Grateful Dead

Sunshine Daydream: Veneta, 8/27/72, part 2 supplementary text

by Jesse Jarnow 

The Grateful Dead’s show at the Old Renaissance Fairgrounds in Veneta, Oregon in August 1972 is so revered and story-filled that it requires two full episodes of the Deadcast to capture. For more stories, links, and details, be sure to check out part 1. 

Though Jerry Garcia is known for playing a series of iconic guitars in the early ‘70s, the instrument he plays at Veneta is an otherwise unknown sunburst 1956 Stratocaster known to gear-heads as… the Veneta Strat. Mike Clem put together an outstanding history of Garcia’s instruments. 

Michele Lefkowith of the Adytum non-commune went on to an illustrious career as an anti-racist organizer, interviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1998. 

Our guest Camille Cole is the author of the forthcoming memoir, The Midnight Show: Bohemians, Byways & Bonfires, available from GladEye Press. 

And our guest Lawrence Roberts is the author of Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America's Biggest Mass Arrest. 

Miraculously, Sunshine Daydream flame-keeper (and director of Grateful Days) Adrian Marin was able to find a few bits of film featuring Al Strobel, who helped build the crow’s nest camera tower and film some of the show. Al later went on to star on Twin Peaks as Philip Gerard, the one-armed man. Al was in a car accident as a teen, immobilizing his left arm (which he keeps in his pocket here). It certainly doesn’t stop him from rockin’ the McCullough chain saw, though!