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After a swing by means of the Deep South, they turned north, heading to Monroe’s Brown County Jamboree in Bean Blossom, Ind. Reintroducing themselves to the bandleader, Garcia simply couldn’t pull the set off and ask for an audition, later saying he’d been “too hen.” Instead, they continued east, and a parking-lot jam with the New York mandolinist David Grisman in Pennsylvania proved to be the start of a lifelong friendship. Five years later, Grisman’s mandolin would animate one of many Grateful Dead’s best-known recordings, “Friend of the Devil,” and they might proceed to collaborate occasionally for the remainder of Garcia’s life, most notably with “Old & within the Way.”
They cut up up in Bloomington, the place Rothman stayed on for the summer time and ultimately did land a gig with Monroe, whereas Garcia drove again to Palo Alto. Noting that their journey was Garcia’s first past the West Coast, Rothman questioned if Garcia’s lack of ability to ask for an audition wasn’t a lot an absence of nerve as a deeper discomfort. “He simply turned pale when he noticed whites-only ingesting fountains,” Rothman, who had been horrified on the sight of them the 12 months earlier than, mentioned, “and I believe that helped to seal the deal on him saying this isn’t my tradition.”
Katz mentioned there was a sense of failure for Garcia, “as a result of he had set off desirous to play with Bill Monroe and realized that simply wasn’t going to occur and that he needed to get dwelling. Partly to get again to us, however primarily to determine what got here subsequent.”
An reply appeared when a Boston-based group, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, carried out in close by Berkeley. A quick blip on the folks revival scene, jug bands performed free, rollicking variations of Depression-era tunes, typically specializing in previous novelty data and bawdy blues. Katz remembered going with Garcia to listen to Kweskin each evening. “They had been simply so pleasant and enjoyable and type of loopy,” she mentioned. “I believe Jerry wanted a launch and this was simply excellent.”
In quick order Garcia and a number of other associates together with Ron McKernan, often known as Pigpen, and Bob Weir shaped Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, an acoustic band that later went electrical, altering their identify first to the Warlocks and later to the Grateful Dead.
And then?
“And then,” Katz mentioned, “got here LSD.”
