Jerry Garcia 8: Almost Acoustic

Multiplatinum success wasn’t going to slow Jerry Garcia down any, and just because the Dead didn’t have any gigs booked didn’t mean he wasn’t going to play somewhere. For a few months in 1987 and 1988 he did a series of shows with a group that augmented a few members of the Jerry Garcia Band with old friends David Nelson (of New Riders of the Purple Sage) and Sandy Rothman plus a fiddle player. Hence, the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band.

The repertoire was primarily folk and blues, not as extreme as the bluegrass of Old & In The Way but certainly connected. Almost Acoustic presented a grab bag of tunes recorded during stands in Frisco and L.A. and released on the Dead’s own label for the new generation of Deadheads to snap up for their CD players. These kids would have been familiar with the likes of “Deep Elem Blues” and “I’ve Been All Around This World”, and of course the closing “Ripple”, but they might not have expected the original song about Casey Jones. In the process they would become more familiar with the work of Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten, Jimmie Rodgers, and so forth.

The playing is relaxed and friendly, the crowd noise appreciative but not distracting. Jerry’s voice is a bit rough, but he’d been through a lot lately. Luckily the other pickers sing, and they harmonize well. And if you like this, there’s more where it came from, as seen below.

Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band Almost Acoustic (1988)—3
     Archival releases of same vintage:
     • Pure Jerry: Lunt-Fontanne, NYC, 10/31/87 (2004)
     • Pure Jerry: Lunt-Fontanne, The Best Of The Rest (2004)
     • Ragged But Right (2010)
     • On Broadway: Act One (2015)
     • Electric On The Eel (2019)

Jerry Garcia 7: Run For The Roses

Just as Bob Weir liked to stretch outside of the Dead, Jerry Garcia had regularly used other bands as a chance to just jam without any pressure. Run For The Roses was technically the product of the Jerry Garcia Band, but that last phrase as written didn’t appear anywhere in the packaging. Along with the usual gang of John Kahn, Ron Tutt, and Merl Saunders was the brand new name of organist Melvin Seals, while the repertoire mixes diverse covers and originals written with Robert Hunter.

One of those is the title track, which sounds closest to a Dead contender and has some of Hunter’s most clever lyrics. Michael Omartian’s burbling clavinets dominate both channels of the otherwise surprisingly reggaefied “I Saw Her Standing There”. Clyde McPhatter’s “Without Love” is soulful R&B and a keeper, except for that final flatulent brass note. A real surprise is “Midnight Getaway”, a subdued and blatant lament over the end of an affair—very uncharacteristic of Hunter’s more, shall we say, poetic excursions. There’s no question what this song’s about, and the instrumental sections are even better. (We especially like the mention of the cat “under the stars”.)

That makes the equally straightforward “Leave The Little Girl Alone” something of a letdown—maybe because Kahn wrote the music while Jerry solos constantly under his own vocals. “Valerie” is a slow shuffle more along the lines of what we’d expect, and a sleepy slog through “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, done even more reggae than Eric Clapton did, continues the dance with Dylan that would last the rest of his life. (Outtakes of “Tangled Up In Blue” and “Simple Twist Of Fate” feature among the bonuses on the expanded CD, along with an attempt at “Dear Prudence”, an alternate mix of “Valerie” with backing vocals, another stab at “Fennario” a.k.a. “Peggy-O”, and a pre-Dead take of “Alabama Getaway”.)

Even though side two loses steam, there’s enough on Run For The Roses to give fans something to enjoy at home when they’ve run out of concert tapes. Some of the keyboards and guitar effects are a little same-y and dated, but such technology would continue to be refined and embraced better in years to come.

Jerry Garcia Run For The Roses (1982)—3
2004 expanded CD: same as 1982, plus 6 extra tracks

Jerry Garcia 6: Cats Under The Stars

Just as bandmate Bob Weir got to indulge his quirks outside the confines of the Grateful Dead, so could Jerry Garcia. And he did, constantly. Cats Under The Stars ventured near the MOR territory of Bob’s recent outing, but at least Jerry had lyricist Robert Hunter to keep him in familiar territory. Keith and Donna Godchaux feature prominently, on keyboards and too-loud vocals respectively, alongside the reliable John Kahn, Merl Saunders, and Ron Tutt; the collective was dubbed, naturally, Jerry Garcia Band.

“Ruben And Cherise” is one of those character mythologies that Robert Hunter weaves so well, though we could do without the synth horns and guitar effects that sound like a warped steel drum. It’s also easy to sway too, despite the constant tempo changes. John Kahn is credited for the music on the calypso-flavored “Love In The Afternoon”, and it’s surprising that nobody pointed out the chord changes are identical to “Ship Of Fools”. “Palm Sunday” is a brief trifle, sunk by what sounds like a synthesized harmonica, while the title track starts with a decent groove and another screwy meter. We’d love to take that tinkly keyboard out of the mix.

Side two is just strange. First off, “Rhapsody In Red” is a celebration of music that just plain rocks, Jerry soloing from start to finish, whether he’s singing or not. Unfortunately, Donna is the only vocalist on her own “Rain”, which otherwise sports a smart chamber strings and horns arrangement behind the adult contemporary backing, the guitar sounding like ‘70s Traffic. She also leads the choral group on John Kahn’s “Down Home”, evoking a cowboy campfire. “Gomorrah” brings Jerry back to the microphone for a slow lope a la “Candyman” or “Sugaree”, more in line with classic Garcia-Hunter.

Deadheads find Cats Under The Stars to be an absolute treat, but they probably like Donna anytime and anywhere. While Jerry’s voice and guitar ring throughout, the uninitiated may find the album to be dated at best, and generally sub-par. (The bonus tracks on the expanded CD are mostly covers and aren’t very exciting—unless you want a 16-minute version of “Don’t Let Go”—although there is a rehearsal of “Down Home” without Donna and a lovely stripped-down take of “Palm Sunday”.)

Jerry Garcia Band Cats Under The Stars (1978)—2½
2004 expanded CD: same as 1978, plus 7 extra tracks

Jerry Garcia 5: Reflections

As mentioned, the Dead as a unit were off the road, but all the members kept busy, in the studio and onstage, sometimes with each other. So it was that Jerry Garcia’s next solo album was an amalgam of sorts. Half was recorded with the current Jerry Garcia Band (which included Nicky Hopkins on keyboards, as well as Larry Knechtel in the studio), and the rest featured the Dead. Since each of the latter would make it to their setlists, Reflections shouldn’t be dismissed as a side project. Be warned, however: Donna Godchaux is prominent in the mix, in both bands.

The music alternates from one band to the other, but since the Dead tracks bookend the set, we’ll start there. “Might As Well” kicks off the proceedings, but don’t be fooled by the rollicking arrangement; this is predominantly a low-key set. The other tunes made their first album appearances after several years in progress: written solely by Robert Hunter, “It Must Have Been The Roses” was rescued from his first solo album; “They Love Each Other” was a perennial in 1973, but not as jaunty here; “Comes A Time” had been around as far back as 1971, and gains an expressive solo.

The “other” tracks aren’t as strong, with the clear exception of “Mission In The Rain”. The only Garcia/Hunter original here recorded by the solo band, it’s a keeper, from the mystery of the first verse to the delivery in the chorus. Unfortunately, “I’ll Take A Melody” is an Allan Toussaint song taken at a dirgey pace. “Tore Up Over You” is a Hank Ballard & The Midnighters song done well here, with lots of rolling piano from Nicky, whereas the country cover “Catfish John” was already in Jerry’s peripheral vision, having been part of the Old & In The Way repertoire.

Given the two distinct sources of the recordings, Reflections is sequenced very well, mostly alternating between bands. The bonuses include four further middling covers jammed in the studio by the JGB, along with a 16-minute Dead instrumental called “Orpheus”. This certainly supports the theory that the album was pieced together using earlier Dead sessions, coming off the high of the Blues For Allah experiments, to bolster what little the JGB was able to accomplish in the studio.

(Note: while we don’t normally append studio albums with this kind of info, it bears mentioning that two live collections from the vaults spotlight this lineup of the JGB, and especially because Nicky Hopkins is involved. They are listed below.)

Jerry Garcia Reflections (1976)—3
2004 expanded CD: same as 1976, plus 5 extra tracks
     Archival releases of same vintage:
     • Let It Rock: The Jerry Garcia Collection, Vol. 2 (2009)
     • Garcia Live Volume Five (2014)

Jerry Garcia 4: Old & In The Way

All the way back in 1973, mere months after jamming with the Merl Saunders Band, Jerry swapped his electric guitar for his trusty old banjo and hooked up with some friends to play pure bluegrass music. Dubbed Old & In The Way after one of the tunes in their repertoire, selections from a live set recorded that October were eventually released on the Grateful Dead’s Round Records subsidiary. It’s remained (mostly) in print ever since, and as a result, Old & In The Way probably did more to expose a new generation to bluegrass than any other album released during the last quadrant of the 20th century.

Of course, these just weren’t your average friends out for a strum. Longtime sideman John Kahn plucks the upright bass, David Grisman is on mandolin, and Peter Rowan handles the guitar and most of the lead singing, as well as writing most of the songs that weren’t already standards. In a move akin to getting Roy Orbison into the Traveling Wilburys, the fiddle is handled by the legendary Vassar Clements. (They have a lot of fun blowing through his “Kissimee Kid”.)

If you’re looking for Dead music, or even anything like Garcia’s other solo projects, you’ll be disappointed, particularly as none of the songs found their way into Dead sets. Instead, this is just damn fun bluegrass. “Midnight Moonlight” and “Panama Red”—both by Rowan—are possibly the best-known songs from the set, with the possible exception of “Wild Horses”, the Stones song taken even further into the woods than the Flying Burrito Brothers had.

While the band wasn’t around for very long, the archives have been kind to those looking for more of the same. A year after Jerry’s death, David Grisman’s Acoustic Disc label issued That High Lonesome Sound, containing further songs from the same night Old & In The Way was recorded, including a wonderful arrangement of “The Great Pretender”, along with songs from a set at the same location the week before. This was followed a year later by Breakdown, presenting a further assortment of tunes, most of which were alternate takes to the songs already on the other two. (Both sets from the October 8 show were released as Live At The Boarding House in 2008; five years later this set was expanded to include both sets from the week before.)

Old & In The Way Old & In The Way (1975)—4
Old & In The Way That High Lonesome Sound (1996)—3½
Old & In The Way Breakdown (1997)—3

Jerry Garcia 3: Compliments

Jerry Garcia’s second solo album (as opposed to collaboration) was originally titled simply Garcia, but some copies had a sticker above the title reading “Compliments Of”. In order to differentiate it from 1972’s Garcia album, we’re going with the expanded title, as has everyone else over the past 30 years.

Unlike that first Garcia album, which he recorded by himself with only Bill Kreutzmann, this installment features a pile of hired guns, as well as familiar names like Merl Saunders and John Kahn, who supposedly spearheaded the project and suggested several of the tunes. The album follows on from the recent Saunders collaboration, with Jerry playing mostly obscure covers from all over the place. For the most part, they’re fairly dull; “Let It Rock” barely sounds like a Chuck Berry song, and “Let’s Spend The Night Together” is just plain unconvincing. Van Morrison’s early “He Ain’t Give You None” doesn’t go anywhere, and the female backing singers don’t help. There’s something of a New Orleans vibe throughout, but we never had much use for Little Feat either.

From time to time his guitar leaps out of the mix, and it’s welcome. One true highlight is Irving Berlin’s “Russian Lullaby”, which evokes Django Reinhardt, complete with gypsy violin. “Turn On The Bright Lights” is another slow burner with plenty of lead work, but probably could have been faded earlier. We have to admit his Dr. John impression on “What Goes Around” is uncanny. “Mississippi Moon” comes from bluegrass buddy Peter Rowan, about whom more will be heard, while “Midnight Town” is a collaboration between John Kahn and Robert Hunter, and a wonderful ending.

This album grew on us to the point where we increased the initial rating; basically the less familiar you are with the original versions of these songs, the better. (The later expanded version of the album adds another nine covers from the Compliments sessions, some of which would feature in future Garcia bands and shows. There’s also a brief jam called “Cardiac Arrest” that’s livelier than anything else on the album, old or new.)

Jerry Garcia Compliments Of Garcia (1974)—3
2004 expanded CD: same as 1974, plus 10 extra tracks

Jerry Garcia 2: Live At Keystone

While you might not think so once considering the evidence of thousands of shared tapes and hundreds of archival CDs, the Grateful Dead did not tour year-round. They actually took the occasional break, and not just to record albums. Jerry Garcia’s best solution for keeping busy during that downtime was merely to play music with other people. Which, of course led to further album releases, as well as shared tapes and archival CDs.

One of his favorite players was Merl Saunders, a Bay Area keyboard player, and when his band (plus Jerry) played a couple nights at Berkeley’s Keystone nightclub, tapes rolled, and a double live album was duly released by Fantasy Records, to which Saunders was signed. Outside of one funky Saunders original (which has gone under numerous titles over the years but usually called “Keepers”) and a freeform group jam, Live At Keystone consists of mildly jazzy extended covers, from “The Harder They Come” to an 18-minute exploration on “My Funny Valentine”. Jerry’s fascination with Bob Dylan shows in versions of “Positively 4th Street” and “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry”, both slowed down to a crawl. One of the longest and slowest tracks is “Like A Road Leading Home”, written by Don Nix and Dan Penn, and first recorded by Albert King. It’s also absolutely gorgeous. “That’s All Right Mama” thankfully picks up the pace, and we’ll go on a limb to suggest that some of Saunders’ organ runs throughout the album will have one remembering Pigpen in his prime; the clavinet, not so much.

Due to Jerry’s distinctive voice and fretwork, the album fits with the larger Dead picture, and Fantasy Records has taken full advantage of that. Fifteen years later, once the Dead had become bigger than ever, the label cashed in by issuing Live At Keystone on two separate CDs, each sporting a previously unreleased performance from the original shows. That was joined by Keystone Encores, which offered another hour of music, including the Motown classics “I Second That Emotion” and “How Sweet It Is”. (It was also released as two separate LPs, each with one of the “new” performances added to the main Keystone CDs. Lost yet?) Finally, 2012’s Keystone Companions packed every note from the shows onto four CDs, in order of performance; roughly an hour’s worth of music had not been released several times already, or even once. Also, “Space” from the original LP, while not listed as part of the box, is revealed to be an excerpt from one of the performances of “Merl’s Tune”. (For further research, the sixth installment in the ongoing Garcia Live series presents a three-hour show from a few days before the Keystone run, including further covers like “After Midnight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, and a trumpet player during the second set, whose name has been lost to the mists of time. Also, Saunders’ own studio albums often included Jerry somewhere; the Well-Matched best-of presents a sampler of these, as well as music from the Keystone shows.)

Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, Paul Vitt Live At Keystone (1973)—3
1988 CD: same as 1973, plus 2 extra tracks
Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, Paul Vitt Keystone Encores (1988)—3

Jerry Garcia 1: Garcia

With all the time they spent touring, it’s a wonder the members of the Grateful Dead had any time for extracurricular activities. But play they did. Due to his prowess on a variety of stringed instruments, Jerry Garcia was in high demand for his friends’ sessions, making prominent appearances on solo albums by Crosby, Stills & Nash and Paul Kantner, the first album by New Riders Of The Purple Sage, and co-billing on Hooteroll? by jazz fusion organist Howard Wales. His own solo album was very much a one-man affair; with the exception of Bill Kreutzmann on drums and lyrics by (who else?) Robert Hunter, Garcia let him loose on guitars, bass, pedal steel, and keyboards.

And since he sings anything with words, it sounds a lot like a Dead album. Side one alone is wall-to-wall: “Deal”, “Bird Song”, “Sugaree”, and “Loser”, all of which were played live by the band before the album was released, and stayed concert staples for the duration. Each is in that loping, acoustic-based mode established on the last two studio albums, so they will already sound familiar.

Back when album sides had to be flipped to hear the rest, it’s possible that many owners of this LP wore out side one. These days, if listening on CD or a cassette dub, what used to be side two would be rather harsh on one’s mellow. The first three tracks for something of a suite; “Late For Supper” and “Spiderdawg” are examples of avant-garde or musique concrete (take your pick), with the kind of dissonant piano stabs and electronic effects usually associated with early Pink Floyd, whereas “Eep Hour” is a more conventional instrumental built around minor-key triplets and Floydian changes. He stays on piano for the gospel-tinged “To Lay Me Down”, which was attempted for American Beauty but not used, but would still surface onstage from time to time. “An Odd Little Place” is a gorgeous interlude for minimalist piano and atmospheric drums, and makes a fantastic prelude for “The Wheel”, which has an epic feel and big sound considering, again, it’s all Jerry plus Bill.

The eventual expansion of Garcia presents a few of the songs in their early stages—just acoustic guitar, vocal, and drums—plus the piano-and-drums first pass through the “Eep Hour” suite. There’s even a version of “Eep Hour” itself on electric guitar that takes it to a completely new place. Even so, the original sequence worked so well on its own, so the extras are only essential for completists, who are likely trying to catch up with all the live shows the band keeps issuing.

Jerry Garcia Garcia (1972)—3½
2004 expanded CD: same as 1972, plus 8 extra tracks