March 17, 1980 Masonic Hall, Seattle, WA: Robert Hunter and The Ghosts (Lost And Found)

The Ghosts, featuring Keith and Donna Godchaux, recorded in 1979-80, released an album on Whirled Records in 1984

This blog does not typically assess live concert tapes, whether well known or not, since so many other blogs and sites do a better job of that. In general, the archaeology of Hooterollin Around is focused on different sorts of evidence. However, when a tape is the only evidence that we have of a lost concert, and in particular one that may be very telling about the state of the Grateful Dead at a point in time, the blog is not going to ignore that information.

I am one of the few people who has attempted to document Robert Hunter's live performing history, particularly in the 1970s, in general, Hunter spent the mid-70s mostly working in somewhat conventional rock band settings, before finally narrowing his sights in mid-1978 to a mostly solo approach. Thus it was quite surprising to find a tape on the internet of Robert Hunter performing with Keith and Donna Godchaux  and their band The Ghosts, apparently (per the tape), on March 17, 1980 at the Masonic Temple in Seattle, Washington. While I have no other evidence save this, nevertheless the date is pretty plausible. Since Keith Godchaux would die in an unfortunate auto accident a few months later, it is easy to confirm that the tape is what it says it is--Robert Hunter making a live appearance, backed by two former members of the Grateful Dead and some other musicians. I have no idea whether this was for a single show or a few--I expect they played more than one show--but I had never heard of this collaboration before, and it tells me a number of interesting things.

The Tape
Here is the information. I have listened to the tape, and the setlist accurately describes the music. I have no other knowledge of this event.

The back cover of Robert Hunter's Promontory Rider album on Relix Records, an anthology that included material from the 1978 Alligator Moon sessions.

Robert Hunter and The Ghosts
March 17, 1980, Masonic Hall, Seattle, WAaudience recording
unknown gen cassette>cdr,unknown gen cassette>cdr
trade cdr > eac > wav > flac

Additional Lineage: Received as four long tracks,
tracks rejoined and retracked with Audacity,
Checksums and flac level 8 with traderslittlehelper

-Early Show?-
01 //Last Flash Of Rock and Roll
02 Stop That Train
03 Strange Man
04 Promontory Rider
05 Franklin's // Tower
06 -applause-
-Encore-
07 Better Move On

-Late Show?-
08 unknown snippet
09 Heart Of Glass >
10 Cruel White Water
11 Mississippi Half-Step
12 Sunshine Daydream >
Scarlet Begonias >
13 //Stella Blue >
Sunshine Daydream >
Scarlet Begonias
14 Last Flash Of Rock And Roll
15 Tiger Rose
16 -tuning-
17 It Takes A Lot To Laugh,
It Takes A Train To Cry

I can only guess at the lineup, based on listening to the tape and fragmentary information from their only release.
update: Thanks to fellow scholar JGMF, we have a photo and lineup for The Ghosts, from the Santa Cruz Sentinel of May 9, 1980 (advertising a Catalyst gig on May 16)
-The Ghosts-
Donna Godchaux vocals
Bill Middlejohn-guitar
Billy Travis-guitar
Don Gaynor-guitar, vocals
Keith Godchaux piano, vocals
Larry Klein-bass
Grag Anton drums(I am not at all certain about this lineup, and anyone with additional information should put it in the Comments or email me. However, I will note that Steve Kimock's biography on his own site does not have him joining until later than March of 1980, when he joined The Heart Of Gold Band).

Since Hunter bids everyone goodnight after "Franklin's Tower," it appears the ensemble played two shows. The first part of the tape seems to be the end of the early show, and the later tracks seem to be the late show. Since they do not repeat songs, I assume that the venue had more of a nightclub setup, where fans could simply stay for the late show, rather than filing out and re-entering. The last two tracks (16.tuning and 17. It Takes A Lot To Laugh...) seem to be another edited-in bit, possibly from a different set or event.

[update]: thanks to a Correspondent, I have found out some information. There were at least three shows:

• March 15, 1980: HUB Ballroom, U. of Washington, Seattle, WA
• March 16, 1980: Fabulous Rainbow Tavern, Seattle, WA
• March 17, 1980: Masonic Temple, Seattle, WA

The shows varied somewhat, but in general Robert Hunter performed solo and also sang a few numbers with The Ghosts. It appears there were multiple sets with different musicians coming and going, so it must have been more like a "Revue" than a simple Opener/Headliner setup. As a Commenter pointed out, it's worth considering that except for February and March 1980 (with the JGB and The Ghosts, respectively), Hunter never performed live with other members of the Grateful Dead. Given how many times Hunter has opened for numerous ensembles, that has to have been a conscious choice. Hunter's brief flirtation with Garcia and then in Seattle with The Ghosts seems to have been rejected as a route map.

After Midnight, recorded in February 1980, by the Jerry Garcia Band, featuring opening act Robert Hunter as a special guest

Robert Hunter Landscape, Spring 1980
Robert Hunter released two solo albums on Round in 1974 (Tales Of The Great Rum Runners) and 1975 (Tiger Rose). Although he had been quietly performing with a local group called Roadhog since 1974, he stepped forward under his own name in 1976. Robert Hunter and Roadhog peformed in the Summer of 1976, and in mid-1977, Hunter joined another existing group, Comfort. Robert Hunter and Comfort performed from mid-77 until mid-78. They recorded an unreleased album, Alligator Moon, made a couple of FM radio broadcasts and toured the East Coast. However, the band was apparently supported by Hunter, from his songwriting royalties, but in 1978 Hunter stopped performing with Comfort. For the next several months, he toured as a duo with former Comfort bassist Larry Klein. From 1979 onwards, Hunter was a solo performer.

When Hunter had been in Roadhog and Comfort, he had focused on performing his own songs. Hunter had made a point of not performing Grateful Dead songs with his own groups. I believe there was the occasional performance of a few chestnuts, like "Friend Of The Devil," but in general Hunter kept his own bands as distinct as he could from the Dead. Hunter's solo performances, while featuring a wide variety of new and old Hunter songs, also featured a lot of Grateful Dead songs. Most of those songs, however, were not being performed by the Grateful Dead in the late 70s, so it was fun for fans to hear live versions of songs like "China Cat Sunflower" or "Mr. Charlie," and there wasn't as much implicit reason to compare them with the contemporary Grateful Dead. In his own quiet way, Hunter celebrated his Grateful Dead connection while maintaining some artistic distance that allowed him to be evaluated as a performer in his own right.

Hunter's performance with The Ghosts, however, breaks all Hunter's conventions, more or less uniquely, as far as I can tell. Hunter sings "Franklin's Tower", "Mississippi Half-Step" and "Scarlet Begonias" in full out electric versions, and all three were staples of Grateful Dead live shows at the time. Hunter also does some songs from both his released and unreleased albums, and a solo version of a Blondie song (a standard thing for him at the time), but this recording is the only time I know of where Hunter puts himself, as a performer, into direct comparison with Garcia.

Fellow Scholar JGMF sent along this photo of The Ghosts from the Santa Cruz Sentinel of May 9, 1980

Keith And Donna Godchaux and The Ghosts
The performing history of The Ghosts is quite obscure. The band is only really known from a release on Whirled Records from 1984 (The Ghosts Playing In The Heart Of Gold Band), later re-released in various forms on Relix Records in 1986 and '88. Like all Relix releases, details are actually fairly sparse. I myself was not aware of any performances by The Ghosts in the Bay Area in 1979 or 1980, although there must have been a few. Keith and Donna Godchaux had left the Grateful Dead in March of 1979 (their last performance with the band was February 17, 1979), so I was alert to any new ventures by them. They very well may have played around a bit, but they seem to have kept a very low profile.

As rock fans, we always assumed that the members of our favorite bands were well-off, with an endless supply of "money for nothing," as Mark Knopfler put it. The reality was often quite different. Generally speaking, songwriters were the ones who made the most money in 1970s rock bands, and even the songwriters often had serious cash flow problems. Almost every 70s rock band, the Grateful Dead included, was effectively deficit financed, with loans from banks or the record company paying the day-to-day. Thus when revenue came in, it was often spoken for, so musicians could hardly count on a big payday, even if they sometimes got one. JGMF has documented how Jerry Garcia seems to have had serious tax issues in 1978. Even if Garcia was taking advice not to pay his tax bills (possibly as fallout from Round Records), it was a sign that Grateful Dead finances were hardly in good shape.

The Healy-Treece Band
When Keith and Donna Godchaux left the Grateful Dead, I don't think they really had any money. They probably got occasional royalty checks, but the amounts would have been unpredictable. They had to live on something, and as musicians, that meant playing music. I don't really have to guess at this--it's generally forgotten that Keith Godchaux toured with the Healy-Treece Band in 1979 and 1980, after they had left the Grateful Dead. It remains the most undocumented Grateful Dead spinoff band ever.

Healy-Treece Band (1980)

Dan Healy-vocals, guitar'
Richard Treece-lead guitar
Diane Mestrovich-vocals
Keith Godchaux-piano
Mike Larsheid-bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums

The Healy-Treece Band had played a few dates in 1979, but they were only alluded to vaguely in Relix magazine. In 1980, however, the Healy-Treece Band booked the following shows



February 7, 1980 The Palms Club, Milwaukee, WI (tentative)
February 8, 1980 Stage West. Hartford, CT
February 9, 1980 Chateau De Ville, Warwick RI
February 10, 1980 Traces Club, Hillside, NJ
February 11, 1980 Toad's Club, New Haven, CT
February 12, 1980 Academy of Music Cabaret, Philadelphia, PA
February 13, 1980 Final Exam, Randolph, NJ
February 15, 1980 Speakers Club, New Paltz, NY
February 16, 1980 SUNY, Buffalo, NY
February 17, 1980 JB Scott's, Albany, NY
February 19, 1980 Paradise Club, Boston, MA
February 20, 1980 Fast Lane, Asbury Park, NJ
February 21, 1980 Stockton State College, Pomona, NJ
February 22, 1980 My Father's Place, Roslyn, NY
February 23, 1980 The Red Rail, Nancet, NY
February 24, 1980 The Lone Star, New York, NY
February 26-27, 1980 The Cellar Door, Washington, DC
February 28, 1980 Norris Theater, Norristown, PA Richie Havens/Healy-Treece Band
February 29-March 2, 1980 The Other End, New York, NY[as always, anyone with any information, corrections or memories--real or imagined-- about the 1979-80 Healy/Treece Band, please include them in the comments or email me]

The rhythm section (Keith, Larsheid, Billy K) was the same as the late 1975 Keith and Donna Band. Diane Mestrovich--possibly Diane Margolis-is unknown to me, and I find it surprising that Keith went on the road without Donna. However, I can only guess that they really needed the money. I have never heard a tape of the Healy-Treece Band from this era, so I don't know how they sounded, or what they played. Guitarist Richard Treece seems to have been a long-standing friend of Healy's. I have confirmed that Treece was not the same Richard Treece that played with the fine English bands Help Yourself and Green Ray. Other than that, very little is known, though some interesting photos of the group at Toad's Place (Feb 11 '80) in New Haven can be seen here.

The Healy-Treece Band toured the same circuit of clubs that Robert Hunter had been playing n the East Coast, where there was always a need for any Grateful Dead proxy. I think Healy-Treece had played the same circuit the previous Fall--a second-hand eyewitness told me that Keith had mostly played electric bass, strange as that sounds. There is a photo of Keith Godchaux on stage at the Pastime Pub, in Amityville, NY, on May 10, 1979 and he is playing guitar, so who knows. (There is also a backstage photo, and Keith is playing a guitar as well). There are the faintest stories of Keith and Donna playing Mendocino bars under the name Billy And The Beaters, so perhaps the Healy-Treece configuration went back further than anyone realized.

Nonetheless, no band plays 20 dates in 23 days unless they need the money, so Keith and Donna must have needed money. The putative date of the Hunter/Ghosts show fits nicely with the known Healy/Treece schedule, too. We also know where Hunter was in February of 1980: touring the East Coast with the Jerry Garcia Band. We know from Hunter's own liner notes for the fine After Midnight set that money was a squeeze, which was one reason that Hunter had gone solo. So if there was a good paying Hunter/Ghosts gig in Seattle in mid-March, both Hunter and the Godchaux could have used the money.

[Update]: 1981 Healy/Treece Band Shows

February 1, 1981 Selway's, San Ramon, CAFebruary 8, 1981 Knight's Inn, Walnut Creek, CAFebruary 15, 1981 Phyllis Place, Petaluma, CAMay 28, 1981 Old Waldorf, San Francisco, CAMay 29, 1981 Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CAMay 30, 1981 Alameda County Fairgrounds, Pleasanton, CAJune 7, 1981 Phyllis Place, Petaluma, CAJune 11, 1981 Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Lineup (at least for May/June shows)
Dan Healy-guitar, vocals
Richard Treece-guitar
John Cippolina-guitar
Larry Klein-bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums

update: reader John M saw the Healy/Treece Band, and recalled some of the setlist:
I attended the February 12, 1980, late show at the Academy Cabaret Theater, Philadelphia, PA; besides Healy and Treece, the band included Bill Kreutzman, Keith Godchaux (keys), and Kathi McDonald ( vocals); there was no stage and we sat on folding chairs...they were not memorable.

Here's my recollection of the set list:

Roll Over Beethoven
-unknown
Miss You (Rolling Stones)
-unknown
Knockin' On Heavens Door
Nobody Knows What's Goin' On
Stagger Lee
Never Gonna Let Her Go
Temptation
I Shall Be Released
~
Johnny B. Goode

[update2] Commenter and Scholar Ihor has tracked down every Healy-Treece Band tape ever in circulation. I have updated the known performance list above, and you can see complete setlists in the Comments below. Here's just one example:
db.etree.org/lookup_show.php?shows_key=641101

Healy Treece Band 02/08/80
Stage West, West Hartford, CT

Set 1 ( 58:58 )
1 //Willie & The Hand Jive 06:25
2 Just A Song 08:15
3 Bye Bye Love 05:26
4 Miss You 08:45
5 Unchain My Heart 07:47
6 Don't Knock It 06:34
7 You Better Move On 05:06
8 Slippin' Into Darkness 10:38

Set 2 (68:37)
9 tuning up 01:40
10 I've Been Working 16:51
11 Runaway 09:26
12 I Shall Be Released 07:30
13 Nadine 04:34
14 It Takes A Lot To Laugh, A Train To Cry 06:48
15 Bring It On Home 10:56
16 Stagger Lee & Billy 05:27
encore:
17 Johnny B. Goode 05:22

Dan Healy - guitar, vocals
Richard Treece - guitar, vocals
Diane Margolis - vocals, tambourine
Keith Godchaux - keyboards, vocals
Mike Larshied- bass
Bill Kruetzmann - drums

Keith Godchaux's final live performance on July 10, 1980 at The Back Door in San Francisco, with his new band The Heart Of Gold Band, was released on Relix Records in 1986.

Aftermath
In many ways, the 1980 Ghosts performance with Hunter was a road not taken. I'm always curious as to how many other shows by this ensemble there might have been, but I have to think there weren't many. Sadly, Keith Godchaux died in a car crash on July 23, 1980, so no matter what, this didn't last long. Many people grumble today, rightly or wrongly, that groups like Furthur, Phil and Friends or Ratdog are just sort of pedigreed Grateful Dead copy bands. Yet back in 1980, here was three members of the Dead, treading awfully close to that territory. To my knowledge, Hunter never played electric versions of significant Grateful Dead songs again on stage. Was that a good thing? We'll never know.

Everything about performances by The Ghosts, and particularly this performance with Robert Hunter, remain appropriately spectral. Anyone with an eyewitness account, archaeological evidence,second hand rumors or just some intriguing speculation is encouraged to put them in the Comments, in the hopes that we can bring some more about this performance into the light.

March 22, 1978 Veterans Hall, Sebastopol, CA: Jerry Garcia Band (Ozzie Ahlers-piano?)

The Sebastopol Arts Center, in Sebastopol (Sonoma County), CA, where the Jerry Garcia played on March 22, 1978

The Jerry Garcia Band were a popular live attraction in Northern California in the second half of the 1970s. Mostly they played the Keystone Berkeley and the other Keystone clubs, but they played their share of concerts at theaters and small halls around the Bay Area as well. The popularity of the Garcia Band was not surprising, as the Grateful Dead continued to be a more and more popular concert attraction each year, even as rock fashions moved away from the Grateful Dead, so it's no surprise that concerts by the Dead's lead guitarist thrived as well. Yet a peculiar feature of the Jerry Garcia Band was the dark vacuum in which they performed: their shows were never reviewed,  interviewers only asked band members about the JGB in passing, and even Deadheads shared surprisingly little information about the performances. Local Deadheads hardly considered a Garcia Band concert a big deal. People who regularly saw the Garcia Band at, say, the Keystone Berkeley, could not be bothered to drive an hour to see them at Keystone Palo Alto, and vice versa.

As a result, contemporaneous information about the Jerry Garcia Band was surprisingly hard to come by. If the band changed drummers, no announcement was made--you just showed up one night at the Keystone Berkeley and there was someone else in the chair. Nor would there be an explanation if the old drummer came back, or if singers came and went. Phil Lesh subbed for John Kahn a few times, and while Lesh's presence was advertised, no explanation was ever proffered for why Kahn was unavailable. Bay Area Deadheads took Garcia Band shows for granted, and if they went at all, it was generally on the spur of the moment, and they hardly paid attention to setlists, band members or any other details.

Garcia scholarship from the 1980s onward has been focused on trying to capture all that was missed in the prior decade. TheJerrySite is a remarkable recovery of history recaptured before it drifted away. Yet even for all the work at constructing an accurate historical record, unexpected blank spots show up on the landscape, even decades later. One such blank spot came in some recent interviews with former JGB keyboardist Ozzie Ahlers. Ahlers played in the Jerry Garcia Band from Fall 1979 through Summer 1980, and then moved on to his own band. Yet in a recent interview with dj and journalist Jake Feinberg, Ahlers said that in 1978 he filled in for Keith Godchaux on at least two occasions, when Keith was unavailable to play. According to Ahlers, one time was at "some benefit in Sebastopol with Maria Mulduar," and there was at least one other time in "Santa Cruz or Southern California." This is remarkable information worthy of closer analysis, and this post will try and pin down the dates.

Ozzie Ahlers was in the band Glory River, who opened for Mountain and the Allman Brothers at SUNY Stony Brook on July 10, 1970 (the ad is from the June 18 '70 Village Voice)

The Jake Feinberg Interview with Ozzie Ahlers
Jake Feinberg, a disc jockey and scholar,  has undertaken a remarkable series of interviews with jazz and rock musicians from the 1960s and 70s. Although Feinberg's principal focus is on jazz, he has also interviewed a number of musicians who have played with Jerry Garcia, including Melvin Seals, Richard Greene, Bob Weir, David Grisman, Howard Wales and Peter Rowan. Feinberg recently had a lengthy interview with Ahlers, a wide-ranging conversation about Ahlers career and approach to music, but there was plenty of conversation about Jerry Garcia.

Ahlers, who was born and raised in New Jersey, had gone to Cornell University, where he had played keyboards in bands that were popular on the college dance circuit around 1967-70 (his Cornell band was called Oz and Ends). Ahlers ended up in Woodstock, NY, playing professionally with a group called Glory River. Glory River opened a few major rock shows, and even had a chance to record at Electric Ladyland Studios around 1971. The band did not pan out, however, and in 1972 Ahlers moved to the Bay Area to work with Van Morrison, whom he knew from Woodstock.

Ahlers did not actually end up playing that much with the mercurial Morrison, who liked to mix and match musicians and did not keep anything resembling a regular touring schedule. However, Ahlers played and recorded with Jesse Colin Young, alternating keyboard duties with Scott Lawrence, and he played in a lot of local combos around Marin and the East Bay. In early 1978, Ahlers was invited to join Robert Hunter's band Comfort. Ahlers had never met Hunter or Comfort, but he received a call out of the blue from Rock Scully. However, Ahlers had known John Kahn from Woodstock, where Kahn had worked with Paul Butterfield and Geoff Muldaur in the Spring of 1972. Presumably Kahn was the one who tipped Hunter, but even Ahlers himself does not know for sure.

Hunter and Comfort had been playing around the Bay Area since the middle of 1977--Comfort had existed before that--but keyboard player Richard McNees had left in December. Ahlers heard that Hunter had insisted on Ahlers by saying "I don't want your friend, I want a pro," but it does not appear that the remark had anything to do with McNees. McNees himself says that Ahlers is a great guy, and in any case McNees had already left for his own reasons. My suspicion is that Hunter, who was financing the band, wanted to make the sure the new player who came in was top-notch, and preferred a Kahn-recommended veteran to another local pal. In February and March of 1978, Robert Hunter and Comfort opened a string of shows for the Jerry Garcia Band in California and the East Coast, starting on February 18 at Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium and ending at March 18 at the Warners Theater in Washington, DC (the JGB played one more show without Comfort the next night).

Keyboard player Ozzie Ahlers with a great American, indeed, The Greatest

Jerry Garcia And Keyboard Players, 1978
As I have discussed elsewhere, 1978 was a critical year for Jerry Garcia's musical future, even though it may not have seemed that way at the time. Keith Godchaux held down the piano chair in both the Grateful Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band, and while both groups had some high moments during the year, their musical progression seemed stalled. Yet in retrospect, I have shown how all the important keyboard players whom Jerry Garcia played with from 1979 through 1990 were heard by him when they opened for the Dead or the Garcia Band. Melvin Seals played with the Elvin Bishop Group (opening for the Dead in Santa Barbara on June 4, 1978), Brent Mydland played with the Bob Weir Band (opening for the Jerry Garcia Band in the Pacific Northwest for the weekend of October 26-28, 1978) and Ozzie Ahlers played with Robert Hunter and Comfort for the Spring '78 Eastern tour.

I theorized correctly that Garcia heard Ahlers play with Hunter and judged him suitable for future use. I did not realize, however, that Kahn already knew Ahlers, and indeed may have recommended him for the gig. I also did not realize, nor seemingly did anyone else, that Ozzie had quietly filled in for Keith Godchaux for at least two shows in 1978. Thus when Garcia and Kahn decided to re-start the Garcia Band in late 1979, Ahlers had already passed the trial by fire of onstage performance.

Jerry Garcia was infamous as a musician who avoided rehearsal whenever possible. Thus, if Keith Godchaux was sick, the least of Garcia's concerns would have been that a last-minute substitute would have had no chance to rehearse. In fact, I suspect Garcia would have preferred the inherent risk and incipient possibilities of playing with a new band member who had no preparation whatsoever. With respect to the March 22 date, Ahlers would have just come off a road trip where he would have heard the Garcia Band perform ten different times, so he wouldn't have been in the dark about their music. Yet Ahlers lack of preparation would have insured that he mostly had to improvise his parts, which is exactly what Jerry would have wanted him to do anyway.

A long unseen poster for the Jerry Garcia Band/Robert Hunter and Comfort concert at the Sebastopol Veterans Hall on March 22, 1978. The concert was a benefit for the Sonoma Stump, a local paper. Thanks to JGMF for the scan

Veterans Hall, Sebastapol, CA March 22, 1978
The Jerry Garcia Band/Comfort tour of the East Coast went from March 9 through March 19, although Comfort did not play every date with the JGB. Three days after Garcia's last Eastern date in Pittsburgh, the Garcia Band played a show at the Veterans Hall in the tiny Sonoma town of Sebastopol (pop. 7,500). Sebastopol isn't particularly far from San Francisco or Berkeley (just an hour from each), or even San Rafael (about 45 minutes), but it isn't on the way to anywhere, so most Bay Area residents consider it "out-of-the-way." The peculiarly casual nature of Jerry Garcia Band performances in the 1970s was such that few East Bay or San Francisco Garcia fans considered driving to Sebastopol for the concert. Yet the Veterans Hall was tiny (see the photo up top), and the show must have had a great vibe.

In the Feinberg interview, Ahlers specifically recalls substituting for Keith Godchaux at a show in Sebastopol, with Maria Muldaur. Since the Garcia Band is only known to have played Sebastopol this one time, everything points towards the March 22, 1978 show. Ahlers recalls it as a benefit, which is possible, but we don't even have a poster or ad from the show, so we don't even know that much [update: now we do, thanks to JGMF. The concert was a benefit for the Sonoma Stump, a local paper]. I do not how much publicity the show received. Given what appears to be the tiny size of the room, I suspect it was practically a guerilla show, with very little notice.

I recently listened to the surviving tape of the March 22 show, hoping to be able to distinguish some difference in the piano playing. However, while it's true that I don't have the sharpest ears in the world, I can't myself say from listening that I can tell whether or not Ozzie is playing rather than Keith. Of course, Ozzie would be playing Keith's rig, which at the time was a Yamaha electric grand piano, so that would make the tape sound "just like Keith" in many ways. Also, Ahlers would have been borrowing Keith's licks, to the extent he could remember them, so that was yet another way it would be impossible to tell them apart. Certainly, if any readers give the tape a good listen, please put your insights and speculations on the keyboard player in the Comments section.

Could there be some mistake in all of this? Could Ozzie Ahlers somehow be mis-remembering the entire sequence of events? Of course, anything is possible, but I think all signs point towards Ahlers' memory of the show being completely accurate. For one thing, it had to be a dramatic event for Ahlers to have been asked to sit in for Keith Godchaux on almost no notice. For another, Sebastopol is an oddball place for a concert, since it was a tiny farming town. To me, the sign that Ozzie's memory is clear is the very specificity of such an obscure location for the show[update: we also now know for sure that Ozzie was there, since he was a member of Comfort at the time].

The question that has to be raised is how Ozzie's presence passed unnoticed all these years. However, a few points stand out. For one thing, Garcia shows in the Bay Area in the 70s were very different than Garcia shows there the next decade, much less Garcia shows on the East Coast at pretty much any time. Much as western Deadheads loved Jerry, he was just sort of There, playing the Keystone Berkeley every month and the occasional local concert. There didn't seem to be an urgency to catch every show, and people rarely went out of town. Thus, when I lived in Berkeley, I could usually find someone who went to the most recent Keystone Berkeley show, and try and quiz them about what the JGB played, but I could never find anyone who even went to Keystone Palo Alto, much less the wilds of Sonoma County. So if anyone from my circle of acquaintances went, I never met them, and I think the Berkeley solipsism of Jerry fans was common to every Bay Area county back in the 70s.

For another thing, how many of the Sebastopol fans may have even noticed that Keith Godchaux wasn't on piano? Donna was out front, along with Maria Muldaur, so how good a look did they get at the man behind the piano? Yes, of course, Ozzie doesn't look like Keith, but most Deadheads back then would have been hard-pressed to say what Keith Godchaux looked like. Finally, most of the people who went to the show--and there probably wasn't a huge number, as it was a small place--may only have been vaguely aware of the configuration of the Jerry Garcia Band, so it may not have occurred to them to note that the keyboard player wasn't the Grateful Dead's piano player, even if they had known who Keith was.  So the fact that Ozzie Ahlers' presence at Sebastopol has gone unnoticed all these decades is hardly farfetched at all.

[update: it seems that the March 22 '78 Sebastopol show will be released as GarciaLive Volume 4, so we should find out if Ozzie played with Jerry that night. If not, where did he play with them? Rohnert Park Community Center on October 5 '78 seems like the next best choice.]
[update2: ok, we now know from the liner notes of GarciaLive Volume 4 that Ozzie played on the last four numbers: Mystery Train, Love In The Afternoon, I'll Be With Thee and Midnight Moonlight]

The "Other Show"-Southern California or Santa Cruz?
Of course, in the Feinberg interview, Ahlers mentions that he subbed for Keith Godchaux in the JGB at least one other time. He vaguely recalls that it was "Santa Cruz or Southern California." Of course, from March 1978 through the last Keith and Donna JGB shows in November, the band never played either Southern California or Santa Cruz. The Jerry Garcia Band would go on to play many shows at the Catalyst in downtown Santa Cruz, but Jerry Garcia's first show at that venue did not take place until early 1979. I don't think an undiscovered show at the Catalyst in 1978 is likely, either. The Catalyst had existed in downtown Santa Cruz since the beginning of the 1970s, but at first it was just a coffee shop. Its actual location was a room in a former hotel (the St. George) at 833 Front Street, and the club did not move to the converted bowling alley on 1011 Pacific Avenue (where it remains today) until the end of 1978. When the Catalyst was still on Front Street, I do not believe they could have afforded or accommodated the Garcia Band, so I feel comfortable ruling out Santa Cruz for Ozzie Ahlers' "other" show with them.

However, since the JGB did not play Southern California at all in 1978, where did Ozzie sub? A close look at the Fall '78 Garcia Band show list point directly at the Keystone Palo Alto. Palo Alto is about two hours from Marin, so if Ozzie was driven down, it might have seemed like a long trip, and he may not have known exactly where he was. There are a number of October and November JGB shows at Keystone Palo Alto for which we have no evidence beyond the advertisement of a show--no setlist, no tape, and of course, no review, since the band was never reviewed. So Ozzie could have sat in for Keith Godchaux and we would still be none the wiser.

Aftermath
As we know from both the Feinberg interview and David Gans' liner notes from the recent Jerry Garcia Band archival cd featuring the Ahlers lineup (March 1 '80), Ahlers was invited to join the Jerry Garcia Band when it was restarted in the Fall of 1979. It appears that John Kahn's jazz rock band Reconstruction was originally supposed to exist in parallel with the Garcia Band, but that was not in fact what happened. Ahlers joined the new look Garcia Band, and played his first gig with them on October 7, 1979 at Keystone Palo Alto--which would be ironic if in fact Ahlers had subbed for Keith there the previous year.

Ahlers played some fine music with the Garcia Band, but he only did two tours with them, first in February and then in July 1980. Apparently, Ahlers never rehearsed with the Garcia Band. When he was hired, Garcia just gave Ahlers a list of 15 or so songs that he liked to do, and Ozzie learned the chords of the ones he did not know (he commented "some of them were Dead songs, and they were, like, folk songs with half a bar missing"). Other than that, he just waited for Jerry to count off the songs and let it happen, but it turns out that he had already done that before, so Garcia and Kahn had complete confidence in his ability to roll with it.  Although many Deadheads now find the Oberheim synthesizer sound that Ahlers used kind of dated, it turns out that Garcia and Kahn asked Ozzie to solo on that instrument, apparently because they were seeking a change of pace, and that too was a new experience for Ahlers.

It seems that Kahn and Garcia invited Ozzie to tour with them again in 1981, but the financial circumstances were not as good. Also, Ozzie had his own band, at the time called The Average Beach Band, later to change its name to The Edge. Ahlers knew that the Jerry Garcia Band would always be a part-time engagement, so for good or ill he threw in his lot with The Edge. Melvin Seals was invited to play organ for the Garcia Band, and the Garcia Band traveled on. The Edge, who played "reggae-rock," which seemed to be a coming style at the time, put out a couple of nice albums that went nowhere. They even opened for the Jerry Garcia Band once (Concord Pavilion, September 7, 1981).

Although The Edge did not make it big, Ozzie Ahlers ended up making a successful series of albums in a jazz-rock "New Age" style with Jefferson Starship guitarist Craig Chacuiqo. Yet Ozzie looks back fondly on his time on the Garcia Band. It is remarkable that after all these decades, we are still finding out more about the Garcia Band in the 1970s, when for all their relative commercial success they could invite a different keyboard player to sit in with no rehearsal and no fanfare, as it they were just some local cover band playing in some dive.

May 11, 1975, Town Hall, Kresge College, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA; Keith And Donna And Friends

A long lost poster for Keith & Donna & Friends at Kresge Town Hall, Kresge College, University of California at Santa Cruz, on May 11, 1975. (scan courtesy of JGBP; recconstruction thanks to JGMF)

One of America's leading investigators recently sent me a scan of a mysterious and long-lost poster of a Keith And Donna Godchaux performance at the University of California at Santa Cruz on May 11, 1975. I had been aware that Keith and Donna had performed on the campus, but I had most of the details wrong. Not only does the poster set the facts straight, it raises a host of other interesting questions. I am the only person who has attempted any kind of detailed history of the Keith And Donna Band, and in so doing I have been keeping up a concert history of the band during the eight months that it existed. This poster, however, suggests that some of my assumptions about the beginning of the Keith And Donna band may have been somewhat mistaken.

This post will try and place the Keith and Donna Godchaux performance at UCSC on May 11, 1975 into some kind of context. This will be hard to do, since I only have a few sketchy eyewitness accounts, but there are still some important pieces of information that can be discerned. I will also reconsider my assumptions about the early history of the Keith And Donna band it light of what we will see, and make some different assertions in the hopes that someone can shed some light on the formation of the Keith And Donna band.

The Poster
The poster advertises

Kresge College Presents
From The Grateful Dead
Keith And Donna And Friends
Keith Godchaux-keyboards
Donna Godchaux-vocals
Royce Scott-guitar
Jellyroll-bass
Hoddy-horns
Steve Schuster-reeds
Tom Dollager-drums
special guest-Eric Andersen
2 shows May 11, 7:30, 10:30
Kresge Town Hall, UCSC

There is ticket information, and the finer print identifies Sunseeker Productions,  and the poster is signed "Bob Whitmire '75." First, let's parse out some of this information.

Kresge College: UCSC had been founded in 1965, but it was structured to have colleges within the University, like Oxford or Cambridge. Although students could take classes from any college, in the early years of Santa Cruz students identified strongly with their colleges socially and personally, and felt that each college had personalities (Cowell College was the first college, for example, and they looked down on other colleges, who in turn thought Cowell was full of snobs). Kresge was the sixth UCSC college, founded in 1971, and  "it was designed with the concept of participatory democracy as a means of encouraging a strong sense of community." The "Town Hall" was the dining commons/multi-purpose area in the dorms, where student events could be held.

Keith And Donna And Friends: The May 11 show would be the second Keith And Donna show that I am aware of. The first was at River City in Fairfax on April 17, about which more later. However, we do not have any idea how the River City show was billed. I'm not sure why "And Friends" was added. The big question to me was whether "And Friends" was just to indicate that their would be a band, or whether it meant, in Grateful Dead-speak, "this isn't precisely the real Keith And Donna band," which would be a strange thing for a band's second show.

• Royce Scott-guitar: This would have been Ray Scott, a regular member of Keith And Donna.
• Jellyroll-bass: This would have bassist Roger "Jellyroll" Troy, a regular member of Mike Bloomfield's band, among many others. He had been an old playing partner of Howard Wales in the midwest in the 60s, and had played with Wales on his brief tour with Jerry Garcia in 1972. Troy had sat in occasionally with the Garcia-Saunders band as well.
• Hoddy-horns: This would have been trumpeter Hadi Al-Saddoon. I don't know much about him, but he has played with many Marin ensembles over the years.
• Steve Schuster-reeds. Schuster was also a regular member of Keith And Donna. 
• Tom Dollager: All but certainly, this was drummer Tom Donlinger. Donlinger, from Chicago, had relocated to Marin in 1970 to work with the band Lovecraft. He was later in Aorta, and he played on many albums in the 1970s. His brother was Jim Vincent (actually Jim Donlinger), who had also been a member of Lovecraft and Aorta, and who had also played with Howard Wales, Jerry Garcia and Roger Troy on the 1972 East Coast tour. I checked on Tom Donlinger's website, and he mentions playing with Keith and Donna Godchaux, so I'm pretty confident of my assumption here. Some of the odd spelling errors lead me to think the information for the poster was transmitted over the phone, with no time for a proof of the artwork (it's not like they could email a scan in advance).
• Special Guest-Eric Andersen: Besides being an old Greenwich Village folkie and an established recording artist, Eric Andersen had also been Bob Weir's next-door neighbor, which is how he came to write the lyrics to "Weather Report-Part 1."

Two Shows, 7:30 and 10:30: I think this was a somewhat commercial event. Many universities had student events where civilians were still allowed to buy tickets, but this event has two admissions and tickets available downtown (at Odyssey Records, for example). I don't see a discount for student ID, either. The presenter appears to be "Sunseeker Productions," rather than an explicit student group. All of this points to using a University facility for a relatively commercial event. While the event had to be University sanctioned or it would not have occurred, I do not think it was University funded. Of course, the putative artist, Bob Whitmire, might have plenty of insights, but we will have to hope that he will surface.

Early History of The Keith And Donna Band
Some time ago, I tried to piece together the early history of the Keith And Donna band. Their debut seems to have been at a tiny club in Fairfax (Marin County) called River City, on April 17, 1975. The show was somewhat ragged. I have heard the tape, and read the reminiscence of the taper, and its unclear who was in the band that night. Everyone, including me, has assumed that the Keith And Donna band had a relatively static membership for it's entire existence from April 17 through December 20, 1975. In particular, I had assumed that Bill Kreutzmann was always the drummer, and Wisconsin musician Mike Larsheid was the bassist. I had known that a trumpeter had sat in with Keith And Donna on occasion, and there was an indication that Hadi Al-Sadoon was that player.

My new perspective is that everyone, particularly me, noted that Bill Kreutzmann started being advertised as the Keith And Donna band's drummer about June 1975, and assumed that he had always been so, and that Mike Larsheid had always been the bassist. I'm now thinking that the original lineup was considerably more fluid. That doesn't mean that Keith And Donna had a fixed lineup at first, or that Kreutzmann couldn't have played a gig here and there, but perhaps things were considerably less fixed. Consider the sketchy information we have on early Keith And Donna shows:

• April 17, 1975: River City, Fairfax, CA
• May 11, 1975: Kresge Town Hall, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA
• May 12, 1975: Yellow Brick Road, San Francisco, CA
• May 15, 1975: The Longbranch, Berkeley, CA
• May 23-24, 1975: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (opening for NRPS)
• June 6, 1975: River City, Fairfax, CA
• June 7, 1975: The Longbranch, Berkeley, CA
• June 12, 1975: The Bodega, Campbell, CA
• June 13-14, 1975: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

The June 1975 Keystone Berkeley calendar

I have a copy of the Keystone Calendar for June, 1975, and Kreutzmann is listed as a member of Keith And Donna (above). It seems likely he played the shows the week before (Fairfax, Longbranch and Campbell), just to get warmed up prior to a relatively high profile headline date at the Keystones. However, given that we know the putative lineup for May 11 (from the poster), it seems unlikely that the band would be rehearsed for just one show. It seems more likely that the lineup that played Kresge also played the other dates in May. Presumably the mesh wasn't perfect, or the money wasn't right, or something, and a different rhythm section was put in place. In any case, both Tom Donlinger and Roger Troy had numerous other obligations, and the Keith And Donna band may not have fit them for entirely non-musical reasons.

As for Hadi Al-Sadoon, I think he was not a guest, but a full time member of the band until the Fall of 1975. Ironically, it was the Fall '75 Eastern tour that garnered the most attention for the Keith And Donna band, so Sadoon's absence practically wrote him out of the band. However, what tapes, eyewitness accounts and poster evidence that exist from before that always mention a trumpet player, and I now think that Sadoon played every date with Keith and Donna until October 1975.

Keith And Donna, unknown venue, Santa Cruz, CA June 20-21, 1975
A BASS tickets ad listed Keith and Donna in Santa Cruz on June 20-21, 1975, and I had always been at a loss to figure out what it was. Someone mentioned on my blog that they had seen Keith and Donna at Kresge, so I had assumed that was it. I had wondered why they played two nights at the college, and why they played after the quarter was probably over, but I was happy for the information. This poster caused me to rethink this. Keith And Donna definitely played Kresge, so my Commenter's memory was correct, but it looks like it was May 11, not in June. Where did Keith and Donna play in June? Campus would have been largely deserted, and there were no real rock nightclubs in Santa Cruz at the time (the Catalyst was just a coffee shop then, with folk performers, and I don't think the Crow's Nest booked rock bands in those days either). Also, whether Keith And Donna actually ended up playing Santa Cruz or not in June, the planned event had to be high profile enough to get mentioned in the BASS ad, rather than just being in the back room of some Chinese restaurant (Robert Hunter played such a show). So the June 20-21 booking retreats into the mystery category.

The Grateful Dead Archive, UC Santa Crux
As everyone who reads this blog must know, the Grateful Dead Archive is housed at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Pinning down a performance on campus by a sitting member of the Grateful Dead seems pretty historic. I had thought that Keith And Donna's appearance at Kresge was the first and only performance by a Dead member at UCSC. UC Santa Cruz's college loyalties are nothing if not firm, however. A graduate of a different college has assured me that Bob Weir and Kingfish played his college some months earlier, and has promised to reveal all the details shortly. Nonetheless, Keith And Donna's little noted appearance at Kresge College suggests that there are some interesting stories yet to be heard about the show, and if any Banana Slugs have any sudden flashbacks, hopefully they can share them in the Comments. Just because your memory is fuzzy doesn't mean it's not real.

NRPS with Keith and Donna Godchaux, 1973

An ad in the Feb 22 '73 Village Voice, assuring that 'Special Friends' would join the New Riders

Keith Godchaux was a brilliant piano player for most of his time with the Grateful Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band, but by all accounts he was very shy. Indeed, without his wife he would never have been in the Grateful Dead at all. Keith could be a brilliant improviser, and one unfortunate byproduct of his shyness was the fact that he played very rarely with anyone outside the Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia, so we rarely heard what he could add to other bands. One of the few markers of Keith's versatility was several occasions where he sat in with the New Riders of The Purple Sage in the Spring of 1973. Keith's appearances with the New Riders were too frequent to be mere coincidence, but have never really been discussed anywhere, to my knowledge. This post will attempt to rectify that by making a list of Keith's performances with the New Riders and attempting to draw some conclusions about his appearances.

Background
When Keith Godchaux joined the Grateful Dead for their first tour in Fall 1971, the New Riders of The Purple Sage opened almost every show. However, the New Riders were in a state of transition, replacing Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar with Buddy Cage. It would not seem like the time to let a piano player sit in while getting used to a new member. In any case, I believe the 1971 tour to be the only one where Keith toured without Donna, and if Keith was as shy as he was reputed to be, he would not have been the sort to go up to the New Riders, whom he had (relatively speaking) just met, and say "hey, I'd love to sit in with you some time." The Dead and the New Riders continued to play together periodically throughout 1972, so by the end of the year, Keith would have had ample opportunity to hear all their material.

Donna Godchaux had a more forthright personality. On the New Riders' third album, Gypsy Cowboy, recorded in mid-1972, she sang harmony vocals on a few songs. In fact, Donna was an obvious choice, given that she was an experienced Mussel Shoals session singer (she sang on Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" and the first Boz Scaggs album, for example), and she was a friend of the band. More importantly, however, the sociable Donna would surely have made clear to the Riders that she would be delighted to sing on their records, and the band was all the better for it.

By late 1972, the New Riders of The Purple Sage were at an interesting crossroads. I myself was a huge New Riders fan, and as a naive suburban High School student who knew almost nothing about country music, the Riders seemed somewhat more unique than they actually were. I have to think, however, that my naivete was duplicated in suburbs all over the country, and there was an opportunity for country rock bands to capture fans who could appreciate country music as long as it had a long-haired sensibility not rooted in Nashville. On record, the New Riders sounded great, as Buddy Cage and David Nelson layered as many guitars as needed to get a rich sound. As the New Riders had gotten more popular, however, and played larger and larger venues, the fact was they had started to sound kind of tinny. In fact, there were significant piano contributions on both their second and third albums, respectively (Nicky Hopkins and, oddly, Jerry Garcia on Powerglide and Mark Naftalin on Gypsy Cowboy), so the Riders were clearly aware of what a grand piano added to their sound.

John Dawson had basically been a folksinger prior to forming the New Riders, and in the early days of the band his lack of experience in a group really showed. However, as the New Riders continued to tour, Dawson became a more productive part of the group, but he was always more of a singer than a guitar player. By late 1972, Dawson could hold down his rhythm guitar parts all right, but he wasn't any kind of jammer. Since the New Riders consciously aspired to a version of the Bakersfield sound, Dave Torbert and Spencer Dryden tended to a spare sound that was in distinct contrast to the likes of Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann. As a result, in a big place, when the band was rocking out on a solo, the New Riders sounded a bit thin with just Cage and Nelson spreading their wings. Onstage at least, a piano seemed like a logical addition, particularly if the guy could really honky tonk.

A partial scan of a 1974 bootleg lp of the March 18 '73 NRPS Felt Forum show

March 18, 1973, Felt Forum, New York, NY
The New Riders had a high profile show in Manhattan at the Felt Forum, which was housed in Madison Square Garden. The show was broadcast on WNEW-fm, New York's biggest rock radio station, and a Village Voice advertisement (up top) broadly hinted that the Dead would be sitting in. In fact, the entire broadcast was tremendous. The most memorable part today was a brief acoustic set in which Garcia (on banjo) and Weir led the Riders through a series of gospel-style bluegrass numbers, including "Swing Low Sweet Chariot." However, the entire set is a gem, featuring the classic New Riders with Dave Torbert, in their prime, including periodic guest appearances by Donna Godchaux, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia (on electric guitar) and Ramblin' Jack Elliott (who opened the show). Nonetheless, the lasting impression for me was that Keith Godchaux sat in on grand piano for almost every song, and the New Riders sound is infinitely richer and more powerful with Keith's presence.

The Grateful Dead were between shows at the Nassau Coliseum, and their "surprise appearance" was clearly planned. That is particularly true with respect to Keith, since grand pianos have to be rented, delivered and tuned, and aren't simply hanging around a venue waiting to be played. Since Keith sat in on a grand, it wasn't a casual event. Whoever suggested that Keith sit in with the Riders, however, clearly knew what the band needed. Since the show was broadcast on WNEW, some of it ended up getting bootlegged on a white-label record, and I purchased it in about 1974. I was absolutely amazed at how great the New Riders sounded with Keith, and I couldn't understand why they didn't either use him as often as possible or get their own piano player.

A ticket for the Apr 4 '73 NRPS show at Clark U

April 4, 1973 Atwood Hall, Clark University, Worcester, MA (early and late shows)
It turns out I wasn't the only person who thought Keith sounded great with the New Riders. The Grateful Dead ended a leg of their tour on April 2, 1973, playing with the Riders at Boston Garden. Although the Dead and their crew must have gone home, Keith and Donna seem to have stuck with the Riders. When the New Riders headlined at Clark University, Keith played piano for the whole show. On top of that, not only did Donna provide harmonies on "She's No Angel" (early show) and "Long Black Veil" (late), but for both shows she took a solo turn, singing lead on Loretta Lynn's "You Ain't Woman Enough To Take My Man."

If Donna took a lead vocal, this wasn't no casual sit-in, this was a plan. Furthermore, since Keith played great piano, that too was not casual, since the piano had to be rented, delivered and tuned. Interestingly enough, the New Riders released highlights of the Clark U shows on an archival cd. To my ears, much as I love the sound of Keith with the Riders, the band sounds kind of ragged to me. From that point of view, I think releasing the Felt Forum show would have been better, but of course I already had that.

April 7, 1973 McGonigle Hall, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA (early and late)
Apparently, Keith and Donna also played at another New Riders show, at Temple University a few days later. The New Riders site is good as far as it goes, but I think there is a strong likelihood that Keith and Donna also played other dates as well (such as an unknown venue in Philadelphia on April 6 and Queens College in Flushing on April 9). The site lists Keith as playing electric piano on both early and late shows at Temple, and Donna as singing backups on a few numbers as well as singing lead on "You Ain't Woman Enough." I have a feeling that Keith and Donna played with the New Riders for the entire April leg of the tour, but I am unable to confirm any of that, or even be certain of all the dates.

May 26, 1973 Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA
The New Riders of The Purple Sage opened for the Grateful Dead and Waylon Jennings at Bill Graham's inaugural Day On The Green. According to one internet commentator, Keith sat in on piano. I have nothing else to go on, but it seems logical. Given that he had played with the Riders the month before, and that his piano was there, it seems logical that he would sit in. I wonder if Keith had sat in the week before at Santa Barbara (May 20)?

Update: a Commenter reports that Keith played on March 30 and 31 in Boston, but did not play in Santa Barbara (May 20) or Kezar (May 26). I suspect we have yet more Keith sightings with the Riders yet to be found in the March/April time frame.

Was There A Plan?
I don't think there was anything accidental about Keith sitting in with the New Riders, but I don't know how calculated it was. It is Keith's shyness that makes me certain that there had to be a concerted effort to get him to sit in. The interesting part to me would be how much of Keith's presence could be attributed to musical fun and how much might be attributed to other plans. In mid-1973, the Dead and the New Riders still shared management (through Jon McIntire) and a booking agency (through Sam Cutler). At the very least, there may have been a general awareness that the New Riders sounded better on stage with Keith on piano, particularly in a big place.

More interesting, however, would be the idea that since the New Riders had been created with some members of the Grateful Dead, perhaps they would have a higher profile if some other members continued to be adjuncts to the New Riders. Keith and Donna weren't Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart, but they were members of the Dead and they added a lot to the New Riders on stage. Keep in mind also that if Keith and Donna had toured with some regularity with the New Riders, they would have gotten paid. I don't know how much of course, but other than Garcia and perhaps Weir, the members of the Dead were not well-off, and if Keith and Donna could have made a little money touring periodically with the New Riders, they might have appreciated it. Certainly the New Riders would have sounded better for it.

What Happened?
The history of the New Riders Of The Purple Sage is not that well documented, particularly after Jerry Garcia left the band. However, I think in late 1973 the New Riders shifted over to new management, although I am unable to define an exact timeline. Their new manager was Joe Kerr, who had been a college friend of George "Commander Cody" Frayne. Kerr was the manager of Commander Cody as well, and by 1974 Kerr was managing both groups. From mid-1973 onwards, Commander Cody and the New Riders played a lot of double bills together, particularly on the East Coast.

Cody went way back with the Riders--in fact he had played on their debut album (NRPS). When the Riders and the Airmen were billed together, often Cody sat in for the end of the show. The New Riders site identifies a few instances, but I think it was a pretty regular occurrence. The band would just leave the piano on stage, and Cody could join them at the appropriate points. I was fortunate enough to see Cody and the New Riders open for the Grateful Dead (at the Oakland Coliseum Stadium on June 8, 1974), and Cody sat in with the New Riders for a few numbers and sounded great. If there had been a plan afoot to have a regular guest piano player with the New Riders, the regular bookings with Commander Cody seemed to have filled that bill.

If there was ever a plan to have an ongoing relationship between Keith and Donna Godchaux and the New Riders of The Purple Sage, it appears that the change in New Riders management diverted them in another direction. It's really too bad, since the New Riders needed an booster shot after Dave Torbert left at the end of 1973, and Keith and Donna would have given them a different direction. It's impossible to say what might have been planned, or what might have happened. However, I cannot help but think that there are a number of New Riders dates in the Spring of 1973 where Keith and Donna were part of the band, and I hope to be able to pursue this in the Comments.

Aftermath
On May 23 and 24, 1975, the New Riders of The Purple Sage headlined at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, and the newly-formed Keith and Donna Band opened the show. It would be very interesting to know if Keith or Donna sat in for either show. The NRPS set has a setlist for the first night (May 23), which mentions nothing about either of them, although it does namecheck old friend Darlene DiDomenico joining in for "Whiskey," which suggests that there is a tape for that night at least. Given the divergent paths of the Dead and the New Riders by 1975, I wouldn't draw any specific conclusions from Keith's presence or absence, but it would still be interesting to know.

"So What" The Jerry Garcia Band: Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA November 3, 1978

The last performance of the Keith and Donna iteration of the Jerry Garcia Band was at the Keystone Palo Alto on either November 3 or 4, 1978. The Jerry Site shows the November 4 date as questionable (the source was Dennis McNally's list, and he too had a question mark), so the last confirmed date for the Garcia Band with Keith and Donna was Saturday, November 3. We already know that Jerry Garcia had heard Brent Mydland play with Bob Weir the week before, and Garcia and Weir were contemplating replacing Keith and Donna with Brent in the Grateful Dead. The Dead had been unhappy with Keith and Donna for some time, particularly Keith's playing, but in typical Dead fashion the band never discussed it. According to fuzzy rumor, Garcia became unhappy with Keith in the Garcia Band at the end of 1978 over some non-musical issue, and did not schedule any more performances. Perhaps Garcia was figuring that with Brent on the horizon, the end was near anyway.

Over the years, I have not been a huge fan of the late '78 Garcia Band tapes, and thus had not paid too much attention to them. When I was researching the final days of Keith and Donna with the Dead, however, I had to focus on their last date with the JGB, and looked more closely at the November 3, 1978 show. I had dimly known that the band performed Miles Davis's classic "So What," but I had vaguely assumed that this was just a fin de siecle quote, like "Teddy Bear's Picnic" or the like. I did look at the setlist, however, and was astonished to see that "So What" was over 17 minutes long. A reliable Commenter said that the Nov 3 "So What" was supposedly one of Garcia's favorite JGB performances, making the demise of that lineup even stranger. It was worth my time, then, to at least check it out.

Although I do not normally make blanket statements about tapes, I have to say that the Keystone Palo Alto "So What" from November 3, 1978, is my single favorite performance by the Keith and Donna version of the Jerry Garcia Band. Granted, I have an unnatural favoritism for Miles Davis, and it's always exotic to hear seemingly "one time" performances, but despite being very late for the train, I could not believe that during what was probably the last performance of that lineup there was a fantastic, extended performance of a difficult song completely outside of the regular performing repertoire of the Jerry Garcia Band. The Garcia/Saunders group and The Legion Of Mary had a jazz component to them, best expressed in some great 1974 versions of Eddie Harris's "Freedom Jazz Dance." The Keith And Donna variant, however, played no jazz tunes and no instrumentals (to my knowledge), and yet here they were at their tail end, with a vibrant version of a jazz classic that suggested an entirely different band.

The "Other" Jerry Garcia Band 1976-78

The Golden Road/Winter 1987

In John Kahn's first major interview, with Blair Jackson and Regan McMahon of The Golden Road (Winter 1987 issue), Kahn described a number of remarkable things about the history of his partnership with Jerry Garcia that have often been forgotten. In one remarkable sequence, Kahn described how the band rehearsed (clipped above):

Keith used to live over on Paradise Drive [in the Marin town of Corte Madera], so we used to play over there all the time. He had a room set up so we could just go in and play. Tutt was out of town a lot, but that was OK. You could practice without a drummer. Plus, Tutt was so good that there was nothing that we could come up with that he couldn't figure out right away. I lived in Mill Valley, and Jerry lived in Stinson Beach, so it was real easy for us to get together. Anyway, we had this scene where we would get together just about every night and play. We'd do just about everything. We had Dylan songbooks and we'd do stuff like play everything from Blonde On Blonde. Then we'd do all sorts of Beatles songs. It was great. Most of it never got past that room.

Ok. Just to recap so far: The Jerry Garcia Band got together almost every night in the 1976-77 period, when they were in town, often without a drummer, and played songs out of songbooks. I wonder how "Memphis Blues Again" sounded? Did they ever even think about recording any of this? Why, as it happens, yes. Kahn:

We had this trip where we'd call ourselves the Front Street Sheiks and we'd play dumb piano jazz and stuff like that. We did some recording down at the rehearsal place [what evolved into the Dead's studio] right after they got their 24-track. We'd be down there every night of the week playing these old songs like "All The Things You Are," and "Night In Tunisia, " things like that. Keith and Donna were always together, so Donna sang with us too.

So, at some point, 24-track tapes existed of most of the Jerry Garcia Band playing jazz standards and goodness knows what else, just having fun to see if the new equipment worked. The Garcia Band rehearsed in what became Le Club Front in mid-1977, so it sounds like they had moved from the Godchauxs Corte Madera home over to San Rafael. Did any of these tapes survive? Has anyone even heard a rumor of this material, even under another name?

I think the Jerry Garcia Band had played "So What" many times, if often without Ron Tutt. The relaxed confidence with which they move through the changes isn't just luck. Whether consciously or not, the JGB knew that Keystone Palo Alto was the end of the line, and for 17 minutes it was just one final time for the boys in the living room, swinging a Miles Davis tune like champs, because it was fun. A nice way to go out. Here's to hoping that some fragments of this alternative universe Garcia Band have survived into the 21st century.