Aug 292023
 
oteil stella blue

Jam band superstar Oteil Burbridge is a leader at forefront of the movement, and has been for many years, including a storied run in the Allman Brother Band as their longest-standing bassist. He has also been a key member of huge recording and touring bands, including the recently-departed Dead and Company. and led his own Oteil and Friends outfits. He has now announced his new project: The songs of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, reinterpreted by him and performed by his own chosen musicians.

It was a theme, approaching a meme, for fans to demand that his bands “Let Oteil Sing.” This project also allows him to do that. The first single from the album is “Stella Blue”, which is timely as the train comes for his time in Dead and Co. The album is due out in September. Continue reading »

Jul 172023
 
goose us blues

We recently wrote about how one chapter in the history of jam bands was ending, with the final show of Dead and Company (see: The 30 Best Grateful Dead Covers Ever). In another chapter, though, Norwalk, CT, based indie groove specialists Goose continue to write their own story. They have a close relationship with the Dead’s fanbase and have been joined by Bob Weir on occasion. They have covered many artists, across genres, but have made a specialty of Dead songs. The first appearance of “US Blues” came on the Stone Pony Summer Stage at Asbury Park on Independence Day. Continue reading »

Mar 302022
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

On April 7, 1972, the Grateful Dead hit the stage at Wembley Empire Pool in London, kicking off a multi-city European tour. The 22-date outing would eventually be immortalized in the three-LP live album it spawned: Europe ‘72.

The tour has been chronicled heavily in band members’ memoirs, remembered for both its great musical output as well as its levels of unbridled debauchery, excessive even by the standards of the Dead. For the band at the time, the tour felt like a monumental undertaking that included both scores of people and mountains of gear. In A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally cataloged everything that came along for the journey, which included: “seven musicians, ten crew, five staff, seventeen assorted friends, wives, girlfriends and children … They brought themselves and fifteen tons of instruments, a sound system, and a sixteen-track recording system which they would install in a truck as a mobile studio. There was also lighting gear and their first traveling lighting designer.”

That spring, the band’s lineup was in a state of evolution. It was their last tour to include founding member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who would pass away in 1973. The husband and wife duo, pianist Keith Godchaux and vocalist Donna, were firmly entrenched in the band. Mickey Hart was on hiatus after his father had stolen money from the band, leaving Bill Kreutzmann as the band’s lone drummer. Given both this blend of musicians and the high quality of the recording equipment, the shows have a unique sound that differs from other eras of the band’s music.

While many bands use live albums as an easy way of fulfilling their contract or rehashing their greatest hits, Europe ‘72 is very much a complete work in its own right. The 17-track, three record set contained practically a full album’s worth of new material mixed in with older tracks. There are six new songs that were never even included on any studio records, three previously unreleased covers and two instrumental jams. Given the album and tour’s popularity among Deadheads, in 2011 the band released a more exhaustive collection, Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings, a 73-CD box set.

As Deadhead nation marks the album and tour’s 50th anniversary, we decided to put together our own form of celebration. Here’s a breakdown of live covers of every single track on the album.
Continue reading »

May 282021
 
bombay bicycle club terrapin station

The title track of the Grateful Dead’s 1977 album Terrapin Station is arguably the group’s most intricate studio creation. Clocking in at 16 minutes, the song blends elements of folk, prog rock, baroque music and jazz, along with extensive percussion tracks and a classical symphonic and chorale finale. The multi-part odyssey features a level of studio precision that the band could never replicate on stage, which may explain why they never played the track in its entirety in concert. Continue reading »

Jul 222020
 
full moonalice bird song

The origin story behind Full Moonalice reads like a cross between a Bay Area-rock n’ roll odyssey and a business profile in The Wall Street Journal, complete with name changes and mergers.

The band started in the late ‘90s when it was founded by Silicon Valley investor and guitarist Roger McNamee as the Flying Other Brothers. The band retooled in 2007 as Moonalice. It performed and recorded for more than a decade with an ever-shifting lineup of well-regarded jamband musicians. Somewhere in the middle, McNamee was an early investor in a plucky little startup called Facebook. In late 2019, Moonalice announced it was teaming up with the T Sisters, a folk-singing sister act and the soul group the New Chambers Brothers to form Full Moonalice. Continue reading »

Feb 182020
 
wynonna bob weir

In a recent article in The New Yorker, writer and cultural critic Adam Gopnik made an unlikely musical analogy. He compared songwriter Cole Porter with both Chuck Berry and the Grateful Dead’s lyricist Robert Hunter, calling them “the three great lyricists of invented American speech.” He wrote: “Hunter, in songs like ‘Uncle John’s Band’ and ‘Friend of the Devil,’ invented a lost nineteenth-century world of runaway trains and pursuing sheriffs and brass bands playing by the riverside which somehow resonated as an available American reservoir of myth.” Continue reading »