Notes: A Tribute to the Grateful Dead
PROJECT NOTES…
The Good Ol’ Grateful Dead…
I fell in love with the Grateful Dead on June 23, 1993. Having missed the first set of the evening, and some of the second, as I was getting to my place in the crowd at Deer Creek the boys launched into Terrapin Station - one of the few songs I was familiar with outside of the tunes on the greatest hits collection Skeletons From The Closet. By the end of the jam out of Terrapin and the ensuing Drums I was hooked! I was one of the few people dancing in the pavilion through all of Drums. Coming out of Space they launched into Dark Star…at my first show! I must admit I didn’t really know the song at that point, nor fully appreciate getting a Dark Star at my first show, but the music gripped me none-the-less. I can still hear the crowd singing along to the encore of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds when I close my eyes today. What a magical night! I had never seen or heard anything like what I experienced that night. I get goose bumps even thinking about it as I write this now. That was the beginning. I would go on to collect hundreds of hours of live recordings and fully embrace life as a Deadhead. If you know me, you know.
Fast forward to 2020…
While working on the beginnings of the John Prine tribute album, we decided it would be fun to cover a couple of Grateful Dead songs as well. We decided to pick four or five songs to record and promptly got to work. Well, those four or five songs turned into forty four! I had so much fun recording those initial songs that I just kept going with it. Thankfully, my musical cohorts indulged my insanity and the Grateful Dead tribute album was born. As the project went along I realized that what I wanted to create was a studio version of a Grateful Dead show. Before anyone gets uptight and says “hey, the Dead were a live band based around improvisational music - how does a studio album of a Dead show recorded one-instrument-at-a-time make any sense?” give it a chance. Whenever possible I have tried to use first takes in an effort to capture some of that spontaneity and improvisational aspect of the Dead’s music. These renditions are not perfect, nor were they meant to be. They’re meant to sound human, warts and all. They’re meant to capture the energy and spirit of the Dead. They’re meant to sound like a singular performance, not a polished studio gem. The vibe and performance were paramount over perfection or exacting recreations of these songs. In keeping with the Dead’s sound, every song on this album has two drums sets, along with the other standard instrumentation in the band (along with a few non-standard choices as well). In a nod to the spring 1970 shows, where the Dead were playing an electric set followed by an acoustic set followed by another electric set, this tribute album is arranged in three “sets”, with the second being the “acoustic” set. While not fully acoustic, the second set is modeled on the acoustic material from the 1980 Warfield and Radio City Music Hall shows and the album, Reckoning, culled from those shows. Sonically, the first and third sets are loosely inspired by the soundboard recordings of the ‘80s and ‘90s. (Hopefully they sound better than some of the cassettes I had back in the day) While slightly longer than the average Dead show (but not by much) this album is the culmination of nearly thirty years of listening, love, and respect for the music the Grateful Dead created, and which continues to live on to this day. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank David Thomas, Nick Vote, Matt Frick, Carey Gunn, Sloan Morris, and Eric Riddles for all of their contributions to this album. It was truly a group effort to get this across the finish line.
Album artwork is derived from a photo by Chris Walter.
Disclaimer:
Red Hippo Recording/Travis Ellison has no financial stake in putting these recordings out to the world. None of the Red Hippo Recording tribute albums are for sale, nor will donations of any kind be accepted. These albums were recorded out of love for the music and are offered here for free for your enjoyment.
