The train keeps on rolling for Grateful Dead fans. The band have prepped another vintage live release in their ongoing Road Trips series and a special reissue of late frontman Jerry Garcia's live acoustic forays in the late 1980s.
Volume 4 of Road Trips starts with a three-disc set capturing the band's two nights at The Big Rock Pow Wow, an outdoor festival held on a Seminole reservation in Florida in May 1969. Recorded months after the Fillmore West shows expertly captured on Live Dead, the pair of nights captured on this release are at once classic Dead yet still promised to be full of surprises, including some amusing stage banter and uniquely arranged set lists.
The other big release for Deadheads is a set of material from The Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. Garcia's project, a softer folk-acoustic band that paired Garcia with core members David Nelson and Sandy Rothman (who played with Garcia in The Black Mountain Boys in the early 1960s), opened for Garcia's electric band throughout 1987 and, by the next year, had released an album's worth of the material they'd recorded on the road.
Dead.net's newest release pairs that newly-remastered album alongside Ragged But Right, a new compilation of more of those tunes. JGAB: Complete Repertoire adds a newly-written essay on this phase in Garcia's career. (They can also be purchased separately.)
For info on both sets, follow the jump.
The Grateful Dead, Road Trips Vol. 4, No. 1: Big Rock Pow Wow '69 (Grateful Dead, 2010)
Disc 1: Live @ the Big Rock Pow Wow, Hollywood, FL - 5/23/1969
- Hard to Handle
- Dark Star
- St. Stephen
- The Eleven
- Turn on Your Lovelight
Disc 2: Live @ the Big Rock Pow Wow, Hollywood, FL - 5/24/1969 (Part I)
- Introduction
- Turn on Your Lovelight
- Doin' That Rag
- He Was a Friend of Mine
- China Cat Sunflower
- The Eleven
- Death Don't Have No Mercy
Disc 3: Live @ the Big Rock Pow Wow, Hollywood, FL - 5/23/1969 (Part II)
- Morning Dew
- Me and My Uncle
- Yellow Dog Story
- Alligator
- Drums
- St. Stephen
- Feedback
- We Bid You Goodnight
Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, JGAB: Complete Repertoire (Grateful Dead, 2010)
Disc 1: Ragged But Right
- Ragged But Right
- Short Life of Trouble
- I Ain't Never
- Trouble in Mind
- Drifting with the Tide
- Band introductions
- Deep Elem Blues
- Rosa Lee McFal
- Two Soldiers
- If I Lose
- Bright Morning Star
- Goodnight Irene
- It's a Long, Long Way to the Top of the World
- Drifting Too Far From the Shore
- Turtle Dove
Tracks 1-12 recorded at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York City - 10/15/1987-10/31/1987
Tracks 13-15 recorded at the Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles and Warfield Theatre, San Francisco - November 1987
Disc 2: Almost Acoustic (originally issued in 1988)
- Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
- Deep Elem Blues
- Blue Yodel #9
- Spike Driver's Blues
- I've Been All Around This World
- I'm Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail
- I'm Troubled
- Oh, the Wind and Rain
- The Girl at the Crossroads Bar
- Oh, Babe, It Ain't No Lie
- Casey Jones
- Diamond Joe
- Gone Home
- Ripple
Shaun says
It may seem to hard to believe, but Dead fans (like me) often get frustrated at the pace live material gets released. For some reason, we can't get enough! Having said that, this appears to be some great stuff.
Almost Acoustic was a fine album that's been out of print far too long. The companion release will be nice addition to that, but the real gem here is the 1969 stuff. There really hasn't been enough 60's live Dead released, and especially given how transformative the years 66-70 were for the band. I'm looking forward to hearing this show!