Back in October 2020, Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor wrote an essay that accompanied the Vinyl Me, Please Anthology The Story Of The Grateful Dead. There he explained how he eventually came to be a Grateful Dead fan, stating in part, “I think the music of the Grateful Dead has remained so constant in my life—even as my taste has evolved and other music has fallen away—because of how genuine it feels, and how vulnerable. To know even a little bit of the Dead’s history, crisscrossed by so much triumph and weird luck and tragedy, is to begin to understand their journey as something akin to a Greek myth, or perhaps an American crossroads tale in which the singer bargains for fame and fortune and poetry in exchange for his soul.”

Back in 2016, Hiss Golden Messenger visited Relix and performed “Brown-Eyed Woman” This is the same song he contributed to the Day Of The Dead compilation that came out the same year.

A few weeks ago, I found myself with enough time and bandwidth to actually think about a project that I’ve always wanted to accomplish. Namely, recording some of my favorite tunes by The Grateful Dead and somehow releasing them during the Days Between, those high holy days between August 1st and 9th (Jerry Garcia was born on the 1st and died on the 9th, 53 years later) when Dead fandom reaches a sort of midsummer poetic zenith. I started with “They Love Each Other,” a Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter composition that originally appeared in recorded form on Garcia’s solo album Reflections in 1976. Being as I was also on a bit of a Waylon Jennings jag, I wondered whether I could approach TLEO like Waylon might, ergo in straight time, as opposed to swung, and with plenty of phaser, mandolin and fiddle. It worked and, importantly, it kept feeling easy, so I kept things in the country zone, playing the legendary Garcia/Hunter tune “Dire Wolf” as though we were on the bandstand at a VFW Hall on a Friday night, singing through the cigarette smoke and spilled beer. Incidentally, I recommend everyone put themselves in that scenario at some point in their lives if you can.

Friends like Omar Ruiz-Lopez, Matt McCaughan, Matt Booth, Mikaela Davis, Kelly McFarling, Joe MacPhail, and John Lee Shannon came over like it was no big deal, shooting the shit, drinking espresso, telling stories and laughing, and I realized, “Oh, right. This is what it’s actually about, hanging with my community. The Dead songs are just one way to get there.” When distance became a bit of an obstacle, friends like Chris Boerner, Rich Hinman, and the mighty BERTHA choir (frontline of the baddest drag Grateful Dead cover band in the land) sent me tracks across space and time that sounded like we were all in the room together. When it came time to mix it, engineer Clay Blair of the great Boulevard Recording Studio in Hollywood offered his services like it was preordained, and my dear friend Lou Hazel created the artwork based off a truly mangy text I sent him. Actually, I might have asked him to have the skeleton and wolf making out, but he made it better.

All this to say, yes, I love the Grateful Dead. But, I was also reminded, yet again, that community trumps all. Pulling in the same direction, with joy as the engine, especially in troubling times, is the greatest feeling ever. May we all, with pure hearts and electric minds, continue to find ourselves among our people. That’s what I felt as I shepherded these songs to completion, anyhow. Huzzah!

Subscribers to his Substack can hear the two songs.