American Beauty Project

"A SPECIAL 2-NIGHT TRIBUTE TO THE GRATEFUL DEAD"

Workingman's Dead

8pm Sat, Jan 20, 2007 - 

Uncle John's Band - Ollabelle with Larry Campbell
High Time - The Holmes Brothers
Dire Wolf - Larry Campbell with Teresa Williams and Rob Barraco 
New Speedway Boogie - Catherine Russell and friends
Cumberland Blues - The Klezmatics
Black Peter - Jim Lauderdale with John Leventhal, Brandon Ross, Catherine Russell and friends 
Easy Wind - Tim O'Reagan (the Jayhawks)
Casey Jones - Railroad Earth

Plus instrumental interludes by: Andy Statman and Tony Trischka.


American Beauty

8pm Sun, Jan 21, 2007 

Box Of Rain - Toshi Reagon with Catherine Russell 
Friend Of The Devil - Mark Eitzel (American Music Club)
Sugar Magnolia - Jim Lauderdale and friends
Operator - Jorma Kaukonen with Barry Mitterhoff and Larry Campbell
Candyman - Jay Farrar (Son Volt/Uncle Tupelo)
Ripple - Dar Williams and Dan Zanes 
Brokedown Palace - Ollabelle with Larry Campbell
Till The Morning Comes - Espers
Attics Of My Life - Larry Campbell with Teresa Williams and Rob Barraco
Truckin' - The Jen Chapin Trio

Plus instrumental interludes by: Sex Mob, Tony Trischka, and Andy Statman.

Dennis McNally concert program essay...

The Beautification of the Grateful Dead

Country and rock music danced together long before The Band's first album or the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo or the Grateful Dead's Workingman's Dead. After all, the fusion of country singing and blues picking was part of the atmosphere at Memphis Recording (aka Sun Studios) when Elvis Presley recorded "That's Alright Mama" in 1954, or the next year in Chicago, when Chuck Berry and Johnnie Johnson .. to my mind .. created rock and roll with "Maybellene."

Country was also part of the Grateful Dead's musical heritage -- very little American music wasn't part of their heritage -- via Jerry Garcia's profound immersion in "old-timey" music and bluegrass in his early '60s apprentice days. But the combination of LSD, electric instruments, and the power and glory of Coltrane-inspired improvisation had meant they mostly played very loud blues-based music from their garage-band beginnings in 1965 well into 1969.

The acoustic sound and folk/country tunes of Workingman's Dead, released in June 1970, would come as quite a shock to many fans, and to the critics as a harbinger of some sort of conscious movement (along with The Band, Dylan and the Byrds) toward country. But as usual with the Grateful Dead, the album's origins were serendipitous and synchronistic, involving no plan or program. Instead, their swerve to include country songs in their work began quite accidentally when their lyricist Robert Hunter moved in with the Garcia family in January, 1969.

At that point, Grateful Dead music was described as "living thunder" and could go 30 minutes without a vocal. Hunter had already contributed a number of lyrics to the band's psychedelic anthems, including "Dark Star" and "St. Stephen." February of that year would see the introduction of the elegant, mystical "Mountains of the Moon," a minuet, Hunter said, and surely not a rock song, and "Dupree's Diamond Blues."

But as the rains stopped and spring came in, Hunter and Garcia's songwriting relationship, enriched by simple propinquity, flowered. Garcia would sit on the couch picking out a new tune over breakfast coffee, and Hunter might have lyrics in front of him before lunch. Not necessarily in any conscious way, their mutual understanding of each other..s work process grew ever more sophisticated, and the songs revealed the growth.

The cosmic journeys of experimental improvisation which had become identified with the Grateful Dead (captured perfectly in Live/Dead, recorded primarily in February 1969) were debilitating. Brilliantly as the band was playing at that time, they slowly began to recognize that they needed to expand their repertoire or risk implosion. Since the new songs emerging from Hunter and Garcia were clearly the most creatively exciting thing happening within the band, their fellow musicians embraced them.

Several factors gave these new songs a country sound. Hunter had been in a number of Garcia..s folk/bluegrass groups in the early ..60s; the style was certainly central to his ethos. But Garcia..s April visit to a music store in Boulder, Colorado, was essential. He spotted a pedal steel guitar, sat down and fooled with it, and achieved some sort of understanding of it. He turned to the clerk and said, "I want to buy this fucking thing, but can you send it to me in tune? I'll never remember this tuning."

Amazingly enough, it arrived intact. He began to practice, and the easiest way to do that was to back up his old friend John Dawson, who..d written a number of fine country songs and was playing them .. along with country classics .. in a Palo Alto, California, coffeehouse on Wednesday nights.

And so in June the Grateful Dead gave birth to the first song that would appear on Workingman's Dead, "Dire Wolf." Over the course of the year, "Cumberland Blues" (so very perfect a miner's lament that one miner was sure the filthy hippie Dead had stolen it), "High Time," "Casey Jones," and "Uncle John's Band" would join it. It is highly evocative that the anthemic "Uncle John's Band" would debut two nights before the disaster at Altamont.

In March 1970, they went into the studio to record Workingman's Dead. Hugely in debt to their record company, they were forced to be simple and economize, thinking consciously of Buck Owens.. Bakersfield sound. The simplicity served the music perfectly, and the result was a classic, although not the departure many thought it was. They..d enlarged their vision, not changed it.

The creative richness of the Hunter-Garcia partnership continued to flourish, and more great songs emerged "Candyman" in April 1970, "Attics of My Life" in May, "Sugar Magnolia" in June, "Ripple" and "Truckin" in August. In that period they found themselves with some extra time and returned to the studio to record American Beauty. Thanks to producer Stephen Barncard..s gorgeous handling of their vocals, it sounded even better than Workingman..s, and it became a touchstone of the era.

By following only their own creative impulses, the band had evolved into an ensemble capable of playing almost anything, and into composers who..d fused an extraordinary span of American music into an archetype. For the next 25 years, they would be, quite simply, the Dead.

-- Dennis McNally is the author of a biography of Jack Kerouac, Desolate Angel, which led to his being the Dead's official biographer, and its publicist since 1984. His work on the band, A Long Strange Trip/The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, was published in 2002

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