.

The Jerry Site shows four consecutive nights at Keystone Berkeley, on February 14-17. However, I don't think that the Garcia Band played 4 nights in a row at Keystone Berkeley, certainly not before two nights of concerts on the 18th and 19th. I am unable to track the provenance of this, but as usual I may be at least partially guilty. My notes (the source for Deadbase IX) say that JGB played three nights in Berkeley, and then has Keystone Palo Alto on February 17 as a question mark. Regardless, I don't think the Garcia Band played anywhere on February 17, and I wouldn't be surprised if they only played two of the three nights from the 14th through the 16th.

February 17-19, 1978: The Roxy, Los Angeles, CA: Bob Weir Band (early and late shows)
With Heaven Help The Fool having been released in January of 1978, the Bob Weir Band was gearing up to tour as well. Rather than draw from the usual San Francisco suspects, Weir had organized a group of Los Angeles based musicians. I have dealt with this subject at length as well. Ibanez guitar rep Jeff Hasselberger had introduced Weir to guitarist Bobby Cochran, and the two Bobs had signed up drummer John Mauceri and bassist Rick Carlos. Carlos in turn invited organist Brent Mydland, with whom Carlos had played in various bands. The Bob Weir Band tour was originally scheduled for December of 1977, which leads me to think that both Garcia and Weir's albums were originally scheduled for earlier than they were actually released. Unlike Garcia, however, Weir could not afford to tour until he had an album to support.

Weir and his cohorts must have spent the time between the end of the Dead tour and the beginning of the Bob Weir Band tour rehearsing. I have to suspect that the Bob Weir Band rehearsals were held in Los Angeles and not in San Francisco, another break from regular Dead practices. The Bob Weir Band debuted at The Roxy on the Sunset Strip, far and away the most high profile rock club west of the Mississippi. The Roxy, at 9009 W. Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, had opened on September 23, 1973. The Roxy was operated by Elmer Valentine, the proprietor of West Hollywood's legendary Whisky A Go Go. It was backed by some of the biggest names in the industry: Lou Adler (of Ode Records), David Geffen (of Asylum Records), Elliot Roberts (the manager of CSNY and Joni Mitchell) and Peter Asher (besides being "Peter" in Peter & Gordon, he was Linda Ronstadt's producer). Artists played The Roxy to see and be seen, in true Hollywood fashion.

Weir had played The Roxy before, with Kingfish in March of 1976. Then, too, when he had played The Roxy it had been because Kingfish had also just released a new album. The Roxy wasn't intended to be financially sound for bands. They got paid, but not that much. Playing The Roxy meant that everybody in the industry checked you out. For a member of the Grateful Dead to begin his tour by playing The Roxy on a weekend was a clear indicator that Weir was approaching his album differently from the usual Grateful Dead spin-off.

February 18, 1978: Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium, San Rafael, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Robert Hunter and Comfort
Bill Graham Presents promoted two Jerry Garcia Band shows in the Bay Area, quite a rarity during the 1970s. At this time, Freddie Herrera's Keystone family of clubs were Garcia's home base. However, there were not Keystones in Marin or Santa Cruz, so presumably Garcia felt that his loyalty was not compromised. The Jerry Garcia Band was about to embark on a 9-date, 12-show East Coast tour in March, with Robert Hunter and Comfort opening several of the shows. Money aside, I assume that one reason for these two Bay Area shows was for the band and crew to check out the concert configuration of the two bands

The Marin Veteran's Memorial Auditorium, part of the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael, was finished in 1971. It seats 1,960. It was rarely used for rock shows in the 1970s, although interestingly enough, parts of Peter Frampton's bestselling Frampton Comes Alive album was recorded there. Over the years, Marin Vets was used more often for shows, and the Grateful Dead played a number of fine shows there. In 1978, however, I believe this was Garcia's first concert (as opposed to nightclub) appearance in his home county in some time.

In retrospect, one interesting footnote to the Marin Vets show was that it would have been the first time Jerry Garcia heard keyboardist Ozzie Ahlers play. Ahlers had recently joined Comfort, replacing Richard McNeese on piano. After the early 70s, Garcia was no longer able to casually hang out and jam with or listen to musicians without attracting attention. Nicky Hopkins, Brent Mydland, Ozzie Ahlers and Melvin Seals had all been in bands that opened for Garcia or the Dead, and that seems to have been Garcia's principal source of new keyboard players (James Booker and Jimmy Warren excepted). Although no one ever asked him about it, he would have had a good chance to hear Ahlers in February and March of 1978, and he seems to have stored that information away for a while, as Ahlers was invited to join the Garcia Band in October of 1979.

February 19, 1978: Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Robert Hunter and Comfort
The Jerry Garcia Band had played Santa Cruz with some regularity, but mostly at the smaller Del Mar Theater. The Civic Auditorium, at 307 Church Street, has a capacity of about 2000. Garcia had played there before with Old And In The Way. I have also written about the Dead, Garcia and Santa Cruz at length, so again I won't recap it all. However, while Garcia's future haunt The Catalyst had opened some years earlier, in 1978 it was still a coffee shop on Front Street, and had not moved to its current location on Pacific Avenue where it was big enough to book the JGB.

February 19, 1978 was a Sunday night, but Monday was President's Day, so it counted as a weekend night. Tracks from both Marin Vets and Santa Cruz were part of the fine Bay Area 1978 release.

February 23, 1978: Civic Center Theater, St. Paul, MN: Bob Weir Band/Doucette
Having debuted at The Roxy in Los Angeles, and with Heaven Help The Fool in the stores, the Bob Weir Band began a relatively traditional 70s rock tour. It began in Bloomington, MN, in a suburb of Minneapolis, at the Metropolitan Sports Center. The Met Center was a hockey arena built in 1962, home of the NHL's Minnesota North Stars, with a capacity of 15,000. While I find it surprising that Weir could headline such a big place on a Thursday night, I suspect that like many indoor arenas it had different configurations, and the functional capacity for the Weir show was considerably smaller.
Update: I had thought that the tour opened in Bloomington, MN, at the Met Center, but Commenter John says that in fact the show was at the Theater in the St. Paul Civic Center. The Civic Center, at 175 W. Kellogg Boulevard, was built in 1973. I'm not sure which of the smaller theaters attached to the main facility was used for Weir's show.

On the other hand, not so many bands tour the very cold upper Midwest in February--well, other than the Grateful Dead--, so there may have been a fair amount of fans happy to see any member of the Dead in any configuration. A booking like this was as much to generate attention and encourage FM radio play for a new album as it was for concert receipts. Singer-guitarist Jerry Doucette had just released a successful album in his native Canada, Mama Let Him Play. His tour with the Bob Weir Band was an effort to expand his audience into the States.

February 25, 1978: Riviera Theater, Chicago, IL: Bob Weir Band/Doucette
While its possible the Bob Weir Band played somewhere on Friday, February 24, the second known date was Saturday, February 25 in Chicago. In fact, the Grateful Dead had just played three nights at The Uptown Theater in Chicago a few weeks earlier, but Chicago is a huge city so there were plenty of potential fans. The Riviera was at 4715 N. Broadway, not far from the Uptown. It was built in 1915, with a capacity of 2500

If normal record company practices were followed, and I'm sure they were, Arista Records would have invited every disc jockey, program director (AM and FM) and rock critic in town to the show, and plied them with free drinks. 

February 26, 1978: BJ's Concert Hall, Mt. Clemens, MI: Bob Weir Band/Doucette
Mt. Clemens, Michigan was a suburb about a half hour North of Detroit. A Sunday night show in Mt. Clemens would likely have been a little more about making some money than a high profile show. That isn't to say that many Detroit DJs and PDs would not have been invited, I just don't know whether or not they were likely to go to Mt. Clemens.

One thing about a suburban show was that many younger people who might not be able to or allowed to go to big, bad Detroit for a rock show would have been able to see the Bob Weir Band in the suburbs. In the Bay Area or the Northeast, Garcia Band or Kingfish shows had been common enough, but if you were a Deadhead in suburban Michigan in 1978 in the Winter, you were probably pleased when any member of the band showed up.

February 28, 1978: Bogart's Cincinnati, OH: Bob Weir Band/Doucette (early and late shows)
Ohio has quite a rocking history, and indeed the Grateful Dead themselves had some history in Cincinnati. Bogart's, which is still open, is at 2621 Vine Street. It was built in 1890 with a capacity of about 1500. I suspect this Tuesday night show as also a sort of "showcase," with all the jocks from the likes of WKRP (and Loni Anderson, I'm sure) invited. The fact that there were early and late shows suggests that the club expected a fair turnout, but perhaps the two-show format was standard.

David Nelson and The New Delhi River Band, July 1967-February 1968 (David Nelson IV)

A flyer for the last known New Delhi River Band show, at Cowell College in UC Santa Cruz, on January 27, 1968 (submitted by people who attended)

The New Delhi River Band were founded in Palo Alto, CA in the Summer of 1966. They were one of the first psychedelic blues bands formed in the South Bay--though of course not the very first--, and they had a significant following in the South Bay underground. The group is usually remembered today, if at all, for being the first rock band for future New Riders of The Purple Sage David Nelson and Dave Torbert. Since the band never released any recordings, however, and the venues where they thrived are lost in the mists of time, the New Delhi River Band is just a ghost.

Despite substantial efforts by the group in 1967, The New Delhi River Band never succeeded outside of their South Bay turf, and the members moved on to other pursuits. My research seems to suggest, however, that they were an interesting and popular band in the little universe of the South Bay underground in 1966 and 1967, and their story makes a great case study on how regional bands help shape scenes while getting left behind themselves—the story of The New Delhi River Band stands for the tale of every cool local long haired band in 1966 and 1967 who never got big past the County Line, living on as a fond, hazy memory of their fans.

David Nelson was one of Jerry Garcia's best friends, and Nelson's career presents an interesting counterpoint to Garcia's. The Grateful Dead were the South Bay's first psychedelic blues band, of course, and the New Delhi River Band's ups and downs shed light on different ways in which the Dead were both fortunate and special. By the time Nelson and Garcia reconnected in 1969 with the New Riders of The Purple Sage, Nelson had had his own odyssey, far less legendary than Garcia's but fascinating nonetheless. This post will be part of a series on the hitherto lost history of the New Delhi River Band.

In a 21st century interview for RD Records, drummer Chris Herold recalled

NDRB was a really fine band. Some very fond memories of the formative time. We were one of the first white blues bands, probably THE first in the Bay Area. We were Butterfield Blues Band fans and it showed in our music. We also drew from all the old greats Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters . . . the list goes on. The band members were: Sweet John Tomasi (vocals and harmonica), Peter Sultzbach (lead guitar), David Nelson (rhythm guitar), Dave Torbert (bass) and me [Chris Herold] on drums.”

David Nelson played a critical role in Jerry Garcia's career, both before the Grateful Dead and during their existence. After the New Delhi River Band ended in early 1968, Nelson re-appeared in Garcia's universe at the end of 1968, participating in the Aoxomoxoa sessions (although probably not appearing on the record). More importantly, Nelson, along with Garcia and John Dawson, was a founding member of the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Garcia's first extra-curricular band. In subsequent decades, Nelson made all sorts of great music, with and without Garcia, and continues to do so in both the revitalized New Riders and the David Nelson Band.

This chronology would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of Ross Hannan, Chris Recker, the late Russell Towle, the Magic Theater and David Nelson. Anyone with additional information, insights, corrections or recovered memories (real or imagined) is urged to Comment or email me.

Recap: The First Year Of The New Delhi River Band
Part I of the New Delhi River Band story reviews how David Nelson was a bluegrass musician in Palo Alto, just like his friend Jerry Garcia. The arrival of the Beatles and LSD electrified the tiny community of bohemian musicians, and the hitherto acoustic Nelson started to get interested in plugging in. By mid-1966, Nelson and his Channing Avenue housemate Carl Moore had joined forces with a Los Altos band called Bethlehem Exit, and hatched the idea of The Outfit. The Outfit was intended to be a sort of permanent Trips Festival in sleepy little Palo Alto, with a venue, a band and a light show all called The Outfit. According to Nelson, there was only one show, a memorable mini-Acid Test in June 1966 graced by Neal Cassady himself, but the enterprise never got any further. The New Delhi River Band found a name, however, and started to play a few shows in the South Bay, opening for Them and The Doors.

In Part II, The New Delhi River Band found a home in the Fall of 1966 at The Barn in Scotts Valley, a tiny unincorporated community in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Barn, known as 'The Fillmore of The Mountains," was only open from mid-66 through mid-68, and indeed it was closed during much of that time as well. What little information is available on The Barn mostly comes from our site, and what is posted there is fairly outdated. By the Fall of 1966, the New Delhi River Band would become the "House Band" of The Barn, whatever exactly that meant. After The Barn closed, it disappeared without a trace. The fuzziest and warmest memories of The New Delhi River Band stem from those lucky enough to be part of that tiny scene, when the few long-haired bohemians and some younger aspirants gathered together every weekend in the mountains in one of the earliest Bay Area hippie hangouts beyond San Francisco and Berkeley.

By early 1967, most  of The New Delhi River Band had moved to an old house on Euclid Avenue in East Palo Alto, along with various other denizens of the Channing Avenue house, including Carl Moore and Russell Towle. Nelson lived in the house, and Dave Torbert and John Tomasi were around there pretty much, while the more staid Peter Sulzbach and Chris Herold only dropped by when needed. East Palo Alto was across Highway 101 from Palo Alto, and was unincorporated county land (and San Mateo County at that), relatively sleepy and poor compared to well-to-do Palo Alto proper. The band used the house as a rehearsal space, and they stayed there throughout '67.

The rock market was starting to explode in the Bay Area in 1967, but it was still a collection of local scenes, even if the Fillmore and the Avalon in San Francisco were biggest and most exciting of them. Thanks to constantly playing The Barn, the New Delhi River Band were a popular act in the South Bay. They were booked at a variety of local venues, sometimes as a headliner, and they were very much a leading 'underground' band on their home turf. However, the NDRB had a difficult time breaking out beyond Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. They regularly played free concerts in Berkeley, particularly at Provo Park, so they were somewhat known, but that had transferred into very few paying shows. By the end of June, 1967, the New Delhi River Band had played a benefit at the Fillmore and a free concert in The City as well, but they had no traction in San Francisco, the most lucrative of  the Bay Area scenes.

The New Delhi River Band, July 1967
Sweet John Tomasi-vocals, harmonica
Peter Sultzbach-lead guitar
David Nelson-guitar
Dave Torbert-bass
Chris Herold-drums

By July 1967, the New Delhi River Band had been performing for a year. As they were Palo Alto's second psychedelic blues band, it is worth considering their progress in relation to the first one. Let's take a snapshot of some of the differences and similarities between the Grateful Dead after their first year of existence (July 1966) and the New Delhi River Band after one year.

A Special Genesis: Acid Tests and The Barn
After six months of playing bars and teen dances, the Warlocks wormed their way into Ken Kesey's infamous Acid Tests. With the collaboration of one Owsley Stanley, the Grateful Dead were at least the musical center of an important cultural change, and they were infamous long before they recorded a note.

Although the New Delhi River Band's cultural impact was limited to two counties, they were part of some original bohemian happenings in Palo Alto (at The Outfit) and in Santa Cruz (at The Barn). The Barn was the hippest place in the South Bay at a time when hippies were few and far between, and public events weren't really possible without excessive police interference. The New Delhi River Band were the house band at The Barn, and with Ken Kesey's bus "Furthur" parked out back, they were pretty hip in their own little Universe.

Venues: A Base Of Operations
New bands, particularly new bands playing what at the time was not commercial music, will not endure if they cannot find a place to play. Before the Summer Of Love, almost every rock band that made an impact, even at the local level, had some places to play where they could do their thing and build an audience. Even if they didn't make a lot of money, they made enough to keep going. That is why legendary rock bands are so often associated with a foundational venue, as well: there wouldn't have been the Beatles without the Cavern Club, and vice-versa.

The Grateful Dead, of course, were regulars at The Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom throughout 1966. Along with many other bands, the Dead made their music and made a living, and along with a host of other bands, not only made San Francisco the capital of the music world, however briefly. The Fillmore and the Avalon defined the modern rock concert as we know it today, so an entire industry was established along with the bands that started it. As far as the Grateful Dead were concerned, without the Fillmore and Avalon, the band would not have made enough money to get by, as they were too far outside the mainstream to play what they wanted to play anywhere else.

In the Fall of 1966 and into 1967, the New Delhi River Band regularly played The Barn, and the group built a South Bay following and made enough to keep going. For about six months, The Barn was a self-sustaining operation for all concerned, and there would have been no New Delhi River Band without it. However, by the middle of 1967, the rock market had exploded, in a large part due to the Fillmore scene. The Barn closed due to pressure from its neighbors, and the New Delhi River Band lost their base. Although the NDRB were popular in the South Bay, more fans wanted to see the big Fillmore bands come to their town, rather than see their locals. Thus New Delhi River Band bookings became fewer and less lucrative, in part due to the increasing impact of Fillmore bands like the Dead.

Music: Jamming The Blues
From what we know of the New Delhi River Band's repertoire, they played straight ahead blues songs and some funky R&B songs like "Youngblood" and "Suzie Q." Memories are foggy, of course, but it seems like they had their own arrangements and didn't rush through the songs. The material that the New Delhi River Band were mining in mid-1967 was roughly from the same vein that the Grateful Dead were pulling from: music from black radio stations in the early 60s. The NDRB's business card said "We Jumps," so they were definitely trying to be fun to dance to, not just purists.

However, by mid-1966, at the end of their first year, the Grateful Dead were experimenting with numerous original songs. In fact, they had worked up a handful of original songs after their first six months, as we know from a November, 1965 demo tape.. In fact, only one original song from the Dead's first year survived even into 1967, namely "Caution: Do Not Stop On Tracks" and that was a sort of mutant version of Them's "Mystic Eyes." Nonetheless, the Dead were experimenting with songwriting from the very beginning. It took a while to get it right, not to mention the arrival of Robert Hunter, but the Dead were working on it from the beginning. In contrast, there's scant evidence that the New Delhi River Band had any original material beyond some instrumental jam-type numbers.

Management: Working The Phones
Early in their career, the Grateful Dead had found a patron in the notorious Owsley. Owsley thought big, really big, and he did things his own way. Garcia and Phil Lesh in particular were sympathetic to Owsley's self-directed vision of success, even if they did not individually subscribe to all his ideas. On a less dramatic scale, David Nelson's friend Carl Moore had tried to start a venue in Palo Alto called The Outfit, for which the proto-NDRB were to be the band. Although the venture only seems to have had one event in June, 1966, it put the New Delhi crew on a different path far earlier than their peers. Moore continued to be a useful influence throughout 1967.

However, after Owsley stepped aside from the Grateful Dead, fellow travelers Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin acted as managers. Rather than being "10-percenters" like the traditional Hollywood managers, Rock and Danny were part of the collective consciousness of the band. While the Dead rehearsed and played, Rock and Danny worked the phones, looking for the next booking. For a busy, ambitious band, whether hip or unhip, trusted managers who could focus on finding paying gigs was crucial for success.

According to David Nelson, however (via David Gans), the New Delhi River Band arranged and booked their own shows. That insured that no one ripped them off, but it also meant that all the band members were wearing multiple hats. To some extent, the paucity of NDRB bookings may have been partially due to the fact that they had no dedicated manager. In mid-1967, the New Delhi River Band had a name as a hip band around the Bay Area, even if not that many people had heard the band. A hustling manager could have worked the phones enough to find some gigs, and the musicians could have done enough by playing well. The New Delhi River Band had no such assistance, however, and so their world of contacts was limited.

Recordings
The Grateful Dead made their first studio recordings in November, 1965, before they were even the Grateful Dead. They had made a six-song demo for Tom Donahue's Autumn Records (the 'Emergency Crew' demo). Five of the six songs were original. In June of 1966, the Dead had recorded a single ("Don't Ease Me In"/"Stealin'") at a San Francisco studio.

The New Delhi River Band had also recorded during their first year, some time in 1967, although the exact date remains uncertain. David Nelson told me (when I spoke to him after a New Riders show) that the band recorded 15 or 16 songs in 1967 in "some guy's garage in Berkeley." There was a garage studio in Berkeley, known--I think--as Reggie's Guerage, but I don't recall Reggie's full name. I know that Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, among others, recorded a demo in the same garage. I believe the Masked Marauders album was recorded there as well.

Nelson promised me that he never throws anything out, so we may yet be lucky enough to hear the New Delhi River Band, perhaps on some Grateful Dead Marathon on KPFA.  Still, from what little I can piece together, the NDRB were regarded as a fine live band without much in the way of original material. Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead got over the hump by engaging Robert Hunter as their in-house lyricist. Hunter had to return from a difficult situation in New Mexico to join up with the Dead, but he had contacted Carl Moore who sent him a little money to get him home.

Ironically enough, an eyewitness recalls a much-worse-for-wear Hunter sleeping on the couch at the New Delhi River Band house on Euclid Avenue, waiting for the Dead to fetch him. Legend has it that Phil Lesh drove to Palo Alto (technically, East Palo Alto) to pick up Hunter and return back to Rio Nido, where Hunter wrote "Dark Star" shortly afterwards. I have to wonder: while Hunter was hanging out with his old pal Nelson, did either of them consider the idea that Hunter could have written songs for the New Delhi River Band as well? It would not have inherently interfered with the Dead's plans, and the history of the New Delhi River Band would have been very different indeed.

New Delhi River Band Performance History, July 1967-February 1968
Despite my diligence, I have only been able to uncover a smattering of performance dates by the New Delhi River Band in their final 7 months. I feel confident that there were quite a few more, but I have not yet been able to find them. Anyone with any additional information or recovered memories (real or imagined) is encouraged to Comment or email me.

July 2, 1967 El Camino Park, Palo Alto, CA: Grateful Dead/New Delhi River Band/Anonymous Artists Of America/Solid State/The Good Word/others Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival and Be-In
The Grateful Dead headlined a Be-In in Palo Alto, and the NDRB were one of many other bands at the event. I have covered this unique moment in Palo Alto history elsewhere.

July 9, 1967: The Steppenwolf, Berkeley, CA: County Joe and The Fish/Loading Zone/New Delhi River Band/Notes From The Underground
The Steppenwolf was a folk club at 2136 San Pablo Avenue. This was probably a benefit, as Country Joe and The Fish had long since graduated to being a Fillmore headliner, and either Loading Zone or Notes From The Underground (both East Bay groups) could have topped the bill at the modest club on their own. Once again, the New Delhi River Band was playing Berkeley effectively for free. Plenty of Berkeley rock fans had heard them, but the band hadn't really made any money out of it.

July 15 and 16, 1967:  Devonshire Meadows Raceway, Cal State Northridge, Northridge, CA  Fantasy Fayre and Magic Music Festival
Saturday, July 15 running order (10:00am-8:00pm): Second Coming/Kaleidoscope/Whirling Dervishes/Doors/Solid State/Iron Butterfly/Grass Roots/New Delhi River Band/Thorinshield/Kaliedoscope/Solid State/The Factory/[unknown]/The Groupies
Sunday, July 16 running order (10:00am-8:00pm): Solid Sate/Humane Society/Sunshine Company/Butterfield Blues Band/Country Joe And The Fish/Heather Stones/New Delhi River Band/ Jefferson Airplane/Thorinshield/Sunshine Company/Merry Go Round/Canned Heat/Solid State
To my knowledge, the New Delhi River Band only made two road trips outside of the Bay Area. One of them was to Southern California, for the "Fantasy Fayre" at Devonshire Meadows. There had been a similarly named event in Northern California the month before, on Mt. Tamalpais (June 10-11, 1967) and the NDRB had played in the parking lot. I assume there was a connection between the two events. Presumably the NDRB had played well enough to get added to the Southern California shows.

Some major bands headlined the festival. The actual acts who played were different than who was booked, as The Mothers Of Invention, among others, were advertised but did not play. However, the running order is known from a photograph at the festival grounds. The New Delhi River Band played both days. On Saturday (July 15), they were booked at 4:45, after The Grass Roots and before Thorinshield. On Sunday (July 16), the NDRB were booked at 2:30pm, after Heather Stones and just before the Jefferson Airplane. All acts, including the big names, were scheduled 45 minutes apart, so sets would have been short. Who actually played, and for how long, remains somewhat obscure.

Summer 1967: [unknown venue], Vancouver, BC: New Delhi River Band
David Nelson told David Gans that the New Delhi River Band made their longest road trip in the Summer of '67, in Nelson's '62 Chevy station wagon. All five band members plus John Tomasi's girlfriend made the trip. I know quite a lot about the booming 60s Vancouver rock scene, but I haven't yet found a trace of the New Delhi River Band. However, there was a lot of Bay Area bands that got booked in Vancouver, particularly from Berkeley, so it's not at all surprising that a locally popular but unsigned Bay Area band played around Vancouver.

Nelson recalled that they went to "Queen Elizabeth Island in Vancouver, " which can't be quite right. The actual Queen Elizabeth Islands are much farther North. However, there are numerous parks and buildings in Canada named after English royalty, for obvious reasons, and there are also islands and promontories in Vancouver, so I am assuming that Nelson's memory is about 2/3 correct, I'm just not sure which third is muddled (Update: a fellow traveler surfaced, and he recalled that the main venue couldn't find the money to pay the band, so they didn't play the gig. However, the group did play University of British of Columbia and Simon Fraser University, presumably at some casual student dances).

While I don't have any date for the Vancouver expedition, the entire adventure must have taken at least a week, so the late July/early August period provides a good window. One thing to note was that if the trip took a week or more, since the band were booking themselves, they could not have made many phone calls on their own behalf to book shows while on the road. Thus, a few weeks after they returned, they would have found their calendar fairly empty. This illustrates one of the pitfalls of bands who booked themselves, particularly back in the 1960s. Even if they completed a phone call, how would they leave a callback number? Its not a surprise to see the New Delhi River Band's gig sheet thinning out as the Summer of 1967 ended.

July 21, 1967 Cafeteria, Berkeley High School, Berkeley, CA: New Delhi River Band/Anonymous Artists of America
The July 13, 1967 SF Chronicle reported this Friday night show as the first in a series of folk-rock dances. I don't know if others were held. There was an idea to move the Provo Park scene indoors, but it never really got traction (thanks JGMF for this).

Palo Alto Times, July 20, 1967

July 22, 1967 Burgess Recreation Center, Menlo Park, CA: New Delhi River Band (Saturday)
The Menlo Park Teen Club put on a Saturday night dance at the local park. The Rec Center was a small indoor building. Presumably The Magic Theater provided the light show (thanks Ross for finding this one).
 

A poster for the New Delhi River Band show at Azteca Hall in San Jose on August 25, 1967

August 25, 1967: Azteca Hall, San Jose, CA:  New Delhi River Band/Weird Herald/Ohms Band/Warriors of The Rainbow
Azteca Hall was at E. San Antonio and S. 24th St, not far from where Highway 101 meets Interstate 280 today. I don't know anything else about it, but it probably wasn't too big. This sort of show was where the New Delhi River Band had a following. The NDRB were a known quantity in the tiny South Bay underground, so they could headline a concert in San Jose, albeit a modest one.

Weird Herald were a legendary San Jose band that featured guitarists Billy Dean Andrus and Paul Ziegler, along with bassist Cecil Bollinger and drummer Pat McIntyre. Both Andrus and Ziegler were old friends of Jorma Kaukonen’s from his South Bay folkie days.  Ziegler was briefly in the electric Hot Tuna around 1970.  Andrus was a true South Bay legend, and when he died unexpectedly in November 1970 it upset all his friends greatly: Jorma wrote "Ode For Billy Dean," and another old friend, Pat Simmons of The Doobie Brothers, wrote "Black Water" for and about him. Weird Herald only released one obscure single, but they did record an unreleased album, and having heard a few tracks I can assure you their legendary reputation had some basis in fact.

Warriors of The Rainbow were another band of ex-San Jose State folkies, featuring guitarist Page Brownton, who is still performing in the Santa Cruz Mountains today, as far as I know. The Ohms Band is a mystery, even to me.

Robert Hunter would have arrived in East Palo Alto right around this time. The Grateful Dead were playing in Lake Tahoe this weekend, but I believe Phil Lesh would have picked up Hunter on Euclid Avenue shortly afterwards.

A poster for the planned show at the football field at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz County on September 2-3, 1967. There is no evidence that the shows ever took place, sad to say.

September 2-3, 1967:  Cabrillo College Stadium, Cabrillo Junior College, Santa Cruz, CA
Benefit for SCA at Santa Cruz [canceled]
Grateful Dead/Canned Heat/The Leaves/Andrew Staples/Sons of Champlain (sic)/New Delhi River Band/Second Coming/New Breed/Butterfield Blues Band/Gross Exaggeration/Yajahla/Tingle Guild/People/Jaguars/Art Collection/Morning Glory/Ben Frank’s Electric Band/New Frontier/Chocolate Watch Band/The Other Side/E-Types/Mourning Reign/Imperial Mange Remedy/Omens/Ragged Staff/Talon Wedge & Others.
This was scheduled as a two-day event on the Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Cabrillo College is a Junior College about six miles from the UCSC Campus, with a view that would be the envy of a million dollar resort. The event is widely known because the poster appears in Paul Grushkin's book The Art Of Rock.

However, I looked into the subject at some length, and there's no evidence that the event actually occurred. I talked to numerous old South Bay rockers who wouldn't have missed it, and even someone who was in a band that was booked at the show (the E-Types) and not a one recalled anything about it. It's impossible to prove a negative, but I have to believe this event was planned and then got scuttled by finances or the powers-that-be.

In theory, the Grateful Dead would have played Cabrillo on Saturday, September 2, because they were playing Rio Nido on Sunday (September 3). Remember that with Labor Day weekend, Sunday would have been like Saturday night, and shows could have run late. Most chronologies have the Dead at Cabrillo, but I don't think they, or anyone, was there. It's too bad. For one thing, it would have been a chance for the New Delhi River Band to play with the Grateful Dead, but this never occurred. More intriguingly, if the Dead had played, they would have bought Hunter along, and perhaps having already accepted the offer to be Garcia's co-writer, perhaps Hunter would have considered the possibility of writing with Nelson, but that too was not to be.

September (8?), 1967 San Bruno Recreation Gym, San Bruno Park, San Bruno, CA: New Delhi River Band/Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band (date assumed)
[update 20230626] A Commenter writes in

In the late sixties, my friends and I put on a couple of concerts at the San Bruno Recreation Gym located in San Bruno Park. One of the concerts had both The New Delhi River Band and the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band. We also had our own light show called Temporary Optics which provided the lights for the show. I don't remember what year, but the month was September. We had a great crowd and both bands were well received.

San Bruno is on the Peninsula, just above San Francisco Airport (SFO).  San Bruno City Park is on Crystal Springs Avenue, just near El Camino Real, but below Junipero Serra Park. Temporary Optics was the regular light show at the Family Dog on The Great Highway for many of the 1970 shows at the venue. The Cleanliness And Godliness Skiffle Band were from Berkeley, and had arisen out of the same scene as Country Joe And The Fish. I have assumed the date to be an open weekend, but it just as well could have been at the end of the month (September 29-30).

A poster for Moby Grape and the The New Delhi River Band at the Continental Ballroom in Santa Clara on September 15-16, 1967. Note the odd spelling of NDRB (thanks to Colin for the scan).

September 15-16, 1967: Continental Ballroom, Santa Clara, CA:  Moby Grape/Nu Delhi River Band/Om
The Continental Ballroom was San Jose's leading rock venue, although it was actually in the nearby town of Santa Clara, at 1600 Martin Avenue. All of the major San Francisco bands played there, albeit for a variety of different promoters. Moby Grape was riding quite high at this time, soon after the release of their debut album, and the shows were probably well attended. Why, exactly, the New Delhi River Band's name was misspelled on the poster is a mystery, but I assume it was an intentional one. I assume the opening act 'Om' was the same as The Ohms Band who had played at Azteca Hall the month before.

September 17, 1967: Provo Park, Berkeley, CA: Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band/New Delhi River Band/Strawberry Window
The New Delhi River Band played yet another Sunday at Provo Park, with Berkeley's own Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band and the Strawberry Window, from San Leandro.

A flyer for the New Delhi River Band's show at The Bold Knight in Sunnyvale. Once again, note a variant spelling for the band's name--I don't think these were accidents

September 22, 1967 The Bold Knight, Sunnyvale, CA New Delhi River Band/The Art Collective
The NDRB were still popular in the South Bay. The Bold Knight was one of the best paying gigs in the area. On this September weekend, the NDRB played a free concert Thursday in Palo Alto, a well paid show in San Jose on Friday, and a San Francisco show on Saturday where they may not have made much money at all. That pretty well summed up the NDRB's career.

A poster for the New Delhi River Band's performance at the Western Front on September 23, 1967 (thanks to Ross for the scan)

September 23, 1967: The Western Front, San Francisco, CA: New Delhi River Band/Mad River/The Other Half
The Western Front was an obscure concert venue at 895 O'Farrell (at Polk), just 4 blocks from San Francisco's run-down Tenderloin District. The venue was a former car dealership. Like many such venues, it has a vague, murky history, which I have done my best to sort out. After a dramatic opening weekend around July 4 of 1967, it closed for over two months, due apparently to the lack of a dance permit. The New Delhi River Band played the second night of their re-opening weekend.

The bands on the bill were very hip: Mad River had relocated to Berkeley from Ohio, and are widely revered today as being far ahead of their time, although they were merely strange back then. The Other Half have also become popular in collector's circles, with the great guitarist Randy Holden. However, I have never read an eyewitness account, much less a review of any Western Front show, and despite being one of the NDRB's few bookings in the city, it can't have led to much.

The building that housed the Western Front is just two doors down from the Great American Music Hall. 895 O'Farrell now houses the notorious Mitchell Brothers Cinema (don't google it at work).

October 1, 1967 El Camino Park, Palo Alto, CA Steve Miller Band/Blue Cheer/New Delhi River Band
Palo Alto had a series of Be-Ins at El Camino Park, the city's first downtown park. The Grateful Dead had played one on June 24, and unlike most cities Palo Alto continued to have free concerts in the park all the way through the Summer of 1968. This Sunday afternoon Be-In was produced by the Mid-Peninsula Free University (or "Free You" as it was known), yet another one of those South Bay stories that's too much of a tangent to explain. At this time, all three of the acts were popular locally, but none of them had a record. Blue Cheer went on to a certain kind of infamy, and the Steve Miller Band, along with rhythm guitarist Boz Scaggs, went on to huge success. Yet the New Delhi River Band, somewhat on a par with these groups at the time, has slipped into total obscurity outside of my blog [note: i had originally thought that this show was September 21, but JGMF found a mention of the date in the September 26, 1967 Stanford Daily].

>Fall, 1967 Fraternity Row, Berkeley New Delhi River Band
An eyewitness remembers a trip to Berkeley where the group played a hall overlooking ‘Fraternity Row’ in Berkeley. This could have been any number of smaller buildings. In fact, Frat Row at the time was moving from Northside (Euclid Ave and Hearst St) to Southside (Piedmont Ave and Warring St), so I'm not even sure which side of campus it would have been on.

Fall, 1967 Peninsula School, Menlo Park, CA
Peninsula School is a legendary Menlo Park instituion, a K-8 school founded in 1925 on Quaker principles. It was very popular with progressives prior to and during the 1960s (not to mention afterwards), and it was the kind of place where kindergartners addressed their teachers by their first name. Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter played their first paying gig at Peninsula in 1961, and the school has been intertwined with Grateful Dead history ever since. Alumni of the school include John Dawson, Bob Matthews, Steve Marcus and me. Jerry Garcia's first wife Sara worked there at one point, as well.

There was a fundraiser type rock concert at Peninsula in the Fall of 1967 for Pacific High School, and a then-student thinks that the New Delhi River Band may have been present. Given the social circles, this seems like a very likely possibility. Pacific High School is another of those 60s South Bay tangents that cannot be summarized easily. Pacific was sort of conceived as the High School successor for Peninsula School graduates. Suffice to say, students calling teachers by their first name was just the starting point.

From the Fall of 1967 onwards, it gets harder and harder to find any evidence of the New Delhi River Band performing. There were more and more rock shows around the Bay Area, but as the underground and commercial scenes started to merge, as Fillmore music started to appeal out in the suburbs, not every band made the transition. I think the New Delhi River Band's lack of formal management meant that they didn't have any entree into the universe of booking agents and promoters that lead to paying shows. Without any recording opportunities on the horizon, the band seems to have just slowly ground to a halt.

October 28, 1967 Channing Place, Berkeley, CA: New Delhi River Band
JGMF found a listing in the SF Chronicle of October 21, which mentioned several bands that would be playing Channing Place over the next several days, through Saturday October 28. Channing Place was at 2511 Channing Way (at Telegraph). The other bands mentioned were the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, Purple Earthquake and Ball Point Banana. It's possible Ball Point Banana was a Palo Alto band.

An ad from the San Jose State College newspaper, the Spartan Daily, for a Nov 3 '67 show headlined by The Doors (h/t JGMF).

November 3, 1967: Continental Ballroom, Santa Clara, CA: The Doors/Heatherstones/Orphan Egg/New Delhi River Band
JGMF uncovered this gig, advertised in the San Jose State's Spartan Daily.

November 7, 1967: Rancho Diablo, La Honda, CA: New Delhi River Band/Black Shit Puppy Farm
This was more of a party than a gig. This was actually a birthday party for a popular student at Pacific High School (the date was inferred from a friend who recalls her birth date).

The friends of the birthday girl lived at a La Honda Road commune known as Rancho Diablo. Rancho Diablo had been the location of the commune that housed the group Anonymous Artists of America, who had to some extent succeeded the Merry Pranksters and taken over their equipment, including Ron Boise’s ‘Thunder Machine.” However, the AAA commune had moved out mid-year and others had moved in. Many of the others were former or current Pacific High School students who later became known as the Black Shit Puppy Farm, which was both a light show and a rock band, depending on the gig. The band was named after the commune dog, a Black Lab named Arnold.  The lead guitarist of BSPF remembers this birthday party event with the NDRB, as it was one of their first public performances.

November 22, 1967: The Bold Knight, Sunnyvale, CA: Heatherstone/New Delhi River Band/Bogus Thunder/Art Collection
The Bold Knight usually only put on shows on Friday nights. However, the audience was primarily teenagers, so the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was like a Friday to them. The NDRB played along with some other South Bay stalwarts. Bogus Thunder (is that a 60s name or what?) were connected to groups like The Chocolate Watch Band and The Other Side, and The Art Collection, though a South Bay band, were fronted by New Zealand singer Ray Columbus. Heatherstone, sometimes billed as Heather Stone, are familiar to me from old flyers, but I don't know anything about them.

December 17, 1967: The Steppenwolf, Berkeley, CA: Mad River/New Delhi River Band/Lincoln’s Promise/Sky Blue
I have a suspicion that this show was another benefit, since Mad River could have filled the tiny place by themselves, and their was hardly a need for four groups if they were all expecting to get paid. This was a comparatively early show by the Berkeley group Sky Blue.

January 5, 1968: The Bold Knight, Sunnyvale, CA: New Delhi/Blueberry Jam/Steve Jenkins Group/Glare
The Bold Knight was a well paying booking in the South Bay, as the shows were held on Friday nights in a restaurant ballroom that could include up to 1000 patrons. Since no drinks were served, it was accessible to the many young people with cars in the South Bay. If the NDRB could still headline the Bold Knight in early 1968, they definitely had a following in the South Bay. Yet they had been headlining the Bold Knight six months earlier, and they had gotten no further in other markets. According to Nelson, around this time the New Delhi River Band simply stopped playing, without really breaking up.

It's not clear from the poster whether "Blueberry Jam" and "Steve Jenkins Group" are the same or different. Glare was a Los Altos High School band.

According to a 1977 interview with Kingfish leader Matt Kelly in the English fanzine Dark Star, Kelly's group St. Matthews Blues Band had opened for the New Delhi River Band sometime in late 1967, although I have been unable to determine exactly when or where. Kelly said that he took to jamming regularly with the NDRB so regularly that he became a member of the group. This too has been hard to pin down, but it must have been around this time [update: Kelly told me he was never actually a member of the New Delhi River Band, and did not start jamming with some of the members until after they broke up]

I know the name of the woman in the poster, and I know that the cat belonged to one of her roommates. Her roommate, however, can no longer remember whether the cat in the modified photo was "Fear" or "Trembling." Research continues.

January 27, 1968: Cowell College Dining Commons, UCSC, Santa Cruz: New Delhi River Band/Living Color
The last trace of a New Delhi River Band performance that I have been able to find was a Satruday night show at the Cowell College Dining Commons, at the newly opened University of California at Santa Cruz. The Cowell Dining Commons is within walking distance of the McHenry Library, the site of the Grateful Dead Archive. A very nice copy of the poster endures (thanks to Queenie, Kindy and Georgiana). It's uncertain if Kelly had joined the band by this time, but the NDRB fully evaporated shortly after this, whether or not Cowell was truly their last performance, which it very well may have been.

Aftermath
In the Dark Star interview, Kelly recalled that David Nelson and John Tomasi left soon after Kelly joined. Peter Sultzbach soon followed. He and Nelson were replaced by guitarists Ryan Brandenburg and Tim Abbott, another Palo Altan from various groups including The Good News, from whence Torbert and Herold had come. Abbott had also had a stint in San Jose's great Chocolate Watch Band.. Around this time the band changed its name to Shango. Kelly recalls that the biggest gig Shango did was headlining a wake for Neal Cassady at Big Sur (on March 21-23, 1968), a weekend show attended by as many as 4000 people. Shango led to Horses, but then that group too disintegrated. I will tell the whole story of the subsequent adventures of the band members, but for now a brief survey will have to suffice.

David Nelson went to ground after the New Delhi River Band, surfacing several months later with old friends like Jerry Garcia and Peter Albin. After playing some bluegrass and almost joining Big Brother and The Holding Company, he joined Garcia and John Dawson in the band that became The New Riders Of The Purple Sage. He still leads the group.

Dave Torbert went to Hawaii after 1968 to go surfing. In early 1970, Torbert was on his way to England to join Matt Kelly in Gospel Oak, when he 'coincidentally' received a call at his parent's house from John Dawson, who invited him to join the New Riders. After a few fine years and five albums with the Riders, Torbert and Kelly finally teamed up in the band that would become Kingfish. Torbert died of long-standing health issues in 1982.

Sweet John Tomasi remains the most elusive of the New Delhi River Band members. For the next few years, he performed periodically as the singer for the groups Mountain Current and Lonesome Janet (with Matthew Kelly and Chris Herold), but his subsequent activities remain obscure. Hopefully he is well and well-off somewhere.

Chris Herold managed avoided the draft as a Conscientious Objector. However, he was obligated to other service, in his case driving a hospital truck from 1969-71. As a result he could only play on weekends. He played in an apparently excellent Santa Cruz Mountains band called Mountain Current, but they only played the local haunts. I have always thought that when the drum chair for the New Riders opened up in late 1970, with the departure of Mickey Hart, Torbert and Nelson would have liked to get Herold into it, but it would have been impossible. With the initial demise of Kingfish in 1976, Herold seems to have stopped playing music professionally, although every few years he seems to have sat in with Kingfish for a song or two. Herold is now a widely respected writer of Haikus.

Peter Sultzbach joined Linda Tillery's band after NDRB broke up. Tillery had been in The Loading Zone, with whom NDRB had shared the stage many times at Provo Park, so I assume that was the initial connection. In 1968-69, Columbia was trying to make her a star as 'Sweet Linda Devine.' Ultimately she returned to the Loading Zone. Loading Zone, a fine band, faded away after 1972. However, they had shared management and rehearsal space with Oakland's finest, Tower Of Power. Sultzbach became Tower's road manager, and a google search of his name will turn it up on the credits to some of their albums. Sadly, Sultzbach died of cancer in 1981, far too young, fondly remembered by his friends.

The New Delhi River Band lived on, however faintly, when Nelson and Dawson's pre-New Riders history was ever alluded to. They were never huge, but they were big in their county. Still, being Palo Alto's second psychedelic blues band didn't quite have the impact of being the first one. Hopefully Nelson will rescue their demo tape from his garage, and some South Bay grandparents can have a long awaited flashback or two.