4/16/2013

T-Woos-day night in the middle of April and Deadstein is marching through its spring season. This week we marched without Alan, who called in sick, and played with just one guitarist. This gave me an opportunity to play a bit more Jerry Garcia Band than we would have typically played if Alan was there. Rather than having a surprise guitarist, the night's surprise was a surprise drummer, in the form of Bill Sloan. He came to hang with us and worked on the PA system throughout the night. Additionally, he did a bit of the round-robin with both Scott and Lee, playing drums with us on several of our songs.

Shortly after 11pm, Bill left with Donna leaving the rest of us to close out the night. Scott Bayer, was our only other guest arriving late in the night only the have Carol listen to a song or two before the 12-midnight time hit us.

Trying to think of an opener at the time was a challenge and I snuck in the Slow Train Coming to get us going. I thought it was pretty good and definitely got us moving down the line. We all expected Rich to call for the Next Time You See Me Next, but we were surprised when the You Win Again Came out of his mouth. We began a Love in the Afternoon to get on the Garcia Band roll and that is about when Donna entered. From then on we performed lots of Jerry songs including a That's Alright Mama which Rich brought in the lyrics for. That had a nice feel to it although I lack the necessary dexterity to pull that one off too well.

I think the It's No Use had a real nice groovy feel to it, I know Donna and I don't necessarily agree to the definition of groovy, but I think this song may have approached it. Truckin' was Donna's last song with us as she left at the beginning of the end of the Truckin' jam and we explored that for a while after she left, taking it into the Other One. We didn't have too much time left at that point but we made the best of it with the Catfish and the Taxman in honor of April 15 which just passed us by. To close I happened to open right to the Good Night Irene and it was an omen. A good one at that as I really enjoyed that song.

For this week's music, Rich forwarded me the raw MP3 files from his 2 recorders and I did my best to mix them together. Hopefully I'll get back to some previous week's music that he gave me at the last jam. Till then, Freak in not out.