Tips for guessing within two years when a song was played.
Larry Mishkin reviews the Grateful Dead concert from August 4th, 1994, at Giant Stadium. He discusses the show and welcomes guest Christian Sauska, who attended that concert and shares his love for New Orleans-style music and his journey as a Deadhead. The conversation delves into the 80s and 90s eras of the band, and they discuss their musical backgrounds and the band's new music.
Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-show
Larry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin
Rob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-hunt
Christian Sauska - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-sauska-5aab2310/
Jay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesberg
Grateful Dead
August 4, 1994
Giant’s Stadium
East Rutherford, NJ
Traffic opened the show
Jerry sits in with Traffic on Dear Mr. Fantasy and Gimme Some Lovin
INTRO: Box of Rain
Track No. 2
3:42 – 4:51
SHOW #1: Jack Straw
Track No. 3
5:00 – 6:09
SHOW #2: Eternity
Track No. 7
0:36 – 1:45
A “new” Bob Weir song, music by Bob and Rob Wasserman and lyrics by Willie Dixon
first played on February 21, 1993 at Oakland Alameda County Coliseum
Played 44 times in concert
Last played July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field – second to last show
Released on Dead’s first post-Jerry box set, So Many Roads
Rob Wasserman (Rat Dog with Bobby) Wasserman started playing violin, and graduated to the bass after his teenage years. He studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied composing with John Adams and double bass with San Francisco Symphony bassists.[5]
He worked with Van Morrison, Oingo Boingo, and David Grisman. His 1983 album Solo won Down Beat magazine's Record of the Year award. On the albums Duets and Trios, he worked with Bobby McFerrin, Rickie Lee Jones, Cheryl Bentyne, Lou Reed, Stéphane Grappelli, Jerry Garcia, Brian Wilson, Willie Dixon, Branford Marsalis, Bob Weir, Edie Brickell, Les Claypool, Neil Young, and Elvis Costello.
Duets was nominated for three Grammy Awards. Bobby McFerrin won for "Brothers", which was performed with Wasserman. Wasserman also won Holland's Edison Award for Record of the Year.
His 2000 album, Space Island, incorporated more contemporary musical elements.
RatDog, which he co-founded with Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, occupied much of his time. He toured extensively with Lou Reed.
Wasserman was a judge for the sixth-tenth annual Independent Music Awards.[8]
Rob Wasserman died on June 29, 2016. Cause of death was cancer.[9] Entombment was made in Salem Memorial Park and Garden at Colma, California.[10]
Willie Dixon (1915-1992) was one of the preeminent blues songwriters and performers of all time. The Grateful Dead covered a fairly lengthy list of his songs, attesting to his influence on the band: “Down in the Bottom,” “I Ain’t Superstitious,” “I Just Want to Make Love To You,” “Little Red Rooster,” “The Same Thing,” “Spoonful,” and “Wang Dang Doodle.”
The song was written during the sessions for Rob Wasserman’s Trios album. “Guitar Player” magazine ran an interview with Weir in 1993:
“I had this chord progression and melody that I wanted to run by Willie to see if he liked it .... he did, so he started dashing off words. He wanted me to run a certain section by him again and stuff like that, and we started working on a bridge. Then he dashes off this sheet of lyrics and hands it to me. Now I'm really stoked to be working with the legendary Willie Dixon and I'm prepared for just about anything.
“He hands these lyrics to me and I'm reading through them. And they seem, you know, awfully simplistic. Like there wasn't a whole lot to them....
“....Now he wants me to read through it and sing the melody I have and see if they fit. And so I started singing through these simplistic lyrics, and that simplicity takes on a whole other direction.
“By the time I had sung through them, it's like my head is suddenly eons wide. I can hear what's happening just sort of echoing around in there and I'm astounded by the simple grace of what he has just presented to me. I'm sitting there with my mouth open literally, and Willie's laughing. He's just sitting there laughing, saying, 'Now you see it. Now you see it. That's the wisdom of the blues.'”
David Dodd (author of Complete Grateful Dead Annotated Lyrics) – “Weir’s songs from this era (anything from “Victim or the Crime” forward) seem aggressively innovative, shall we say. The rhythmic patterns, the big multi-layered chords, the changes in meter and tone, all add up to something that seems calculated to disrupt any comfort we might have been sinking into. OK, I didn’t say that very well, but anyone who has struggled with these late-period Weir songs knows what I mean.”
SHOW #3: Childhood’s End
Track No. 8
3:10 – 4:15
A “new” Phil tune, first played July 24, 1994 at Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN
Played 11 times in concert
Last played July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field – last show
Never released on a studio album
“Childhood’s End” on 7/20/94 – the last original Grateful Dead song to enter the live repertoire, written and sung by Phil Lesh.
Per John Hilgart of 4CPComics, the background story is that Lesh (and perhaps the others) felt that new songs would help fuel Garcia engagement in a period when Jerry was headed in the same direction as in the mid-1980s, when his drugged-out-bad-health put him in a coma that he narrowly survived – living on to drive the 1989-onward renaissance of the band. In the 1995 remake, Jerry died. The big musical difference between those two episodes is that everyone else in the band had their shit together in 1994, whereas the whole band was a mess in 1986.
John’s general take on post-Brent 1990’s Dead is that they were not to be dismissed – a band that had stopped depending on Garcia’s leadership to determine the musical outcome, but who were always therefore also ready when Garcia was feeling spry. Weir has said something to that effect. And when Garcia was feeling spry, it was just as you would wish it to be.
SHOW #4: Way To Go Home
Track No. 14
2:59 – 4:12
A “new” Vince song music by Vince and Bob Bralove, lyrics by Robert Hunter.
First played February 23, 1992 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum
Played 92 times
Last played June 28, 1995 at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills
Also wrote Samba In The Rain for the Dead.
Bob Bralove is a keyboard–synthesizer player who worked as a sound technician with the Grateful Dead from 1986 to 1995. Throughout his tenure, he performed as an auxiliary musician throughout "Drums" and "Space", the band's signature aleatoric music segments.[1]Accordingly, he played a key role in their integration of MIDI technology (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music.[1] ; Before the development of MIDI, electronic musical instruments from different manufacturers could generally not communicate with each other. This meant that a musician could not, for example, plug a Roland keyboard into a Yamaha synthesizer module. With MIDI, any MIDI-compatible keyboard (or other controller device) can be connected to any other MIDI-compatible sequencer, sound module, drum machine, synthesizer, or computer, even if they are made by different manufacturers.), first working with drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, keyboardist Brent Mydland, and later guitarist Bob Weir and synthesizer/piano player Vince Welnick. He also co-wrote several songs with Weir and Welnick, including "Picasso Moon" on Built to Last (1989) and "Way to Go Home" and "Easy Answers", which were slated to appear on the band's unfinished fourteenth studio album. (A live reconstruction, Ready or Not, was ultimately released in 2019 and contains both songs.) Perhaps his most significant project with the band was curating excerpts from "Drums" and "Space" on Infrared Roses, a 1991 compilation album. "Parallelogram" and "Little Nemo in Nightland" are some of his most notable "compositions" from this release.
Bralove was also a member and producer of the Psychedelic Keyboard Trio, along with Welnick and fellow former Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten.[2] Bralove and Constanten also collaborated as Dose Hermanos, a showcase for their improvisational keyboard work; since 1998, they have toured irregularly and released five albums under the moniker. Bralove also worked with Stevie Wonder, setting up and programming Wonder's synthesizers including while he was touring.[3]
OUTRO: Days Between
Track No. 20
5:55 – 7:24
“new” Jerry tune
First played February 22, 1993 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena
Played 42 times by the Dead
Last played June 24, 1995 at RFK Stadium in D.C.
It has become a favorite of the surviving band members, played the third night at the 50th Anniversary Shows at Soldier Field in 2015 and frequently played by Dead & Co. with Bobby singing, Also played by Bob Weir and Wolf Bros. and Phil and Friends. Great tune to end this episode.
David Dodd: “Days Between” has come to be an anthem that makes us remember Garcia in a particular way, and, in particular, the days between his birth date of August 1 and his death date of August 9. It’s a fitting song for such thoughts, with its big sweeping chords and its lyrics heavy with nostalgia and longing.
There’s a word in German, sehnsucht, that lacks a proper emotional counterpart in English, but which means, roughly, “longing.” It carries a sense of wishing you could see something—see something again, see something at all—that something is missing from your eyes and from your presence. I find that “Days Between” belongs with a raft of songs that induce this feeling in me.
“Days Between,” a late song in the Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia songbook, was perhaps their last collaboration on a big, significant song, one that ranks with “Dark Star” and “Terrapin Station” as ambitious and intentionally grand. (I was talking the other day with a friend, about Garcia’s playing and songwriting, and the thought came up that Garcia, like few others, was unafraid of grandeur, and could successfully pull it off. Same with Hunter.)
During its relatively short time in the live repertoire, they played it 41 times, always in the second set, and fairly frequently rising out of the Drums.
Phil: “I don’t know whether to weep with joy at the beauty of the vision or with sadness at the impassable chasm of time between the golden past and the often painful present.”
Larry (00:37.462)
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Deadhead Cannabis Show. I'm Larry Mischkin of Mischkin Law in Chicago, and I've got a great, great show for you guys today. So thank you so much for tuning in and listening to us. Uh, we have the Grateful Dead from August 4th, 1994 in Giant Stadium. And although that date may be a little bit out of whack for the show that, uh, with today's date, uh, we're doing it because we are very lucky to also have with us a guest, Mr. Christian Sowska, uh, who is coming to us and we will be chatting with him in a few minutes.
He was at this show that we're featuring today, which is why we're featuring it. And he's going to talk with us about all sorts of stuff. The music that he makes, New Orleans style music, his recollections of the Grateful Dead and other fun things that I'm sure we will get to during our show. But let's dive right into August 4th, 1994 Giant Stadium. And this is what they opened with.
Larry (02:36.182)
You know, when you walk into a dead show and they open up with box of rain, you give yourself a little pet on the back and said, I came on the right day. That worked out just fine for me. And, uh, unfortunately I wasn't there and I never, in fact, never made it inside a giant stadium in East Rutherford or anywhere they had it. Uh, but Christian did Christian welcome to our show. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
christian sauska (02:42.873)
Yeah.
christian sauska (02:56.735)
Well, thank you, Larry. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. And similarly, I was excited to be at that show. It was, in fact, my first.
Larry (03:07.33)
everybody has one that's not a bad first show to go to uh... you know giant stadium has been known to be uh... the home of some of the uh... some of the finest summer dead shows out there and uh... for many a year uh... hosted the dead on their annual east coast summer swings you know playing to upwards of sixty thousand plus people all new yorkers and i'll withhold my comments on that but anybody who's ever been to an east coast dead show knows exactly what i'm talking about and uh...
It was funny because, um, you know, Dan asked for this show because you had been there and I said, sure, that's great. We can do it. And I started to read the reviews of it. And I'm going to tell you right now that, you know, some of these deadheads were just an entitled bunch of, I won't even get into it right. Oh, anything after 93, I won't listen to. I was there, but I don't, I don't count that. And I don't Jerry's fat and this and that. I'm like, of course, absolutely. But you know what? There were 60,000 people there that day. And the next day and the day after that, the whole rest of the tour was sold out.
and they sold out right through the final show at Soldier Field. Sometimes it was painful. Sometimes you kind of winced a little bit. But Jerry fucking Garcia for God's sakes. And anybody who wasn't happy with that, then look, you must have fallen off the bus somewhere along the way and not made it all the way back. One other thing to note about this recording today is that it is an audience tape. So we do pick up some ambient conversation and other stuff like that in the background.
which to me just makes it more genuine because if you've been to a show people around you are talking all the time anyway. So Christian this raises the obvious question what got you to your first Grateful Dead show?
christian sauska (04:44.523)
Well, I grew up, grown up in Connecticut. I was a, I'm a, you know, I'm a New England prep school kid. I went to private school. I was not a dead head. There were kids in my group who said they were into the Grateful Dead and I thought they were crazy lunatics and didn't understand why they would, you know, I didn't think they knew what they were talking about. And then I was probably never one to say no very often. That's not one of my best traits was Dan can.
Larry (04:49.954)
Sure.
Larry (05:06.57)
Uh-huh.
christian sauska (05:13.491)
probably a test too. And one of my buddies, who became one of my closest dearest friends and was certainly ended up on the bus with me. We said we were going. So the two of us took off. We went to East Rutherford, didn't have a ticket, got a ticket in the parking lot. I was looking at everything, taking it all in. We had fun, made a lot of the same mistakes. I think if you look, this is, you know, traffic open. Jerry came on. They did Dear Mr. Fantasy.
I may have told some people at some point that we were there, but we were not there for that. We didn't know what we were doing. I was not a deadhead at this point. You know, I made some mistakes in the parking lot. Luckily, we made it home safe. Everything was fine. And then, you know, I don't know if it's weird. Not weird. My journey, let's say, did not begin until after Jerry died. And it hit me in the face and it hit me hard. So you know.
that's, but I made it to two shows total, but not with any of the excitement I had. Let's say when I went to go, you know, if I went to, when I went to the Grateful Dead, 50th anniversary shows in Chicago, that was, there was an excitement and an emotion there that I certainly did not have in my first show because I did not, I wasn't on the bus yet. I might have seen it coming.
But I didn't get out.
Larry (06:43.554)
Well, you know, that's I think what happens to everybody in their first shows. And you know, some people got on the bus very late and they didn't start seeing shows until 94 or 95. And for them, you know, that's the whole body of live Grateful Dead music that they have to work with. And so I'm sure that they look at it a little bit differently than some of us jaded guys who had already been seeing them, you know, for 10 to 15 years by that point and forget about me, right? There were people who had been seeing them for 25, 30 years and maybe even farther back than that. And although, you know, we were all respectful of Jerry and understood that...
you know he wasn't entirely healthy and he was out there kind of trooping on you know there wasn't there still wasn't really the sense that like well the final curtain is about to come down on them or anything and then it did and i think he gave everybody a whole lot of appreciation by the time they pulled it all together for the twenty fifteen fiftieth reunion show i think it did spark a lot of uh... energy in a positive way because you know a lot of deadheads who never really felt that they had a sense of closure with the Grateful Dead because they'd seen him somewhere on the ninety four ninety five tour
decided, yeah, this isn't really what I've been hearing on my buddy's tapes. I don't know if I'm going to keep going back or not. And then like you say, I finally have a chance to sit down and listen to a wide body of the work and realize, wow, this is great, great music. And I missed out on it. And 2015 gave people a great opportunity to catch up on that. And, you know, people have their differences of opinions and feelings about Denko, but, you know, they played strong for seven or eight years. And I always enjoyed going to the shows. You know, like I've been very open about the fact that
I wasn't always wild about the arrangements or the way they played some of the songs, but on the other hand, they played the songs. They played them in the environment where you want to hear it with all the other dead heads around and with as many of the surviving members as they could bring together under one roof and still keep peace in the family apparently. But that's a whole dead head thing that an inner circle thing that those of us who are just dead heads on the outside could speculate about, but we never really had to know what was going on. But I got to say for your first show.
christian sauska (08:24.263)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
christian sauska (08:28.767)
can speculate all we want.
Larry (08:36.61)
uh... you know to come out strong with the box of rain that's like that's a good sign you know my first show was birthed there's certain songs that are just meant to be first songs at your first show and if you get it i think the good karma just flows right along with you and it did in this show apparently because the very next song they played is another
Larry (10:03.07)
Okay, so you heard your first show, it's like Box of Rain, check, Jack Straw, check. Most deadheads probably have to go to five, 10, 15 shows before they can, before we can, they get to see songs like that.
christian sauska (10:16.327)
Yeah, we, I remember when I was with my buddy Bill, we were in the car, he might have known more songs than I did at this time and we were saying, we just want to know a couple of songs. We know a few songs and then it's a win. And it's like bam bam, holy crap, this is awesome. It was, I remember, I remember that feeling. So everything else was landgapped as we say down here afterwards.
Larry (10:39.371)
Yeah.
Right, you know what, it was awesome and it was, even years later, going to a show towards the end of the run and you'd see them come out like this, 94, box of range, extra, you do, you never get tired of it, you never grow that emotion, never grows old, you never wear out of it, it's just wow, the boys are really kicking tonight and maybe kicking for 94 wasn't the same as kicking for 77 or 85 but...
christian sauska (11:07.848)
Yeah.
Larry (11:09.538)
You know, for those of us that were still checking them out in 94 and supporting the band, they were great. And, you know, we enjoyed all of it and, um, you know, they could play a song like Jack's draw and still just, you know, kick butt with it and get that energy going and you can feel, you can, you can hear them on stage when, when Jerry's enjoying himself and not going through one of these, Oh God, I got to drag my way through.
christian sauska (11:22.163)
Yeah.
christian sauska (11:31.307)
I mean, I think that's everything. He was in a good mood, everything was gonna be running totally well. And I'm sure I've, at some points in my life, been the picky guy or wanting to be a little snotty at times and the later stuff isn't as good. But if I look back at it, it was a 1993 show that I was listening to that was the fish hook that pulled me in. And I probably myself don't listen to...
the later, late 80s and 90s stuff as much as I would do the 70s stuff, but I don't know that I feel too guilty for it.
Larry (12:07.822)
Sure.
Larry (12:11.682)
No, look that's the beauty of being a deadhead. There's different eras. Some deadheads are specifically attracted to one. A lot of folks don't believe the Grateful Dead existed past 1969 or 70 when they put what my co-host Rob and I always call Primal Dead and Dave Lemieux calls it that too so we're not trying to claim credit for that Dave. We get it that you've done it as well. But Primal Dead, which is wonderful stuff and I love that era. I also happen to love the Americana era that flowed out of that.
christian sauska (12:29.789)
Yeah.
Larry (12:38.85)
But some people say, hey, when Tom Constant left the group and they put away the psychedelics in that regard and went on to the other stuff, they were okay, but that's not the real grateful debt. And some people say, if you didn't see them in 73, 74, 77, 78, you never saw them. Okay, but I had to see them when I see them. I've got no complaints, and although I'm sure it would have been fun to see them back when I could, within the 30-year period when they were playing, I feel damn lucky to have kind of dropped down right in the middle of it.
and really had a chance to see a good number of those shows and really get a chance to experience it. And you too, once you see a show, it doesn't matter how many you've seen, you know what people are talking about, you can join the conversation.
christian sauska (13:21.65)
Absolutely and actually this might be a good opportunity for me to talk. I have this guilt sometimes when we're talking about you know like early 70s, early 70s, early 70s. I'm listening and I...
Larry (13:29.262)
Hehehe
christian sauska (13:34.479)
And it's like, oh, it works so well. And there's an experimentation to it and a rawness, but it's still a big energy. But I almost feel bad because a lot of the shows I end up liking is Mickey wasn't in the band, right? It was when his little hiatus was going on. And I almost feel guilty how much I enjoyed some of those shows. And I don't know that it would have been different if he was there, if it wouldn't have been better if he was there.
I don't have that kind of opinion, but there is almost, why do I feel that way? I have a hard time coming to terms with it.
Larry (14:11.338)
You know, I think that, you know, those of us that, you know, for whom the grateful debt are defined as, you know, the six guys between the eighties and the nineties, just switching out Vince Welnick for Brent when it became necessary to do so, unfortunately, you know, that's who we really think of, you know, when they played in 2015 and they didn't invite Vince back to them. But I, you know, I just, I discovered that, you know, Jeff Comente, who I had heard before, but really in those shows, in my opinion, you know, really rose to the top as, as one of the ultimate keyboard players who
play with them and you say, boy, where was he after Brent died? Um, you know, but I'd say that I loved Vince and I love the way he performed in the nineties, but yeah, you do wind up feeling a little bit guilty about that, I think, because we like to think of them as a collective whole, you know, as far as Mickey goes, you know, my feelings are very simple. Look, his father came in and screwed the band. Now, whether that was Mickey's fault or not, I'm going to err on the side of saying, I don't think it was, but you know, who knows, but either way, Mickey felt like he needed a breather. Maybe the band felt like they needed a breather either way.
christian sauska (15:02.31)
Yeah. Right.
Larry (15:10.002)
Off he went and, uh, you know, Kreutzman stepped in and, and did the job admirably. And, you know, I think credit to all of them is during that period of time, Kreutzman's drumming is, is just absolutely stupendous. He really drives that band and does a fine job of doing it solo. But I think, you know, some people might be forgiven if they sat there and listened to it and the way that he and Mickey so seamlessly drum together. Sometimes it's hard to tell that it's just one drummer. You have to know what period it is and what's going on. I think in some of these instances to really be able to pick up on the fact.
christian sauska (15:31.74)
Yeah.
Larry (15:38.95)
uh... you know as well as court to complain but more importantly as well as they all play together uh... you know i think credit to court's been the rest of the band when the key was ready to come back they were ready to have a back everybody benefited from it and you know he's still there today you know doing his things
christian sauska (15:48.271)
Right. We got the rhythm devils. I mean you can't, nobody's complaining. But actually this reminds me, there was the Grateful Dead channel, Serious Radio, the Tales from the Golden Road. We're allowed to talk about this, right?
Larry (16:03.182)
Sure. Oh, absolutely. We love David Gans.
christian sauska (16:05.283)
And I've always wanted to call in and never quite did. I was dropping my son off at a soccer game. It was an hour early. It just comes on and said, I'm calling. And couldn't get through, couldn't get through, get on. And the reason I wanted to call him, I did end up getting, we had a great conversation, was that I have, my kids and my wife don't always wanna listen to the Grateful Dad radio, serious radio, but I made it a game.
Larry (16:26.999)
Heh heh.
christian sauska (16:32.551)
I said, all right, if it's a live show, I'm going to guess from within two years when it was going to be. And that's, you know, is that one drum or is it two drums? All right, there's not a gene. Okay, good. But the reason I called is because I didn't know how to, I didn't have any tricks for the eighties, right? I mean, you tell people who are uninitiated, 65 to 95, it's 30 years of live music. I'm going to tell you within two years when that song was played, it sounds impressive, but there's a lot of little tricks.
Larry (16:38.306)
Right. Sure.
christian sauska (17:01.855)
But the 80s killed me, it killed me. And they pointed out on what I called in that it was the longest period of the sustained lineup that didn't change, right? So that made sense. The only thing they could come up with was that after the coma, Brent put something into his, and his keys had a different kind of sound. I don't even remember what they said. I should figure that out.
But even they said that it's just, it's hard in the 80s to figure out, you know, when it was, but it was still a fun game. That was a fun phone call.
Larry (17:39.766)
all right now i that first of all that we've had david gans on the show he's a wonderful guy we haven't had gary lambert yet but maybe one of these days will be lucky enough to get him to sure that their sunday show i think is almost required listening for dead heads because in order to you know really build up this base of knowledge and understanding and feeling about the death there's nothing better than hearing the stories of other dead heads some of them are real long and boring others of them are really short and absolutely amazing
Deadheads have processed this whole experience, not just the music, but I love their stories. Well, I picked up my buddy and we went here and some people were like, I don't want to hear about that. I went here. No, I do want to hear about that because I had those long road trips with buddies and those were always an integral part of everything that happened. You know, it was all, there was the musical part and then everything else, the travel part, we have to eat, we got to sleep, we got to, you know, and you do all of it. And so, you know, they're really a lot of fun to listen to as well. For the 80s, I think that's true.
christian sauska (18:19.01)
Yeah.
Larry (18:37.594)
I think that Brent became a little more aggressive the second half of the 80s in terms of his playing and his singing. But really, well one thing is, the beginning of the 80s Phil was not singing. By the end of the 80s Phil was singing. So if you pick up a Phil song, you already know you're in the second half of the year of the decade I should say, right? But...
christian sauska (18:43.689)
Maybe needed to.
christian sauska (18:57.861)
Yeah. Right. Oh, oh, that's there you go. I like that's a nice little right.
Larry (19:02.906)
Right? So if you pick up Phil singing, that eliminates, you know, that gets you at least to 84 or 85 when he started doing Tom Thumb's blues. And then Box of Rain in 86 and from then on in, he was always singing. But I also think part of it just has to be the song selection. And that's hard. If you're listening to Uncle John's band, that may be very tough, right, to discern. But if you're listening to Built to Last, then you know you're talking about
88, 89 or somewhere in there. But yeah, in terms of actual sound, I think it does get difficult during that period. We all have tricks, right? If you're listening to They Love Each Other and it's that fast upbeat snappy version, that's 1973. That's the only year they ever played it that way. When you hear Dark Star at the very beginning, you hear those little maracas scratching together. That's 1968 and 69.
christian sauska (19:32.546)
Right. Starring selection can be a part, yes, for sure.
christian sauska (19:46.28)
Yeah.
christian sauska (19:52.645)
Right.
Larry (20:00.61)
They always started Darkstar that way during that period of time. And you know, I mean, we, we could sit here and go through and pull out all of these, but I love to play that game. And in fact, what I do is, and I don't know if you've listened to fish at all. I enjoy fish now and I've come to like them because my kids are into them so much that I thought, you know, it would be fun to get into them and see some shows with them as well. But I, the difference is, is that fish has been playing the same songs more or less the same way all the way through. They didn't really have a primal fish.
christian sauska (20:06.58)
Yeah.
Larry (20:30.382)
Americana fish and so, you know, when they play possum, possum is possum and, you know, Gordon sings it and the rest of them all come in on the back and it's a great tune and I love it but I couldn't necessarily distinguish, but I'm sure people who have seen fish 150 or 200 times could sit there and tell you about how their voices sound and whether their voices are too scratchy or not or whatever it might be and that can give it away. But you know, definitely with the dead you have those little markers, that's great. You know, you're the first guest that we've talked about with.
christian sauska (20:30.582)
Yeah.
christian sauska (20:45.701)
Right.
christian sauska (20:58.719)
It almost makes it easier to chronicle for education purposes as you're going back to the different eras of the band. Yeah. And I haven't thought about it so much. I've seen Fish a lot, got off on Fish plenty, but with me there's the Grateful Dead and then there's everybody else. Like that's... And I sometimes almost wish it was different because I could have seen...
Larry (21:11.743)
It's true.
Larry (21:20.266)
Yep. Right. No doubt.
christian sauska (21:27.499)
I had friends and they went full boat fish and I was like, I get it. It's rocking. I love it. But it ain't the same for me. And I don't know.
Larry (21:36.33)
No, nor for me. I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, I mean, now I go back and I'm listening to the Fish Stations. They're playing all these shows from the late eighties, early nineties. It's like, wow. I mean, this was a band that was really coming of age right at a point in time when I was perfectly positioned to have stepped in and seen all of that. But I was still seeing 20 dead shows a year, you know, with a wife and kids. All of a sudden you get to a point where you don't quite have that same luxury unless you're my, my son, Matthew's good friend, Kevin, who somehow has a couple of kids, but manages to get out.
christian sauska (21:50.759)
Yeah.
Larry (22:03.63)
I'd see every freaking show in the world. His wife is a saint. I don't know how he does it, but more power to him. But otherwise, you reach a point that I didn't have the ability to catch both of them. And so I used all my points to go see the Grateful Dead. And then after Jerry died and it stopped, it was kind of hard, I think. There was a part of me that felt like I wasn't glad or relieved that they'd done it.
christian sauska (22:08.947)
Yeah.
Larry (22:32.054)
that he had died and that they had stopped playing. But it's like anything else in life, all of a sudden you're like, wow, look at all this additional time I have that I'm not spending running off to Grateful Dead shows, right? And it was like, no, I'm not doing anything this weekend. Normally we'd be in Las Vegas at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, but not anymore, let's go do something. And I tell you, I was the bull season ticket holder until recently, and same thing. My wife, everybody knew.
christian sauska (22:43.481)
Yeah.
christian sauska (22:51.262)
Right.
Larry (23:00.502)
May and June, Bulls Playoffs, we're not going anywhere. And then Michael Jordan retired and the Bulls sucked. They weren't even in the playoffs. And all of a sudden it was like, wow, May and June are wide open for, these are good travel months, who knew? Right? So let me ask you this, Christian. Tell me a little bit about your musical background because clearly you have some connections to music and what are they and what's really got you going in music?
christian sauska (23:14.047)
appreciate it.
christian sauska (23:25.407)
So my, I grew up, my mom listened to Dire Straits, Clapton, Little Hendrix, so I had that little bit of a foundation, but I became, I was a parrot head. I was Jimmy, at one point, Jimmy Buffett, when I was in my teens, I wanted to party and it was, it was Jimmy Buffett and I was a champion of it. And then,
Larry (23:37.374)
Classics.
Larry (23:51.566)
Cheeseburger in paradise, baby.
christian sauska (23:56.099)
And then I went to a couple of dead shows, did my freshman year of college at Tulane, and got, and it was worse than that. And it was, this was, this was, it was what, 90, mid-90s, 94, drinking Connecticut, hard, you know, 21 and strict. Then I moved here and I could have a large pizza, six pack of beer, and a pint of Jack Daniel's delivered to my dorm room.
Larry (24:02.67)
God.
christian sauska (24:25.467)
At midnight, I had no chance. And so I had gotten exposed a little bit to some more New Orleans music. And actually Fish played right next to my dorm in the Callister would have been either fall of 94, spring of 95. And we met them outside. I mean, it was a couple of thousand people and they were outside mingling with everybody. And I had seen a couple of shows or whatever, and like, you know, said dumb stuff.
Larry (24:25.995)
Right. Yep.
That's it.
Larry (24:43.406)
Okay.
Larry (24:53.358)
Sure.
christian sauska (24:54.355)
So after my one year at Tulane before they told me it might be good to take a break, I was living in Boston and probably partially depressed trying to figure out everything. I, you know, might have had, Bill might have sent me some stuff from Arizona and that was the guy I was at the show with and, you know, I had some buddies that left. So I'm in a new apartment, no TV, I had a black leather lazy boy.
And my buddies had left a cassette tape over. Chapel Hill, March 24th, 93, and I'm just listening to it, miserable, miserable. And then all of a sudden, as I'm just, it just kind of goes like this, and it was all, everything made sense, and I was just like, fish-hook, done. And then for the next decade, for the next decade, all I did was listen to Grateful Dead.
Larry (25:42.858)
Right?
christian sauska (25:49.075)
that didn't do anything else. And then, you know, right, right. And then, you know, as I'm growing up, I'm only, up until I had my first kid in 2007, I probably listened 90 plus percent Grateful Dead. Then, just like all good.
Larry (25:54.83)
It's not a bad way to spend a decade.
christian sauska (26:18.023)
And this was my musical experience. I was not playing any instruments. And then he was born, we moved to New Orleans. So I'm back in here. But you know, there's jazz fest and all this other kind of stuff going on. Long story trying to get to the short of it. I quit drinking about four years ago, COVID hit. I picked up a bass guitar. I was, I bought the cheapest one, cheapest guitar, cheapest amp, because I didn't know if there was gonna be for two days or what I was gonna do. And I just...
I just kept going, kept going, and you know, my God, putting on Jerry Garcia bands and playing and listening. You hear the crowd and you're like, oh my God, they love me. And it was the most fun I've ever had in my life. There was nothing else I would rather do. Nothing. And then, you know, but I'm playing bass and I'm like, why? I can't, you know, it's not an acoustic guitar. If you play bass, you gotta be playing with people. And then I...
Larry (27:03.246)
Sure.
christian sauska (27:16.923)
I did an open mic, met some amazing people, everybody I've met has been supportive and encouraging, and then played with some dads, friends I knew, and it was great, and I said, but Christian, we really think this is gonna be an upright. I'm like, upright, I'm like fighting for survival with this thing. I rented an upright. There was another crazy singing group that is hard to explain in any kind of short period of time that I was in.
and I, they needed my truck and I hadn't, I said sure, I just gotta, let me put this bass in here. Said oh, why do you have that bass? They said, well I'm gonna learn how to play it. I said, well why don't you play it tonight? So we had a show and I'm like, okay. And now I'm in two bands, I can't stop playing, practice it all the time, people paid to see me play, haven't laughed and it's been an amazing freaking journey. So.
Larry (28:12.142)
That's great fun. My mom always said, learn to play an instrument. You'll love to do it when you're adult and I never listened to her. Now I'm an adult and I wish I had. So you give it... No, it's true. Right. That's true.
christian sauska (28:18.663)
It's not too late Larry. It's not too late. You know you can just get a few chords and I mean we played we played we went down to a corporate a corporate event. Not very corporate but it was a corporate event and we went down we played and we said guys this is a way if we just if we do it for us if we can get off on it that's all we can ask and they're either along for the ride or they're not. I pulled out a bow. I don't even know how to hold a bow. We played
Larry (28:26.259)
I don't know.
Larry (28:45.006)
I don't know man.
christian sauska (28:48.287)
We're harrowing for eight minutes with a bow. It's two chords and went right into fire on the mountain. Two more chords, 15 minutes of music, four chords. Cause it's all about energy, heart, and nobody's gonna play with me cause I'm a virtuoso cause I miss that, I miss that boat. But I bring the energy.
Larry (29:02.926)
Sure.
Larry (29:08.642)
All right. Now I understand, well, you know, Dan Humiston, man, he drives a rough ship over here. We don't always have time to break away and play all that music like we'd like to. Some day down the road when I can finally, like Jim Marty managed to retire, we will see what he does one day. But I love that you're talking about the standup bass because that's a great lead into the next clip we're gonna play from our show from August 4th, 1994. And now what we're gonna do is we're gonna get into a streak the rest of the way here of new Grateful Dead music.
Larry (30:41.206)
So yes, Eternity is one of the, what we would always call the new, newer, Grateful Dead tunes, because first there was Touch of Grey, then there was the whole Built to Last situation, and then finally we got into these songs that they were playing in the mid to late 90s that never made it onto an album. So this was a new Bob Weir song, but it's really got a fascinating history, because it was written by Bob, the music was written by Bob along with Rob Wasserman, who was a stand-up bass player.
and played with Bob a lot in Rat Dog as well as playing with a number of other famous musicians. But more importantly, and I'm going to confess I never knew this before, the lyrics for Eternity were written by none other than Willie Dixon. And yeah.
christian sauska (31:14.958)
Okay.
christian sauska (31:18.683)
Which blew my mind when I saw that I had no idea either and I mean he was a freak of nature in a positive way
Larry (31:25.574)
Yeah, and just amazing, right? So they first played it in February of 93 out in Oakland. It wound up being played 44 times. It was last played the second to last show, July 95 at Soldier Field. And although it never came out on an album, it was one of these songs included in the Dead's first post-Jerry Bach set called So Many Roads. You know.
christian sauska (31:34.026)
Thanks for watching!
Larry (31:50.786)
we thought that the title of the song was very apt for what the song was. And it did seem to kind of take an eternity for Bob to sing his way through it. And, you know, I don't feel entirely bad saying that we never really developed much of a, uh, an affection for this song because I'm not aware of Bobby having even played it anymore. I've seen him with Wolf Brothers. I've seen Dead in Company. I, he covers every, he covers Jerry all the time on his Wolf, you know, some of the other tunes that Jerry did as well as, but he doesn't play this one. And I'm like, Hey man, this is your tune.
uh... you should be out there playing it and really get stuff going on it and yet he didn't but dot but you know he did do a lot of stuff with uh... with rob wasterman and although i never saw a red dot with rob wasterman feel bad about that but dot he did they really worked well together this is a great example of that willie dixon those raised the fascinating because this was right at the very end of his life he died in nineteen ninety two
And this song came out, they first started playing it in 93. Um, and, you know, but, but Willie is really, I think you have to say one of the preeminent blues songwriters or performers we've ever had, uh, and the grateful dead were no stranger to Willie Dixon's tunes. Um, they played down at the bottom. I ain't superstitious. I just want to make love to you. But by the way, it was also played by Fog Hat for a long time. I thought it was Fog Hat song cause I had never heard anybody else play it until somebody clued me in the note was actually a Willie Dixon tune.
christian sauska (33:12.336)
Right.
Larry (33:16.502)
after the dead played it. Little Red Rooster, which we all heard once every third show throughout the 1980s, the same thing, Spoonful, which we never heard enough, and Wang Dang Doodle, which they were guaranteed to play if they came into Chicago. But these are all Willie Dixon songs, and for a lot of Deadheads, they just look at them as though this is just part of the Grateful Dead's repertoire, but it only was in the context of them being cover songs.
christian sauska (33:27.999)
Thank you.
Larry (33:44.054)
Bob, we are, you know, when talking about this particular song with Willie Dixon, he said, he goes, I had this chord progression and melody that I wanted to run by Willie to see if he liked it. So we don't know how to access the guy like Willie Dixon to just run some music by and see if he likes it. But Bob did, so credit him for doing it. And Willie liked what he saw. So he started dashing off some words. He wanted me to run a certain section by him again and stuff like that. And we started working on a bridge. Then he dashes off this sheet of lyrics and hands it to me. Now I'm really stoked to be working with the legendary Willie Dixon.
and I'm prepared for just about anything. He hands these lyrics to me and I'm reading through them and they seem, you know, awfully simplistic, like there wasn't a whole lot to them. Now he wants me to read through it and sing the melody I have and see if they fit. And so I started singing through these simplistic lyrics and that simplicity takes on a whole other direction. By the time I had sung through them, it's like my head is suddenly eons wide. I can hear what's been happening, just sort of echoing around in there. I'm astounded by the simple grace of what he has just presented to me. I'm sitting there with my mouth open literally and Willie's laughing.
he's just sitting there laughing, saying, now you see it, now you see it. That's the wisdom of the blues. So first of all, that was an explanation that was an eternity. So, you know, Bob, Bob really has a way of with words, but, but when you stop and listen to what he's saying, uh, it, right, it's amazing on two levels. One, because I don't write songs and really have any knowledge about how to write music and, you know, the fact that there's people that have the ability to do that always amazes me because without them, we wouldn't have any of this great stuff. But the second part is we've said is.
You know that he's sitting here basically changing notes back and forth with a legend. I mean, really one of the greatest legends of all time. And, you know, as a deadhead that makes me proud because Willie Dixon, you know, he was popular enough. He could have worked with any musicians he wanted to work with. And the fact that, you know, he gave the dead so much time and attention and was willing to be not just accessible to a guy like Bob Weir, but literally work with him on crafting some songs. It has to speak to the fact that he must have really liked the way that they played.
his other tunes and that's one of those stories that I really love hearing about. It kind of puts the song in a whole new image. I can't say so much that if they were coming back for one night, I'd want that in the setlist. But if they were back full time and we were going to be seeing them on a regular basis, I wouldn't mind if they threw it in every now and then.
christian sauska (35:48.538)
Right.
christian sauska (35:54.74)
Right, right. No, no, that's a, immediately you got me starting to think if putting together that set list, did you have to make it in where it would fall during the set or could it just be how you're going to fill it? But yeah, but Willie Dixon, you know, in my last year of studying for the upright, certainly one of the names that came up and there's some great old, I love some of the old videos of him, the old black and white ones and he's a mountain of a man.
and he plucked it. It doesn't look the same like when I'm playing it. But he was a, you know, he was one of those guys that was just, he was a force. It was, it was, and I'm sure he appreciated that the Grateful Dead had something similar, right? They were just, it was a force of energy and he had it and they had it and certainly rooted a lot in the blues anyhow.
Larry (36:29.18)
does.
Larry (36:45.954)
I think that's very true. And just because the dead were gonna do with this particular night boy, they really piled it on. So they went, actually right before this, Jerry did a standing on the moon. And a first set standing on the moon, to me was always tremendous. And excuse me, not standing on the moon, so many roads. He did a first set so many roads, right before the eternity. And then closing out the trio of new tunes is this next cut.
Dan, if you'll run this one.
christian sauska (38:00.789)
Okay.
Larry (38:22.53)
So you know, if you were like a deadhead that kind of hopped off the bus somewhere, you know, early 90s, you'll be forgiven for not having any clue what this is, other than the fact that it is Phil Lesh singing, which is kind of hard to miss as a childhood's end. And it was, it was the, again, you know, the quote unquote new Phil tune. They each had their own new tune as we saw in this concert. They're jamming right through them. This one was first played in July of 94 at Deer Creek. It was only made into the concert repertoire 11 times.
christian sauska (38:39.913)
Yeah.
Larry (38:50.114)
but somehow managed to hang on and was played at the final show at Soldier Field on July 9th, 1995. Never made it to a studio album. And interestingly enough, it is the last original Grateful Dead song to enter the live repertoire. And it's written and sung by Phil Lesh. So, you know, kind of, yeah, hats off to Phil. Well, you know, and maybe so, right? Because Box of Rain was the last song they played. So, you know, Phil, every now and then, he knows when to step in and do it.
christian sauska (39:08.139)
There's a trivia question.
Larry (39:19.422)
I saw a great article about this from John Hilgard at 4CP Comics, and he says the background story is that Lesh and perhaps the others felt that new songs would help to fuel Garcia's engagement in a period when Jerry was headed in the same direction as in the mid-1980s when his drugged out bad health put him in a coma that he narrowly survived, living on to drive the 1989 onward renaissance of the band. In the 1995 remake, Jerry died. The big musical difference between those two episodes is that everyone else in the band
christian sauska (39:44.679)
No.
Larry (39:48.426)
had their shit together in 1994, whereas the whole band was a mess in 1986. So John's general take on the post-Brent 1990s dead is that they were not to be dismissed. A band that had stopped depending on Garcia's leadership to determine the musical outcome, but who were always therefore also ready when Garcia was feeling spry. Weir has said something to that effect, and when Garcia was feeling spry, it was just as you wish it would be. And yeah, I mean, that's very true. I think that's absolutely true.
in the mid to late 90s Jerry could you come in and just be on the top of his game and we'd have as much fun as we had been having in the 80s and uh you know it's a great song in the sense that I love that Phil was writing songs. I can't say it was a great song in the sense that I really like to hear it but you know it just showed me that you know I mean if a guy like Phil Lesh is still writing songs you know that far into it sounds like you know everybody's happy or at least content to keep working together.
christian sauska (40:44.504)
I think, and why should they stop writing, right? I mean, the whole band was based on experimentation and anything goes at any time. It would be criminal to stop.
you know, they could shelve it and put a pin in it and maybe wait and, you know, let it, let it figure itself out, let it develop on its own. So, you know, certain songs certainly don't hit home the way that so many others do. And, you know, that's not one that, that I happen to, you know, maybe I should listen to more. I don't know. It just, I don't find it. It doesn't come up in what I listen to. Um, and, you know,
I haven't heard it too many times on Sirius.
Larry (41:29.654)
No, I'm just gonna say, right, I've yet to be driving along, oh look, they just put on Childhood Zen, right? Maybe they'll play a show that it pops up in, but otherwise that's about it. And it's interesting, right, because some of Jerry's last final tunes that never made it onto albums are lionized by these guys. They love Days Between, they love Liberty, they love some of these songs to the point where Bobby plays them with Ded and Co. and with the Wolf Brothers.
christian sauska (41:40.692)
Yeah.
Larry (41:58.214)
all of this Jerry stuff that we think of as the really new Jerry stuff. And I'll tell you, I never really got behind Liberty very much either. It seemed a little too overly simplistic for me. The lyrics weren't really as clever as some of the other stuff. I felt it was kind of like an end of career effort to keep something going. But I respect people who, the music that they grew up on hearing, the dead play. Liberty is, that's significant for them. And I can appreciate that.
Larry (42:28.002)
has not played Childhood's End all that much. You know, his Phil and Friends rotations, you know, probably pops up every now and then. But he's too busy playing, you know, Mason's Children and, you know, The Eleven and all the good, you know, really old Grateful Dead stuff. We all hoped they would keep playing, but you know, Jerry decided he didn't want to do it anymore and didn't. But you know, I look, I recognize Phil for what he was. He wrote some of the some of the greatest Grateful Dead tunes. A Box of Rain has to be up there and everybody's top five of
of Grateful Dead songs for sure. And, um, you know, it was such an integral part of the band musically that, uh, you know, look, Phil wants to write songs. I say that's great, man. He must be in a good mood. Good for him.
christian sauska (43:05.511)
Yeah. You know, I, I look, I, I when I when COVID hit, I picked up an instrument. I picked up the bass. And the one and only reason I picked up the bass is because when I'm listening to the dead, it is I am writing film and there is, you know, I don't try and play and like him at all, you know, or pretend to even do whatever, but
That is why I picked it up, right? And so to me, you know, whether it's talking contribution, I mean, obviously it's immeasurable, but it is, it is reminds me of, I had a good, one of my closest friends, girl lives in LA and she's married and her husband is a very talented musician and was a big dead head and played with some of the cover bands and then we hadn't met and he couldn't propose until.
She had met me and so they come into New Orleans and we are fast friends right away. Just like this. Everything's good. We're four days in, they're hanging out and going nuts and he's over the house and I have a picture of Phil on the wall. Somehow the discussion was, well, clearly, it was the dead, it was Jerry.
And then, but they couldn't have been the Grateful Dead without Phil. It's like, yeah. And he said, well, same thing without Bobby. I'm like, it's not even close. And he's such a Bobby Camp guy. And I'm such a Phil Camp guy. And I'm like, who are you? How are you marrying this guy? You know, like it is like, are you a Bobby guy? Oh my God. But I love them all almost equally. Um, but maybe I have some more favorites than others.
Larry (44:57.418)
Look, you know, everybody does, you know, I mean, I love Phil too, but I, you know, I was always a Jerry guy, Rob, Rob hunt, my cohost. And I will often say that on any given night, I'd be just as happy to see the Jerry Garcia band as the grateful dead. Um, and just, you know, jam with Jerry all night long, his music, his songs, it's, you know, he doesn't have to trade off songs or anything. And yeah, it was always great, but you know, look,
christian sauska (45:10.517)
Oh, yes.
christian sauska (45:15.467)
Oh, no pressure. His energy is great.
Larry (45:22.402)
Bobby, like every other part of the dead, I think is something that you begin to acquire a taste for and a deeper appreciation for as you go on. Now, I'm not going to lie. Again, my actual musical knowledge is fairly limited, but when you start reading stories and hearing people talk about that Bobby wasn't just your ordinary rhythm guitar player, that he really mastered the craft and he really learned how to fill in the holes with Jerry and was a perfect complement to him. That was kind of stuff that I always just took for granted.
christian sauska (45:44.126)
Yeah.
Larry (45:51.446)
You can't just take it for granted. And you know, Bobby is a showman in his own way. He may not always sing the songs the way I like him to sing them, but it's his man, not mine. He's entitled to sing them any damn way he wants. And, uh, you know, he, he rarely disappoints, you know, he will come out and he'll put on the show that people want to hear and he'll do his thing. Um, but, but I, I'm not going to disagree with your underlying premise, which is, you know, again, you know, if I had my way, I would tear this whole building down. And of course, you know, have nothing but
christian sauska (45:57.796)
Yeah.
Larry (46:19.35)
You know, Jerry, Phil, Jerry, Sugar Magnolia, Sugar Magnolia playing in the band. Those songs you can play all freaking day. Lost sailors saying of circumstance. Love that rather report sweet. Amazing. You know, you know, and what else have we casted? He's a great tune. I mean, you know, there's so many of his songs that.
christian sauska (46:23.048)
Yeah!
christian sauska (46:26.876)
Yeah.
christian sauska (46:36.015)
I've gone back and forth with that one myself. And that's what I think about it. I have my own journeys with individual songs of the Grateful Dead. And it blows my mind. That doesn't happen with anybody else. There's nobody else's music I'm listening to. So many songs that just, you know, I've gone on emotional rollercoasters with. And so that clearly, it's got to mean something.
Clearly it does.
Larry (47:05.746)
Yeah. Well, I think so. And I think we've talked about it on this show before a lot, which is, you know, that I think that Bobby somewhere in the early eighties and then onward, you know, really be, he became the front man for the band, right? He was the one who'd say, we'll be back in a few minutes. Thanks for coming out. That, you know, rarely if ever would Garcia say, even say a word, let alone, you know, really purposefully communicate with the audience. And, uh, you know, Bobby.
christian sauska (47:17.983)
Yeah.
Larry (47:29.586)
Filled that role great, you know, not fade away while the rest of the band might be falling asleep Bobby's up in front jumping up and down about having a Cadillac and this and that and throwing his arms out and you know, you appreciate that energy, you know, at those moments in those shows when they're really kicking it, it's great to see that the guys in the band are having a good time and you know, on those rare occasions when Jerry would, you know, sway back and forth a little bit, you know, we don't look Garcia's dancing, isn't this amazing, you know, but with Bobby was just a given and it had to be somebody needed to be that role.
christian sauska (47:29.972)
Yeah.
christian sauska (47:52.742)
Yeah.
Larry (47:58.438)
And, you know, he was the perfect, the perfect foil for Garcia.
christian sauska (48:00.143)
And he was always the pretty boy. He was always that face. He was always, he brought a different quirky energy that was vital to the whole thing. I mean, it's, you know, I live in New Orleans, everything's a gumbo and that's what that was. And his spice and his thing was certainly vital, you know, the cutoff jean shorts, that's probably not for everybody, but it was, you know, whatever.
Larry (48:10.347)
Absolutely.
Larry (48:22.51)
worked for him and now he wears the capris. Look, I'm very happy. Having daughters has been a wonderful influence on him and that's a great thing too, to see that. Let me just, we're not gonna have too much time, but I just wanna touch really quickly. Tell us a little bit about what's going on down in New Orleans music-wise and where you go when you're in New Orleans and you just wanna go see some great jamming and hang out.
christian sauska (48:46.503)
Yep. So I moved almost exactly two years ago. I mean, not far uptown to more than New Orleans. It's a bubble. I don't put a lot of miles on my car every year. But I am walking distance now to Tipitina's, which is an iconic club down here that I started going to when I was at Tulane.
Larry (49:03.939)
Okay.
Larry (49:11.773)
That's why I said before, every Tulane person winds up walking into Tipitina's, they all fall in love with the radiators and you hear about it forever.
christian sauska (49:18.371)
Yeah, and what's amazing here too is because it's not a big town, you're walking around, you've seen these musicians everywhere. Like they have kids, they're people too. And these are guys that I, you know, looked at, I worshipped when I was younger. And now, like, you know, they can become friends and it's just, it's amazing. And that's something that you get here. So much of this, you know, it feels like a big city to some people, but it's really a small town.
There's so much good music here, but Tipatina's is not five, seven days a week. The guys from Galactic own Tipatina's now. So I'm there, you know, a couple of times a month, especially now going to see this upright Peter Harris is an upright bass guy who plays at the Pontchartrain Hotel, like four days a week and it's free to get in. He has, I mean, from Stanton Moore, Jason Marcellus, Johnny, but I mean,
Everybody comes in and plays with them rotating and it's free to get in. You can get good drinks. It's more adult than a lot of the places that I used to go to. But those kind of thing, I mean, go to the Maple League. George Porter still plays once a week. You can go there on Monday nights with Johnny Padalka. Like 15 bucks to get in. And you're watching legends play. So it.
Larry (50:29.486)
Mm-hmm.
christian sauska (50:43.699)
Pick the night and there's still a lot of good stuff to go see here in New Orleans. And I think what's exciting is I think there's more, there's a lot of commonality in the energy and improvisation of New Orleans music and Grateful Dead world, but those worlds did not come together too well too often. And it was almost like they were separate. There's not a lot of...
There's obviously a history that your dad has with New Orleans, but this wasn't on their rotation very much. But I feel like there's more and more Grateful Dead music influence being played by a lot of, whether it's Anders, Liddell, you know, guys from the Radiators and all this kind of stuff. They, the Honey Island Swamp Band, you know, New Orleans, NOLA Suspects. There's just, it seems to be creeping in and I think...
I think that's a great thing. Hearing songs played with different energy and in a lot of different ways. So you're not gonna go long without hearing a Grateful Dead tune, no matter where you poke your head here in New Orleans.
Larry (51:43.787)
No, it's wonderful.
Larry (51:54.618)
No, I mean, every band you mentioned is great. And I just, I think of The Meters, I think of Trombone Shorty, and some of these other guys who I've been lucky enough to see both in New Orleans and in other places when they're touring. And it is always such a distinctive sound, but more important, it brings along a little sense of, hey, this is the way we do it down in New Orleans. And so we're gonna bring it from there to your town tonight. And you get a chance to experience it the way they do down there. And it's always fun. I've got...
really good friends who live down in that part of the world. And you know, anytime I have an excuse to go down there and say hello, strangely enough, always right around the time of jazz fest, but yeah, whatever we can make it happen. Yep. You know, go down there and, Hey guys, haven't talked to you in a while, but boy I saw that line up at jazz fest and decided this is a good time to get some Ben yeas and, and do our thing. Well, that's, that's fun too.
christian sauska (52:30.954)
What did I call it? That's amazing how that happens. Just amazing.
christian sauska (52:39.809)
Yeah.
christian sauska (52:47.283)
The Jazz Fest is, you know, we, I think we had, it was two years it was canceled because of COVID and it is just, it feels like it's back bigger, stronger than it's ever been. And, you know, can it get too crowded? Sure. But you know, I don't need to go see all the big acts. I almost like it when everybody's going to see the big acts because that means all the other stages are a lot easier, a lot more accessible for me.
Larry (53:14.606)
Everybody wants to go see the Eagles? I am very, very comfortable going and seeing Dr. John and Warren Haynes while you guys all go see the Eagles. We'll compare notes afterwards. Absolutely. Well, let's dive back into this show one more time here because we still haven't heard all of the new songs from all the members. So now Vinnie gets his turn.
christian sauska (53:21.139)
Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Larry (54:49.678)
So nobody could argue that the Grateful Dead weren't an egalitarian band. Here they are, really on the back end of their career. They're all writing songs and they reach out to new guy in the band, Vince Willing, and they can say, have at it. And Vinny comes up with way to go home. He also did Samba in the Rain with the Dead, which was a fun tune to hear him play. And Vinny just was a victim of bad timing. He's a great guy, obviously had a very strong musical career before getting to the Dead.
And I love the way that they let him write some songs and get them out there. But what really impresses me about this song is the guys that he wrote it with, Bob Brelov and the lyrics are by Robert Hunter. Now, by this point in his career, Hunter could just kind of sit back in his rocking chair and be resting his laurels. But he saw a guy come into the band who he thought had a creative flair and took the time to sit down and crank out some lyrics for him. Anytime you have a song where the lyrics are written by Robert Hunter, it's up to the musician to blow it.
christian sauska (55:45.009)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Larry (55:46.346)
And Vinnie doesn't do it here, you know, he really played it strong. This one debuted February 23rd, 92 in Oakland at the Coliseum. They actually wound up playing it 92 times, which I think is pretty significant for a Vince Wellnick tune over the last few years of the band. And this one was last played on June 28th, 95 at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Just for people who don't know or need a refresher, Bob Brelov is a keyboard synthesizer player who worked as a sound technician with The Grateful Dead from 86 to 95.
Throughout his tenure, he performed as an auxiliary musician throughout drums and space, the band's signature music segments always coming in the middle of the second set. And he also played a role, a key role in their integration of MIDI, M-I-D-I technology, which stands for musical instrumentation digital interface, which allows all sorts of electronic instruments and recorders and amps and everything to all work with one another and leave it to guys
Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman working with Bob Breloff, and even Brent Midland and Bob, we're to really work all of this in to the Grateful Dead sound in the late 80s and early 90s. He also co-wrote other Grateful Dead songs, including Picasso Moon, Way to Go Home, Easy Answers. And, you know, good for him. Again, somebody who came in and had one purpose, ostensibly, in the band, but was so talented.
that they were able to use them in a lot of different places. Many people say that... I'm sorry, go ahead.
christian sauska (57:17.907)
good coach. Yeah, that was just gonna say somebody was a good coach. He got somebody who's here who's on the team and he's got something extra. Let's find something else for him to do. Sorry.
Larry (57:31.83)
No, no, you're absolutely right. And they did a great job with all of it. Um, uh, you know, Bray Love also was part of the psychedelic keyboard trio, along with Vince Welnick and, uh, former Grateful Dead keyboardist, Tom Constantin. They collaborated as Dos Hermanos, a lot of other improvisational keyboard work. Uh, they too somewhat irregularly, but Bray Love was also busy working with Stevie Wonder. So, I mean, this is just always an amazing cast of characters that wind up somehow, uh, interfacing into the Grateful Dead musical universe.
And kudos to Vince for even during his short time with the band, kind of figuring out who these guys were and attracting their attention, where they were willing to give him the time. And good for them to be egalitarian in that way and not just give, well, we're here to work with Jerry. We don't really have time to work with the rest of you. And it's certainly a song that played well for the Grateful Dead. And it helps secure Vince's legacy in the band to some degree.
Anybody who plays with the Grateful Dead should have a legacy and you know, like I said, I like Vinny and I'm glad he got his.
christian sauska (58:35.087)
Yeah, you know, I agree. He's not as just as many of the things that you just said on how people, you know, either perceive or analyze his time with it. Just looking at these songs that you add here with these newer tunes, you know, eternity and childhoods and way to go home.
I know which song has made it more into my sphere out of those. And even not to play a spoiler for what you have coming up, except for that time in Chicago, which I think elevated it for a lot of people. This is the song, it's Vince's song that was most relevant to me.
Larry (59:07.502)
Sure.
Larry (59:25.826)
Yeah, Days Between is a wonderful tune. We'll get to it in one second. This was another of the new Jerry tunes, if you will. And again, first played in February of 93 out in Oakland. The Dead managed to get to it 42 times. It was last played in June of 95 at RFK in one of the final shows of that summer tour, ultimately culminating in Soldier Field. It clearly has become a favorite of the surviving band members.
They played it the third night at the 50th anniversary shows at Soldier Field. It's been frequently played by Denneco with Bobby singing. It's also been played by Bob and Wolf Brothers by Phil and Friends. It's a great tune to end this episode. It's just a great tune all the way around. David Dodd, who also did a lot of work with the Grateful Dead wrote about days between that it's come to be an anthem that makes us remember Garcia in a particular way. And in particular, the days between his date his birth date of August one and his death date of August nine.
It's a fitting song for such thoughts with its big sweeping chords and its lyrics, heavy with nostalgia and longing. There's a word in German, which I won't pronounce correctly, but, san schucht, that lacks the proper emotional counterpart in English, but which means roughly longing, carrying a sense of wishing you could see something, that something is missing from your eyes and from your presence. I find that days between belongs with a raft of songs that induce this feeling for me. It's a late song in the Robert Hunter Garcia songbook, perhaps their last...
a great collaboration on a big significant song, one that has to rank with Darkstar and Terrapin Station as ambitious and intentionally grand about it. And during its relatively short run in the live repertoire, they still got to it, as I say, 40 times, always in the second set, mostly always coming out of drums. And Phil Lesch had this to say about it, I don't know whether to weep with joy at the beauty of the vision or with sadness at the impassable chasm of time between the golden past and the often painful present. And yeah.
very shortly we're going to be coming up on to the days between these eight or nine days that really symbolize a lot for Deadheads and Garcia fans and anybody who loves this kind of music. And Days Between was definitely a tune that had to grow on you. The first couple of times it was kind of slow and Garcia maybe not had been at the top of his game. But you're right, I think that we're doing it in 2015, really kind of put it on a whole other level for people.
and caused a lot of us to go back and really reassess our feelings about the song and the way that Jerry played it. And then you kind of hit your head like, wow, if I hadn't been there so concerned that he wasn't playing Morning Dew, I might have really enjoyed him doing this because he had the emotion in his voice and the ability to really take this song and make it great. So we're going to listen to this in one second. But just really quickly, Christian, I just want to say thank you so much for...
christian sauska (01:02:00.94)
Yeah!
Larry (01:02:17.314)
for being on the podcast today. This has been great. I've enjoyed our conversation. It's always fun to talk with the guy who loves the Grateful Dead, loves good music, knows all about New Orleans music, and my guy, we never even got to cannabis. So we'll save that for the next time you're on, and we can talk about all the joy that people get out of that as well. But...
christian sauska (01:02:29.259)
Thanks.
christian sauska (01:02:34.951)
Yeah, maybe it maybe it's a jazz best podcast in New Orleans. Next year, you know, a location podcasting
Larry (01:02:41.162)
Ooh, d-
Larry (01:02:45.386)
I love that. I'm going to have to talk to Dan about the travel budget, though, and see if that's something that's in the cards for this scraggly group, even though we might have to take you up on it anyway. But thank you for being on. We really appreciate it. You added a lot, and really appreciate the insight, both as it relates to the Grateful Den and just musically overall. So thank you, and please plan to come back again sometime, because we'd love to have you.
christian sauska (01:02:53.971)
Uh.
Larry (01:03:11.998)
And so yeah, otherwise in closing out, I will just say to everyone, listen, have a great week, be happy that Fish's tour came out. By the way, anybody who's old enough to really appreciate it, go to YouTube and check out the cover version they did the last night in Alpharetta, Georgia of the Vicki Lawrence tune, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, from way back when she was still on the Carol Burnett show. And the fact that Fish played it was great. It doesn't sound very good, but they're playing it, and so that's absolutely a lot of fun.
christian sauska (01:03:36.915)
Yeah.
Larry (01:03:40.47)
Dave's picks 47 from the St. Louis December 1979. My brother Jeff went to that show. He's never seen a dead show since, but he loves telling up. St. Louis Keele Auditorium, December 79.
christian sauska (01:03:47.391)
Where was it? Where was it? Where was it? Ah! I got married at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis and during the wedding I got to go on the stage do my Jerry pose. But anyway, sorry. Go ahead.
Larry (01:03:57.226)
Yep, Fox Theater. We'll come back and we'll talk about that too. That's another one of our favorite stories. But yeah, no, just a quick shout out to my brother, Jeff, because he did see the Grateful Dead before I on December 79th, so he was actually at the show. And I'm gonna have to get him a copy of it. For everybody else, thank you. Continue to enjoy your summer. Make the most of it. Be safe and enjoy your cannabis responsibly. Here's Jerry.
christian sauska (01:04:00.648)
Alright.