11/22/2016

On the last jam before Thanksgiving, we decided ahead of time to play an anniversary tribute to the gigantic 11-22-1972 show from Austin Municipal Auditorium. This is a 25 song show, though many of the songs short ones, so we decided to try to tackle it. With it being the week of the Thanksgiving, there was a lot of traffic coming into the city and it didn't give us all the time we needed to do the entire show so some alterations were on tap for the night.

With the addition of Stagger Lee to the rhythm section this week, we had two drummers to accompany the two guitarists, Andy and I, because Alan was an early morning cancellation. We played in the big studio and I played through a Boogie III, Trister had a Fender Deluxe Reverb, Rich didn't have the standard PZM, but some other Piano microphone, and Scott's kick drum didn't have a microphone hole in the skin so it's recording came out a bit flabby. Otherwise, the recording sounds good as I was able to quickly mix the beast in just one day in time for Thanksgiving. Enjoy.

In similar fashion to recordings of 11-22-1972 show,the Promised Land wasn't recorded, though they played it. We took that opportunity to open the night with the Promised Land and soundcheck the recording with it. We played the Promised Land without Andy who was still heading in at that time. Even, so, we started a little late and Andy arrived right at the end of the Promised Land, he got set up and we dove into the Sugaree. Andy was obviously listening to the Sugaree on the way in as he gave us Jerry's great note at the opening of the first lead.

We just pushed on from there and did an uncharacteristically excellent Mexicali Blues for Deadstein. Yea-ha!. As we were rushing the songs along, we finished out Deadstein first set at 10:05pm with a hastened Birdsong presenting itself at a svelte 10'52". Our second set started with the Playing' in the Band which was also was a bit hastened presenting itself as a svelte 13-minute song. It was during the Playing' the my bother Jay came in with 3 other friends he just had dinner with. We cut it a bit short to say hello to them. We played the Casey Jones for them, which closed the Austin, TX show's first set and pulled of a surprisingly coherent Greatest Story Ever Told in '72 fashion with the extended St. Stephen style lead. From there we cast off into a 35-minute 4-song jam where we cut out repeats from the Austin show (Other One, Ramble on Rose and Big River) that we had recently played and would have disrupted the flow. Instead I closed the section with the Sugar Magnolia which seemed to make so much sense. It left us to play the Brokedown to complete the night of Deadstein, the the Austin Dead show continued on with a few more songs. We certainly gave it a great and grateful effort. Speaking of which, Happy Thanksgiving to all and ...

Making America Grateful Again

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