On Thursday (Sept. 3), to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s Blues for Allah, Devendra Banhart shared a cover of the Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower,” available as an Amazon Original.

Banhart’s “Franklin’s Tower” features his current touring band: Nicole Lawrence on guitar, Jeremy Harris on synths and Gregory Rogove providing drums and percussion. The track was mixed and produced by Noah Georgeson, and it was recorded remotely “in various studios and home studios around Los Angeles and Stinson Beach, CA.” (Quote via press release.)

Banhart shared a lengthy poem along with the release; read it below.

Listen to his cover of “Franklin’s Tower” here: http://amzn.to/DevendraBanhart

Banhart on “Franklin’s Tower”:
More than ever I find myself Fighting dread With the dead…
We chose “Franklin’s Tower” for its opening line, one of my favorite opening lines of all time: “In another time’s forgotten space Your eyes looked through your mother’s face”
This is the gift of the Dead,
The paradox of personal universality…
Wisdom found at the end of a maze,
The bliss of unconditional love and acceptance…
There’s a Dead for everyone…
Through the pandemic, I go on daily immersions into Blues for Allah, marveling at Phillip Garris’s eerie and alluring cover art,
Help/Slip/Frank guiding me through the weird underworld that the day has become, &
I feel at once remarkably insignificant and the most precious thing in the universe, A
wave, held in the ocean of my mother’s eyes… a child dancing, rolling away the dew…
Knowing Help is indeed on the way…