The former Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, at 795 Willow Road. This old building is all that remained in 2018 from when Ken Kesey worked there as a night orderly.
However, readers cannot contribute their information if they are not given a platform. I have tried not to create a post without some context, not just a piece of information but some other supporting evidence that at least suggests a show was a somewhat plausible occurrence. Nonetheless, over the years I have come across some information that is plausible but cannot be proved or disproved. My idea for this post is to list a few of these possible shows, in the hopes that someone has something to add. Since these events only have one data point, I have decided to combine them into one post, in the hopes that there may be some supporting information for at least one of these events.
An ad for The Dragon A-Go-Go in San Francisco, albeit from the February 11, 1967 SF Chronicle. The Liverpool Five were an English band on RCA, though not actually from Liverpool.
I also asked her if she recalled any other places The Warlocks might have played, and she speculated that they may have played a place in Chinatown called The Dragon A-Go-Go. Now, she was very clear--one of the reasons I found her memories of The Tangent and Menlo College so believable--that she had been to Dragon A-Go-Go many times, and she wasn't certain if she had actually seen The Warlocks there. If she did, it was a sort of audition for the band, and they probably must have flunked, since groups typically played Dragon A-Go-Go for at least a week at a time.
Nonetheless, here's the scoop on the Dragon A-Go-Go. In the mid-60s, rock music was seen as a strictly teenage phenomenon. One response to this was clubs that allowed teenagers. In some cases, people over 20 were not even allowed (I don't know if they really checked IDs). In this case, based on the ads, it appeared that 18 year olds were welcome, so my suspicion was that high school students a bit younger could get in as well. Probably beer was available for adults, since the club was attached to a restaurant.
My eyewitness liked to dance, and she liked to go to the Dragon A-Go-Go. Her favorite band to go see there was called The Liverpool Five, a popular but somewhat forgotten English band who cashed in on the Beatles craze. The Liverpool Five were actually from England, though not from
Liverpool, and had two albums on RCA in 1966 and 1967. They toured
America pretty steadily and were apparently a pretty good live band.
The Dragon A' Go-Go was in San Francisco's Chinatown, at 49 Wentworth Alley near the intersection of Grant and Washington. Although Chinatown was a genuine and long-standing community of
immigrant Chinese and Chinese-Americans, commercially Chinatown was
geared towards tourists. In the 1960s, Chinese restaurants were not
common in most places, and good ones were even less common, so Chinatown
made San Francisco an exotic and attractive destination. Since
Chinatown was in walking distance of both the Financial District and
North Beach (if you don't mind a few hills), it was accessible to the
majority of San Francisco visitors. Chinatown was an appealing
destination for families from the suburbs looking to spend a fun evening
in the City, because it was exotic and fun, but easy to get to.
The proprietor of Dragon A-Go-Go was Louis Chin. The club was in the basement of a restaurant called Kuo Wah, having replaced a nightclub called The Lion's Den. The club seems to have been open from 1965 until at least 1970. Among the groups that played there were The Beau Brummels, The Outfit, The Frantics (whose members went on to form Moby Grape) and The Whispers. Some time after the Dragon A-Go-Go closed, Chin went on the open a club in San Francisco called Soul Train, with partners Don Cornelius and Dick Griffey (Cornelius was host of the famous Soul Train TV show). The addresss of Soul Train was 412 Broadway, later well known to Deadheads as The Stone.
Did The Warlocks audition at Dragon A-Go-Go? They could have. My correspondent couldn't be sure, but I'm hoping someone out there has a shred of a rumor we can work with. The Dragon was professionally part of the North Beach circuit, so it would fit that The Warlocks would try to get a gig there, even if it didn't work out. I have seen many ads in the SF Chronicle for Dragon A Go Go, but they would never list audition bands, just the headliner, so unless The Warlocks played a full engagement, it's unlikely there would be an ad or listing with their name.
The American Legion Hall, at 2758 South Lake Tahoe Blvd [US 50], in South Lake Tahoe, CA
Fall 1966: American Legion Hall, South Lake Tahoe, CA: The Grateful Dead
Many families in both the Bay Area and the Sacramento/Central Valley
area would buy or rent second homes in Lake Tahoe, East of San Francisco, and they would spend
much of the Summer and many Winter weekends at Tahoe. Part of Lake
Tahoe's specialness was that it was a great resort for both Summer and
Winter. After 1960, when the Winter Olympics were held at nearby Squaw
Valley, Lake Tahoe boomed again, particularly for Winter sports. Since
the Lake was on the California/Nevada border, parents could go over to
the Nevada side and gamble, leaving their teenage kids to fend for
themselves.
The first person to catch on to the vast quantity of teenagers in Lake
Tahoe was a guitarist named Jim Burgett. He started putting on dances at
the South Lake Tahoe American Legion Hall (at 2748 Lake Tahoe Blvd [US 50],
South Lake Tahoe, CA) in 1958. The story is complicated, but by the mid-60s Burgett was holding dances at the Legion Hall seven days a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
For any teenagers spending a week, a month or a Summer in Lake Tahoe,
every night was Friday night, and with the parents often away in Nevada
anyway, the Legion Hall dances were the only show in town. Burgett's own
band played most nights, but on occasion he hired out of town acts as
well. When the Fillmore bands became popular, he would often hire them
to give his own band a night off (Burgett also played six days a week at
Harrah's Tahoe, believe it or not). The Jim Burgett saga is amazing, and well worthy of a book, which fortunately he is planning to write.
Poking around the web on various message boards and comment threads, one
finds that numerous people have fond memories of the Lake Tahoe scene,
particularly Jim Burgett's dances at the American Legion Hall. However,
one commentator piqued my interest, and although like all internet
comments they have to be considered with some reservations, it's a
fascinating tidbit. Specifically, an old Tahoe hippie recalls seeing
the Grateful Dead at the American Legion Hall in the Fall of 1966, well
after Labor Day. There were less than 50 people present, and it was so
laid back that Pigpen actually wore guns on stage, in an old West styled
holster.
This crazy story is not as far fetched as it sounds. Jim Burgett was
kind enough to respond to a few questions, and he told me that while he
held the master lease to the American Legion Hall, outside of the
Memorial Day to Labor Day window he often leased it to outside
promoters. In many cases, Burgett and his band were on tour, so Burgett
only had a general idea of what was being presented at at the Legion
Hall (he knew a concert promoter would be using it, for example, but he
might not know who the bands were). Thus some San Francisco entity could
have leased the Legion Hall to put on a Dead show, and found out that
the audience wasn't there in the Fall.
Who would have put on such a concert, thinking that the outlaw Grateful Dead would draw a crowd in an empty Lake Tahoe? Likely suspects would be the crowd who originally started psychedelia at the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City, NV, just about an hour Northeast of Lake Tahoe. The Red Dog Saloon crowd evolved into the Family Dog, and when Chet Helms took it over they became the Psychedelic Cattleman's Association. The Red Dog Salooon, for all its original hippie trappings, was very gun-positive, so if someone like Red Dog founder Mark Unobsky was involved, Pigpen may have felt very comfortable indeed wearing his holster on stage.
Fall 1966 Village Square, San Lorenzo, CA: Grateful Dead (afternoon free concert)
In a post about free Grateful Dead concerts, a Commenter writes
One show was played in 1966 at the San Lorenzo Ca, Village SQUARE, FOR
FREE!!! and help make the Grateful Dead legendary. Early on. in thee
east bay area.not sure of any documentation but it did change some lives
forever
San Lorenzo is a tiny East Bay town, just between San Leandro and Hayward, and between the Nimitz Freeway (I880/17) and the Bay. Most Northern Californians have driven by it numerous times (just South of the 238/580 split), but never turned off there. In the Fall of 1966, it was pretty common for malls or downtowns to have free rock concerts to encourage teens to hang out and/or shop. So it makes perfect, absurd 1966 sense that someone in San Lorenzo heard about the Dead playing free concerts and called them.
The Cheetah (formerly The Aragon Ballroom), at 1 Navy Pier on Venice Beach, near Santa Monica, as it appeared in June 1968. Did the Grateful Dead and the Doors play here on January 22, 1968?
January 22, 1967 The Cheetah, Venice, CA: The Doors/Grateful Dead
This remarkable date is based on someone else's research, but since I have lost contact with him, I want to get it out there (Len, if you're around, check in!). Some years ago, a fellow scholar was working on a truly remarkable and absolutely thorough chronology of The Doors live performances. It was online for a while, but has since disappeared, and no book came out that I am aware of.
One of the mysteries the Doors researchers was working on was a joint Grateful Dead/Doors show at the Cheetah in Venice Beach, on Sunday, January 22, 1967. According to his correspondent, this was kind of an "underground" show. The Cheetah--which may have still been The Aragon Ballroom--was just an underused dance hall for rent at the time. Venice Beach was Hippie Central, however, so even if only locals knew about the show, it could have done alright. The correspondent even recalled the weather, which research checked out.
The Grateful Dead were in Los Angeles to play a bill with Timothy Leary on Friday, January 20. The Dead were underground legends, even though they had no album. The Doors had been an underground legend, but their album had been officially released on January 4, so they would have been the hot new thing in Los Angeles. Of course, the Doors and the Dead had played a double bill at the Fillmore the weekend before, and the Doors had attended (though not performed at( The Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park on Saturday, January 14.
The Doors and the Grateful Dead were not fans of each other, to my knowledge, so they may not have hung out, and may have had no fond memories to recall. Or maybe it didn't happen? But--maybe it did...
An ad for the Teenage Fair in at the Oakland Exposition Hall from the Oakland Tribune on March 26, 1967
February or March 1967: Teen Fair, Oakland Exposition Center, 9th and Fallon Streets, Oakland, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Wildflower/others
Up through the first half of 1967, the Grateful Dead rarely left the Bay Area, and thus took any paying gig they could find. While many of those shows are immortalized by Fillmore posters and the like, some of them were just junior college dances or other casual engagements. If the band was free one night, then making several hundred dollars was better than not making it. While there are inevitably numerous vague stories from back in the day, many of them half-remembered wishful thinking, I find any story that involves a payday far more believable than the usual "free in the park" tale. Thus I find it very plausible that the Grateful Dead played the Bay Area Teen Fair at the long-forgotten Oakland Exposition Center in February or March of 1967.
America's premier journal of Wild Sounds From Past Dimensions is Ugly Things. Readers who are not familiar with Ugly Things should subscribe immediately, as the quality and breadth of their research transcends all other 60s research efforts. Back in issue #29, Ugly Things had the complete story of The Wildflower, a band whom many Deadheads will recognize from old Avalon posters, but about which little was known. After reading Erik Bluhm's exhaustive article, however, complete with pictures, with the whole Wildflower story laid out in fascinating detail, their tale becomes fully fleshed out.
One interesting saga was the Wildflower's appearance at the Teenage Fair in Oakland in 1967, which Bluhm identifies as having been in February.
Though the idea of a Teenage Fair had originated in Los Angeles in the early '60s, the phenomena of the Teenage Fair quickly spread to the rest of the country. Booths were set up to display all sorts of things teenagers drooled over, from custom cars and surfboards and musical instruments. To a constant barrage of the latest sounds blaring from multiple stages, teens were encouraged to squander as much of their allowances as possible before curfew.
The earliest Teen Fair I know of in the Bay Area was in 1965 in San Mateo, and the last one I am aware of was in Santa Clara in 1969.
Bluhm spoke with then 14-year old Hayward music fan Paul Honeycutt, who attended the show to see a Hayward group who had won a local "Battle Of The Bands," and ended up seeing The Wildflower. For our purposes, however, the most tantalizing comment is Honeycutt's final remark, after describing the Wildflower's fine set:
We had to be back to get a ride home with my Dad, so we didn't get to stay to hear the San Francisco bands scheduled to play later. I think both the Dead and and Airplane and maybe Moby Grape played over the course of the weekend, but we missed 'em.
The Teenage Fair would have been a paid booking at a time when the Dead desperately needed ready cash. It probably wasn't that great a show, but it's very possible that the Dead played the afternoon or some other time when they wouldn't have been playing, so it would have been an extra payday. The Teenage Fairs generally promoted the event rather than the bands, so it's not surprising that we haven't found any posters, ads or publicity promoting the Grateful Dead at the Oakland Teenage Fair.
The Grateful Dead had a pretty clear February, too, so they would have needed the money.
January 30-February 5 Recording in Los Angeles
Friday, February 10-Santa Venetia Armory
Saturday, February 11-open
Sunday, February 12-The Fillmore (Benefit concert)
Friday-Sunday February 17-19 open
Friday-Sunday February 24-26-The Fillmore
Some years ago I did some research into the 1967 Teenage Fair in Oakland, which is how I learned about the Exposition Center. At the time, I only knew that the Wildflower had played, not the Dead or the Airplane. I came up with the dates March 17-26, but I only know the Fair ended on March 26, based on an ad in the Oakland Tribune (above) I find it unlikely, however, that the Fair ran for two months. It's possible the Fair had two runs, in both February and March, or something like that. It is typical of this sort of mystery that the only two solid data points (the eyewitness and the Oakland Tribune ad) conflict.
For various wonky reasons, I do not rule out these dates. However, those dates do inherently cause a conflict with the Grateful Dead's touring schedule, as the band played for Bill Graham on the weekend of March 17-19 (Winterland and the Fillmore) and for Chet Helms at the Avalon the next weekend (March 24-26). If the March 17-26 date turns out to be correct for the Oakland Teenage Fair, there are three likely possibilities:
The Grateful Dead didn't play the 1967 Oakland Teenage Fair
The Dead played a weeknight (note that Paul Honeycutt doesn't say what night he went), or
The Dead played an early set and went over to the Fillmore or Avalon, as the case may have been (keep in mind they had just released an album that week, and Warners would have wanted them to promote it)
On balance, I think the Grateful Dead played the Oakland Teenage Fair at the
Exposition Center in 1967. They definitely needed the money. They
probably played an hour long set for five hundred bucks or so, and
hopped back over the Bay Bridge. Most of the suburban kids wandering by
were probably a bit nonplussed, wondering why this strange bunch of
barbarians were playing such ragged music. A few years later, when they
were in college, they probably had a moment at their "first" Dead show
when they thought, "wow, these guys seem awfully familiar." Here's to
hoping that some of them are reading this, and have a sudden flash of
memory.
A 1967 Midget Auto Racing poster from the Oakland Exposition Center. The Exposition Center was on 10th and Oak, now the Oakland Museum of California. It is very hard to find any traces whatsoever of the Oakland Exposition Center
The Oakland Exposition Center
The Oakland Exposition Center was an important building in post-WW2 Oakland, but it is nearly entirely forgotten now. It is all but impossible to Google, and there seem to be few references to it. It seems to have served as both a sort of convention center and indoor sports arena. I think it was somewhat smaller than the Oakland Auditorium (now the Kaiser Convention Center), which is nearby. I do know that the Exposition Center had indoor motorcycle and auto races from the 1940s through the '60s, which was how I first found out about it. I also know it was sometimes used for Roller Derby, which has a very Oakland-centric history. I believe it also was used for various kinds of "Expositions," a now-archaic term for a sort of celebration of industrial innovation.
The Oakland Exposition Center was torn down around 1968, to make room for the Oakland Museum of California, on the very same site. The Oakland Museum of California, around the block at 1000 Oak Street (at 10th) opened in 1969, and it is a worthy institution well worth visiting, but the Exposition Center has all but disappeared into the mists of time.
A news item from the front page of the April 22, 1965 San Mateo Times, about the recent teenage fair. Future Cold Blood singer Lydia Pense won a prize. Attendance was 196,000 over nine days.
Teenage Fairs
My earliest sighting of a Teenage Fair in the Bay Area was in Redwood City in 1965. Redwood City teenager Lydia Pense, the future lead singer of Cold Blood, won a prize. The last one I know about is in Santa Clara in 1969. By 1969, some of the top bands at the Fair were advertised, since they were draws in and of themselves. Santana actually played the 1969 Teenage Fair in Santa Clara. I'm not aware of Teenage Fairs after '69. By 1970, youth culture was synonymous with the rock market, and hippies were too cool to ever to go to something as commercial as a Fair. Unless it was, y'know, like a Renaissance Faire, where people had bare feet and there were maidens, and jousting, and flagons of mead, and, like, man, it wasn't commercial at all.
A flyer for the "Vernal Equinox" at Lime Kiln, near Big Sur. The multi-day festival overwhelmed the little town with hippies. Everyone had a great time, and it never happened again.
March 19, 1968 Lime Kiln, Big Sur, CA: Jim Stern and friends (with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir) (Tues)
There was a Vernal Equinox event on March 22, 1968, attended by perhaps
3,000 hippies, which was far too many for Big Sur. The weekend had
turned into a sort of wake for Neal Cassidy, who had died the month
before. There were, however, low-key events leading up to the Equinox.
Producer Jim Stern, then a local drummer, said in a Jake Feinberg
interview that his band sort of freaked out and bailed on playing, and
said that Garcia and Weir showed up in Big Sur to bail him out. This
would have been a sort of jam, presumably with other players, and a
sparsely attended thing. The exact date is unclear, but it would have
been daytime (March 20 definitely a possibility, and March 21 not out of
the question).
September 25, 1969 Ungano's, New York, NY: Grateful Dead
Ungano's was nightclub on West 70th Street in Manhattan (mid-town), much favored by record companies for up-and-coming or newly-signed bands. Explaining why I think the the Grateful Dead played Ungano's on September 25, 1969 would take an entire post in itself.
Conveniently, I have written that post. The Grateful Dead were advertised in the Village Voice as playing Ungano's on Thursday, February 12, 1970. This was the night between legendary shows at the Fillmore East on Wednesday February 11 (when the Allmans and Fleetwood Mac showed up to jam) and Friday February 13 (with a 90+ minute "Dark Star">"Other One">"Lovelight"). In those days, Lincoln's birthday was February 12, so February 11 was like an extra Friday night.
Did it happen? Did the Dead play Ungano's? I wrote out the evidence, and it generated a Comment Thread for the ages. To explain why I think the Dead played Ungano's on September 25, you have to read the whole post and then the whole Comment Thread.
May 4, 1970 Central Park Bandshell, New York, NY: New Riders Of The Purple Sage
Several years ago I
had a lengthy exchange on AOL with someone from New York who described
in great, plausible detail seeing the New Riders play for free in
Central Park Bandshell at lunchtime in Spring 1970. Among the detailed
parts of his memory was that he had to cut class to do it (meaning
weekday), he was in the 7th grade (locks in the year), and it was
announced on the radio by WNEW-fm dj 'Real Alison Steele' (the teenage
crush of every adolescent New York boy). She apparently announced that
"Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead" would be playing. He didn't know who
the New Riders were (obviously), nor did he know what a pedal steel
guitar was. He figured it out the next year. If you do the sums, it
comes out that the schedule had to be
Sunday 3 May--Middletown
Monday 4 May--possible Central Park Bandshell
Tuesday 5 May--possible Central Park Bandshell
Wednesday 6 May--Kresge Plaza, MIT
I
have searched in vain over the years for any corroboration, but the
details I was given (above) have the ring of truth to them. Periodically
I have tried to at least see if there was an announcement about free
noon concerts at that time, even if no band names were given out. In any
case--Garcia had to be somewhere on May 4-5, why not Central Park?
Fellow scholar Jesse Jarnow points out the surrounding evidence suggests that the Dead were already in Massachusetts by May 5, so it makes Monday, May 4 more plausible. Remember, also that the Dead had a Fillmore East show coming up, and Bill Graham would not have wanted any publicity about a free Jerry Garcia show undermining ticket sales. On the other hand, no one knew better than Bill about how free concerts created buzz, so he would have supported a free show sans official advertising.
[update: Correspondent Larry sends along an article by Sparrow (that’s his name) who reports having seen a band “from Out West” who were “wearing Cowboy hats” in Central Park one afternoon (Chapter 10 at the link). Later he finds out it was the Grateful Dead. All signs suggest that it was actually the New Riders of The Purple Sage, on May 4, 1970 (or thereabouts). See for yourself here at The Sun.]
It is plausible that the free Central Park show was the next week, where the schedule was
Sunday May 10-Atlanta, GA
Thursday May 14-Merramec JC, Kirkwood, MO
Friday May 15-Fillmore East (two shows)
Saturday May 16-Temple Stadium, Philadelphia, PA
While the Kirkwood, MO remains an enduring curiosity--how did it get booked, and how was it profitable for the Dead to play the show?--the band had to be somewhere between Sunday and Thursday. Maybe they returned to NYC, and played a midweek Riders show?
[update 2: thanks to research by Jesse Jarnow that surrounded the Dead's St. Louis box set, it has been determined that the New Riders played yet another free concert in St. Louis. On May 13, 1970, the New Riders played at Washington University in St. Louis, at The Quadrangle, where the Dead had played back in 1969. Apparently, there had been plans for the Dead to play the school, but they fell through, but the Riders still played a free concert. Dead manager Jon McIntire had gone to Wash U, so draw your own conclusions. These three free New Riders shows--Central Park, Boston and St. Louis--all daytime, all in big cities, seem to have been a nascent attempt to replicate the Dead model with the Riders by playing for free.]
There is a perpetual rumor of the band playing at a Tim Leary benefit at the Village Gate in Greenwich Village on Monday, May 11, but by Manhattan standards that would be high-profile. I don't believe the Dead would have played a Tim Leary Benefit by 1970, either.
Reviewer: Peter Sramek - favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - September 21, 2017
Subject: An Amazing Day
What I remember of this outdoor concert was standing 5 feet from Jerry
Garcia just mesmerized by his guitar work. I'm sure he was stoned out of
his head, but it just flowed without any signs of trying. And from what
I remember this performance was pretty impromptu. They were playing
officially the next day, but set-up outside for the afternoon. A group of us went into downtown Boston later that weekend to see New Riders do a public concert and that was also amazing.
I am more inclined to believe that there were two free New Riders concerts in Manhattan and Boston, or none, than that there was just one. The Dead were in upstate New York (SUNY Delhi) on Friday May 8, and played Worcester, MA on Saturday night May 9. Worcester is just an hour from Boston, so the transit is very viable.
August 5, 1970 [unknown venue], San Diego, CA: Acoustic Grateful Dead
The August 5 1970 show is different than most shows on this list, in that there is not only a tape, but a board tape that has circulated for decades. 15 songs, two sets (or two pieces of tape, anyway) of acoustic Grateful Dead, with John Dawson and David Nelson helping out here and there. The show has appeared in every list for many moons.
But here's the thing. There's no evidence of any show in San Diego around then. The recording suggests a small place, but why would the Dead fly to San Diego to play some tiny place? You can suggest that it's really the Matrix or the Lion's Share, and that's fine, but why was it dated August 5 in San Diego?
Now, it's true that during July and August 1970, the Dead's road crew was supported by Alembic, and the Alembic team had gone on tour with the Medicine Ball Caravan. The Dead had been supposed to be on the tour, too, but they pulled out at the last second. But Bob Matthews, Betty Cantor and many other Alembic regulars were out of town. So the Dead could play acoustic gigs, but not really electric ones. The band did play some acoustic shows at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, discussed at length by JGMF, so maybe the "Aug 5" tape is from the Lion's Share. I myself have speculated that the tape is from a place called Thee Club in Los Angeles, where the acoustic Dead (and the New Riders) played on August 28-29, but that doesn't explain the dating and "San Diego."
The truth is out there.
Coda: Leave No Tern Unstoned
If anyone has information, concerns, speculation or flashbacks about any of the above events please put them in the Comments.
Dawn Of The New Riders of The Purple Sage, a 5-cd box released by the Owsley Stanley Foundation at the end of 2019
The end of 2019 has greeted us with two remarkable releases by, of all unlikely bands, the New Riders of The Purple Sage. The Owsley Stanley Foundation provided a remarkable 5-disc set called Dawn Of The New Riders of The Purple Sage. It included the second show ever by the band, before they even had a name, from August 1, 1969. There were also complete sets from August 28 '69, October 14 '69 and June 4 '70. As if that weren't enough, the discs were filled out with additional numbers from other sets on those weekends. Abruptly, a UPS delivery opens a wide window on the early music of the New Riders of The Purple Sage, and Jerry Garcia's critical role in their formation.
Around the same time, the NRPS Archive continued its excellent series of releases with Thanksgiving In New York City, a two-disc set containing the complete late show at the Academy Of Music in Manhattan from November 23, 1972. In contrast to the tentative explorations of the early Riders, the '72 band was road tested and battle hardened. They played a wide variety of originals and covers, rocking hard while the melodies soared. By then, Garcia's pedal steel chair had been taken by the great Buddy Cage, and Cage took Garcia's basic melodic template and exploded it into a remarkable kaleidoscope of sweet picking and sharp sustain.
On February 5, 2020, Buddy Cage moved on up for his final load-out. Relix had a nice Memoriam, which you can read, but I recommend playing some New Riders of The Purple Sage music loud, really loud, in Buddy's honor. And Jerry's too, for that matter. The new releases will do nicely, and we can finally unravel not just the mythology of the early New Riders, but how their music actually evolved from a pickup bar band to a major touring band, in a musical sub-genre in which they were among the pioneers.
When we look closely at the reality of the origins of the New Riders of The Purple Sage, rather than the myth, something unexpected comes into view. On the edge of Grateful Dead history, there were occasional references to a murky ensemble called Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck. The Cards Off The Bottom seem to have been a bigger part of the original plan than anyone thought, only to get written out of the origin story.
Thanksgiving in New York City, an archival release from the New Riders of The Purple Sage. It features both NRPS sets from the late show on November 23, 1972 at the Academy of Music in Manhattan.
NRPS Mythology
The fable of the origin of the New Riders of The Purple Sage is simple, mythical and largely wrong. Sure, there are a few elements of truth in the myth, but the story has been repeated so many times--not least by members of the Dead and New Riders--that everyone now assumes that the myth is fact. The truth is far muddier, and the Owsley Foundation release at least untucks the covers of the story.
The Riders were spoken about in many interviews, and still are, on occasion, but there was almost no actual information about the first version of the band. Up until the release of Dawn Of The New Riders of The Purple Sage, here's what we had about the 1969 incarnation:
Two live tapes, Aug 7 '69 from the Matrix and Sep 18 '69 from the Inn Of The Beginning
Two studio tapes: "Marmaduke and Friends," with two tracks from 1968-69, and a four song demo from November '69, both released on the Relix lp Before Time Began. There were no liner notes.
No live reviews from the 1969 incarnation
No eyewitnesses, either
No on-stage photos
Journalists only became interested in the Riders around '71, and queried Jerry and others in interviews. Garcia, and later John Dawson and David Nelson, told the same story again and again. It goes like this:
Garcia got a pedal steel guitar
Dawson went to a Dead rehearsal, found out Jerry had a steel
Dawson visited Garcia to play, Garcia found out that Dawson had a Wednesday night gig playing original songs in Menlo Park, and decided to accompany him
Garcia and Dawson invited Nelson to join them in Menlo Park
The trio invited Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh to join them on drums and bass, and went on the road. The theory was that they could acquire the money for the opening act while only bringing two extra people.
Later Dave Torbert replaced Phil, and then Spencer Dryden replaced Mickey. Then they made an album.
Only one thing about this myth is definitively incorrect--Phil Lesh never played on the road with the New Riders--but this simple story belies a far more interesting origin.
Thesis: What Was The Plan? A clip from the Porter Wagoner syndicated TV show in the late 60s, playing "Old Slewfoot" (originally a hit for Johnny Horton). Many of the "obscure" country covers sung by Bob Weir were recorded by Wagoner around 1968--"Slewfoot," "Let Me In" and "Green Green Grass of Home," for example
This will be a long post, and it will be kind of hard to follow if you aren't sunk in New Riders minutia like me, so I'll lay it out:
Garcia and Weir watched a lot of syndicated country music TV shows on Saturday afternoon
In mid-1969, they conceived of touring like a country show, with a variety of interlocking performers filling an entire evening, ending with the headliners
The New Riders of The Purple Sage were one part of the plan
A group called Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom was conceived as a vehicle for covers, duets and other material
The Cards Off The Bottom would have included the members of the Dead, the Riders and additional players like Peter Grant
After various tentative explorations, the plan was scaled back
An Evening with The Grateful Dead was the end result, It debuted May 1 '70, featuring the "acoustic Dead," the Riders and then the electric Dead
Ultimately, the Grateful Dead and the New Riders had to split apart, in order to keep both organisms thriving.
Marmaduke: The Palo Alto Years
John "Marmaduke" Dawson was a few years younger than Jerry Garcia. Dawson's family lived in Los Altos, just above Palo Alto, and he had gone to Peninsula School with Bob Matthews. Dawson was interested in folk music and The Beatles, so it's no surprise he was in the outer orbit of the very tiny proto-hippie circles of Jerry Garcia and his friends. According to one story, Dawson took some lessons from Garcia at Dana Morgan Music, but I can't verify that.
Dawson made a self-financed album in 1964 that has recently surfaced, and he seemed to be a typical folkie of the time. Dawson graduated high school in 1964, had a brief foray in college (Occidental, I think) and then an equally brief time in England, but seems to have returned to Palo Alto by the time of the Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band. Dawson was around for the Warlocks' debut at Magoo's Pizza. David Nelson tried out Dawson as the bass player for the New Delhi River Band in Fall '66, but Nelson said that "Dawson wasn't really a bass player," a kind way of saying his friend's sense of time wasn't very strong.
It's not really clear what Dawson was doing between 1966 and 1969, but it doesn't really matter. He was young and the world was changing, and he was thinking about being a musician and songwriter. There are only a few sightings of him from back then. There are hundreds of photos from the free concert at Palo Alto's El Camino Park on July 2, 1967 , and supposedly Dawson can be seen helping Bob Matthews with the Grateful Dead's equipment. I don't really know where Dawson lived at the time, but I assume it was the South Bay.
Later, in mid-1968, Bob Matthews got a job building a recording studio in San Mateo, called Pacific Recorders. Some months later, the Grateful Dead would spend several months recording and re-recording Aoxomoxoa there. Initially, however, as Matthews and his girlfriend Betty Cantor built up the studio, one source of income was letting aspiring songwriters and bands record demos. Betty has mentioned playing kick-drums on some Dawson demos, essentially because his time was wobbly. While she didn't mention a date (and probably didn't recall one), it would make sense that these recordings were in mid-68, when Pacific Recorders was available for paying customers. It also makes sense that those recordings were later re-recorded or overdubbed, and they became the two tracks known as "Marmaduke and Friends" that were broadcast on KSAN and released on the Relix album.
In the Fall of 1966, the New Delhi River Band, with David Nelson and Dave Torbert, were more or less the house band at The Barn, in Scotts Valley, amidst the Santa Cruz Mountains. This flyer was for October 14 (NDRB) and 15 (Flowers)
In early 1969, Nelson started hanging out with the remnants of Big Brother and The Holding Company, as he was old pals with Peter Albin. After at least one Matrix gig, however, any band plans went on hold as Albin and Dave Getz went on tour with Country Joe and The Fish. Nelson was mostly living at Big Brother's rehearsal warehouse, although by mid-69 he had moved to Divisadero, near Haight Street. Dawson and Nelson had some involvement in the Aoxomoxoa sessions, enough to be named on the back of the album, although it is unclear what their contributions actually were. I assume they did handclaps or backing vocals, which may or may not have been processed or erased in the endless sessions.
Marmaduke, Jerry and Dave
Somewhere in the middle of April 1969 the mythology gets very potent. We know that Jerry Garcia bought a Zane Beck D10 pedal steel guitar at Don Edwards' Guitar City in Lakewood, CO, on April 13 or 14, while the Dead were on tour. He bought the steel the week after seeing Sneaky Pete Kleinow play one when the Flying Burrito Brothers had opened for the Dead at the Avalon the week before. Dawson has said that he attended a Grateful Dead rehearsal in Novato, and that Garcia told him he had a new pedal steel. Dawson invited himself over sometime later to hear Garcia play it, although whether it was at Garcia's Larkspur house or at the Novato rehearsal hall is unclear.
Dawson played his own songs, so that Garcia would have something to play along to, and Garcia took a liking to them. Garcia then invited himself to one of Dawson's gigs. Dawson was singing his songs by himself on Wednesday nights at a Menlo Park "hofbrau" called The Underground, on El Camino Real. As near as I can tell, it was on 1029 El Camino Real, just a few blocks from Magoo's Pizza. The first such gig was probably May 7 or May 14. Garcia seems to have brought Nelson along shortly thereafter, and they seemed to have initially played as a trio.
Some apparent facts that are never reflected on:
John Dawson was an old friend of Bob Matthews from Palo Alto, and had known most or all of the band for some years. While Dawson still lived in the South Bay, he was still connected enough to hang out at a 1969 Dead rehearsal. By 1969, although the Dead were flat broke, they were genuine rock stars, and half of the hip Bay Area wanted to hang out at their rehearsals, so Dawson was not just nobody to them.
Dawson heard that Garcia had a new pedal steel guitar, and asked or invited himself to come over and see it, and Garcia appears to have agreed. So Dawson's connection to the Dead extended personally to Garcia, not just Matthews. Yet no one ever mentions Dawson around the scene any other time than the rehearsal, so there may be added layers that we don't know about.
Rukka Rukka
Dawson, Nelson and Garcia did indeed play a few Wednesday nights at The Underground (see below for a prospective list). According to the mythology, the trio decided to add a rhythm section and take it on the road as a "real band." While that isn't untrue, trace evidence suggests that someone, almost certainly Jerry Garcia, may have had a different plan entirely.
More importantly, an enitely different band seems to have played a few gigs, according to Dennis McNally (p.321). The group consisted of Nelson, Dawson, Garcia, Weir, Lesh, Hart, Tom Constanten and Peter Grant. They played a date at Peninsula School in Menlo Park, per McNally (see here for a discussion of the exact date), and then a show on June 11 at California Hall. A flyer survives for the California Hall show, and McNally even found a setlist. We see some of the numbers that would turn up in acoustic Dead sets, for both Garcia and Weir, but it is tantalizingly unclear whether there was a separate set featuring Dawson and his songs. Peter Grant, an old pal of Garcia's, seems to have been the designated banjo player.
Yet these two shows at Peninsula and California Hall have simply been dropped from the Riders origin myth, because they don't fit. What might Garcia have been thinking? While I am about to introduce a tangent that will ultimately require an entirely different, very lengthy--even by my standards--post, everything points to Garcia and Weir watching a lot of syndicated country music shows on weekend afternoons, which as you know is when touring rock musicians wake up.
To most Americans, the best known syndicated country music show was Hee Haw, featuring Buck Owens and Roy Clark. That show, however, first aired on CBS (prior to syndication) in the Summer of 1969, so it wouldn't have been an influence.The most prominent of the syndicated shows from the mid-60s appear to have been The Porter Wagoner Show and Buck Owens Ranch. Fellow scholar Jesse Jarnow even pointed that in between songs of the first Grateful Dead "acoustic set" on Dec 26 '69, Weir even said (approximately), "I try to watch as much country music on TV as possible." So I'm not imagining things.
Touring country music in the late 60s, as represented in the TV shows and often on stage, consisted of relatively large, multi-instrumental ensembles, sharing lead vocals and periodically joining together for some gospel-type numbers. There was a headliner, of course, but there was an opening act and all the guitar players sang a song, and so on, and a few people played a bunch of instruments. Hey--this kind of sounds like An Evening With The Grateful Dead, doesn't it? Some folkie songs, a little bluegrass gospel, some country honky-tonk with the New Riders and then the full deal with the Dead. Take another look at those old Porter Wagoner videos on YouTube, and tell me I'm wrong.
Another ignored clue is the presence of Peter Grant at a few Dead shows in June, 1969. Grant played banjo through a Fender Twin Reverb ("set to stun" according to him). The peculiar little banjo experiment wasn't repeated after June '69. If Garcia and the Dead were gnawing on a different configuration, then Grant's seemingly random guest appearances take on a certain logic. Keep in mind also that Grant played pedal steel guitar, banjo and lead guitar, so he would have been a versatile addition to a multi-layered ensemble, just as Nelson and Dawson's harmonies were superior to Weir and Lesh's at the time.
Weir got stripped out of the Riders, ultimately, to play his part in the acoustic set, and Grant receded back to San Jose, but those facts play no part in the myth. The Owsley tapes re-set the narrative, and we can see them an entirely different way. The Aug 28 show is the hitherto unknown mid-point between the initial Rukka Rukka incarnation and An Evening With The Grateful Dead, before Weir and Dawson were fronting separate ensembles.
A clip from a September 1971 Rolling Stone article by Ben Fong-Torres has the first recital of "The Call"
Who Played Bass?
For me, and pretty much nobody else, there's only question that acts as a fulcrum for New Riders' studies: who played bass? I have written numerous posts on this topic, and even my most loyal Commenters say "aren't you tired of this?" The answer--no. It's a critical question, and we are finally getting some answers, thanks to Mr. Owsley.
The initial New Riders mythology, promulgated in Rolling Stone from 1971 onwards, was that Phil Lesh had been the bass player, until he was replaced by Dave Torbert in Spring 71. The myth has Torbert traveling from Hawaii to England, to meet up with old pal Matt Kelly, and stopping off at his parents' house in Redwood City. A chance call with an offer to join the New Riders changed his plans, once Kelly had given his old friend his blessing. Nice story, eh?
For the release of the now-largely-forgotten New Riders album, Brujo, in November 1974, Columbia Records commissioned a Riders "Family Tree" from the great Pete Frame (later published in Frame's More Rock Family Trees). Besides revealing the existence of the New Delhi River Band, for the initial iteration of the Riders Frame wrote "Phil Lesh or Bob Matthews" as the bass player. I may have been one of the few people who noticed this--in 1975, at KFJC-fm studios in Los Altos Hill, CA, but I digress--but eventually historians caught on to the idea that Matthews had a role. Still, what about the "or"? Did Phil and Matthews alternate shows? What was the deal? Since we only had a few tapes, it was very hard to figure it out.
The search was further confused by Robert Hunter's passing comments that he rehearsed with the New Riders as a bass player, but was never asked to join the group. Two bass players, and a third one who only rehearsed? What sort of band was this? Of course, no one asked the principals. Now, thanks to Owsley, we can review the historical periods of the New Riders from the point of view of their rhythm section, and not their far-more-famous front line.
The Menlo Hub restaurant in Menlo Park, as it appeared in 2012, at 11029 El Camino Real. Menlo Hub was probably the site of The Underground, where Jerry Garcia first played live with John Dawson in May 1969. Next door at 1035 (now Su Hong) was Guitars Unlimited, where Garcia and Weir briefly gave lessons in 1965.
Genesis: John Dawson at The Underground, Menlo Park, CA
John Dawson had apparently been playing his songs at The Underground in Menlo Park (probably at 1029 El Camino Real) on Wednesday nights for some time. Garcia agreed to join him. I think the first night was May 7, 1969. One of the amazing details of the Dawn Of The New Riders box is the revelation that Owsley recorded three reels from May 14. I am assuming that May 14 was the first date with Garcia, Dawson and David Nelson but we will have to wait on the Owsley Foundation for that [update: Nelson had not yet joined]
The Underground, whether at 1029 El Camino Real or not, was very near a music store called Guitars Unlimited, at 1035 El Camino. When Garcia and Weir were fired from Dana Morgan's for obscure transgressions, probably borrowing equipment without asking or paying, they both got jobs teaching guitar at Guitars Unlimited. I think they only taught there for a little while, as it was late 1965 and the Warlocks were morphing into the Grateful Dead. Few students seem to remember them teaching there (unlike Morgan's), and I think they mainly worked there to borrow equipment. Nonetheless, Garcia was still using Guitars Unlimited to work on his instruments as late as 1969 (there's a receipt), so it played a part.
A peculiar, yet ungooglable footnote to this story, is an eyewitness description of Garcia persuading David Nelson to join him in playing with David Nelson. Writer Paul Krassner wrote an obituary for Jerry Garcia in High Times. Amidst many other reminiscences, Krassner quotes Ken Babbs as going with Garcia to Nelson's "bleak" apartment in San Francisco. Garcia persuades Nelson to join him in performing with John Dawson. Granted, the narrative is mediated through various filters, but it's still fascinating to read the tale, however vaguely recalled. On Wednesday nights in May and June of 1969, Garcia and David Nelson backed up Marmaduke at a tiny sandwich-and-beer joint in Menlo Park, just blocks from where the Warlocks had debuted just four years earlier.
Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom headlined a peculiar show at California Hall in San Francisco, on June 11, 1969
Hypothesis: Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom, Rukka Rukka Ranch, Marin County, CA
So here's my theory. I can't prove it, but there's a lot of fragmentary evidence, and it has to be explained somehow. So let's try this on, and the Comment Thread can weigh in on the plausibility index. Remember, though--if you deny my theory, you have to have another one.
In May and June of 1969 we know two things, more or less, about Garcia playing the pedal steel guitar
Garcia, Nelson and Dawson were playing Dawson's songs as a trio, mostly at The Underground in Menlo Park
Garcia, Nelson and Dawson were "rehearsing" at a hideaway called Rukka Rukka Ranch, where Bob Weir lived along with Rex Jackson, Sonny Heard, Steve Parish and other scattered members of the Dead universe.
I think Garcia was envisioning a sort of country and western "revue," like you would see when Porter Wagoner or Merle Haggard played the county fair. The Grateful Dead plus some of their friends would be the "revue," including Pete Grant, David Nelson and John Dawson. There would be a chance to play some folk music, some bluegrass, cover some country songs and play some new material. Remember, not only did Dawson have a bunch of songs, the material Garcia and Hunter were writing would have fit right into the Porter Wagoner show. We can all imagine Porter or Merle singing "Dire Wolf." With Nelson and Grant on board, Garcia wouldn't be exclusively tied to playing lead 6-strng electric guitar on every number.
I think the "Country Revue" concept was going to be called Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck. Whether the Cards would open for the Dead, or play their own gigs, or both, wasn't so critical at this point. Garcia was thinking big, trying to figure out how he could play traditional and country music on a variety of instruments while still doing the Grateful Dead thing.
We know that Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom were billed at one show at California Hall in San Francisco, on June 11. The Peninsula School show wasn't advertised, and may have been before or after the California Hall show. [update: noted scholar LIA points out that McNally says the band was Garcia, Dawson, Nelson and Phil, but no Weir. So it doesn't quite fit in my proposed narrative, but shows that Phil was involved from the beginning].The Cards Off The Bottom name then sort of disappears, but not entirely. One of the remarkable things about the Owsley box is that when Weir joins the New Riders for the Family Dog show on August 28, Dawson introduces him as "Bobby Ace of Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom." While this is clearly a kind of joke, it's also not a joke--Dawson and Weir sing a series of duets that have clearly been played before.
The musical evidence provided by Owsley suggests that the plan was that the New Riders were an autonomous unit, but that they would be supplemented by Weir and others in The Cards Off The Bottom. By the time the concept reached fruition in May 1970 as An Evening With The Grateful Dead, the organization was a little different. There was an acoustic, folkie set, then the Riders then the Dead. Yet Weir's guest appearances with the Riders in early May '70, singing "Me And My Uncle," are a whiff of an earlier, grander plan.
The name Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck was used one more time, for the April 17-19 shows at the Family Dog, previewing the acoustic Dead lineup. It's hard not to see a link between the name and the duets. And really--where did the name "Bobby Ace" come from? I think it came from the Cards Off The Bottom idea, as no one ever seems to have referred to Weir as "Ace" prior to that.
Jerry Garcia and John "Marmaduke" Dawson are advertised in the Daily Cal, playing at the Bear's Lair at UC Berkeley on August 1, 1969. SUPERB was the Student Union Performance sponsor.
Antithesis: Marmaduke and Friends
By the time of the Rukka Rukka rehearsals, probably in May, Garcia and Dawson were already playing in Menlo Park, with Nelson on board. The last known Underground show was on Wednesday, June 25. The trio also appears to have played on Sunday, June 29. The Grateful Dead hit the road after that, so no gigs seem likely for the next few weeks.
The next time the band appears they are opening for The Grateful Dead (plus Cleveland Wrecking Company and Ice) at Longshoreman's Hall on Wednesday, July 16. The band has no name, but were probably introduced as "Marmaduke and Friends." There were equipment problems, caused by Owsley, and Blair Jackson describes the proto-Riders gig as "shambolic." The next show was actually billed as "Marmaduke and Friends" in the UC Berkeley Daily Cal newspaper. The band played two sets at the newly-opened student union pub The Bear's Lair. Both sets of this August 1, 1969 show are included in the Dawn Of The New Riders box set. It is indeed the dawn, as they are not even named yet.
I will not describe the music--you can listen to it for yourself. But a few comments are in order. First of all, it's clear that there has been very little rehearsal. Garcia, despite his inexperience with the pedal steel, stays in the groove and atop the melody for every song. Not so much the other band members, save for Nelson. David Nelson's electric guitar is the rhythmic center of the band. Mickey Hart acts as a percussionist rather than a drummer. His parts are interesting, if not always particularly appropriate. He clearly has no real familiarity with country music, which is both good and bad. Bob Matthews' bass playing is very rudimentary, following Nelson's chords for the most part.
The Bear's Lair pub and coffee house opened on the UC Berkeley campus in about 1969. It was in the basement of the Student Union building. Pauley Ballroom, where the Grateful Dead played a few times from 1966-70, is two floors above the Bear's Lair. This photo was taken in 2013, but the basic configuration had not changed much since those days.
The Bear's Lair was tiny. The band was probably playing in the front room. All of the band's comments are audible on the mics between songs. When Dawson suggests singing "The Lady Came From Baltimore," for example, Garcia says "yeah, good song" and plays along comfortably. Nelson seems to follow, as well. Mathews and Hart, however, muddle along, figuring out the song as they go. I doubt the band ever rehearsed much. Garcia and Nelson seem to have known a million songs, but Hart and Matthews didn't have their folk and bluegrass performing background.
The first appearance in print of the name "New Riders Of The Purple Sage," from Ralph J Gleason's column in the SF Chronicle on August 6, 1969. It says "...at The Matrix tonight and tomorrow night, New Riders of the Purple Sage (W. Jerry Garcia)"
Synthesis: New Riders of The Purple Sage with Bob Matthews
The first use of the name "New Riders Of The Purple Sage" was in the San Francisco Chronicle the next week, when the band played the Matrix for four nights. We have a tape from the second night (Thursday August 7). The band is a little tighter than at the Bear's Lair, but not much. The honky tonk feel of the band is in place, but the rhythm section hardly plays rhythm. Matthews had spent more time as an engineer than as a musician, and he played very simply.
Nonetheless, Bob Matthews was the New Riders' first bass player. For the Dead's first "road trip" with the Riders, to Seattle and Oregon (Aug 20-23 '69), Matthews played bass. So much for the myth of only having to bring "two extra people" because Phil Lesh played bass. The next weekend (Aug 28-30), the New Riders opened for the Dead at the Family Dog, and Matthews again played bass. Thanks to the box, which has the complete set from August 28, and a few tracks from the next two nights, we know Matthews was the bass player. By this time, Matthews and Hart know the material a bit better, and the group sounds more like a band.
Matthews' last gig as the New Riders bass player was September 18 '69, at the Inn Of The Beginning in Cotati. Our source is Matthews' himself, in an interview with Jesse Jarnow (@bourgwick). Conveniently, Matthews taped the show, by hanging his rig off a beam in the ceiling. The band is continuing to improve, but not very fast. In any case, Matthews was a partner in the newly formed Alembic Sound company, along with Owlsey and Ron and Susan (Frates) Wickersham, and he didn't have time to moonlight as a bass player.
1048 University Avenue (at Tenth St), the site of Mandrake's, as it appeared in 2009. Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart played this tiny club in Berkeley in October, 1969 (and Garcia and Hart twice more in April '70)
New Riders of The Purple Sage with Phil Lesh
With Matthews becoming a full-time sound engineer, Phil Lesh took over as bassist for the New Riders of The Purple Sage. Keep in mind that if my hypothesis is correct, then Phil had already been rehearsing with Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom, so he would have already played at least some of the material. In any case, unlike Matthews, Phil hardly needed rehearsal to play honky-tonk songs.
Dawn of The New Riders provides us with the first glimpse of the New Riders playing live with Phil Lesh, a short 50 years after it happened. The tapes are from a tiny place called Mandrake's, at 1048 University Avenue(near San Pablo Ave) in Berkeley. The Riders played Tuesday through Thursday, October 14-16, and the box includes tracks from the first two nights (for the full story of Mandrake's, read the unearthly 500+-Comment Thread here, no I did not mistype the number). If my chronology is correct (see below), these would have been just Phil Lesh's second and third shows with the band.
[update: I am completely wrong. Bob Matthews plays bass at Mandrake's. It's even on the tape box. At the minimum, I was doing him a disservice, and he had improved as a bass player. It turns out that Matthews assertion that Sep 18 '69 was his last gig as a Rider is also incorrect, as he must have left much later. When Phil joined remains a mystery]
The New Riders' honky-tonk sound was designed to melodic and simple, befitting its country music roots. Phil Lesh uses his remarkable skills to find hidden melodies in the songs, and to bring them out from the bottom of the sound rather than the top, an unexpected twist. Garcia has something to bounce off now, with Phil on board. Phil cannot help but overlay some more complex rhythms into the melodies, leaving Nelson and Garcia to keep it simple. It goes without saying that Lesh's unique approach makes Mickey Hart's contributions less eccentric.
With Lesh on board, the New Riders of The Purple Sage become a real band at last. Sure, they have a unique approach to melodies, and their rhythms might throw off Buck Owens, but for the hippie audiences they are playing for, it probably worked. The New Riders played little places around the Bay Area, never opening for the Dead, playing college and nightclub gigs. For all the problems Phil Lesh solves, however, it leads to another--Phil apparently got bored.
All Deadheads take it as a given that Phil Lesh is a musical genius, so it's no surprise that he fills all the holes in the early Riders sound single-handedly. Phil's subsequent career, however, tells us that he never really liked playing bars, nor playing the same songs over and over. I think Phil's experience with the Riders is essential to his brilliant, understated playing on Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. Having figured the music out, however, Phil apparently lost interest in it. The New Riders of The Purple Sage did not cease to exist after November, 1969 but they pretty much ground to a halt.
Friend Of The Devil
The New Riders, with Phil Lesh on bass played six dates in October 1969, and about a dozen in November. All of them were around the Bay Area, and none of them were opening for the Grateful Dead. The Dead played a share of local gigs, too, so there were opportunities for the New Riders to be booked, but it didn't happen, in distinct contrast to mythology.
But here's the thing; after November 1969, what few and far between New Riders bookings there are were mostly canceled. There's nothing in December, as the Dead were mostly on the road. There's a benefit at Pauley Ballroom in Berkeley, on January 19, 1970, but we can't confirm that it happened. In February the Dead are mostly on the road, nor do the New Riders open no shows at home or away. Riders showed were booked for March 12, 13 and 14, 1970 but I demonstrated that the band canceled (replaced by Big Brother, itself an interesting story). There was one more booking, on March 18, 1970 at the Family Dog, when the Dead were between Buffalo and Port Chester. Amazingly, there is trace evidence that the Riders actually played, but that too can't yet be proven unless the Owsley Foundation still has the tape.
Yet despite the lack of performances, the New Riders continued to exist. The explanation is one of simple geography. During the late 1969-early '70 period, Garcia and Mountain Girl shared a house at 271 Madrone Avenue in Larkspur with Robert Hunter and his girlfriend. David Nelson mostly crashed on their couch. A careful review of that underrated source, Robert Greenfield's Dark Star, a 1997 "oral biography" of Jerry Garcia, tells us the crucial clue on page 115: John Dawson lived across the street. Presumably Nelson slept at Dawson's when the Garcia house was full.
[update: fellow scholar Jesse interviewed David Nelson recently. It turns out that Nelson and Dawson lived in Kentfield, about 3 miles and 10 minutes away. Nelson often crashed on the couch at the Garcias when he didn't want to drive home. So my general point about Nelson and Dawson living near is still true, even if it wasn't actually "across the street"].
Once you realize that Dawson lived across the street from Garcia, a number of extraneous threads start to link up. The period where Robert Hunter was rehearsing with the Riders but not performing with them? It makes perfect sense if you realize that Nelson and Dawson were over at his house playing with Jerry, so plugging in and playing along would have been easy. And the whole story about "Friend Of The Devil," as told by Nelson? In short, that Dawson wrote a song, Nelson played the tape for Garcia--remember he was probably sleeping on the couch--and next morning Garcia had added a bridge, so Hunter added some lyrics ("Got two reasons..."). It all makes sense when you realize that Garcia, Hunter, Nelson and Dawson lived in two houses across the street from each other.
Was it coincidence that Dawson lived across the street from Garcia and Hunter? I hardly think so. You can't fault Dawson for anything, though. He was a songwriter looking for a chance, and even a part-time band with Garcia gave him an opportunity he might never get otherwise. So having the foresight to rent the place across the street kept the New Riders dream alive for him and Nelson.
During the Dec '69-Mar '70 NRPS "Interregnum," Garcia and Weir played some brief acoustic sets with the Dead, and Garcia played a little pedal steel on some country covers, so the Bobby Ace idea was still floating around. All the Riders really needed was a bass player who actually wanted to play with them, and it wasn't going to be Phil Lesh.
The flyer for what was certainly Dave Torbert's debut as the New Riders bass player, at the Family Dog on the weekend of April 17-19, 1970. Also billed were "Mickey Hart and His Heartbeats" and "Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck." We know the Dead played acoustic, but nothing else really about the shows.
For some years, the story was that Nelson or Dawson had called Dave Torbert's parents house "by chance" when he picked up clothes on his way to London. Torbert got the offer to join the New Riders as bass player. He called his friend Kelly, who graciously told him to take the offer to be in a band in California with Jerry Garcia rather than a long shot in London. Torbert helped the New Riders fly high, and Gospel Oak released an obscure album and disappeared.
Was the call a "coincidence?" Of course not. David Gans, at my behest, queried David Nelson about this a decade ago, and Nelson conceded that they knew when Torbert would be there. At the time the Dead, much less the Riders, had no money (thanks to Lenny Hart), so they needed Matt Kelly's MCA money to fly Torbert home. How consciously the whole scheme was crafted can't really be known now, but in any case, Kelly got Torbert to San Franciso, and then let him join the New Riders. A contemporary interview (from Rolling Stone in 1971) concedes that David Nelson's girlfriend actually made the call, another sign that it was a planned event.
The April 17-19 booking at the Family Dog, with The New Riders of The Purple Sage, Mickey Hart and His Hearbeats and Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck, almost certainly was Dave Torbert's debut as the New Riders' bass player. It was also the formal debut of the "Acoustic Dead," using the Cards Off The Bottom name for the last time. A tape of the Dead's acoustic set from April 18 was released a few years ago. It's interesting to think that the naming conventions, at least, hint at a grander plan than the streamlined "An Evening With The Grateful Dead."
Spencer Dryden onstage with Jerry Garcia ca. 1971
Spencer, and The Return of Phil Lesh
With Dave Torbert on board, the New Riders were like a real band. Starting on May 1, 1970, they joined the Grateful Dead on tour. The shows were usually titled "An Evening With The Grateful Dead." Garcia and Weir would open on acoustics, usually joined by Phil Lesh and a drummer, and occasional guest appearances by Pigpen, Nelson and Dawson. Then the New Riders would play a set, followed by a full two-set concert by the electric Grateful Dead. In those days, most concerts had two or three acts. The Dead were all the acts--hence the title "An Evening With..." That title was subsequently adopted by almost all touring rock bands who played a show without an opening act.
The Dawn of The New Riders gives us a nice snapshot of the early Torbert-era band, although we do have plenty of tapes and a few photos from that era. Torbert has a solid sense of time and provides nice harmonies. The band has narrowed down their repertoire to the strongest of Dawson's material, and has selected some choice covers as well. As the June Fillmore West shows, however, the weak link was Mickey Hart. His percussionist approach to the drums worked with Phil Lesh, but did not lock in well with the rock steady Torbert.
In the fall of 1970, probably around October, the Riders were signed by Columbia Records and started recording with Stephen Barncard at Wally Heider's. By all accounts, the sessions were terrible. Now granted, the musicians (save Garcia) were inexperienced in the studio, and were notorious for having a party, but I have to think the insurmountable problem was Hart. Radio music, particularly in a country vein, needs a steady beat, and that wasn't Hart's bag. The Riders recruited former Airplane drummer Spencer Dryden around that time, some months before Hart had to leave the Dead for personal reasons. Per Dryden's own story, he was approached about replacing Hart while Hart was still playing live with the Riders, so once again it was clear that Garcia (and possibly others) had a plan. Sally Mann Romano, then Dryden's wife, in her can't-miss book The Band's With Me, makes it clear that it was Garcia who recruited Dryden.
Spencer Dryden was more of a rock and R&B drummer than a country player, but he was solid like Torbert. In any case, the soulful backbeat provided by Torbert and Dryden was perfect for the psychedelic Buck Owens music the New Riders were trying to make. The Buck Owens sound was swinging country laid on top of a rock rhythm section, a kind of rural Chuck Berry sound. Dawson added some songs about dope and ecology, and Garcia added some sustain, and that was the Riders. Dryden's background in jazz and soul, along with the Jefferson Airplane, was an excellent fit with Torbert.
Of the 10 tracks on the New Riders famous debut album, only two tracks survive with Hart on drums ("Dirty Business" and "Last Lonely Eagle"). Dryden plays on the rest of them. It's a wonderful debut album, with a kind of spare beauty that was only hinted at during the prior year's live performances. According to Stephen Barncard, the unsung hero of the recording was actually Phil Lesh. Lesh, credited as "Executive Producer" on the back of the LP, spent time in the studio helping to arrange the songs. Having played a couple dozen gigs with the band, Lesh knew the material. The melodies that his own playing hinted at on the 1969 Mandrake's tape were brought out by the entire band, directed by Phil himself.
Buddy Cage (far right) as a member of Ian and Sylvia Tyson's band, Great Speckled Bird
Buddy Cage: Moth To Butterfly
One way to look at the evolution of the New Riders is to see them evolving, paring back weak links to make themselves stronger. Some original Dawson songs from 1969 were simply not good enough to make the cut, and they dropped away. Bob Matthews and Mickey Hart, for different reasons, were not strong enough either, and they were replaced by better players. Ironically, by mid-1971 the weakest link was Jerry Garcia's pedal steel guitar playing. Garcia had great melodic ideas, and a beautiful feel for getting the right tone, but his picking was well below the quality of a full-time steel player. Garcia himself knew this.
One of the many subplots of the Grateful Dead's adventures on the Trans-Canadian train tour in July 1970 known as Festival Express was the discovery of pedal steel guitarist Buddy Cage. Cage was playing with Canadian folk-rock stars Ian and Sylvia, whose band at the time was called Great Speckled Bird. Garcia apparently approached Cage on the train about replacing him in the Riders. It took a while to actually happen, but happen it did. In the meantime, Cage continued to tour with Ian and Sylvia and record with Anne Murray and others (that's him on "Snowbird" I believe). Around September 1971, just as the debut album was released by Columbia, Cage came to the Bay Area to rehearse with the New Riders.
The loyal Garcia played the first leg of the tour with the New Riders. Columbia had paid to broadcast many of the NRPS shows, in conjunction with live Dead broadcasts, and Garcia was the main attraction of the Riders at that point. Garcia played 11 NRPS shows where they opened for the Dead, between October 19 (Minneapolis) and October 31 (Cincinnati). On November 11, in Atlanta, he turned over the chair to Cage. Cage is a rare musician whose very first performance with a new band was broadcast live on FM radio. No worries--Cage nailed it from the first note, which he continued to do for as long as he was in the New Riders.
With an album, a record contract and no members of the Grateful Dead, the New Riders of The Purple Sage were free to be a real band. The new archival release, Thanksgiving in New York City, shows how good they had become after just a year with Buddy Cage. By this time, the band was playing two-hour shows, with a rich mixture of original material and covers of both classic country and contemporary rock hits. Much as we all love Garcia's tasteful steel licks, it's Buddy Cage who was the real deal with ten or twenty strings. Cage could encompass all of Garcia's melodic warmth, pick like any Nashville cat, and still get a rockin' edge from his steel guitar that made him a real rock and roller.
The final trace of Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom was the title of Bob Weir's 1972 solo album, Ace. No one called him Bobby Ace, to my knowledge, prior to the Cards Off The Bottom.
From Small Things Big Things One Day Come
Jerry Garcia had been a bluegrass and folk player in the early 60s, and he became a signpost to new space as a psychedelic rocker later in that same decade. By 1969, he and Bob Weir were looking for a way to play all that music under the same umbrella, perhaps touring the nation like a kaleidoscopic Buck Owens. There would be some folk music, some honky-tonkin', somc original material and straight up psychedelic blues and rock and roll. Did it happen? Yes. But not quite the way it was originally conceived.
America was ripe for country rock, and the New Riders of The Purple Sage were among other pioneers like The Byrds, Poco, The Flying Burrito Brothers and the Eagles. To thrive, the band had to subdivide from the Grateful Dead, like a one-celled animal, in order to thrive. And thrive the Riders did, at least through the 70s. The Dead's acoustic sets disappeared amidst equipment problems in the early 70s, but the country and honky-tonk material stayed, when the Dead added a slew of cover versions to their repertoire. The acoustic Dead was gone, but that music would reappear with Old And In The Way, another acoustic revival in 1980, and the various Garcia and Weir performances throughout the later 1980s.
What little evidence we have for the nascent Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom seems to have been for some kind of contemporary honky-tonk ensemble. To different degrees, the Jerry Garcia Band and Kingfish filled these roles, playing the sort of Chuck Berry, Buck Owens and Bob Dylan material that had been hinted at by the early Riders. The Dead's huge range of musical interests, combined with the realities of the music industry, made it more sensible to have a slew of ongoing ensembles playing separately instead of touring as a single entity.
You can still have the Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom experience, though, if you want it. If you have the time, set the Wayback machine to the mid-70s. Play some acoustic Dead, play some Old And In The Way, some primo New Riders, a little Kingfish, your favorite JGB set, and then a crushing two-set Grateful Dead concert. It should take about 9 hours. That was the idea, and you have to admit it was a good one.Make sure to play it loud for Buddy Cage, and for Jerry Garcia, and for Keith, and Pigpen and Nicky Hopkins and Dave Torbert and Spencer Dryden, too, and everyone else who we wish were still here.
Appendix: NRPS Timeline 1969-70
For convenience, here is a timeline of known New Riders shows from the 1969-early '70 period. Follow the links for more discussion of the details around each show. (update: I have made a considerably advanced version of this another post)
Don Edwards' Guitar City, in Lakewood, CO (ca 'late 70s), where Jerry Garcia bought a pedal steel guitar on April 13 or 14, 1969
April 13 or 14, 1969 Don Edwards Guitar City, Lakewood, CO
Jerry Garcia buys a pedal steel guitar from a well-known steel shop
May 7, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: John Dawson
This was probably the first Wednesday night that Garcia sat in with Dawson.
May 14, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: John Dawson
Dawson and Garcia played, because the Owsley Foundation has a tape. Neslon had not yet joined.
May 21, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: John Dawson
Likely a night that Garcia and Nelson backed Dawson (the Dead were booked May 28). May 1969 GD/Garcia Tour Itinerary
June 3 or 4 (?), 1969 Peninsula School, Menlo Park, CA: unbilled benefit featuring Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom
Although undetermined, the most likely date for the gig described in Blair Jackson's book is during this week.
June 4, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: John Dawson
I have indirect confirmation of this date. It's plausible to think that the Peninsula School gig was in the afternoon, and the club in the evening.
June 11, 1969 California Hall, San Francisco, CA: Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck
Thanks to McNally (p.321), we know the band consisted of Garcia, Weir, TC, Phil, Hart, Peter Grant, Nelson and Dawson. McNally also found a setlist (not a tape), which consists of the typical covers performed by the "Acoustic Dead" in 1970. A tantalizing clue (ignore the Scientology Benefit side-story, which is tangential).
June 18, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: John Dawson
Impossible so far to confirm, but presumably the trio played this Wednesday as well.
June 25, 1969 The Underground, Menlo Park, CA: John Dawson
Fascinatingly, McNally uncovered a setlist from a serious fan who kept such things. Until or unless the Owsley foundation releases the May 14 tape, this is our only insight into what the trio played in Menlo Park: Tiger By The Tail / Fair Chance To Know / Mama Tried /
The Next In Line / I'm In Love With You / Stagger Lee /
Coat Of Many Colors / Whatcha Gonna Do / Truck Drivin' Man
/ If You Hear Me When I'm Leaving / The Race Is On / Six
Days On The Road / Jailbait Gets You Busted / Close Up The
Honky Tonks / Last Lonely Eagle / For What It's Worth /
I Still Miss Someone / Together Again / Superman / Lay Lady
Lay / If You Want To Run / Buckaroo / Long Black Veil /
Me & My Uncle / Delilah
June 29, 1969 The Barn, Rio Nido, CA: Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady/Jerry Garcia and Friends
The Owsley Foundation release of Jorma Kaukonen/Jack Casady/Joey Covington Before We Were Them was recorded on June 27, but there is one track from June 28. At the end, the announcer mentions a "jam" at Rio Nido and says that "Jerry Garcia and a friend" will be playing. This is all but certainly Garcia and Dawson, most likely with David Nelson as well. June 1969 GD/Garcia Tour Itinerary July 16, 1969 Longshoreman's Hall, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Cleveland Wrecking Company/Ice Hell's Angels Benefit
Unbilled, the soon-to-be Riders opened for the Dead. They came on late, due to equipment problems apparently caused by Owsley. The band played briefly, and per Blair Jackson's eyewitnesses, shambollically.Presumably Matthews and Hart debuted. Given that the Dead had toured much of early July, there can't have been much rehearsal.
August 1, 1969 Bear's Lair, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Marmaduke
The band plays two sets, starting at 10:30pm, at the tiny, newly-opened beer joint on the Berkeley campus. Confusingly, the Dead were booked at the Family Dog this night, but did not play. A union of light show workers were striking, and Garcia--union-born through his mother--would never cross a picket line. It's telling that in a non-confrontational Garcia move, he simply booked another gig and clearly had no intention of participating in any dramatic showdown at the Family Dog event.
August 6-9, 1969 The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage
Tne New Riders of The Purple Sage name first appears in the San Francisco Chronicle when the band plays Wednesday thru Saturday night at The Matrix in the Marina District. We have a tape from Thursday (August 7, sometimes dated differently).
August 13, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Lost City Ramblers/New Riders of The Purple Sage"Hoe Down" This hitherto unknown show was mentioned in the Berkeley Tribe newspaper (August 22-29). It appears that
old South Bay pal Pete Grant sat in with the New Riders on banjo for a
few numbers. Not surprisingly, Garcia and Nelson were very excited to
play on the same bill with the New Lost City Ramblers, and at the end of
the show members of both bands played a few tunes together.
August 19, 1969 Family Dog At The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Riders Of The Purple Sage It's not clear that there was actually a show this night (it was the Monday after Woodstock). [update: the Owsley Foundation has a tape, so it happened]
August 20, 1969 El Roach Tavern, Ballard, WA Grateful Dead
The Dead, The New Riders of The Purple Sage and a group called Sanpaku
were scheduled to play an outdoor venue in Seattle. They got rained out,
so the Dead played a scary biker bar in Seattle called El Roach. I have written about this at length.Possibly the New Riders played as well.
August 21, 1969 Aqua Theatre, Seattle, WA Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Sanpaku
After the rainout, the Dead and their support acts came back and played Seattle's Aquatheatre, joined by Sanpaku flautist Gary Larkey. This was the last performance at the unique outdoor venue, and I have written about it as well. This booking was the first time the New Riders were billed as opening for The Grateful Dead.
August 23, 1969 Bullfrog 2 Festival, Pelletier Farm, St Helens, OR
Grateful Dead/Taj Mahal/Portland Zoo/Sabatic Goat/River/Sand/Notary
Sojac/Searchin Soul/The Weeds/New Colony/Chapter Five/Trilogy/Bill
Feldman/Don Ross/Mixed Blood/Ron Bruce
The Grateful Dead headlined a rock festival in Oregon. This festival
was originally scheduled for the Columbia County Fairgrounds in St.
Helens, Oregon, about 30 miles North of Portland, but a local judge
voided the promoters contract. The festival was moved to private
property nearby.
The festival ran three days (August 21-22-23). I assume Taj Mahal
headlined Friday night (Aug 22) and the Dead headlined Saturday. The
rest of the groups were Oregon bands. An eyewitness once reported (in a
letter to an Oregon newspaper) that the New Riders (and Country Joe)
played the show also, and I find that plausible since we know that
Nelson, Dawson and their equipment were with the band.
August 28, 1969 Family Dog at The Great Highway: Mickey and The Hartbeats/New Riders of The Purple Sage August 29-30, 1969 Family Dog at The Great Highway: Grateful Dead/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Rubber Duck Company
Thanks to the Owsley box, we have music from this weekend. The Thursday night "Hartbeats" set was a jam, it's not clear if the Dead proper actually played. The event was promoted via handbill and was probably more like a public rehearsal. Commander Cody's band had only recently relocated from Ann Arbor, MI to Emeryville. GD/Garcia tour itinerary July/August 1969
The Inn Of The Beginning in Cotati, as it appeared in 2010
October 9, 1969 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage
Apparently Phil Lesh's debut as the New Riders' bass player.
October 14-16, 1969 Mandrake's, Berkeley, CA New Riders Of The Purple Sage
It seems that the shows on the Dawn Of The New Riders box were Phil Lesh's second and third performances with the band. [update: still Matthews on bass]
October 17, 1969 Student Union Ballroom, San Jose State College, San Jose,CA New Riders Of The Purple Sage/The Fourth Way
This may have been the very first rock concert at the newly opened ballroom (soon known as The Loma Prieta Room). The Grateful Dead would return to headline two weeks later. The Owsley Foundation has a tape.
October 22, 1969 Family Dog on the Great Highway, San Francisco, CA:
"Ecological Ball" with Lazarus/Garden Of Delights/Heavy Water/New Riders
Of The Purple Sage and films
This show had been known from an obscure flyer, but this listing in the
Wednesday, October 22 Chronicle sheds slightly more light on the event.
Only the Riders and Lazarus were rock bands, as Garden Of Delights and
Heavy Water were light shows. The evening sounds like what today would
be called a "multi-media" event. The Riders probably played one set.
November 3-4, 1969 The Matrix, San Francisco, CA New Riders Of The Purple Sage
The four-song New Riders demo was taped at Pacific High Recorders in San Francisco sometime in November, with Phil Lesh on bass.
November 6, 1969 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: New Riders Of The Purple Sage
The Poppycock, at 135 University Avenue in Palo Alto, was one of the steady rock clubs around the Bay Area in 1969. This flyer is for November 8, 1969 and following.
November 18, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage/David LaFlamme "Square Dance"
LaFlamme likely sat in with the New Riders.
November 19, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco New Riders Of The
Purple Sage/Big Brother and The Holding Company/Barry McGuire & The
Doctor Naut Family A Family Dog benefit was originally advertised for
Winterland, but the show was moved to
Fillmore West.
November 20, 1969 The Poppycock, Palo Alto, CA: New Riders Of The Purple Sage
November 22-23, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco< CA:
New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Anonymous Artists Of America/Devil's
Kitchen
The second night, and possibly the first night as well, was likely canceled due to a Grateful Dead show in Boston on November 23.
November 26, 1969 The Poppycock, Palo Alto, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage
JGMF found this listed in the Berkeley Tribe. Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the third week in a row that the Riders were booked at the Poppycock November 27, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway New Riders Of The
Purple Sage/Lamb/Cleveland Wrecking Company/Deacon and The
Suprelles/Rafael Garrett Circus
This was part of a multi-media extravaganza including stage performers and films (whom I have not listed).
A clip from Ralph Gleason's SF ChronicleAd Lib column on Nov 28 '69
November 28-29, 1969 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: New Riders Of The Purple Sage
The New Riders returned to Cotati for yet another show, this time
apparently for a full weekend. Its possible that the Riders played
Friday (28) and that Joy Of Cooking played Saturday (29), but I will
take Gleason at his word here, even though his hastily-typed Ad Lib section often had typos or casually elided certain bills.
January 19, 1970 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage Benefit
This benefit show was advertised. It's not clear if it happened, or if the New Riders played at it if it did.
February 7, 1970 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Taj Mahal/Big Foot
I am no expert on tape lineage, but some old circulating audience tapes had John Dawson singing with the Dead (I think on "Together Again"). The old tapes were compilations of some sort, and could have been mis-dated.
This photo from p.4 of Tapers Compendium V1 shows tapes in the Grateful Dead Vault, probably ca. 2004. If you blow it up and look on far right of the upper shelf, you can see several tapes marked "3/18/70 Hot Tuna" and "3/18/70 NR." So some recording of the night was made. Investigations continue (thanks JJ and DM for the photo)
