"Jerry and i met a long time ago when we both tried to learn how to play bluegrass music." "And we both did, somewhat." "Then we formed our own styles because bill monroe said the best thing you can do is go get your own style." "So jerry, he started the "dead" style of music." "He's the pioneer of that." "David, he started "dawg" music." "The last time we got together we played bluegrass." "Now we try to fuse our styles." "So we have a new tune that's kind of a combination of dead and dawg or as we call it, "grateful dawg."" "They were like two peas in a pod." "There they were, beards of a feather." "They were born out of the same cosmic egg." "They looked similar and did crazy things the same way." "How they'd grown up paying attention to music the sum of those parts created an awesome duet." "There was a communication that was soulfully connected." "Each knew where the other was coming from." "David tightened jerry up." "Jerry loosened david up." "Friends that are great musicians." "They had a musical friendship." "They played music they talked about music, they listened to music." "I've traditionally been more of a disciplinarian." "Jerry was more an in-the-moment type guy, and everything was cool." "So he kind of adopted a little bit of my attitude and i adopted a little of his." "It was okay that he was his way but when we got together, we tried to be more like each other." "Jerry and i met in 1964 at a place called sunset park in west grove, pennsylvania." "We were both there to hear bill monroe and his bluegrass boys." "He came from california, i came from new jersey." "People would come to hear the entertainers but during intermission they'd go in the parking lot and pick." "Then they'd hear bill monroe come on and then they'd go back." "An awful lot of friends were made in the parking lot." "People would jam, swap instruments." "I believe we did some picking then." "I knew who david was." "I had friends that had played with him." "There was the new york crowd, the cambridgelboston crowd." "There was a chicago crowd." "There was a berkeley scene, and l.a." "These people were aware of each other." "Somebody would make a pilgrimage." "Eric thompson came out to new york from berkeley." "David and jerry's roots came from the same place." "They both loved the music from the south, the bluegrass tunes." "When they got together, that came out together too." "Jerry had that little lope." "You'd think he ain't gonna make it back there but he always hit on the right spot to give it dynamics." "Others wouldn't have taken those risks spending your career playing an electric guitar and then playing banjo or acoustic guitar." "Beautiful instruments came into jerry's hands through his connection with david." "Stemming from their love of music." "It was fun to give jerry stuff." "We gave him that huge banjo book." "It's, like, this big." "It was $500." "One day, dave and i brought it." ""Here's a present." "It weighs a ton."" " Nineteen pounds." " One book, just on banjos." "He was, like, "wow!" trying to blow away the guy who has everything." "He turned us on to lots of stuff." " Real pleasure." " An endless source of imagination." "We had a banjo picker who was a very deep person and multifaceted in his expressions in life." "And he could give nicknames." "He gave good nicknames." "He gave one to vassar." "Vassar smokes a pipe a lot so he was called clamp." " Where is my pipe?" " Or clem, depending." "Me, of course, i was red, for "panama red."" "John kahn played the bass, and both were called mule." "And the mandolin picker, he was known as david "dawg" grisman." "The man who gave us the names, his nickname was spud." "Spud boy." "Jerry "spud" garcia." "When we met, david said, "garcia lives just up the hill."" ""He likes to play banjo." We walked up there and there's a little sign that says "sans souci."" "Which, i think, in french means "no problem."" "And there was this guy with a beard and a blue dungaree shirt and jeans on and sandals picking banjo, coming to the gate to greet us." "That's when the band was born." "After a few hours of picking, he said, "we're old  in the way."" "I thought the world of all of them." "What i really liked about it is, everybody got along so well." "And everybody wanted to play and to rehearse." "And it's hard to find that in a group of people." "That anytime anybody said rehearse, let's go." "We both lived in stinson beach." "So was peter rowan." "We started playing bluegrass for fun." "One day jerry said:" ""I can get us gigs." "We need a bass player."" "He invited john kahn, his bass player." "He also played upright bass." "That was the genesis of our little band." "I knew i was gonna get together with old  in the way." "I thought, " maybe we will go out and play bluegrass festivals."" "People ask, " how is it playing with guys with long hair?"" "I don't notice their long hair." "I notice how they play, what kind of people they are what kind of heart they have." "That's what matters." "It's interesting how old  in the way approached bluegrass." "We decided to go ahead and play modern and traditional songs and original songs with the same approach that we played old songs." "In a way, it was too loose for me." "I'd played in tight bluegrass bands." "I'd played with the kentucky colonels and red allen and i had this real discipline for bluegrass." "David was more the leader of the music of old  in the way." "David could be tortured in a moment if the music wasn't right." "Jerry would say, "well, it's just another note, another set."" "We did a lot of things with bluegrass, and you can tell by the effect it had." "Just 10 songs from a live tape spawned a whole generation's interest in bluegrass." "To us, it was just a casual thing." "The record didn't come out till '75, two years after it was all over." "So this band had a career without ever really existing in real life." "My dad bumped into jerry." "They hadn't seen each other in 12 years because of a silly business thing that had gone awry that had nothing to do with them." "But you know how you have situations with friends." "The more time goes by, the more you're embarrassed to contact the other." "It's amazing they never saw each other being in similar circles." "We both were booked on a session for pete sears a local musician." "Sure enough, jerry comes walking up the steps and it was... it was like nothing had passed between them." "We just had a long talk for about two hours or something and kind of re-connected." "We saw each other again at the village music christmas party." "David credits that as the initial genesis when the garcialgrisman band idea came to them." "So david had been talking to me for several years about playing at one of my parties." "When the garcialgrisman thing happened i thought, "that'd be fun." "Want to do a christmas party?"" "He said, "let me talk to jerry." A week later he said, "we're on."" "At my parties we had lots of musicians." "It wasn't just playing for your friends." "It was playing in front of a lot of musical peers." "It was a private function but where there's a will, there's a way." "It resonated so deeply for me." "By hook or crook, i had to be there." "They wanted to do a duo but then thought of a rhythm section." "I said, "well, i have a pretty neat rhythm section." "It's acoustic."" "Jerry said, "let's try that."" "We went through an audition." "I think jerry wanted to check it out." "He wasn't familiar with what jim and i were doing or sonically how it would tie in." "I guess jerry dug it." "It was fun to see jerry taking cues from others." "He was looking at all of us, and we were making it all happen." "He was a true member of the band and he was ready to listen to what we were doing and make that part of what he was doing." "For me to see him, especially at that point in his career in the intimacy of the sweetwater with david grisman, doing material that was up my alley it was heaven." "They'd been apart for so long." "They revisited each other musically and emotionally, and it came through." "They got back together at a time when they both needed it." "They both needed to do that together." "That was destiny." "Jerry said, "we should make a record."" "I asked him, "aren't you under contract?"" "He said, "no."" "I said, "well, i just started my own little label."" "He said, "we'll do it." It was simple." "Jerry had a huge fan base." "But david was well-respected for the music he had created." "So when jerry came to the studio, he wanted to put this stuff on tape whether it was the jazz or bluegrass or jimmy cliff songs." "He wanted that music to come out in this form." "He appreciated what david was doing." "The fact that his work was calling attention to it and allowing these other pieces to come out made him feel great." "Jerry went back and forth between electric and acoustic." "He had fun playing both instruments." "It was a chance to play acoustic music on a high level." "Jerry's one of those few guys whose tone is the same on acoustic and electric." " He had..." " and it's him." "It came through on both." "It's rare that somebody can do that." "I never considered myself an acoustic player." "I don't enjoy what i'm playing." "But now i'm developing the foundation." "I like the stuff we're coming up with." "Garcialgrisman was about everything." "It wasn't just bluegrass." "It was all the musical idioms and styles that they both enjoyed tremendously." "It's american music." "It runs across a lot of different styles from rockabilly to modern jazz to old-time and bluegrass and a little swing." "Gypsy, rock 'n' roll, reggae music whatever they felt like playing." "They played well off of each other." "As a musician, i can really hear that." "That's hard for me to explain but when two great musicians get together, that's what happens." "Both david and jerry were musicologists." "They wanted to feel they were part of a tradition." "They'd unearth these things and share them with people." "This was music we'd appreciated for a long time and not tried to play." "We learned whaling ballads from a.l. Lloyd and ewan maccoll who made a few obscure records in the late '50s and early '60s." "They were called blow boys blow and thar she blows." "It was just great stuff." "You know, old sea chanteys." "The sea chanteys are outrageous." "I've never tried that." "But i love the music." "We both share a love for all different kinds of styles." "So we're trying all kinds of things." "It all feels good." "This is their connection with each other." "It's what brought them together in old  in the way and it's what reunited them years later with garcialgrisman." "You play some acoustic music and play those old tunes." "You go back before you were born." "It's an older style of music where the music ethos was completely different." "Jerry's very consistent with his emotional output." "He always has a great deal of depth." "He might hit a clinker, he might forget some words but the emotional content of what he's conveying in that music is, to me, pretty deep." "He had a way of really telling a story with those tunes, those ballads." "He took on the character of the tune." "That was the biggest knockout." "Those songs were written before the recording industry." "Sung in town squares." "They were songs of the day, written by people." "The songs that interested jerry were the subtle ones that had to do with aspects of life that we don't really think of." "When you go to sea on a whaler you'd sing for people far away from their loved ones." "I just think that was something that rooted jerry in experiences that he didn't have in his life." "It was the role of music in the richness of real life." "Not performing life, but real life, and how it sustained people." "Not for kids only was an idea i had." "I thought it would carve a new niche in kids' music." "Actually, the concept of kids' music... there shouldn't be a distinction." "Kids are people." "I think that's why we came up with that title and that's why so many people who aren't kids like the record." "It's really not for kids only, but it is for kids too." "It exposed jerry garcia of the grateful dead who was known for many things, but not for turning children on to music." "David tried to get jerry to do kids' songs but he said he didn't want to because of this patriarchal image people foist on him." "He didn't want to feed that." "I remember that we wanted him to do the cover art for not for kids only." "One day he was there, and he sat in your dad's studio and he drew a preliminary sketch for not for kids only." "He had to leave." "We'd say, " before you leave draw a freight train." "Draw a little bumblebee."" "That's how the artwork to not for kids only kind of happened." "Personally, this is also kind of a reaction to the revisionist revamping of children's songs that's current in the children's music world." "Well, anyway there's a lot of nice, traditional songs that kids haven't heard." "A generation of kids, at least one, that haven't heard these nice songs." "How would you describe these?" "What are they?" "Bloodthirsty, violent." "American, you know." "I said, " hey, jerry, you want to try this kids idea?"" "And he said, "okay." I said, " i got this book with 2,000 songs." "There's 'freight train'."" ""Oh, yeah, 'freight train's' cool."" "So we did "freight train," then we did "jenny jenkins."" "We did three or four songs and they came real easy and they sounded good, just the two of us." "And then jerry said, "yeah, this could be cool."" "The studio was so relaxed, it felt like someone's basement." "As kids, we'd play in a basement and have fun." "I imagine that it was like that for them." ""Arabia" was interesting, a kind of collaboration with everyone." "It came out of the drama happening in the real world at the time." "That gulf war was going on, and i had this middle eastern line." "I just tossed it out to jerry." "We played the parts that were there." "Jim knew this cuban song." "He threw that in for his bass solo." "It's just a hodgepodge of related things." "We kind of stitched this all together and it worked." "We did about 44 sessions." "There was never an agenda." "Never a planned agenda." "It wasn't, "today, we'll record..." we never knew what we'd do." "But there was so much spontaneity with how it would just evolve." "We'd sit out in the basement, around in chairs, and play." "Then they'd go, "great."" "We'd take five steps into the recording room and turn the tape on." "Every time we got together was a recording session." " Are we starting again?" " Yeah." "No, i mean, we will be." " Say when." " The tape was always rolling." "It was very relaxed." "A lot of great stuff musically, and everything between takes." "That's the attitude, man." " Yeah, no matter what." " We got a door open here." "No matter what, we're ready for you." " Even if nothing's plugged in." " Fuck, yeah, man." "They wanted to expand the tune." "I played this piece that i learned, which was a cuban revolutionary song." "I played it as we worked on the tune." "I was just messing with it." "They wanted to incorporate it into the piece." "We knew it'd be a long opus-type thing that would tell a story." "It didn't matter that it was arabic in nature." "We just made it musical." "It's all like african music." "That's why we're trying to get over there with this song." "Right." "Incursions into the middle east." "Yes, sirree." "You want one take in a tune like "arabia," which kept changing." "It kept building." "That was tough." "You do one take and then you do one more." " And the next." " We did it in sections." "We do stagger it." "Wait until we're all in before you make the trip." "You've done that." " I mean, here's the thing." " He has been." "I do this." "I do that once." "Now, the next time i won't play that part." "That's your part." "I play harmony, but that time i had to play it three times by myself, which i would cut out." "I mean, by that time... whatever." "I think we all understand each other." "Dave, how are we doing for tape?" " You ready?" " Ready, ernie." "Yes, sir." "I mean, yes, sir." "My approach doesn't work with something like "arabia."" "It's complex." "It has lots of parts to it and it wants to be very precise." "It's good to have something rigorous." "It's mental discipline." "You know?" "That's something that i shied away from most of my life." "Just sliding along on good luck." "The contrast between your approach and jerry's was great." "You would tend to want to push and jerry would say:" ""That's great." "That's good."" "So, in your differences you had a great dynamic in the way you sort of directed the sessions." "David would start things out faster than jerry expected." "Jerry would say, "are you kidding?"" "We balanced being supportive and then kind of ribbing each other." "They would bicker and have spats about what kind of... if there was an introduction here, or whatever." "But they'd support each other." "You played a good solo though." "Whatever." "We sat across from each other." "I felt this kind of electric wave going back and forth, or something like that." "It was really cool." "It was just being in sync, you know." "With jerry, it was a collaboration." "I didn't take that much initiative or try to organize anything any more than he did." "It would have been pointless because we were having too much fun." "I mean, we still got down to a lot of music." "David's a hard worker." "No doubt." "Anybody in his band is a hard worker, including jerry." "David made an effort to keep it very relaxed and comfortable." "There was no pressure for jerry to be here or if he didn't wanna be here, no big deal." "Whatever jerry wanted was fine." "That was the premise." "Once he got jerry here..." ""how about we do it this way?"" "I was surprised at how many takes jerry would do." "I'd usually leave it up to him and he ended up being a perfectionist." "I'd like you to meet my friend jim." "Jim kerwin." "Jim's drinking a white seltzer." "Jim, are you enjoying your beverage?" "It's a vanilla cream too." " What do you think?" " It's like the rock group cream." " I'd like you to meet my friend jerry." " How are you?" "He's a little weird." " And this is david." " I'd like you to meet my friend david." " This is david's hair." " Turn this way." "This is the padded cell that we play in." "We've just been to arabia." "This piece is a bitch." "At first i didn't know whose video it was." "It turned out to be mine." "In terms of ideas for it, i thought of how the song struck me more than an image for jerry and dave." "We put them in an interesting setting with many characters." "We got them in suits and made a gangster motif." "They just had to perform." "I was as surprised as anybody at what that they let us do." "I remember there was some haircutting." "They put a lot of hours into this project." "I don't think either of them woke up one day and said, " let's spend 12 hours on a set."" "The neat thing about jerry and david doing this video is, it's them together." "They were together musically, but they didn't have a lot of time to kill all day swapping stories." "They were both very encouraging and not just on this project... to do more videos and keep working on what you love." "Watching them doing that it was inspiring that life could have those possibilities for me too." " That's a good one." " I love that rhythm." "That's a good song." "Shit, i love those songs, man." "They have freaky melodies." "It sounded great." "I gotta get these lyrics." "Certain amount of them anyway." "Tell you what, man, you can have the whole book." "I've gotta get it out of here." "That's the last good tune in it." "We've burned it out." "There's nothing left." "I'll type out the ones you want." "That'll be good." "I'll practice the good ones." " You need a pencil?" " Yeah." "The two of them together created a big, comfortable living-room space." "And you felt that feeling of the easy chair and the relaxed atmosphere." "I think jerry coming over and hanging with my dad was... it was a safe haven." "He could come and there was no pressure to be jerry." "He had a burden being the king of the deadheads." "Jerry garcia of the grateful dead, icon of '60s american rock 'n' roll." "Here, he was just one of the guys." "It was about hanging out, playing music, talking about music and eating some food and doing some more of all of the above." "He used to call me "squirt." Just squirt, for short, of sam." "I don't remember him calling me that, but my dad's always saying it." "I think he loved the idea that it was at a home david's home, and david's family was there." "It was just something very warm and cozy." "Jerry enjoyed that david had created that." "I think we should do a project like my bluegrass thing but get different guys to do tunes with." "I'm into doing that in the fullness of time." "That's the only problem, getting hunks of uninterrupted time." " It's really a bitch." " Right." "If i knew in advance certain days, i could set things up." " Right." " Whatever." "We'll do it." "It'll all come together at various times." "At the end of this next year i'll have four or five months." "I don't wanna put any pressure on you." "No pressure." "I love it." "It's good for me." "Jerry said, "we can do this for the rest of our lives."" "And we did." "We were always in the process." "But once he died, i realized, "well, this is it."" " You need something?" " No, i was just remembering something." "He liked all genres of music." "He was just a great guy." "When we lost him, it was beyond tears for me." "I knew that a part of me and a part of him were just lost." "He'll still always be inside of me, but i just... that's a shame." "A lot of great music has been played in this house but something about jerry and david together made it possibly more fun than we have ever experienced in this house." "It was a place that they went to in the studios or the warfield where they both left their worlds." "David was a little more in his world." "Still, they had another world that they created together." "It sounds like they couldn't wait to be together each time to play together." "Whether they said it or not, it comes off that way." "Jerry saw something in david that resulted in this flowering of garcia's music through david's efforts in jerry's last years." "David's pushed me a long way now." "I'm happy with my progress." "And insofar as we keep doing this, it keeps challenging me." "I hope to get better yet." "Jerry left behind quite a legacy." "Thousands of grateful dead tunes and recordings." "But there was a whole part of him that hadn't been expressed the way he wanted." "It came out in those last five years." "He expressed that with my dad, and it's on tape for all to share and listen." "That's jerry." "I pretend like he didn't go anywhere." "I won't see him anymore." "I keep all those good aspects, hanging out with me, you know." "I could imagine how he would react to something." "I just adopted a philosophy of "take up a little slack, become a little more jerry-like.""