For David Lemieux, archivist and producer of the Grateful Dead’s wealth of concert material and host of “Today in Grateful Dead History” on SiriusXM’s Grateful Dead Channel, his annual workload goes something like this -- listen, produce, release, listen, produce, release, listen, produce, release...
Those three actions work in favor for Grateful Dead fans who enjoy the high-end audio results -- four Dave’s Picks concert recordings and a multi-show box set each year.
In 2021 the Dave’s Picks subscription series traveled from one musical era to another -- April 15, 1978, Sept. 8, 1973, April 26, 1983 and finally July 18 and 19, 1990, Brent Mydland’s final shows – while the major release this year, "Listen to the River: St. Louis '71 '72 ‘73," featured seven previously unreleased concerts on 20 CDs stored in a specially-constructed slipcase. The box set is also available digitablly.
Listen to the River offers a sonic evolution of the beloved band as it transitioned from different lineups -- with and without Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, with Keith and Donna Godchaux -- as well as the inclusion of material that stretched over five albums – Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, Skull & Roses, Europe '72 and Wake of the Flood. There's an excitement noticeably present among the bandmembers during these performances as much as there is for the listener to experience them.
The Dead played 60 different songs during these shows that included vibrant takes on “Beat It On Down The Line” and “One More Saturday Night,” explorations through “Dark Star" and "The Other One" plus tributes to the River City’s legendary son, Chuck Berry, with covers of “Johnny B. Goode,” “Around and Around,” “Promised Land” and "Run Rudolph Run."
The Dave's Picks series announced its two initial releases for 2022 – Baltimore Civic Center on May 26, 1977 and Winterland on Feb. 23, 1974. All four Picks plus bonus disc, which contains Winterland on Feb. 22, 1974, are exclusive to subscribers. The final date to sign up is Jan. 7.
I discuss with Lemieux what goes into creating these recordings, gain some background on the musical era that’s contained on Listen to the River, catch a few subtle hints of what to expect in future live recordings plus advice on picking the perfect avocado.
JPG: First off, Happy Birthday. One of the nice "presents" you got was on Billboard posted that Dave's Picks 40 is the highest charting Grateful Dead album since 1987.
DL: Yeah, so it seems. This band…I won't say I'm surprised but I am constantly impressed that 56 years into this thing that we call the Grateful Dead…I just find it immensely happy-making just to know how many people are still loving this band, and then new fans who are getting on the Bus. That is the most heartwarming part of watching the Dead legacy continue to develop is that I constantly hear from people who are much younger. There are people 25 years younger than you and me who are getting on the Bus and they are just as passionate about the Grateful Dead's music as you and I were when we discovered it. And they're just as passionate when they get a show they haven't heard. Whether it's through the Dave's Picks series or whatever format they're getting their music or they go see Dead & Company and they get the live experience.
People are getting off on it exactly the same we did because it's still the same thing. It's still Grateful Dead music, in altered forms, the experience and the passion. It's the passion that people are bringing to their Bus ride that's exactly what we used to experience. It just makes me so happy to see.
JPG: My wife and I did eight Dead & Company shows. It was a little weird because of COVID and dipping our toe into concerts again but we had such a blast being in that atmosphere, being around that music. The band was playing so good and was really into being together on stage.
DL: That's it. They're having fun. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything on this tour because there were still border restrictions with the Canada-US border when the tour was on. But, the few times I've been fortunate to see Dead & Company, I spent a goodly portion of my time digging the music and dancing but I also, very consciously, took a look around and to see, whether it's 18 or 20,000 people at Shoreline or the stadiums, which are getting 35,000 to 40,000, the people dancing. It's a similar experience that I had in Chicago six years ago for Fare Thee Well, where obviously I was focused on the music and dancing and being in that moment but also turning around and looking at this stadium. That was 71 or 72,000 people.
It brought me back to 1990 at RFK Stadium and seeing the Dead. That, to me is, I use the term ‘heartwarming' because it reminds me of how longstanding this music is going to be.
I'm still putting on, whether it's a Grateful Dead show from 1967, that's 54 years ago, and I'm loving the heck out of it, or it's a show that was recently released that is something that might've been on people's radar, people are still listening to this music as freshly as we did.
I'd like to think people are going to be listening in 100 or 200 years. Again, here we are 56 years into it and I think the fanbase is growing. So, there's no reason to think that at 100, 150 years it should still be growing.
JPG: Just amazing. A lot of people who apparently like licorice apparently. Remember that Jerry Garcia quote? (“We're like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”)
DL: Yeah, exactly. I'm most certainly a licorice aficionado when it comes to the Grateful Dead.
JPG: Let’s start with Dave's Picks then talk about the St. Louis box set. I remember reading how Dick Latvala had notebooks regarding future Dick's Picks releases. Because you're doing Dave's Picks and you're doing the special releases and box sets, do you have notebooks or files with research and ideas for future releases? Do you have them separated? This show would be a Dave's Picks versus a box set. How do you set everything up and organize it?
DL: That's a great question. Okay. I take a lot of notes. Whenever I listen to the Grateful Dead, it's virtually always in the guise of working, which is to say if I'm listening to the Dead, there's always a part of me thinking could this be a release? If I'm certain that a show that I've been listening to is not going to be by the end of the first set, I might not take a lot of time to listen to that second set. But I take copious amounts of notes where pretty much everything is written down in spreadsheets generally. I do it digitally as opposed to manual. If I start listening to a show that I might not've listened to in a few years but I know it's a good one, I'll open up a new tab for that show and make notes about that.
In terms of a master [list]…I get asked quite a bit, "Do you have any plans to release XXXX as a future Dave's Picks?" The answer is absolutely definitely not, that I have plans, that we have plans to do it. The reason I say that is because every single release we do, we put an incredible amount of work into that specific release. Before we ever pull the trigger and say, "Okay, this is going to be Dave's Picks volume 41," we've already spent six or nine months listening to that show to get to the point of being 100% confident and certain that this is a show that is worthy of release within the Grateful Dead's archival release series.
When I say six to nine months, it means it could be a show that we've listened to 100 times over the last 15 years, knowing it's a great show. But then when it comes time to maybe release something from a specific era, we might go to that show and that's when we spend the six or nine months. There's almost an epiphany where I can listen to a show 50 times and be very very sure that this show is totally worthy of release. Sometimes, I get to that 50th listen and I say, "You know what? It's not quite there. It's not quite the one." Luckily, I've got many other shows that are ready to be listened to and give that time. That's why we give so much time to listen to them.
But when we get to, almost like an epiphany moment, where you listen to it the 50th time, the 100th time, whatever it is, and you say, "Okay, with certainty this is definitely the show." that's when I let Rhino know. That's when I let Jeffrey Norman (mixer/master) know, the archival staff in L.A. where the tapes are, know that the next Dave's Picks is going to be this show.
So, in terms of having a master list of future releases, absolutely not. Every show is given its own world. Its own energy. Its own effort. And it's also largely, every release, and I think a good way to put it, is a reaction to what we've done recently. For instance, we just released the St. Louis box from December '71, October '72 and October '73. When I say every release is a reaction to what we've done around that time, it means that around the time that we released that box set, I could say with certainty that the final Dave's Picks of the year, number 40, from Deer Creek, is not going to be from either December '71 or October '72 or October '73. I had no idea that Deer Creak would be number 40. But I knew that it wouldn't be something from that 22-month period in '71 to '73, the St. Louis era.
A good example is Dave's Picks 39, which was a Philadelphia Spectrum show from 1983. It had been a show that had been on my radar for 15 years or more. I first heard an audience tape of it way back in my tape trading days in the late '80s. I really liked it. Then, I heard the board tape probably 15, 18 years ago and I thought it was a great sounding board tape. It's a magnificent show. So, I always knew.
If that came out August of 2021, the real work on that would've started a full year earlier. So, summer of 2020 I would've started making that decision that we're going to release something from late '82 through late '83. Knowing that, again, this is when I go back to my notes. I know that that Philly Spectrum show from 4/26/83 is a great show and there's a couple other great shows around then too, fall '82 and things like that. I go back and I started listening to that nine-month era because that's what I've decided I want to focus on for the next Dave's Picks or a future Dave's Picks in a year. That's when it comes down to bringing it down to four to six shows from that era, which becomes two or three.
In fact, the Philly Spectrum show, Dave's Picks 39, it was very nearly a different show. It came down to the Philly show I just felt was slightly better start to finish. I thought the first set was really really hot. I thought the second set was magnificent. The show that didn't make the cut has gone back in the spreadsheet. But, this other show that came so close to being Dave's Picks 39, that show is not on a future release list but I do know that when we go back, whether it's a year or in five years and hit that era again for a Dave's Picks release, that show would be given...doesn't mean it's going to be the one from that era but it means it will most certainly be given extremely strong listens because it's a great show.
I have notes, a lot of them. It's nothing like a master list nor is it anything like this is going to be a Dave's Picks while this is going to be a box set...There's not a delineation like that either. If we're going to switch gears slightly in our conversation, a good segue into St. Louis is 10/18/72, the second night of the three nights in St. Louis '72. That was a show that many many times over the last 20 years has come very close to being a release as either a Dick's Picks back in those days or a Road Trips or a Dave's Picks. I always had it in mind because I thought the other two nights from that run were also exceptional -- the first night, which didn't have a “Dark Star" or an “Other One" but is extremely well-played, the third night is really well-played, the 10/19 show.
I always had that in mind, "I'm going to hold off on releasing 10/18 because I do hope someday we're going to do a St. Louis box from 1972 and include all three shows.” Then, through six months of work, ended up morphing into a seven-show 20 CD box that you hold in your hands now.
Over the last 20 years when it came time to pick a show for release from the fall tour of 1972, it was always given extremely high consideration but it was always held back with the hope that someday there would be a St. Louis box set from those three shows, which turned into the seven shows.
Luckily, any time we wanted to do fall of '72 for a release, whether it was a Dick's Picks or a Dave's Picks or even in the 30 Trips Around The Sun box set -- we included one of the September shows -- there was so much great material from August, September, October and November of 1972 that it made it a little easier to leave 10/18 on the shelf a little longer. I'm grateful that we waited.
That's a good example of the process of how we work in terms of holding things.
JPG: Is it easier for you to put together a Dave's Picks because you don't have to bring it to Rhino with a concept of putting together x-amount of shows for a box set? Dave's Picks, you can focus on simply whether this is a good show, we haven't done this era, let's just do it versus if you're going to do a box set, here's the reason for the box set and here's what we can include…
DL: I’ve got to say the team at Rhino, and I certainly do consider them a team, specifically [Rhino president] Mark Pinkus who runs the place and is extremely involved in Grateful Dead decisions, and [Rhino Senior Director of Marketing] Doran Tyson and [Rhino Global Product Manager] Ivette Ramos. Those three people and myself are the team that decides the format and the concepts and stuff like that. While it might be that months and months of discussions about concepts and deciding on a box set, generally we all trust each other so much. By the time I bring a concept to Rhino as a box set idea, for instance St. Louis, by the time I bring it to them I have spent so much time, whether it's six months or a year working on everything about it. There's really nothing left to decide in terms of how that box set should look.
In the case of St. Louis, when I brought it to Rhino I said, "Look, for the 2021 box set I have a concept and it depends on whether you want to do it as 15 CDs or 20 CDs. Both of them work extremely well. I just need to know which one you would prefer." They immediately -- we're talking this whole process -- took about a three-minute phone call because by the time I presented it to them it was so well-developed that it really comes down to asking what they would prefer in terms of box set. In this case they said 20.
Originally, of the two concepts, one of them was just the '72 and '73 shows and one included the two 1971 shows with Pigpen. It's a team that trusts each other extremely well. Ivette coordinates everything and Doran oversees so much in terms of artwork and marketing and I work with Jeffrey Norman on the audio side of things and making sure it sounds great and work on content and find the liner note writers and the photos and the archival materials.
Then, whoever is doing the packaging at that time, in this case it was Rory Wilson (art direction) who did a great job, sometimes Steve Vance, Lisa Glines (creative supervision)who also did work on this, and Doran, and then Mark overseeing the whole enterprise as the executive in charge. It's a great team.
Going back 11 years when Mark and I were both put into a position of working together, Mark and I had a dinner. Mark said, "I heard about your Europe '72 idea. I think it's a great idea." This is an idea that some previous people had pretty much laughed me out of the room when I pitched the Europe '72, 73-CD box set (which contained the entire tour). Mark saw that it was a cool idea. Mark's a Deadhead. That's what it all comes down to. He sees things from a Deadhead's perspective, "Yeah, that would be cool. I'd buy that."
That's what it really comes down. Would I buy that? Would I think this is a cool addition to my Grateful Dead collection? The answer's “Yes" and that's how we work on things.
Again, it's a team. A lot of people say, "Oh, you've got a great job and you're very lucky." I am. I'm very aware that my job's pretty darn amazing. In addition to all of the great stuff that everybody sees, which is that I listen to Grateful Dead music and I've worked on the merchandise and things like that, the best part is I respect everybody I work with and I genuinely feel everybody I work with respects me. That is really the most important thing, knowing the people I work for, the people I work with, there's mutual respect. We have a lot of discussions about things and we debate things a lot but they're always done with respect and they're always always done to end up at a place that is the best thing for the Grateful Dead legacy.
JPG: Since it took a year to a year-and-a-half for the St. Louis box...
DL: We would've been early summer of 2020 when we pulled the trigger on it.
JPG: Was there much of a difference putting it together because of COVID restrictions? When Jeffery Norman's working on stuff, do you come down to his studio to listen to what he worked on or does he always send you files to listen to songs and shows?
DL: I work with Jeffrey on virtually a daily basis. We are either on the phone, texting or emailing everyday, whether it's about a box set or a Dave's Picks or a future something.
Actually, it bothers me to say this. I haven't seen Jeffery in probably five years. I haven't been in a studio with him, I haven't seen him and I miss him. He's one of my best friends in the world. I talk to him all the time but we haven't seen each other. That's largely geographic because I'm in Canada and he's in California.
The way we work together is, for instance, if he's working on a show where, and this occasionally happens where the recording was made with the channels reversed. Let's say Keith [Godchaux] should be on the right but Jeffrey will say, "I'm hearing Keith on the left and just confirming that this is incorrect" in whatever year it's from. And I say, "That is incorrect. Flip them."
We talk about things like that. When it comes to the actual audio, he sends me high-res audio files and I check them out. By the time they get to me he's already spent weeks and weeks on them and then proofs them himself. Very rarely do I have comments about the sound quality that needs to be changed. The only time that happens is when he's mixing a multi-track. That's where it becomes a little more complicated because when he's doing a multi-track he generally does about a song a day. That's a bit of a generalization but that's the focus.
If he's doing one complete Dead show that has 21 songs, he'll plan on a full three weeks of mixing, seven days a week, if not a little bit more, to fix some things. What he does is he mixes all day, sends me the high-res mix -- his close to final mix -- that night. I make sure I'm available every night from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. when he might upload it to me. I spend as much time as needed listening to it several times -- headphones, speakers, I might even burn a CD and bring it in the car and drive around with it. Then, I give him notes. I'll say, "Yeah, I'm not hearing Weir's guitar enough in this part and I think the background vocals…" So, by the time he's back in the studio at 9 or 10 the next morning to finish the mix, he's got my notes that say exactly that. Tweak this, tweak that. When it's a multi-track mix there are a lot of decisions to make whereas, with a two-track there's not the same amount of decisions to make.
COVID did cause a few delays and they were minor, but they were a bummer, was that the Vault where the tapes live was largely closed down. The archive staff, Mike Johnson is my primary contact in Los Angeles, huge Deadhead and a great guy. He's a Grammy nominee as a producer himself. There's the crew down there but Mike Johnson primarily is the one who will pull tapes. I'll hit him up and say, "We need 10/18/72 sent to Jeffrey." Usually within an hour he's got it boxed up and FedExed. It's that efficient and that well-oiled of a machine.
During COVID when the crew was only allowed in once every two weeks, we had to really plan accordingly knowing that Mike was going to be in on Wednesday next week and we would load him up with our requests. So that when he went into the Vault he would know all the tapes we needed to pull for Dave's Picks and for the St. Louis box.
Then, there's also the thing where I might have a show in mind as a possible future Dave's Picks that I'm still very far away from picking but I like it and I get those tapes pulled as well so Jeffrey can check them out because there's nothing worse than getting really far on the process and selecting a show and then getting the tape sent to Jeffrey and he’s like, "I don't know what you were hearing but the tapes I've got, there's but there was a problem with these tapes.”
Before I even get close to letting Rhino know, which is developing the artwork and all those kind of things, before I do any of that for a Dave's Picks I always make sure Jeffrey checks out the tapes. Oftentimes, I'll have picked a show I'm certain it's going to be the next Dave's Picks and I can't let everybody know and pull the trigger on it until Jeffrey's checked out the tapes. Once he does that, then we can. Ninety-eight per cent of the time or more the tapes are fine because what I'm hearing generally came off of the Vault's master.
Another big thing with COVID is a lot of the pressing plant and shipping warehouses and things like that through 2020 and into 2021 had minimal staff, if any. So, a lot of things got delayed as well. What normally might be a four or five-month lead-time became an eight or nine-month lead-time. We just had to alter our productions, where instead of saying, “This is coming out in October, we need to have it done by June.” Now, we have to get it done by March. Clearly, we manage.
A good example, the St. Louis show from 12/10/71, the second show in the box set, was released on its own. We generally do that, select a show or a compilation from any box set, and release it on CD and vinyl. Well, the vinyl was supposed to come out the end of September, early October with the other elements of this release but because of delays it didn't come out until the middle of November. It would come down to some of the delays that go back a year-and-a-half to backlogs at pressing plants.
JPG: That time period, '71 to '73. What makes it so special? Do you feel it is growth from recording American Beauty and Workingman's Dead or something that stayed with them after the Europe '72 tour?
DL: Well no, because that would mean getting into their heads but I do think it was an unparalleled burst of creativity. It's like you said, American Beauty, Workingman's Dead…that alone, those two albums, that in pretty much any other band's career would be everything. That's an incredible run. Two albums, they came out four months apart, which is just mind-blowing. Then, you add several months later Skull & Roses material, all that new material starts coming out.
The most impressive thing on top of that -- the almost forgotten thing that Bobby and Jerry in '72 with all that material being introduced in '71 -- put out Ace and the Garcia solo albums. Those albums are just mind-blowingly good! Not including the cool instrumentals on Jerry's album but that's 13 more bonafide Grateful Dead classics all coming out within a few months of each other. Then, you've got all the new Europe '72 material.
Then, in February of '73 they introduce all that Wake of the Flood material plus a couple of those songs, “[Mississippi] Half-Step [Uptown Toodeloo]” and “Stella Blue” came in '72. We're talking a two-year period where I could keep going on and on and on.
By '73 some of the Mars Hotel material started popping up. It was unparalleled creativity. It was a band that really loved playing together. It's like they were bursting with creativity and new directions. They went from this sound to that sound and then in '77 they went to that sound. It's not reinventing, it's just adapting. It's just changing. I get the feeling that they never allowed themselves to get bored because they were constantly changing things up.
I really don't know how to pinpoint why they were so good. You're a huge hockey fan. You're a New York Rangers fan. You hear about teams. Players will be on their three-year entry-level contract and then at 21, 22-years-old a team will often try to sign that player for eight years because something happens where they hit a new gear. As great as they were at 21, 22, the expectation is that at 25, 26, they're going to hit a new gear. The team wants to have that player under control during that time when they hit that new gear. This is the Dead hitting a new gear. To me, again, that's what blows my mind.
You listen to Live/Dead. To a lot of people the absolute peak of Grateful Dead performing in live music and Grateful Dead creativity and yet a year or two later all the stuff we've just been talking about came out. Complete change in direction.
Then, you've also got the Grateful Dead, most certainly on the improvisational level, able to do something like they did at Veneta, Oregon with that “Dark Star” or a month after Veneta in Philadelphia, another “Dark Star" or all those great “Other One"s. Every single one was a unique moment created right there on the spot that lasted 20, 30, 40 minutes. There's a great 36-minute “Other One" from Baltimore in '72 that is...I listen to that one quite a bit and I don't even understand what's happening because it's so creative and so in-the-moment. It certainly wasn't rehearsed.
That is what continues to blow my mind about Grateful Dead music. So much of their excellence in this period in particular was created right there on the spot. There's a great jam on 8/6/74 at Roosevelt Stadium. As they're going from “Playing In The Band” heading into “Scarlet Begonias” before going back into “Playing In The Band,” there's a jam they get into that, again, created right there in the moment, you listen to it and it is a fully-orchestrated, melodic, beautiful piece of music. And yet they never did it again. They never did it before. They only let it jam for a couple of minutes before they moved on to another idea.
That's what I don't understand about the Dead is how anybody can do something so great every single night and it's made up there on the spot essentially. That's what I love.
I don't know how to define why the Dead were so good then. They were just at an unparalleled burst of creativity that every night they loved playing. I remember reading an interview with Jerry -- I think it was an interview he did on the Europe ’72 tour -- and he was asked if he's having fun, if he's enjoying the tour. He said, "I'm really loving it. The problem is we're not playing enough." They were there for 50 nights or so and they only did 22 shows in 50 nights. The way Jerry was telling it, he prefers to play. You can't play every night but you can certainly play more than that. It was scheduling of Europe and the travel that you had to have two or three nights off, sometimes, between shows. That, I think, bothered him in a way because he loved playing so much. They really loved playing.
If you look at Jerry's schedule in '72, '73, and if you look at the Dead schedule from late '69 through mid-'70, they're constantly playing. The few times they're not playing and on tour, they're in the studio recording Workingman's Dead or American Beauty. It's really amazing. It's really inspiring. Sometimes, we all feel our procrastination level is pretty high. The Dead are a good antidote for that for me because they really inspire me to get off my butt and get things done.
JPG: You mentioned “Dark Star,” and it's interesting the line that runs from the 10/30/73 “Dark Star” in the St. Louis box set to the present day. In my mind, I heard a bit of The Beatles' "Dear Prudence" in that "Dark Star" within the first nine minutes and then last summer Dead & Company covered “Dear Prudence.”
DL: It's typical Grateful Dead synergy.
JPG: Also, the other thing that I noticed that was fun about the St. Louis box set, especially the '71 shows. I’m sure it wasn’t fun for the band to having equipment problems but hearing the band talking and joking and being relaxed and even hearing one of Bobby's jokes...
DL: They were definitely having fun. That '71 tour was a lot of fun because a couple weeks before they got their first gold record for Skull & Roses, which had just come out. They were touring. They were being on the radio a lot with these FM broadcasts. It was yet another new high for the Grateful Dead.
This band had momentum and you hear that from '68 onward. It's really since Mickey joined the band. That momentum keeps building and you can look at it as these steps of momentum. Now you've got Keith in the band...every time somebody new joined the band it was a whole refreshed, renewed energy. Then, Pigpen comes back, which is a whole new thing and that's great, too, because now you've got some organ, you've got some piano plus you've got Pigpen as a front man on a few songs, which is amazing.
I do find that momentum just keeps growing. As '72 rolls on and Pigpen leaves the band and then they settle into the groove and the next bit of momentum is starting their own record company and Wake of the Flood coming out. Then, the next bit of momentum is the Wall of Sound and the development of that through '73 with its debut in '74.
It’s this constant momentum rolling so fast that it led to October of '74, which led to the Grateful Dead taking a couple of years off because that momentum, I think, took them a little too far too fast.
JPG: Speaking of Pigpen. Nice timing that this box set came out just before the holiday season and it contains “Run Rudolph Run" with Pigpen on vocals during the '71 shows.
DL: They only played it a half dozen times. They only played it in December of '71.
JPG: A version also came out on Dave's Picks Volume 22 (12/7/71) as well.
DL: It's a nice little fun Pigpen rocker. There's not enough of those. Anytime that we can get another cool Pigpen sung song in the repertoire, I love it.
I remember hearing that 35 years ago in the mid-'80s, hearing a tape, I think it must've been one of the Felt Forum shows that had it. I knew the song. I'd heard the song before on the radio, the original. I couldn't believe the Dead were playing it, an amazing addition to the repertoire. Again, it's a neat little time period in the Dead's history where they only played that for that two-week period half a dozen times and then it was gone. Now, we've got two here, so that's pretty cool.
JPG: The recordings themselves -- the '71 shows were done by Rex Jackson, Owsley "Bear" Stanley for the '72 shows and Kidd Candelario for the '73 shows. Thinking of those three different recorders as well as previous official live releases taken from Betty Cantor, Betty Boards, when you're listening, are you able to notice differences between them?
DL: Absolutely, 100%. They all sound so distinctly different from one another. Instantly, in particular Betty's tapes from '77. An interesting thing is Betty's tapes, which are uniformly magnificent, I've never heard a Betty recording that didn't absolutely knock my socks off. Her recordings from June of '76 and then her recordings from spring of '77, her recordings from fall of '77 and her recordings from the spring/summer of '78, each of those eras sound distinctly different. I don't know what that is. I don't know if it was different equipment, different techniques, different stage equipment for the band. You listen to summer, June of '76, all those theaters and then go listen to spring of '77. It is so distinctly different. It's still magnificent. I have a huge smile on my face just thinking about them, and now I want to go listen to the June '76 box set that came out last year because it is so good. They were always some of my favorite recordings, performances too obviously. Performances are wonderful but those recordings are studio level recordings.
Kidd's recordings put them up against Bear's from fall '72, put them up against Rex's from '71, put them up against Bear's from early '70, late' 69. Remarkably different. Again, I don't know how much of that is recording equipment, how much is stage equipment, and how much is different recording techniques.
Absolutely, they are very very different, whereas by '79, pretty much all recordings were straight up PA recordings. They reflected the sound in the hall. They were stereo output out of the soundboard, whereas everything else we've just discussed were not that. They were all things that had embellishments and changes and manipulation done to the recording to make it a very very good recording as opposed to a PA mix that happened to have a left and right split that also went to cassette or DAT or whatever it was.
JPG: Do you have any idea why there was a switch in '79?
DL: I don't know. I'm not sure but the last shows Betty recorded, not the last shows but the last two-track recordings that she recorded was the New Year's run in '79. Now, a year later with the Warfield and Radio City, she was part of the team that recorded that as well but that's different. That's not what we're talking about here. Summer of '78, that July '78 material was all Betty. The fall of '78 she did not record. She didn't go. She didn't record those. There's some PA tapes of a few of those shows but not all of them. No actual mix to tape recordings.
Then '79, unfortunately nothing from Brent's first tour, the May tour. There is a really wonderful board from his first show at Spartan Stadium but the May tour, no. In August the Kaiser shows, the Oakland Auditorium shows and then the Red Rocks and McNichols shows, and then not again until the California shows in San Diego and UCLA in November of '79. But unfortunately not the October, November, December shows. Then, the five nights at the Oakland Auditorium, those were all recorded by Betty.
Of course, I wish that everything had been recorded to that quality but it isn't. So, I don't lament what we don't have. I celebrate what we do have. That's the way I've always looked at things. You can spend all the energy you want lamenting the things that you don't have but instead I choose to -- whether it's in my personal life or professional life -- celebrate the things that we do have.
JPG: A gratitude mindfulness approach.
DL: Always, man.
JPG: I know I won't get an exact answer but what's in store for 2022?
DL: No, you won't. You probably know Baltimore 5/26/77. That's the next Dave's Picks, which is a great one, coming up in February of 2022, Dave's Picks Volume 41.
Aside from that, Jeffrey's started on number 42. We've already set in stone the box set for 2022, which is very exiting. I don't know if you picked up on this on any other interviews I've done this year but our 2022 release schedule in terms of variety, in terms of formats, was so packed we actually had to move a couple of things into 2023, which is a great problem to have because it indicates that we've got a really wonderful 2022 coming up. I'm really excited about that. I say this every year. If it sounds like it's a company line, it's not. I am very excited about next year.
Whether it's a Dave's Picks or a box set, or if you just look at what we've done the last few years in terms of whether it's a Record Store Day thing or whatever, we've always got something cool happening. 2022 is going to be one of those years that is going to be exciting to focus on.
JPG: Looking forward to it, as usual. As a fellow Deadhead it's always exciting to hear what comes out. Listening to this box set, it's just so interesting to hear what goes on from one night to the next and how the band handled things. It’s always amazing. You just feel like, "I'm on the right path. I chose the right band.”
DL: That's how I feel. Every day I'm grateful that I found this band or they found me, but I sure love listening to it on a daily basis.
