For nearly 40 years through portrait sessions and concerts San Francisco-based photographer Jay Blakesberg has captured many of our favorite musicians on film and digital formats.
While he’s best known for his work with the Grateful Dead and all of its post-Jerry projects including last summer’s Fare Thee Well concerts, Blakesberg has also pointed his lens at the wide-range of jamband artists – Phish, moe., Gov’t Mule, String Cheese Incident, Primus, Mother Hips and ALO among others – plus many of alternative rock’s biggest bands during their early club days. Altogether, he’s produced 10 coffee table books that deal with these subjects.
Blakesberg seems particularly enthusiastic about his 11th art photography volume and the direction that it brings him. Rather than concentrate on those onstage, his new book, Hippie Chick: A Tale of Love, Devotion & Surrender,” which is available at www.rockoutbooks.com, focuses on those in front of it.
From 1980 through to last May’s Summer Camp Music Festival, the 445 images in Hippie Chick are culled from indoor performance venues across America and festival fields where music is played rain or shine. The photos capture earth mothers and fairy princesses, hula hoopers and whirling dervishes, front row regulars and flower crown makers.
Developing this celebration of the feminine connection within the jamband scene further, Grace Slick provides historical perspective in the book’s foreword while Grace Potter writes the afterword. There’s also an Introduction and three essays – “Love,” “Devotion” and “Surrender” — each written by Edith Johnson, who, as Festival Girl, has documented her concert experiences through social media since 2012. She also interviewed 81 women from the live music scene who offer colorful anecdotes to accompany Blakesberg’s images.
“I really want this book to get a lot of mainstream media attention because I want to bring attention to this world outside. I want people to look at this book as visual anthropology, pop culture history. I want this to reach a bigger audience,” he explained.
Hippie Chick is one of four books compiled by Blakesberg this year. VIP ticket holders at this year’s Lockn’ received an art book that gathers his shots from the last two festivals at Oak Ridge Farm. Those who purchased VIP packages for Fare Thee Well shows will also receive a photo book of the event, while another version will be made available to the general public. Both are tentatively scheduled to be out shortly after Thanksgiving.
Last May, he released Guitars That Jam, which emerged out of his 2013 book, JAM. Both feature artists such as the Grateful Dead, Phish, Neil Young, Gov’t Mule, Widespread Panic and moe. among others.
Although Blakesberg plans to do book signings and appearances on both coasts this fall, he’s already thinking about his next project.
“My goal for late 2016 is to start doing some more writing. I have a lot of stories that I want to tell, and I’ve started a lot of those stories over the last eight to 10 years, and I have just not had the time to put into those stories. I’m not writing for anything in particular that I know of just yet but I just want to do something that’s creative but maybe a little bit different than what I’ve been doing, more of a creative exercise, and explore that and see if I can formulate these stories that I have in my head.
“A lot of these stories are things that have happened to me. Not that I’ve had any kind of a more unique life than anybody else but photography has brought me to a lot of places that have allowed me to meet unique people and be in unique places and I want to try and harness some of those stories into one place, into a cohesive piece and see where that takes it and takes me.”
JPG: You’ve had quite a busy year. In addition to your usual slate of concerts and festival dates, you put together four books – Guitars That Jam, _Lockn’, Fare Thee Well and now Hippie Chick. You also took photos at Gathering of the Vibes and Lockn’. What am I missing?
JB: I also did Mountain Jam and Summer Camp Music Festival. I’ve got Hardly Strictly Bluegrass coming up after Lockn’. I guess that’s it for festivals for me this year. No High Sierra Music Festival because it was the same weekend as Fare Thee Well in Chicago…
JPG: And, of course, the usual slate of concerts…
JB: Oh yeah. Tons of Terrapin Crossroads stuff. Phil [Lesh] has been doing these yearly celebrations. He started in 1965 and they’re playing a show from each year. That’s their 50th anniversary celebration at Terrapin Crossroads. Before every one of those shows I interview Phil about the year in Grateful Dead history that they’re performing that night. I’ve done around 15-17 interviews with Phil. Those are really fun.
There’s a whole bunch of these interviews with Phil on Youtube. Just look up Phil Lesh and Terrapin Crossroads History Lesson and type in a year. Most of them are up there. I know some of them are posted on my Facebook page.
If I were to recommend any to go look at, find the ones from 1972. We did two 1972 shows and one year we did a regular interview about the year and the next day we did a slide show of all the Europe ’72 slides. We had a special guest, Dennis Leonard, the recording engineer on Europe ’72, and he told some incredible stories about recording those shows. That’s the one to watch. All of them have been really great ones. We did one with Jack Casady. We talked about the Wall of Sound. The interviews are anywhere from 10-15 minutes long, and usually they’re attached to the whole show.
JPG: Are those going to be once a month, once every couple months?
JB: Up until now they’ve been anywhere from two or three times a month but now that we have Lockn’ and Phil jumped into all of his Capitol Theatre residencies stuff in October, right now there’s no yearly shows scheduled.
Phil, when did the very first show, said, “We’re going to get through all the years, starting in ’65 and going all the way to ’95. As long as it takes, that’s what it takes. If it takes two years to do it, we’re going to do it.” It’s not like it has to be finished by December. It’s just a matter of that’s their celebration of the 50th anniversary.
JPG: Back to books, let’s cover the ones that are going out to the VIPs first – Lockn’ and Fare Thee Well.
JB: After year one of Lockn’ Pete Shapiro, one of the co-owners of the festival along with Dave Frey, they were so excited about the festival and the photographs we captured that they said, “Let’s do a coffee table book.” So, we started playing around with the idea and laying some pages out. We were trying to figure out what would we do with this book? Originally, Pete was thinking that it would be given away to musicians, managers and artists that were part of Lockn’.
After we laid it out and looked at it, we felt like we should wait for two years because it would be a stronger book. After year two we felt the same way but we didn’t know whether this book should be for sale or just be for sale just at Lockn’. So, there were all sorts of scenarios being kicked around.
It might have been me that said, “Why don’t we do it as a VIP giveaway?” because there’s all this stuff you get as a VIP ticketholder — food and beverage and other perks. You might get a poster or reusable water bottle; all these different things that cost money to produce. But, we all get t-shirts, keychains, water bottles and anybody can buy a poster. So, we thought that we’d do something special and make this coffee table book and not make it for sale but make it part of the package for VIP ticket holders. So, it’s of the first two years and we hope to do a book every two years of Lockn’ and create a nice collection of these books.
Dave Schools wrote the foreward for the book. Dean Budnick and Mike Greenhaus each wrote an essay on each one of the years. Every single artist that performed at Lockn’ is represented in the book. We got pretty much everybody.
JPG: Now, will these at some point be available to the general public?
JB: Definitely will not be. We wanted to make it special to the VIP ticketholders. We wanted to make it a very unique thing for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see some of these floating around on eBay. Some people buy a pair of tickets for them and their spouse, and don’t need two books. So, they may give one away to a friend or maybe there’ll be some trading going on or sell them.
JPG: And what about the Fare Thee Well book?
JB: The Fare Thee Well book is a little bit different. We always went into the idea that the Fare Thee Well book would be a VIP ticket perk but we always knew that we wanted to sell this book because there would be such high demand. So many people would want this book as a souvenir. Once the shows were over and we saw what we had and started having conversations with the band, it all got approved for everybody. Then, me and Dan Berkowitz from CID Entertainment, who does the VIP packages, figured out ways to make the VIP book a little bit special. So, we have a couple cool things that are gonna happen along with the book that you’re gonna get as a VIP ticketholder that the average person who orders the book will not get. I’m not going to say what they are just yet.
We have them pretty much dialed in but we want it to be a surprise so people are happy about it.
We’re just finishing that book now. We felt it was important to get the book out before Christmas because, I think, it’ll make a great holiday gift. We’re proofing the book now. The goal is to have this book back from the printer by right around Thanksgiving and start shipping them to the VIP ticketholders right away and getting them into stores.
It’s a 208 page book. There’s over 300 photos in it. Bill Walton wrote the foreword. David Lemieux, the Grateful Dead archivist, wrote the afterword. Gary Lambert, one of the hosts of SiriusXM’s “Tales from the Golden Road,” wrote two spectacular essays, one is a general overarching historical essay about the band in general that covers 1965-2015 and then one is about the Fare Thee Well shows.
Jay at Lockn’ 2014- photo by Dean Budnick
JPG: You were at the Chicago and Santa Clara shows…
JB: Oh yeah. I was the official Fare Thee Well photographer. So, I was at all the rehearsal days, each of the stadiums, all of the shows and the individual portraits that were up during “Attics of My Life.” We shot those at one of the rehearsals a week before the shows.
JPG: Now, your other books that are available to everyone – Guitars That Jam and Hippie Chick …
JB: I had this idea to do this Guitars That Jam book that came about from when I did my JAM book because on the inside cover of the JAM book were all these close-up photos of these guitars. It got so much attention and people were digging those close-up detail shots that I thought I should do a book like that.
At the same time I had been talking about doing this Hippie Chick book. I didn’t think that they would happen in the same year but it just so happened that they did. Timing-wise, it worked out that way. Not the smartest idea to put out two books in the same year, let alone four. Typically, you do a book a year, a book every two years. I’m putting out eight years of work in one year.
Hippie Chick, I just felt strongly that that book needed to come out this year. It’s been kicking around in my head for a long time.
There’s a bunch of quotes in the book. We interviewed 81 women via email with a series of questions and that’s where all the quotes in the book came from. And then, there’s Edith Johnson who I met through Lockn’. She has a blog called Festival Girl. We talked and I brought her on board to collaborate and write the essays.
The book is technically called Hippie Chick: A Tale of Love, Devotion & Surrender. She wrote three beautiful, brilliant essays – one entitled “Love, one entitled “Devotion” and one entitled “Surrender.” Then, she wrote a great introduction as well.
I’m super-proud of this book. I think it’s beautiful. I love this book. I think people that are fans of live music are going to really connect with this book as well. There’s only one photograph of one person playing a guitar in the whole book and that’s Grace Potter. So, it’s a little bit of a departure.
JPG: In the press release you describe it as “visual anthropology.”
JB: I like to call what I do with all my fan stuff visual anthropology. Really, that’s what this is; anthropology being defined as the study of humankind. This is a tribe. Anthropology doesn’t just need to be studying a tribe in Africa that lives in the jungle or in the Amazon Rainforest or in the highest mountains of Tibet. Starting from the Haight-Ashbury 50 years ago in 1965, this is a tribe of people that needs to be documented and makes up an important part of pop culture history.
We’re rock ‘n’ roll people. You’re a rock ‘n’ roll guy. I’m a rock ‘n’ roll guy. This is our tribe. These are our people. This is our scene.
This book represents this one slice of this tribe and who they are and what it means to them to have live music in their lives on a regular basis. These are women who go to festivals all summer long and they go to concerts all year long. These are people that would take off all their vacation days from work so they can follow a band on tour — Phish, moe., the Dead, Phil, String Cheese, Widespread etc. Here are women explaining why and what it means to them in their own words with photos to go along with it.
JPG: Why did you feel that it was a book you needed to put out this year rather than wait?
JB: It was something that had been brewing in my head since I did JAM. So, it was on my schedule in general. It was on there to do before Guitars That Jam. I was already full steam ahead on it. The Lockn’ book isn’t for sale and I had no idea that we were going to be doing a Fare Thee Well book when I started Hippie Chick. It wasn’t even on the radar. When I started it Fare Thee Well wasn’t even announced and I didn’t know about it at the time.
Social media played a big part in it. I’ve been on Facebook since 2008 when my Traveling on a High Frequency book came out. I joined Facebook to try and help promote that book and get the word out. Obviously, Facebook has grown exponentially over the years since then. So, a few years ago I started posting a lot of pictures of all my old Deadhead friends from Dead tour in the ‘80s, and it really struck a nerve. It really resonated with people. I got a lot of really good positive feedback and people were excited to see those photographs. Then, as I kept shooting more festivals and I’d be shooting people raging at shows or hula hooping and I’d post those on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and those photos were also getting a lot of attention.
Sometimes, I’d put a photo of a band that was playing at one of these festivals on Facebook and get x-amount of views and then I’d put a picture of a beautiful woman hula hooping and get three times as many views or 10 times as many views. So, the light bulb goes off on top of my head, “Hmmmm…” And then you get comments from people, “I’d love to see a book of your Deadhead photos,” and I don’t really have a book of Deadhead photos. I just don’t think that I have that many photos to really make that work but I do have, between new photos and old photos, I feel like I do have enough [for what became Hippie Chick. So, I thought that if I combined what I have from the ‘80s and the ‘90s with the Grateful Dead and what I’m shooting today there could be a cool book here. I kept developing and fleshing out the idea from there. Then, I met Edith and we started talking about content and words.
Many years ago there was an article in BAM magazine. I actually shot many covers for them. Before I started working for them, I believe it was in the late ‘70s, Blair Jackson, who we all know as a Grateful Dead historian among other things was the editor of BAM, and he wrote an article about the Deadheads called “A [Strange] Tale of Love, Devotion and Surrender” or just “Love, Devotion and Surrender,” which is also the title of a Carlos Santana/John McLaughlin album. So, when I came up with the title of the book I emailed Blair and said, “I think I’m going to do this book and I wanted to get your blessing to use the title “Tale of Love, Devotion and Surrender.” He said, “Of course, you can use it but you know it was an album by Santana and John McLaughlin.” I said, “Of course, I know it but my reference to it in terms of what I’m doing is your article in BAM magazine.” He connected those words to Deadheads and I connected them to my book.
Then, one day I woke up and had an epiphany. “Let’s divide the book into three sections – Love, Devotion and Surrender. We started talking about photos that would fit in each section but any photo really fits in any section.
Then, I thought about writing an essay for each section, and even that there’s a lot of crossover. How do you first come to love a band? Then, how do you fall in love with that band? What do you love about that band and the scene?
Devotion is what do you do when you’re devoted to that band? You collect ticket stubs, live recordings and memorabilia and posters and buttons and you travel long distances or you wait in line all day so you can have your spot on the rail.
Then, you get to surrender and surrendering is letting go, letting loose and being in the moment, experiencing it where you’re tuning out the rest of the world and it’s just you and the music or you and your people, you and your family that you’re at the show with.
They really are applicable to what the visuals are because there’s all this love, all this devotion and all this surrender that happens. If you’re going to go see a band like Phish or moe. or String Cheese over and over and over and over again, you need to love what you’re doing and you need to be devoted to what you’re doing and you have to be devoted to seeing when tickets go on sale, arranging your travel and connecting with your friends and, of course, you need to surrender once you get there and just let it be.
JPG: With JAM, Guitars That Jam and Hippie Chick, it seems to be a trilogy.
JB: It kind of is. JAM and Guitars That Jam are certainly very much connected and Hippie Chick is also. I agree with that. I can see that. For me it was also really exciting to do a book that was not about music but is still about music. If we’re counting Lockn’ and Fare Thee Well – I believe Fare Thee Well is going to be my 11th coffee table book – and everyone of them has been about music and musicians, and now I have Hippie Chick, which is about music but not about musicians. This book is super special to me. This book is about fashion and passion and inspiration. Passion and inspiration for me are cornerstones of who I am and what my career is and what motivates me to do what I do because without that passion and without that inspiration why keep doing the same thing over and over again?
So, I get inspired by the bands that I see and the music that they’re playing and the instruments that they’re holding. I’m passionate about it but I’m also inspired by the passion that I see in the musicians or the fans in terms of hippie chick. So, it’s this reciprocal thing.
The girls are the muse for my lens. The girls are the muse for the band. The band is the muse for the women. It goes back and forth. Everybody is inspiring everybody. It’s not this groupie thing. It’s not about that at all. It’s a reciprocal thing. The women are fueling the energy of what’s going on with the band and the band is fueling the energy of the women. It’s a two-way muse. Then, there’s me with my camera. It’s the same thing. I’m inspired by turning my lens on the music and I’m also inspired by turning my lens on the women that are raging to the music.
JPG: That brings up this. When I’m taking photos I’m usually focused on what I want to do, making adjustments while still grooving, to some degree, to the music. You’re usually taking photos throughout the whole set, are you still able to enjoy the music?
JB: I enjoy every minute of it. For me I can’t go to a show and not take pictures. That bothers me more. I can’t enjoy a show if I’m not taking pictures of it. If I’m at a show where I can’t shoot or I’m not shooting for whatever reason all I see are photographs that are not being taken.
Here’s a quote from the book by Jenn Ritchie which I really love. “I see being on the rail or in the pit as a responsibility to be present, to take the energy and music they are sharing, to receive it, to life it, to meet it and push it and them to a higher more massive space and sound.” The picture is of her in the pit dancing at moe.down and moe. is onstage.
There’s another quote by her with the same kind of vibe. Think about how much energy is at a Dead show or a Phil show or a Furthur show or anything like that. “We are all here in the moment, lifting the energy of the space, encouraging the musicians to push the envelope, to give more, to play harder, to shred relentlessly and they do. I’ve witnessed it, and it heals me. It heals us all.” So, there’s that back and forth thing between the band and the audience.
Does that happen at a show where there are no people in the pit because it’s a big rock band and there’s that separation between audience and band? There might be 10,000 or 20,000 people with their hands in the air cheering and screaming, and there might be some people up in the front row singing along to every song but look at some of these jamband festivals where – even some of the smaller shows – the audience is more connected to the band. That energy is going back and forth. Have you ever been to a Phish show where every single person in the room is not standing up the entire show? Have you been to any jamband show where pretty much everybody is not standing up? It’s not like that at other big concerts. People sit. They go back and forth. It’s definitely not like that all the time.
That’s the thing about the jamband world. There’s this energy that’s coming from the audience that fuels the band and the energy from the band fuels the audience. It’s like this mobius strip that goes around and around, sort of like the Lockn’ logo.
