It’s always a pleasure discussing Grateful Dead matters with David Lemieux, archivist, co-producer and producer of more than 100 CD and DVD releases. During our lengthy conversation (which will appear in two parts) he explains in his meticulous manner what went into the creation of the latest live releases from the beloved San Francisco act.
His answers balance the excitement that any Deadhead would muster while listening to the group’s Holy Grail of concert tapes contained in the group’s Vault with an attention to detail regarding performance and sound quality. While his stamp of approval is widely known via his list of credits, Lemieux now receives an elevated status. With the conclusion of the Road Trips series, a new set of releases come out 2012 under the Dave’s Picks moniker (The name of the series references the Dead’s original tape archivist, Dick Latvala, who went from fan to caretaker of the tape Vault and started the Dick’s Picks series, which encompassed 36 releases from 1993 through 2005). The four-CD subscription series begins with May 25, 1977, the Mosque in Richmond, Virginia.
Two years had passed since our last conversation. At that time I caught Lemieux finishing up his shopping at a farmer’s market. Since that time he’s made a greater effort to grow his own…vegetables including corn, spaghetti squash, apples and tomatillos. “It’s good. It’s satisfying, and if this whole music thing doesn’t work out, I’ll put out a series of jams called Dave’s Picks,” he said, laughing.
JPG: We’ll get to Dave’s Picks in a moment but first, why end the Road Trips series?
DL: I don’t even know if there was any particular reason except it was time for a change. That’s really about it. We’re all very proud of what we’ve done with the Road Trips and certainly there’s some great music that’s been released through the series. And when the series launched, it was with a message that we’re going to be focusing on compilations and taking the best of a few nights and compiling them down to a couple CDs. We got some great music that way. All of us — the record company, myself and Blair [Jackson], and the fans — started gravitating, and I think it was very natural it wasn’t a conscious decision, more towards full shows.
If you look, we did 17 Road Trips and around the fifth, sixth, seventh, we started moving into the full show world ( Road Trips: Vol 3, Number 1: Oakland, December 28, 1979 ). It wasn’t any grand scheme or drastic philosophical change. It was just the direction we went in, which was great. Everybody seemed to appreciate them. We certainly loved working on them.
As we got up to our 15th, 16th, we realized that we’d really gotten away from what the Road Trips had been announced as, which isn’t a bad thing…Bottom line is, good music is good music. It doesn’t matter what the series title you put it out under or anything like that. For us to keep going with the Road Trips, when we announced it as a certain thing, we just felt, it was no major philosophical decision or a change in philosophy of taking the music… It was just time for a change.
The Dick’s Picks model, which is really what we’re going to model the new series, on was primarily full shows, but and I remember we talked about this a couple of years ago, half of the Dick’s Picks were not complete shows and some of them were very dramatic compilations. You look at something like the London, Dick’s Picks volume seven, which to me is a fantastic pick, where you’ve got essentially nine or 10 CDs worth of music whittled down to three CDs from three very good shows. Likewise, Dick’s Picks Volume 12, the two shows from 1974. Same kind of thing, where you’ve got two fantastic shows whittled down.
So, to bring this back, there’s always a place for compilations but at the same time when a full show is really good, that’s what we’re going to do. The focus of the new series is going to be on full shows. Whether it’s dictated by the music, probably less so, occasionally, it’s going to be dictated by the tapes where we simply don’t have a complete show or maybe we have three partial bits, similar to what we had with the Lake Tahoe, Dicks Picks 22, where we didn’t have complete shows of any of those and if we did we didn’t know because the tapes were so poorly labeled. So, we essentially put out the very best, essentially everything we could release from that.
So, to answer your question…There was no real major reason except for it was just time for a change and we wanted to launch the new series with more of a message of the majority of people who have contacted us over the years, have let us know that, while they appreciate the compilations, and they like them, they would prefer complete shows. And we listened. And we largely agreed.
Again, compilations are fun. They can really bring to life a couple of shows that might have some very mediocre moments and bring them to life, into three CDs of pure bliss, but you have the Grateful Dead experience when you went to a show is, the journey of the complete concert and that is exactly what we want to present with this new series. It’s similar to View From the Vault in terms of the video world where the philosophy was, ‘Oh, sure you’re going to get your ups and downs of any Grateful Dead show. But when you listen to it as a complete journey, hopefully, you’ll be satisfied and you’ll get that experience.’ The Dead haven’t played in almost 17 years. You can go out and see the current band like Furthur and that kind of thing. To get the full Grateful Dead experience, with Jerry, the only way to do it is to listen back to the tapes. That is what we’re focusing on, bringing the Grateful Dead experience home.
JPG: As far as what you have available, do you ever see a time where you have a great show, but either there’s some little portion — a minute — where the tape got mangled or something like that and an audience tape will be edited in there or do you think you’ll ever consider releasing a really good audience recording that’s spruced up? Anything that’s released by Rhino or Grateful Dead Productions has to always be a soundboard and if it’s not a soundboard then it just doesn’t get released?
DL: I definitely wouldn’t say that. We haven’t put much thought into releasing audience tapes because we have so many good board tapes. But, we would absolutely certainly patch a board tape that has a nasty cut and, like you say, is missing a half a minute or a minute, we would patch it. Our first preference is to patch it with a board tape from the same show. Meaning, if we had a reel-to-reel and also had a cassette board we’d fix it with the cassette. That would be our first choice. And secondly, occasionally, we’ve taken snippets, a few seconds, of the same song from another show from the same tour. We’ve fixed it with that. We’ve done internal edits, meaning you can edit the cut together so that it sounds seamless. And the fourth choice would be to edit with an audience tape.
And we’ve done it before. We’ve done it on the Road Trips from October ’78 at Winterland, “From Egypt With Love,” there’s a snippet of an audience recording in there, at least a couple. So, we certainly would. I don’t know if we would do a complete show as an audience recording. I certainly wouldn’t say, ‘No.’ It really hasn’t come up because we have so many good board tapes.
I’ll put it this way. A tape cut has never prevented us from releasing an excellent show. If it’s only missing thirty seconds or a minute, as long as it takes to flip the tape, it’s really never prevented us from releasing anything. There are many ways to fix it. Again, the preference is, hopefully, there’s two board tapes of the same recording with overlaps. But if there isn’t there are other ways to do it. Virtually any recording from the ’60s and ’70s, even the early ’80s, is going to have some tape cuts that we’ve had to fix one way or the other.
You listen to any Dick’s Picks, Road Trips, anything like that; there are cuts in them that we have fixed. The Big Rock Pow Wow ’69 comes to mind as a recent one. Boy, we’ve done a lot of fixes and what we’re trying to do, obviously, is present a proper listening experience. We’ve had times where we actually tried to do an audience patch into something and it just doesn’t work, sonically. You’re presenting the music altogether. The bottom line is about presenting a good listening experience to the buyer and if there’s this jarring nasty cut that sounds terrible going from a bad audience tape from the early ’70s into a clean board tape from the ‘70s and it doesn’t work, we would just do a fade in, do an internal edit, which is butting up the two ends of the cuts together hopefully in a place that isn’t too jarring where the music sounds continuous.
JPG: I didn’t know if the technology was there in the studio that you could fix a really good audience tape in such a way that it would not sound too jarring.
DL: It really depends on the recording. Some audience tapes sound great. They really do. But some early ’70s, mid-‘70s, there are some that they don’t match very well with soundboards and there’s really nothing that can be done. It hasn’t come up too often because generally we have a secondary board tape to fix it from, ideally, from the actual show we’re working on. If not, then within a couple of days. We’ve done that many times. Taken 10 or 15 seconds of the same song from a different show and fixed it. It’s happened. I won’t say all the time, but it does happen.
JPG: That’s interesting. Going back to Dave’s Picks, whose ideas was it. Was Rhino like, “Okay, we’re going to end Road Trips, come up with a new idea”?
DL: That would be Rhino. I think they’ve got a great idea. (laughs). Rhino, they know what they’re doing. They’ve got a very good ability to look at the big picture. I work very closely with Rhino but I also work for them. This was their idea. They felt that having a name change in the series and a philosophical change in terms of the announced intention of the series.
Rhino is doing a very good job of conveying the message that the focus of these new Picks will be on complete shows, not always. When they contacted me and said, “Look, we want to do this, and put your name on it,” I was flattered, obviously. If they think that’s a good idea, I’m certainly not going to argue with it. This was them and obviously in consultation with me. They didn’t want to slap my name on something without my okay, but…it’s good.
It doesn’t change my role at all. It’s exactly what I’ve been doing for 10 or 11 or 12 years almost. So, a rose by any other name is still a rose or in this case, a skull and roses is still skull and roses. It’s really nothing different than what we’ve been doing. A slight tweak from the beginning of the Road Trips but like I say the last 10 or so Road Trips have been primarily complete shows, pleasing many people in the process. Rhino made the decision that it was time to pack up the Dick’s Pick’s series at number 36. They decided to try something new with Road Trips and did very well and people liked them for the most part. But now it’s time to try something new. Change is good.
JPG: Overall, other than the name change, you’ve pretty much been responsible for the releases since Dick passed away, yes?
DL: Primarily yes, with, obviously, a heck of a lot of input and a lot of checks and balances. And that all remains the same. This truly is in a lot of ways nothing more than a name change of the series, especially when you look at the last 10 Road Trips that we’ve gone towards that full show.
But, you know, really nothing changes. It’s not like this is a new role for me at all. It’s the exact same, I’ll call it pressure that you put on yourself to make sure that you’re getting something out that people are going to enjoy and that will, ultimately, when you look back on it many years later will represent the Grateful Dead legacy properly. And that’s what we really try to do. And now the focus is a little more specifically on the complete shows, which I love. I’m a huge fan of complete show listening. And it’s nice because with the team I have in place, which is, generally, a bunch of friends who are hardcore Deadheads…when I start thinking of an idea and let them know and say, “Go listen to this” and the conversations we have, that’s how we come to the consensus on things. It’s a lot of fun, where you start bouncing emails around. “Oh man, there’s a great version of “Let It Grow.”” “Oh, wow. That reminded me of the version from…” and it becomes these great conversations. Then, consensus gets built. “Yes, this is a great show to release. Go for it.” “And if you’re looking for something from this era, we should also look into this one.” Then we spend a few more weeks listening to that show from the same era.
And then, a good dilemma is when there’s two great shows from the same tour. Let’s say, I think I mentioned to you once, when we pick something, we decide quite a bit in advance that, “Okay, it’s time to do a Spring of 1977.” Then you get down to so many good shows there. That’s a funny example but you get down to those five shows that you want to focus on and the conversation you get going — it’s great when you get to that dilemma — where there’s two shows that comes to the very top of the crop. And you’re like, “Well, what do we do?”
An interesting thing, and this is something that I’ve always found curious that people… okay, how do I explain it…well let’s say we put something out from a certain era and people love it and they’re like, “Oh, this is great, but boy, I really wish they’d done the show three nights before because it’s even better.” What I want people to try and understand that we view it as a long term project. So, let’s say that show comes out now and the one night that you really wanted from three or four days later didn’t come out because we went with this one. Rest assured we know that that show three or four days later is also a great show. The fact that we picked this one now certainly doesn’t negate that one coming out later down the road. It’s kind of like when we did, let me think a good example…
JPG: I can think of one real quick if that helps. Truckin’ Up to Buffalo was from ’89.
DL: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
JPG: I was there in ’90, which I thought was a supremely excellent dancey show, especially compared to the week before when I saw them in Pittsburgh, which was more of a musical exploratory type of show in front of 60,000 people.
DL: I understand completely. And when you look at something more specifically on that summer tour of ’89, “Truckin’ Up to Buffalo,” a lot of people said, “Great pick for this Buffalo thing, but man I really wish they’d done the Philly thing.” Well, if people just have a little patience, four years later, Philadelphia comes out. And then we put Philly out and everybody’s like, “Aw, great pick, but man, I really wished they’d do Foxboro. I’m so bummed they didn’t do Foxboro.” Have patience, you know? We know what the good shows are that we have in the Vault and we’ll get to them.
It’s not like we can put out…well, I guess we can put out an entire tour, as Europe ’72 just proved. But Europe would have been a similar thing where any show we picked from that tour, if we picked Amsterdam, Rotterdam, or 5/26 in London, you would have had people say, “That’s a great idea, but man, I really wished they’d done that other one.” Just have patience and stuff will get released.
And that is going to mean we’re going to repeat certain eras. We do hope we’re also going to hit things that haven’t been hit frequently enough. That was one great thing, when we did Road Trips about a year ago from the spring of 1988. That was an era that we hadn’t done anything, literally nothing, from 1988.To find such a great show and it sounded great from the DAT master. It was a perfect time to release that. Likewise, we know there’s eras we haven’t hit. There’s ’84. We know ’85 and ’83 are very underrepresented. We’ll get to them and, more importantly, when we do put something out from an era that people wish, “Aw, I wish they’d done the night before or the night after,” don’t worry we’ll get to it.
Again, we view this as a long term project. I know that patience when you want something is tough. We’re all in the same boat. There’s a million examples like this – well, thousands at least — where we put something out and even we have that struggle when we get down to pulling the trigger and making that final decision on what the show is going to be. There’s always second and third candidates that we really came close to putting out and all that means is that when it comes time to hit that era again that will be the show that gets hit.
That’s a frustration that whatever you do you’re going to disappoint people, and we all have thick enough skin that it doesn’t really bother us. We’re very comfortable in what we’re doing, but I do understand that it’s hard when you want a certain show to be released and the night before you want released gets put out instead.
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.
