JPG: Just out of curiosity, have you figured out after the many shows or portions of shows that have been released through Dick’s Picks and Road Trips and everything else when you might run out of releases? Say, in 2029 or something like that, the very last thing that you have in the Vault is going to be released.
DL: I haven’t. That’s interesting. I wish I had time to do it. We definitely have taken a very rough survey. We haven’t planned the next 140 releases. We certainly have been able to identify over 100, 120, 130 two-track recordings that are certainly of the ‘A’ level quality that could be released in the Dave’s Picks series. Then, there’s a lot of multi-tracks. That is whole other world, which for us is very exciting, because we do those a lot less frequently due to the amount of time that it takes to put them together. There’s dozens of those, not to mention videos. So, I really haven’t…but I think 2029 is a little too soon to think that these archival releases will end. As long as people are interested in them we’re certainly interested in keep putting them out.
What it comes down to on my part is to make sure that the Dead’s legacy is well-represented, and making sure that when somebody looks back on this in a hundred years, they can point to a lot of these releases and say, “Wow! That’s a very good example of spring of 1974, of the Wall of Sound Era,” and “This is a good example of summer ’76 Comeback tour.” That’s what we want to build and we do it on a very long-term scale. The Dead have been around for almost 47 years and the archival releases going on 20 years with clearly no sign of slowing down. We’re at the same pace or even more accelerated as we’ve ever been so, that’s a very interesting question. We haven’t formally thought of it and put a date on it or a certain number of releases, but it’s a heck of a lot.
And I’ll put it this way, never does it come time to pick something for release and pull the trigger and go into mastering on it, it never gets to that point where you’re like, “I really can’t think of anything.” There’s too many things. That’s the fun part of it. At any time you can pick anything. You can say, “Well, it’s time to do early 1980s.” Then, where do you start? There are eight or 10 things that I can think of off the top of my head that would be very possible suggestions for that era. Then, there’s ’87 to ‘89 things there. So, there’s never really a dull moment. Whatever I’m working on, and I’m always working on a couple of things that are very different to the task at hand. Let’s say I’m working on a 1977 release, which I am right now, I’m also looking ahead to the Dave’s Picks Volume 2 to see, first of all, what direction we want to go in. And then once we decide what direction to go in, what shows within that little era, whether that’s a tour or a year or a version of the band, what shows to focus on there?
So, if we wanted to go — where are we now, ’77 – and if we wanted to go Pigpen with TC (Tom Constanten) version of late ’68 through early ’70 that gives us 15 to 25 very strong candidates. So, it’s always exciting. And then after that, if we went there, we definitely want to go a little further ahead. Then, we might get into the ’80s or ’90s. We don’t know. So, certainly never a dull moment. I’m never bored with the music, first of all, but never bored with the way we’re listening to it and the way we’re trying to find things. We’re very methodical about it, but we don’t work too far ahead of ourselves.
We don’t have a master list of the next 20 Dave’s Picks. We know the next one, obviously, ‘cause we’ve announced it and the one after that’s exactly where we are now because that one, the second will come out, I think May or June or something. So, right now is when we’re settling on which era to select from and once that’s decided then we look at the five or seven shows we want from that era — the year or tour or version of the band — and then we start whittling it down. Hopefully, by the middle end of January we have that decided and then we can go into production of it in February. Then, by the time we’re in production I’m already way ahead on number three. It’s fun. The years just roll one into another. That’s why I say we view it as long term. Knock wood, as long as they’ll have me around, I’ll keep doing it, as long as Rhino wants me to keep doing it. Indications are they want to keep doing it for a very long time.
JPG: That’s interesting that you said you’re still working on number two because when it was announced as a subscription series, I thought…they’ll be released quarterly, right?
DL: Exactly. February. May. August and November or October.
JPG: Okay. I thought, “They probably have them all planned out in advance.”
DL: You know what? Honest to goodness, if we did, I think we would have announced them. We have got a lot of questions from people saying, “Hey, can you give me a hint on what the next three are gonna be because if I’m going to subscribe, I’d love to know.” The honest truth is, we really have no idea. Seriously. No idea. I wish we did. But in a way, personally, I’m glad we don’t because it’s fun to work this way. We really love the flexibility of doing it this way. It’s the only way we could do it and do it as well as we do, knock wood. I think we do it as well as we do. If we had the next four picks and then let’s say the Houseboat Tapes arrived, all of a sudden, we’d want to get excited about that and we want to get those out, but now we’ve got to wait a whole year-and-a-half to get the Houseboat Tapes out because we’ve already picked the next…
So, we’re narrowing down number two right now but beyond that, absolutely, no idea. And even number two I have no idea. We’re into four different eras that are dramatically different. And that’s number two. And then, number three will fall into place based on that. We do have four prime eras that we’re looking at for number two. Obviously, one of those eras will get picked and then that leaves three that we didn’t pick that are going to be quite a bit different from what we picked for number two. Then, the number three will probably be selected from those three eras. It always falls into play.
We haven’t done a 1977 release like this since the Winterland box and that’s going on a couple years. And there’s a lot of good shows from ’77, so clearly ’77 is going to get picked a little more frequently than 1983. It just felt like time to do a 1977. Just as importantly, we wanted to start with something that a lot of people love. We will get to some ’67, ’68 with the new series, but we didn’t feel that we wanted to start with that because it isn’t an era that everybody loves. Believe me, I love it and people who do love it are absolutely in love with that stuff but there are people who just, I don’t know, that for whatever reason just aren’t too keen on it or maybe enough has been released. So, we just figured we’d start with something that…I never speak for what “everybody wants,” but indications are a lot of people love 1977. I think indication is understating it. People love ’77. Not everyone but I sure do and hopefully a lot of people do, but it’s a great show this first one. We’re very happy. It’s one of these shows that has very often been at the top of the release list and for whatever reason just never happened.
The last time we did a Spring of ’77 release was the Hartford show and we went with Hartford rather than the Richmond show for a few reasons. One, we wanted to get a spring of ’77 “Terrapin” out, very important, which this one has a really good one. And it was to coincide with the Spring Tour of the Dead which was hitting the Hartford Civic Center. It just seemed like the time to do Hartford. The Richmond show was right up against it and, likewise, when we did Dick’s Picks 29, Richmond was right there, right at the top of the heap, ready to go and then we got the okay to do a six CD Dick’s Picks and that’s when we decided to do two shows back to back. And rather than do Baltimore and Richmond, which I think would have made a great pick, we decided to go with Lakeland and the second night of Atlanta, saving Richmond and Baltimore. Baltimore is also a great show. That might get released sometime in the future. It’s a really hot one. There’s a lot of stuff in the middle of the month. May 11 through May 17 there’s some good stuff. Through May 18.
JPG: SpeakIng of ’77, I was listening to the Grateful Dead channel recently. I believe you played set one from October 29, 1977 from Oklahoma.
DL: We don’t have that in the Vault. That was given to me by a buddy. So, that is one of those non-Vault tapes that you might have noticed. It sounded fine. It didn’t sound great, but it sounded okay. Unfortunately, we don’t have the master tape of that show.
JPG: That’s too bad because I know there’s a lot of Oklahoma City shows that for some reason keep popping up on the channel and each time it’s like, “Wow!”
DL: Yeah. They played well in weird places, with apologies to Oklahoma. Oklahoma is not a weird place, but, obviously, they’re going to play great usually in a place like Madison Square Garden. But the amount of great Dead shows in the strangest of places, Madison, Wisconsin, Des Moines, Iowa, Louisville, Oklahoma City. They’ve played some good shows in places that you wouldn’t have necessarily expected them to bring their “A” game. It just goes to show that the band was really hot more often than not.
It’s something I’ve always found very interesting that we have some people sometimes request, “Oh, you should make the next release from this venue,” without specifically saying any show or any year. “You’ve gotta do a Garden show or you gotta do a…” whatever. And the thing is we’ve never picked music ever based on anything but the music. And that’s why you see so many releases coming from places like that, like Richmond, Virginia. Places where, you just never know. You really don’t. Same thing with a lot of bands wherever they’re playing. They can have a hot night. Likewise, they can be playing Madison Square Garden to a completely pumped crowd and play a mediocre show. That’s just the way it is.
Stay tuned for Part Two which begins with a conversation of the Europe ’72 box.
No Comments comments associated with this post