Grateful Dead

“Talk to me, David…you should talk to me a little bit in my solo…” Garcia was asking me to converse with him musically during the guitar solo he’d been playing after the first verse of Blue Yodel #9, the Jimmie Rodgers classic that we had never played together before.

“Hi, Jerry, nice solo you’re playing,” I quipped. We were kidding around, exchanging light-hearted banter like we always did when we got together in the small recording room that used to be my garage.

Some of the best music Jerry Garcia made in the 1990s came out of acoustic sessions at mandolin maestro David Grisman’s Marin County recording studio, Dawg Music. During Jerry’s lifetime, there were the warm and wonderful Jerry Garcia/David Grisman and Not for Kids Only; then several fine posthumous releases, including Shady Grove, So What, Been All Around This World and The Pizza Tapes.