More often than not, it's 'point-and-shoot' but that's OK. The audio is good and clear although my home audio set-up isn't such that I'm in the best position to judge. (Personally, I was always grateful to hear them cover 'Tangled Up in Blue', which gets a v ery nice workout here to wrap up the show). Only one Dead tune, though, 'Deal', which closes the first set. The set list is representative of the time with a good mix of rock covers, some folk and reggae. The band was in good form (particularly the tight backing vocals - thank you Ms. Given the make-shift nature of the gig, it's therefore understandable that nothing special was arranged. This show was an ad-hoc affair anyway (the JGB had agreed to fill the bill after Garcia's 'day-job' band, the Grateful Dead, dropped out due to the sudden death of keyboardist Brent Mydland). “We can all be grateful for it because it made him who he was.This isn't a particularly dynamic video, just a basic straight-forward document of a Jerry Garcia Band outing from 1990. “He was challenged by the banjo, it was the hardest he’d ever work and the most focused he ever was,” McNally says.
Garcia never forgot his first love for bluegrass. In fact, Garcia’s last recording session before he passed away in 1995 was at Grisman’s, covering “Blue Yodel #9″ for a Jimmie Rodgers tribute album released in 1997. Garcia loved hanging out at Grisman’s small studio in Northern California-it served as a hideout from the hysteria surrounding the Dead. Garcia and his close friend, mandolinist David Grisman, played bluegrass music often, sometimes as a duo as well as once being joined by Tony Rice for the legendary The Pizza Tapes sessions. Though Garcia shifted his musical focus to other genres, you can hear bluegrass elements in the three-part harmonies found on the 1970 Grateful Dead albums Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. “Salt Creek” is a blistering bluegrass instrumental made popular by Monroe and performed by Garcia’s most well-known bluegrass outfit, the Black Mountain Boys, which included longtime Garcia collaborator Robert Hunter.
“Legend of the Johnson Boys,” an Irish ballad turned Southern folk-dance number is sung by the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers (AKA Garcia, Dick Arnold, and Marshall Leicester) in three-part harmonies akin to Flatt & Scruggs’ version of the song. Compiled by McNally and documentarian Brian Miksis, much of the Before the Dead material has never been released, including the two songs that Garden & Gun premieres below. The new box set Before the Dead, out on May 11, traces the evolution of Garcia’s infatuation with the genre, beginning with his first-known performance at his girlfriend’s sixteenth birthday party through various band configurations before Garcia turned to focus on the Warlocks, the precursor to the Grateful Dead.
Jerry Garcia with the Hart Valley Drifters in the fall of 1962.
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