Album Economics: Round Records 1974-76

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To explain my conclusions, I will present the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Round Records Timeline 1975-1976

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grateful Dead Rehearsal Spaces, 1965-1995

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rancho Olompali, CA
Yellow Shark: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Commenter writes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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