David Gans may be the world’s most famous Deadhead (with all apologies to Bill Walton, William Weld, Bear, Steve Silberman et al). His writing on that band has appeared in many books and magazines (his Conversations With The Dead is a personal favorite). He is also the host of the Grateful Dead Hour. However, people may not realize that Gans has done far more than analyze the Dead (his first book focused on the Talking Heads). Indeed, he has been writing and performing music for a long while. Last year he played some high profile gigs with bands, appearing in the Merry Danksters, welcoming Phil Lesh to the stage with the Broken Angels and leading much of the late night jam at the Gathering of The Vibes. Recently however, Gans has decided to focus on his solo acoustic performances. In the following interview he discusses his musical evolution, his tastes and predilections, as well as the dynamics of selecting sounds for the Grateful Dead Hour.
David Gans will be touring the East Coast during the month of February:.
Feb 3 Handlebar, Greenville, SC
Feb 4 Skylight Exchange, Chapel Hill, NC
Feb 6 Cary St. Cafe, Richmond, VA
Feb 8 Patriots Cafe, Fairfax, VA
Feb 10 Blue Terrapin, Elizabethtown , PA (a former “Venue of the Month”)
Feb 11 Khyber, Philadelphia, PA
Feb 13 Mexicali Blues Cafe, Teaneck, NJ
Feb 14 Towne Crier Cafe Pauling, NY
Fb 15 Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, MA
Feb 17 Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA
You may find out more about him as at his web site, www.trufun.com.
B-How long have you been writing songs?
G- I wrote my first song in 1969. I was sixteen or so and I wrote tortured teenage poetry like everyone else at that age. My older brother had a guitar and he set a couple of my poems to music and then he taught me the chords. So in a way I was writing songs before I actually could play guitar. From that point on, anytime he left the house I would steal his guitar, and continue to write. I bought my own guitar as soon as possible.
B- Who were some of your initial influences?
G- I learned everything in the [Beatles]White Album songbook and the Crosby Stills and Nash songbook. Then I was into all sorts of folk music, and there was a lot happening. After that I used to play guitar with a big brother of a classmate of mine. We got really into the Doors, and we would play their music for hours on end, taking turns on lead. Then I got into the singer-songwriter guys like John Prine. Meanwhile, a classmate named Stephen Donnelly and I started writing songs together. He was the lyricist and I would write the music. We had Elton John and Bernie Taupin as our model. He was the guy who actually turned me on to the Grateful Dead and took me to my first show in March of seventy-two {editor’s note- 3/5/72}. So I was really a singer-songwriter, seventies sort of wimp rock guy before I got turned on to the Dead.
B- What impact did the Dead have on your songwriting?
G- Once I got turned onto the Dead that sort of changed everything. We had linked up with a commercial song plugger guy and he was always trying to get us to write hooky songs. Once I was turned on to the Dead, I saw that songwriting could go in all sorts of directions – it didn’t have to be simple, shallow stuff; there was so much more. The Grateful Dead first attracted me for their songwriting before I understood everything that was happening.
B- How quickly and intensively did that association develop?
G- Well I started going to every Dead show I could get to. Rather quickly, most of my friendships revolved around it. When I moved to Berkeley, through a high school classmate, I hooked up with a bunch of guys who played Grateful Dead music, some of whom became my best friends.
B- Most people certainly now know you as a journalist, did you continue to play out during those years?
G- What really happened was in seventy-six my song writing sort of took a back seat to other things. I had another full time job and I also started writing for music magazines. Then in seventy-eight I started working for a computer company in the Bay area and became one of their national consultants. So from about the beginning of seventy-eight until some time in eighty-one I was on the road a lot. I’d stay in a one city for two months working on starting up a new market. I couldn’t really have any continuity in performing. For a few years there I was traveling too much to really focus on my music. In eighty-one I started playing in bands again and sticking closer to home but I still earned my living as an editor and a writer. I played frequently but not consistently. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I put my music back on the front burner.
B- In the interim how did your life experiences influence your songwriting and your performance style?
G- Well they made me into an adult. When I look back now, a lot of the stuff that I wrote when I was younger and didn’t have the courage to present, is actually pretty good material and I’m doing a surprising amount of it now. I really think I was chicken back then. I didn’t really have the confidence, and I think I needed to go through a tremendous amount of stuff in life to become well-rounded enough, solid enough, so that I could stand up there alone and play.
This was also an outgrowth of playing in bands. The stuff I did with the Merry Danksters really taught me my limitations. I was thrilled to be out with those players but I was the weakest player in the chain. I had my strengths but everybody in that group was confronted with their limitations on one level or another. They all regarded me as a songwriter. I think I held my own in the singing department but as a guitar player I was outclassed.
Then I did a few benefit gigs with Phil Lesh in late 1997 and early 1998 which were also really profoundly humbling in a lot of ways. All of that sort to led to my beginning my solo career in earnest once again.
B- Describe that experience when you first took the stage with Phil.
G- I was working with him on a benefit for the Unbroken Chain Foundation, Philharmonia. I was also involved a foundation here at a club in Berkeley. I’m on the board of trustees for the organization that runs it after the guy who had run it was murdered. So we made it into a non-profit. I’ve been on the board trying to keep this thing alive due to my love for the guy who started it, and I had this idea to create a series of benefits both as a place for the Deadhead community to get together and also as a way to raise money for a speaker system for the club. So several of my friends worked with me to create something called the Deadhead Community center there once a month, and all of the proceeds would go to upgrade the sound system at the club.
The first one of those was September twenty-first of ninety-seven, I asked Phil if he wanted to come down and jam with us at the club. His wife and kids were away that weekend, so he kind of had the free time. And he said “sure, I’ll come over.” I basically held off on announcing it until the morning of that day because (a) if he didn’t show up I didn’t want to look like an idiot and (b) I didn’t want the place to be completely insane. As it was we had an overflow crowd, and Phil got up on stage with us and played “Scarlet Begonias” into “New Speedway Boogie.” It was just mind-blowing, it was great fun. He seemed to have a good time, I obviously was thrilled, and so were the other people on stage. At one point he stood in the audience with me and my wife and said he’d never been to a Dead concert, feeling this vibe from the audience, the ecstasy while a jam was going on. And I said “well you know, multiply it by about a thousand and now you’ll know how we felt going to see you play.”
That seemed to get the ball rolling for Phil. He had a good time and agreed to do some more benefits with the Broken Angels. The first one was in November, and he said he’d play a few songs with us so we didn’t really know how to advertise it. It was fairly well attended but not that well attended because people didn’t really know about the scope of his participation. And we did another one in December at the Maritime Hall which had a great turnout. I put together a large group, there were some big jams – we had a cello player for a while and pedal steel player for a while. My role in that wasn’t really to be a guitar god – it was to be a band leader and a traffic manager. I brought a lot of other musicians and dropped them on stage, so I didn’t really have an opportunity to interact with Phil in a concise band situation. Unfortunately for me the whole thing kind of blew up before I had an opportunity for that. We played three organized formal benefits, two at the Maritime and one on January 31st at the Fillmore. But just because of the way things are in Deadland it ended up being a very bittersweet experience.
B- How so?
D- On the day of the Philharmonia, December seventh, Bruce Hornsby and Bob Weir made their pitch to Phil to come out and tour with them in what eventually became the Other Ones. Unfortunately for me, as soon as that happened, I ended up feeling kind of booted out. It was not a very pleasant experience. It was not a simple matter of “okay, we’re going to go play with big guys now.” The mechanics of it were kind of unpleasant and it left me feeling hurt.
Of course in the midst of all of this, the Deadhead community has all this partisanship. Think of how many people just hated Vince Welnick. Well, some of this washed over to me for daring to go up on stage with Phil. There was a thread that started on the dead.net about what a horrible, worthless musician I am, and it hurt.
I mean I never, tried present myself as any kind of great guitar player. I brought in other guys in to play lead at those jams. I knew I was never going to be the guitar player in the reunited Grateful Dead; that was never an ambition of mine, that was never an illusion of mine. The niche I would have in the band with Phil was the one that Bob Weir occupied with the Dead.
So after licking my wounds for a little while I realized that I had to go out and make a name for myself as an individual. That’s when I started playing solo shows outside the Bay Area, and that turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.
The story of my life has been I’ve gotten in trouble in one place or another and it turns out to be a shove in exactly the right direction. I’m just extremely thrilled with the way that it has gone and where I’m at today.
I find that I’m building up momentum. I did a very short Midwest tour in June and it went very well. Then I returned to play those places and a few more last September. At that point we started planning this east coat trip for February. I also went back to Chicago in December. I had such a great time at the Heartland cafe in Chicago, I just really hit it off with the people who worked there. So I wanted to come back and do an extended run. They gave me four nights in a row, and it worked out really well.
B- You have an upcoming east coast tour but what are your plans after that?
G- I’m looking at touring every two weeks out of every two months or so because I’m an old married guy. It’s not like being twenty years old out on the road. Plus I have my responsibilities with the Grateful Dead Hour. I’m building my reputation and getting people to come out and listen to my stuff. I’m not out there with a “this is the famous Deadhead and he’s doing a Dead cover” solo act. I do have a bunch of Dead tunes in my repertoire but I am not presenting myself explicitly to the Dead audience, although I try to make sure that those people know that they’ll probably like what they hear.
B- What can people expect when they come out and see you?
G- My repertoire is about fifty percent originals. Some of the songs I have written are directly related to the Dead Head touring experience and that’s something that’s really important to me. I felt that as an electric guitar player I was way back in a field that was dominated by terrific musicians and so that wasn’t where my future lay. I decided to go back to my real strengths which are songwriting and singing. So I’ve decided to strip it down to the bare essentials, me and my songs. I’ve developed a presentation that I’m happy with.
Along with my originals there’s a very seventies-centric repertoire. I have a couple of Jackson Browne songs, a Randy Newman song, John Prine, a few Bob Dylan songs, one Los Lobos tune, even an Elton John song or two. Lately I’ve been comfortable enough on stage that I’ll ask for requests. People will call out things, such as some of tunes that the Dead did in their acoustic sets, and I know a lot of them. Another thing I do that I’m very proud of and borrows from the Dead experience is I’ll string songs together as a sort of a one-man-jam. I’ll link songs together, putting the songs together in different ways or, for example, I’ll use “Wharf Rat” as a framing device. I’ll also do even longer extended instrumentals out of songs like “Cassady” now that I’m becoming more confident and assertive. I bought a new guitar in November that’s really helping things along.
B- I’m curious, what sort of reaction have you received to your song “Monica Lewinsky?”
G- That’s been a real show-stopper. There was one show in my September tour that took place in a sports bar. The back half of the room was watching a Cubs game while the front half was up with me. But when I did ‘Monica,” I got everybody’s attention. So sometimes it would be the song I could use to grab everybody and then if I was doing a good job I could keep them until the end of the set. I have a few other songs like that, aggressively funny songs. My natural inclination is towards balladry so I like to do the funny, upbeat tunes to balance that out.
B- Do you think you carry any particular responsibilities or stigma as perhaps the world’s most famous Deadhead?
G- It’s a double bind. I sometimes felt I should look outside the Grateful Dead for my audience, because Deadheads are predisposed to thinking “hey he’s a radio guy, why does he have a guitar, who does he think he is.” But then, outside in the real world people say, “oh he’s a Dead Head, I bet his music sucks.”
Grateful Dead taught me a lot. Many of the things I love best about music I learned from the Grateful Dead, about keeping it real and being honest. There are a lot of jam bands out there that are taking pieces of what the Grateful Dead did but they’re not taking it all. I may not be the kind of guitar player who blows people’s minds like a Steve Kimock, but I deliver a ballad with a lot of tenderness and truth.
When I look at the repertoire that I have and think about how I’m presenting myself, in many ways it really goes back to before I ever heard of the Grateful Dead. But then again I am one of Jerry’s kids. My entire adult existence has been spent listening to that music and making it part of my life. It would be ridiculous of me to pretend that it’s not. It would be foolish of me to ignore some of the best songs that I have heard in my life.
B- In terms of your association with the Dead, I’m sure a lot of people would love to know, what criteria do you use in deciding what to play on the Dead Hour, week to week?
G- I try to keep the context moving. skipping around from era to era, genre to genre. I have my favorites. I’m sort of a “Dark Star” geek but I’m also an “Other One” geek. And I get requests every day. People will mail me and say, “could you play so and so, it was my first show.” I’ll write back and say “well what about it makes it good?” And if they can come back and explain that to me, then I’ll go listen to it.
I also have a relationship with Dick and the vault. He’s got great material. He goes through stuff and suggests things for release and at any given moment there are piles of stuff that he thinks are really good. If some of those aren’t going to be used for whatever reason, then he’ll give some to me. And I have my own favorites. I like unusual combinations. If you want to know what my playlist will be ahead of time you can look at my web page. But if you want to be surprised, I almost never tell you at the beginning of the show what’s going to be on it. I like to play interesting combinations: “Scarlet” not into “Fire” but into “Bucket” or “Help On The Way” into “Fire.” I try to come up with what people on the Grateful Dead Hour mailing list want to hear and I also try to come up with things that nobody’s ever heard before. Every once in a while Dick will give me something that’s not in circulation and I’ll listen to it and it’s mind-blowing. I like to put that stuff on when I can because every once in a while you want to blow the minds of the hard-core.
B- Is there any particular show or version of a song that you’ve been dying to play but for any particular reason you haven’t been able to get it on the air?
G- I think the outstanding example would be the Ornette Coleman jam from February of ninety-three. I’ve never been able to get Ornette’s permission. He’s very picky about letting his stuff be heard and I’m very respectful. Most people who sit in with the Dead don’t mind but I understand. It’s too bad because I have a wonderful interview with Jerry, Phil and Gary Lambert talking about Ornette. I always thought it would be great to turn on the younger Deadhead audience to Ornette and I would have played some stuff from one of his records but I couldn’t get permission to do it.
I also can’t play any of the Dylan and the Dead stuff because Dylan doesn’t want his stuff to be broadcast. Mostly whatever else I can get my hands on is okay to play.
B- What about the current wave of jam bands? I know you’ve played with a number of them, who are some of your favorites?
G- I like moe. quite a bit. I have to admit though that sometimes when I play with them, and I’ve jammed on stage with them many times, those guys are so huge that I feel lost. At the Gathering of the Vibes I went on stage with Strangefolk who had done me the honor of learning one of my songs, that was a thrill. They’re really great guys and the thing I like about them is their song orientation; they’re not necessarily so much into the big heavy jam. I’ve really formed a friendship with Gibb Droll as well. He’s a talented player and a very intense guy. Another band I really love from having seen them a couple of times is Donna The Buffalo. Then from sort of the Dead-cover corner, you have the Zen Tricksters. I have played with them before and that’s like getting a ride on a Harley, they are so powerful. I’ve seen the Disco Biscuits a couple of times and I really liked them. I’m anxious to see what happens with the Ominous Seapods, although on some level I’m secretly happy about it because I would love to work with Max Verna. I’d love to do some touring with him where we would each do our solo acts. I’d love to do some writing with him as well because I think that he may be the single most brilliant musician of that generation. Also, Puddle Junction from Chico – they’re a very good hippie band.
I have to say though, Dean, that I have sort of stepped away from the jam bands now that I have started focusing on my solo acoustic touring. I find that I’m a little bit less interested in twenty minute jams and a bit more interested in songs. You had an essay on songwriting and what was lacking in the jam band scene which I thought was right on the mark. There are very few bands out there that have the ability to make me cry the way that a Hunter-Garcia composition can make me cry.
B-Is that your ultimate goal as a song writer?
G- Sure, in part. Although I also have songs that make people laugh, and I have a few songs that make people dance. The trick is to appeal to all of those things. The thing that the Dead had that very few other acts have ever had is versatility. They appeal to the brain, they appeal to the solar plexus, they appeal to the butt and they also appeal to the heart.
