212-475: Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician who was the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and a vocalist with the rock band Grateful Dead , which he co-founded and which came to prominence during the counterculture of the 1960s . Although he disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader of the band. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as
424-500: A Funk & Wagnalls dictionary to an entry for " Grateful dead ". The definition for "Grateful dead" was "a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial". The band's first reaction was disapproval. Garcia later explained the group's reaction: "I didn't like it really, I just found it to be really powerful. [Bob] Weir didn't like it, [Bill] Kreutzmann didn't like it and nobody really wanted to hear about it." Despite their dislike of
636-609: A diabetic coma for several days in July 1986, leading to the cancelation of all concerts in the fall of that year. Garcia recovered, the band released In the Dark in July 1987, which became its best-selling studio album and produced its only top-40 single, " Touch of Grey ," Also, that year, the group toured with Bob Dylan , as heard on the album Dylan & the Dead . Mydland died in July 1990 and Vince Welnick , former keyboardist for
848-511: A jug band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. Around this time, the psychedelic drug LSD was gaining popularity. Garcia first began using LSD in 1964; later, when asked how it changed his life, he remarked: "Well, it changed everything [...] the effect was that it freed me because I suddenly realized that my little attempt at having a straight life and doing that was really a fiction and just wasn't going to work out. Luckily I wasn't far enough into it for it to be shattering or anything; it
1060-500: A Beautiful Day , and many more. In 1995 Garcia played on three tracks for the CD Blue Incantation by guitarist Sanjay Mishra , making it his last studio collaboration. Throughout the early 1970s, Garcia, Lesh, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart , and David Crosby collaborated intermittently with MIT -educated composer and biologist Ned Lagin on several projects in the realm of early ambient music ; these include
1272-643: A Tsnungwe community had re-established around the ancient principal village of łe:lding at the mouth of the South Fork of the Trinity River. The tribe is still surviving there today and is recognized by both Humboldt County and Trinity County. The federal government considers the Tsnungwe to be a "previously recognized" tribe. The Tsnungwe Council is working towards having their federally recognized tribal status restored. The Chimariko people lived along
1484-475: A brief correspondence, he began his relationship with her in mid-1974. This gradually strained his relationship with Adams and culminated in Garcia leaving Adams for Koons in late 1975. The end of his relationship with Koons in 1977 precipitated a brief reconciliation with Adams, including the reestablishment of their household. However, she did not agree with the guitarist's persistent use of narcotics and moved with
1696-513: A couple of records featuring electric instrumentation. Grateful Dead members have said that it was after attending a concert by the touring New York City band the Lovin' Spoonful that they decided to "go electric" and look for a "dirtier" sound. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir (both of whom had been immersed in the American folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s), were open-minded about
1908-668: A few albums. Hart has toured with his world music percussion ensemble Planet Drum as well as the Mickey Hart Band. Kreutzmann has led several different bands, including BK3 , 7 Walkers (with Papa Mali ), and Billy & the Kids . Donna Godchaux has returned to the music scene, with the Donna Jean Godchaux Band , and Tom Constanten also continues to write and perform music. All of these groups continue to play Grateful Dead music. In October 2014, it
2120-489: A few miles of Weaverville , the seat of Trinity County and the main population center of the area. It then turns northwest and receives Browns Creek, passes Junction City , and receives Canyon Creek and the North Fork Trinity River at Helena . Further west it passes the former mining settlement of Big Bar and receives Price Creek. It then enters a deep gorge, which provides the route for Highway 299 ,
2332-607: A folk music coffeehouse operated by Stanford Medical Center doctors Stuart "Stu" Goldstein and David "Dave" Shoenstadt on University Avenue in Palo Alto (1963). As the Warlocks, the band's first show was at Magoo's Pizza Parlor, at 639 Santa Cruz Avenue in suburban Menlo Park , on May 5, 1965, now a Harvest furniture store. The band continued playing bar shows, like Frenchy's Bikini-A-Go-Go in Hayward and, importantly, five sets
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#17327943771202544-442: A former girlfriend from the early 1960s, reentered Garcia's life for a brief period. Meier claimed that Garcia had considered her to be the "love of his life" and proposed to her during a Hawaiian vacation shortly after their relationship recommenced. Garcia's "love of his life" sentiment was not reserved for one lover, as he expressed the same feelings to several other women in his life. At Garcia's 1995 funeral, Koons declared that she
2756-798: A great deal of their character to his experience playing Scruggs style banjo, an approach which often makes use of note syncopation , accenting , arpeggios , staccato chromatic runs , and the anticipation of the downbeat . Garcia had a distinctive sense of timing , often weaving in and out of the groove established by the rest of the band as if he were pushing the beat. His lead lines were also immensely influenced by jazz soloists : Garcia cited Miles Davis , Ornette Coleman , Bill Evans , Pat Martino , George Benson , Al Di Meola , Art Tatum , Duke Ellington , and Django Reinhardt as primary influences, and frequently utilized techniques common to country and blues music in songs that called back to those traditions. Garcia often switched scales in
2968-493: A harmonic bridge between all the things going on rhythmically with two drums and Phil [Lesh's] innovative bass playing. Weir's ability to solve that sort of problem is extraordinary. [...] Harmonically, I take a lot of my solo cues from Bob." When asked to describe his approach to soloing, Garcia commented: "It keeps on changing. I still basically revolve around the melody and the way it's broken up into phrases as I perceive them. With most solos, I tend to play something that phrases
3180-486: A historical site maintained by the Forest Service. Although settlers had been farming and ranching in the Trinity River valley since the beginning of the gold rush, the number greatly increased after the gold rush when miners decided to settle down and homestead in the area. One of the major ranching areas was the wide valley known as Trinity Meadows, which is now flooded by Trinity Lake. The Webber family bought
3392-535: A home. Through Grant, Garcia met Dave McQueen in February, who, after hearing Garcia perform some blues music, introduced him to local people and to the Chateau, a rooming house located near Stanford University which was then a popular hangout. On February 20, 1961, Garcia got into a car with Paul Speegle, a sixteen-year-old artist and acquaintance of Garcia; Lee Adams, the house manager of the Chateau and driver of
3604-535: A large reservoir created by the Trinity Dam . These tributaries include Picayunne Creek, Nyott Creek, and Sherer Creek, Sunflower Creek, and more. Coffee Creek, the Little Trinity River, Tangle Blue Creek, and Eagle Creek are the largest tributaries above the lake. East Fork and Stuart Fork of the Trinity River also flow into the reservoir along with many other tributaries. Just below Trinity Dam
3816-486: A major center of recreational activities such as gold panning , fishing and whitewater rafting . Since 1964 the Trinity River has been dammed to create Trinity Lake , the third largest man-made lake in the state. As much as 90 percent of the upper Trinity River watershed was diverted for agriculture in the Central Valley . In 1991 environmental regulations were enacted, requiring a greater release of water to
4028-517: A malaria epidemic in the 1830s, accidentally introduced by Hudson's Bay Company fur trappers. In the following decades the remaining Wintu became embroiled in conflict as prospectors and settlers occupied their traditional lands. Some of these conflicts ended in deadly massacres. In 1846, one of the bloodiest single encounters occurred when soldiers led by John C. Frémont killed 175 Wintu, Maidu and Yana . In 1850 about 100 Trinity Wintu perished after being given poisoned food by white settlers. By 1910
4240-736: A member of the Grateful Dead. As one of its founders, Garcia performed with the Grateful Dead for the band's entire 30-year career (1965–1995). Garcia also founded and participated in a variety of side projects, including the Saunders–Garcia Band (with longtime friend Merl Saunders ), the Jerry Garcia Band , Old & In the Way , the Garcia/ Grisman and Garcia/ Kahn acoustic duos, Legion of Mary , and New Riders of
4452-633: A night, five nights a week, for six weeks, at the In Room in Belmont as the Warlocks, but quickly changed the band's name after finding out that a different band known as the Warlocks had put out a record under that name. ( The Velvet Underground also had to change its name from the Warlocks.) The name " Grateful Dead " was chosen from a dictionary. According to Lesh, Garcia "picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary ... [and] ... In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about
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#17327943771204664-544: A novice on the pedal steel, Garcia routinely ranked high in player polls. After a long lapse from playing the pedal steel, he played it once more during several of the Dead's concerts with Bob Dylan in the summer of 1987. In 1988, Garcia agreed to perform at several major benefits including the "Soviet American Peace Walk" concert at the Band Shell, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, that drew 25,000 people. He
4876-473: A number of concerts that year, releasing a live album, The Strange Remain , the following year. In 2000, the Other Ones toured again, this time with Kreutzmann but without Lesh. After taking another year off, the band toured again in 2002 with Lesh. That year, the Other Ones then included all four living former Grateful Dead members who had been in the band for most or all of its history. At different times
5088-521: A passing of stacks of paper backstage at a Dead show. His annual shows at the Weir Gallery garnered much attention, leading to further shows in New York and other cities. Garcia was an early adopter of digital art media; his artistic style was as varied as his musical output, and he carried small notebooks for pen and ink sketches wherever he toured. Roberta Weir continues to maintain an archive of
5300-519: A performance, the band checked into their rooms, only to be quickly raided by police. Approximately fifteen people were arrested on the spot, including many of the road crew, management, and nearly all of the Grateful Dead except for Garcia, who arrived later, outgoing keyboardist Tom Constanten , who abstained from all drugs as a member of the Church of Scientology , and McKernan, who eschewed illegal drugs in favor of alcohol. According to Bill Kreutzmann,
5512-474: A police tip-off . Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan were apprehended on marijuana charges which were later dropped, although Garcia himself was not arrested. The following year, Garcia's picture was used in a campaign commercial for Richard Nixon . Most of the band was arrested again in January 1970, after it flew to New Orleans from Hawaii. After returning to their hotel from
5724-487: A psychedelic, kaleidoscopic tapestry in the hopes of elucidating America's national character . At least one of Hunter and Bob Weir's collaborations, " Jack Straw ", was inspired by the work of John Steinbeck . Grateful Dead have been called a "symbol of the counterculture movement of the sixties ". Beginning in the early 1990s, a new generation of bands became inspired by the Grateful Dead's improvisational ethos and marketing strategy , and began to incorporate elements of
5936-670: A radio show for the progressive, community-supported Berkeley radio station KPFA . Using an old Wollensak tape recorder, they recorded " Matty Groves " and " The Long Black Veil ", among several other tunes. The recordings became a central feature of a 90-minute KPFA special broadcast, "The Long Black Veil and Other Ballads: An Evening with Jerry Garcia". The link between KPFA and the Grateful Dead continues to this day, having included many fundraisers, interviews, live concert broadcasts, taped band performances and all-day or all-weekend "Dead-only" marathons. Garcia soon began playing and teaching acoustic guitar and banjo . One of Garcia's students
6148-776: A ranch along the Stuart Fork in 1922 and established a resort. Having traveled in Europe, the Webbers thought the area resembled the Austrian Alps, and so named the mountains along the upper Trinity River the "Trinity Alps". During the 1870s, the Southern Pacific Railroad was extended from Sacramento through Redding and would eventually reach Oregon, making travel to the area easier than ever before. Commercial logging had also been operating for years in
6360-490: A reduced scale, finally ending in 1959, when the last claim was bought by the federal government in preparation for dam construction of the Central Valley Project . Although most of the miners left, either to return home or settle elsewhere, some stayed to work in the ranching and logging industries that became the economic mainstay of the Trinity River area. Some also continued to search for gold long after
6572-626: A reservation here in 1876. They are the only Native American group in California to retain most of their original territory; today, the Hoopa Valley Reservation is the largest and most populous in the state. Jedediah Smith 's expedition to northwestern California in 1828 were some of the first Europeans to set foot in the Trinity River country. After departing from the Sacramento Valley Smith passed over
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6784-531: A result of mutual tax exigencies. Despite the legal codification of their union, she remained in Oregon, while Garcia continued to live near the Grateful Dead's offices in San Rafael, California . Garcia lived with a variety of housemates, including longtime Grateful Dead employee and Jerry Garcia Band manager Rock Scully . Scully, who co-managed the Grateful Dead throughout the mid-to-late 1960s before serving as
6996-400: A result, Garcia was given a general discharge on December 14, 1960. In January 1961, Garcia drove to East Palo Alto to see Laird Grant, an old friend from middle school. He had purchased a 1950 Cadillac sedan from a cook in the army, which barely made it to Grant's residence before it broke down. Garcia spent the next few weeks sleeping where friends would allow, eventually using his car as
7208-399: A second lead guitar. In contrast to most bassists in popular music , Lesh often avoids playing the root of a chord on the downbeat, instead withholding as a means to build tension . Lesh also rarely repeats the same bassline, even from performance to performance of the same song, and often plays off of or around the other instruments with a syncopated , staccato bounce that contributes to
7420-470: A small creek that flows into the Trinity, was the biggest hydraulic mine in California, covering over 3,000 acres (1,200 ha). Tailings washed from this single mine buried the valley, the creek and the entire town of Oregon Gulch (which had been purchased by the mine owners in anticipation of this) under a staggering 110 million cubic yards (84,000,000 m ) of sediment. This is equal to thirty times
7632-433: A standard set, played with minor variations, the Grateful Dead did not prepare in this way. Garcia stated in a 1966 interview, "We don't make up our sets beforehand. We'd rather work off the tops of our heads than off a piece of paper." They maintained this approach throughout their career. For each performance, the band drew material from an active list of a hundred or so songs. The 1969 live album Live/Dead did capture
7844-528: A unique, complex interplay, balancing Kreutzmann's steady shuffle beat with Hart's interest in percussion styles outside the rock tradition. Kreuzmann has said, "I like to establish a feeling and then add radical or oblique juxtapositions to that feeling." Hart incorporated an 11-count measure to his drumming, bringing a dimension to the band's sound that became an important part of its style. He had studied tabla drumming and incorporated rhythms and instruments from world music , and later electronic music , into
8056-631: A wood splitting accident, while the family was vacationing in the Santa Cruz Mountains . Garcia later confessed that he often used it to his advantage in his youth, showing it off to other children in his neighborhood. Less than a year after this incident his father died in a fly fishing accident when the family was vacationing near Arcata in Northern California. He slipped after entering the Trinity River , part of
8268-793: Is 8,888-foot (2,709 m) Sawtooth Peak in the Trinity Alps; the elevation is 190 feet (58 m) where the Trinity meets the Klamath River in the town of Salyer. The watershed is almost entirely covered by mountains, with the only level land in a few narrow valleys: the Weaverville basin, and the Hoopa, Hyampom and Hayfork Valleys. The Hayfork Valley is the largest agricultural area in Trinity County, with about 52,000 acres (21,000 ha) of farmland. About 80 percent of
8480-518: Is a predominantly rain-fed river, with the highest flows occurring between December and April and the lowest from August through October. The water level can rise quickly in the winter when large Pacific storms strike California's north coast. Almost no precipitation occurs in summer, when the primary source of flow is snowmelt from the higher elevations of the Klamath Mountains and groundwater base flow . In addition, diversion of water to
8692-503: Is the smaller Lewiston Dam , which diverts part of the Trinity River through a hydroelectric plant to the Sacramento River Basin as part of the Central Valley Project , providing irrigation water to California's Central Valley . Below Lewiston Dam the Trinity River passes the towns of Lewiston and receives another large tributary named Grass Valley Creek, before passing Douglas City and turns west, passing within
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8904-546: The California Gold Rush – Major Reading discovered gold on the Trinity River. The find attracted thousands of miners to the area and created boomtowns such as Douglas City, Francis, Hoboken, Lake City, Lewiston, Junction City and Quimby. Weaverville, located at the end of the trail Reading had established from the Sacramento Valley to the Trinity, prospered as the main trade center through which gold
9116-549: The Colorado River – which forms the border of California and Arizona and provided most of Southern California's water – was moving toward unsustainable levels. The Bureau of Reclamation restarted its surveys of the Trinity River basin as part of a larger proposal to move water from northern to southern parts of the state, and compensate for the shortages on the Colorado. The United Western Investigation, in 1951, proposed
9328-530: The Disco Biscuits . Many of these groups began to look past the American roots music that the Grateful Dead drew inspiration from, and incorporated elements of progressive rock , hard rock , and electronica . At the same time, the Internet gained popularity and provided a medium for fans to discuss these bands and their performances and download MP3s . The Grateful Dead, as well as Phish, were one of
9540-524: The Grand Ole Opry . His elder brother, Clifford, however, staunchly believed the contrary, insisting that Garcia was "fantasizing all [that] ... she'd been to Opry, but she didn't listen to it on the radio." It was at this point that Garcia started playing the banjo, his first stringed instrument. In 1953, Garcia's mother married Wally Matusiewicz. Subsequently, Garcia and his brother moved back home with their mother and new stepfather. However, due to
9752-670: The Grateful Dead , collaborating principally with Garcia. The two involved themselves in the South Bay and San Francisco art and music scenes, sometimes playing at Menlo Park's Kepler's Books . Garcia performed his first concert with Hunter, each earning five dollars. Garcia and Hunter also played in bands (the Wildwood Boys and the Hart Valley Drifters) with David Nelson , who would later play with Garcia in
9964-617: The Hollywood Bowl , in Los Angeles; he died on March 8, 1973, of complications from liver damage. Pigpen's death did not slow down the Grateful Dead. With the help of manager Ron Rakow , the band soon formed its own record label, Grateful Dead Records . Later that year, it released its next studio album, the jazz-influenced Wake of the Flood , which became their biggest commercial success thus far. Meanwhile, capitalizing on
10176-476: The Kennedy Center Honors . The Grateful Dead began their career as the Warlocks, a group formed in early 1965 from the remnants of a Palo Alto, California jug band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions and members of The Wildwood Boys (Jerry Garcia, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, David Nelson, Robert Hunter, and Norm Van Maastricht). As The Wildwood Boys they played regularly at The Tangent,
10388-749: The Klamath River . The Trinity flows for 165 miles (266 km) through the Klamath Mountains and Coast Ranges , with a watershed area of nearly 3,000 square miles (7,800 km ) in Trinity and Humboldt Counties. Designated a National Wild and Scenic River , along most of its course the Trinity flows swiftly through tight canyons and mountain meadows. The river is known for its once prolific runs of anadromous fish , notably Chinook salmon and steelhead , which sustained Native American tribes for thousands of years. Due to its remoteness,
10600-589: The North American Plate , causing uplift of the sea floor under what is now northwestern California. During the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, tectonic movement along the plate boundary produced a range of mountains much higher than those found in the area today. Over millions of years these mountains were eroded, then reformed again as the next oceanic terrane collided with the continental crust. This repeating cycle of erosion and orogeny created
10812-498: The Rhythm Devils , Phil Lesh and Friends , RatDog , and Billy & the Kids . Despite having only one Top-40 single in their 30-year career, " Touch of Grey " (1987), the Grateful Dead remained among the highest-grossing American touring acts for decades. They gained a committed fanbase by word of mouth and through the free exchange of their live recordings, encouraged by the band's allowance of taping . In 2024, they broke
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#173279437712011024-800: The Six Rivers National Forest , and drowned before other fishermen could reach him. Although Garcia claimed he saw the incident, Dennis McNally, author of the book A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead , argues Garcia formed the memory after hearing others repeat the story. Blair Jackson, who wrote Garcia: An American Life , notes that a local newspaper article describing Jose's death did not mention Jerry being present when he died. Following his father's death, Garcia's mother Ruth took over her husband's bar, buying out his partner for full ownership. She began working full-time there, sending Jerry and his brother to live nearby with her parents, Tillie and William Clifford. During
11236-541: The 1800s. These have declined in part due to increasing environmental regulations. Tourism has been an increasingly important part of the economy especially after the creation of the Trinity Lake reservoir in 1964. The lands that make up the Trinity River basin today began to take shape over 200 million years ago by the collision of several exotic terranes – or crustal fragments of the Pacific Plate – with
11448-407: The 1920s, and the mining settlements were abandoned or fell into decline. This brought on the last stage of commercial gold mining along the Trinity, as floating dredges (called "doodle-bugs" by the miners) were used to turn over the river bottoms that had been inaccessible by the placer miners a half-century earlier. After World War II commercial dredges continued to operate on the Trinity, but at
11660-465: The 1960s . The band's founding members were Jerry Garcia ( lead guitar and vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar and vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan ( keyboards , harmonica , and vocals), Phil Lesh ( bass guitar and vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann ( drums ). Members of the Grateful Dead, originally known as the Warlocks , had played together in various Bay Area ensembles, including the traditional jug band Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. Lesh
11872-520: The 1980s. Many logged areas were on steep mountains, and improper construction of roads and skid trails exposed slopes to erosion and landslides. In 1988 several environmentalist groups including the Wilderness Society , Audubon Society and Sierra Club filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service, preventing the cutting of 18.4 million board feet of salvage lumber in an area with particularly high erosion risk. This generated pushback in
12084-559: The 20th century, before damming, the fall chinook salmon run was estimated at anywhere between 19,000 and 75,500. The spring chinook and coho salmon runs were about 10,000 each and the annual steelhead run was about 50,000. Forest and river habitats in the watershed have been heavily affected by human activities ever since Gold Rush mining began in the 1800s. Commercial logging has caused mountain slopes to become more prone to erosion; even in areas that are no longer logged and have seen secondary forest growth, abandoned logging roads pose
12296-498: The Acid Tests and who, in early 1966, became the band's financial backer, renting them a house on the fringes of Watts, Los Angeles , and buying them sound equipment. "We were living solely off of Owsley's good graces at that time. ... [His] trip was he wanted to design equipment for us, and we were going to have to be in sort of a lab situation for him to do it", said Garcia. One of the group's earliest major performances in 1967
12508-528: The Acid Tests was crucial both to the development of their improvisational vocabulary and to their bonding as a band, with the group having set out to foster an intra-band musical telepathy. Kaler has further pointed out that the Dead's pursuit of a new improvisatory rock language in 1965 chronologically coincided with that same goal's adoption by Jefferson Airplane , Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground . Earlier demo tapes have survived, but
12720-551: The Central Valley has greatly reduced the total flow of the river since the 1960s, though conversely, a required minimum dam release for protection of migrating salmon results in a flow rate during the dry season that is higher than it naturally would be. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) operates eight real-time stream gages on the Trinity River. The lowermost gage, located at Hoopa, measures runoff from 2,853 square miles (7,390 km ), or 97 percent of
12932-620: The Colorado River Basin. One of the key projects was an aqueduct to transport North Coast water to the Imperial Valley , reducing its reliance on water from the Colorado River. However, with the exception of the upper Trinity River project, none of these dam and diversion projects were ever realized. The Trinity River project was first drafted on October 1, 1951, and authorized by Congress on January 2, 1953, as
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#173279437712013144-547: The Dead forced him to opt out of the group. He appears as a band member on their debut album New Riders of the Purple Sage , and produced Home, Home on the Road , a 1974 live album by the band. He also contributed pedal steel guitar to the enduring hit "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young . Garcia also played steel guitar licks on Brewer & Shipley 's 1970 album Tarkio . Despite considering himself
13356-436: The Dead's unique rhythmic character. Weir, too, was not a traditional rhythm guitarist , but tended to play unique inversions at the upper end of the Dead's sound. Weir modeled his style of playing after jazz pianist McCoy Tyner and attempted to replicate the interplay between John Coltrane and Tyner in his support, and occasional subversion, of the harmonic structure of Garcia's voice leadings. This would often influence
13568-458: The Franciscan assemblage as a "nightmare of rocks" due to its complex and fragmented layers. The most common type of rock is greywacke , followed by other types of sandstones and shales. Landslides and mass wasting are common in this region due to erosion as well as earthquakes. An archaeological site on the Trinity River at Cox Bar, with spear points dating from 3000–6000 BC, has some of
13780-507: The Garcia biography Captain Trips , author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time. The motif of the "grateful dead" appears in folktales from a variety of cultures. The first show under the name Grateful Dead was in San Jose on December 4, 1965, at one of Ken Kesey 's Acid Tests . Scholar Michael Kaler has written that the Dead's participation in
13992-491: The Grateful Dead for 11 years until his death by narcotics overdose in July 1990, becoming the third keyboardist to die. Shortly after Mydland found his place in the early 1980s, Garcia's health began to decline. He became a frequent smoker of "Persian," a type of heroin, and he gained weight at a rapid pace. He lost his liveliness on stage, his voice was strained, and Deadheads worried for his health. After he began to curtail his opiate usage gradually in 1985, Garcia slipped into
14204-628: The Grateful Dead song " Althea ", and that soon Grateful Dead music was all he would listen to. Dead & Company toured every year (except 2020), until announcing that their summer 2023 tour, which saw Kreutzmann replaced by Lane, would be their last. However, they later clarified that it was only their last tour , and they continue to perform concerts. Since 1995, the former members of the Grateful Dead have also pursued solo music careers. Both Bob Weir & RatDog and Phil Lesh and Friends have performed many concerts and released several albums. Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann have also each released
14416-533: The Grateful Dead". The shows were performed on June 27 and 28 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California , and on July 3, 4 and 5 at Soldier Field in Chicago . The band stated that this would be the final time that Weir, Lesh, Hart, and Kreutzmann would perform together. They were joined by Trey Anastasio of Phish on guitar, Jeff Chimenti on keyboards, and Bruce Hornsby on piano. Demand for tickets
14628-418: The Grateful Dead's live performances into their own shows. These include the nightly alteration of setlists , frequent improvisation, the blending of genres , and the allowance of taping , which would often contribute to the development of a dedicated fanbase. Bands associated with the expansion of the "jam scene" include Phish , The String Cheese Incident , Widespread Panic , Blues Traveler , moe. , and
14840-594: The Grateful Dead, "They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones that do what they do." Academics Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell argued that the Grateful Dead were "not merely as precursors of prog but as essential developments of progressiveness in its early days". Often (both in performance and on recording) the Dead left room for exploratory, spacey soundscapes. Their live shows, fed by an improvisational approach to music, were different from most touring bands. While rock and roll bands often rehearse
15052-463: The Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial." According to Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead's music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary , when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of Fictionary . In
15264-555: The Hayfork Wintu as norelmaq ("south-uphill people"). Many Wintu villages were located along the Trinity River, and were home to up to 150 people. Each village operated as an independent unit led by a chief, although the villagers interacted frequently through trade with each other as well as neighboring tribes, such as the Nomlaki , Achomawi and Shasta . Since about 1000 A.D. the lower Trinity River has been inhabited by
15476-573: The Klamath Mountains and arrived at what is probably now Hayfork Creek on April 18. They followed the creek to the South Fork and from there to the Trinity River and the Klamath River. After following the Klamath to the Pacific, they traveled north towards Oregon, thus becoming the first white men to travel from inland California to coastal Oregon. Smith and his party traded with the Hupas and Yuroks in
15688-583: The Natinixwe, now known as the Hupa people. Natinixwe is an endonym meaning "people of the place where the trails return". Their name for the Trinity River was hun' simply meaning "river". The name "Hupa" or "Hoopa" appears to originate from the Yurok word for the Trinity River country, hopah , which was first recorded by ethnologist George Gibbs in 1852. The Hupa lived in the fertile Hoopa Valley along
15900-697: The New Riders of the Purple Sage and contribute to several Grateful Dead album songs. In 1962, Garcia met Phil Lesh , the eventual bassist of the Grateful Dead, during a party in Menlo Park's bohemian Perry Lane neighborhood (where author Ken Kesey lived). Lesh would later write in his autobiography that Garcia reminded him of pictures he had seen of the composer Claude Debussy , with his "dark, curly hair, goatee, Impressionist eyes". While attending another party in Palo Alto, Lesh approached Garcia to suggest they record Garcia on Lesh's tape recorder and produce
16112-557: The Other One", "U.S. Blues", " Sugaree ", and "Don't Ease Me In"). In addition to the Grateful Dead, Garcia participated in numerous musical side projects, including the Jerry Garcia Band . He was also involved with various acoustic projects such as Old & In the Way and other bluegrass bands, including collaborations with noted bluegrass mandolinist David Grisman . The documentary film Grateful Dawg , co-produced by Gillian Grisman and former NBC producer Pamela Hamilton chronicles
16324-468: The Purple Sage (which he co-founded with John Dawson and David Nelson ). He also released several solo albums, and contributed to a number of albums by other artists over the years as a session musician . He was well known for his distinctive guitar playing, and was ranked 13th in Rolling Stone ' s "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" cover story in 2003. In the 2015 version of the list he
16536-413: The Trinity Alps – the highest range in northwest California – were also sculpted by glaciation during successive Ice Ages, the last of which ended roughly 10,000 years ago. Glacial erosion produced numerous granite outcroppings, tarns , cirques and knife-edged ridges. Remnants of these glaciers, or "glacierets", are still extant in the higher valleys. The Coast Ranges pass through the western part of
16748-758: The Trinity Mountains to the Whiskeytown Lake reservoir, and from there it flows 2.4 miles (3.9 km) through the Spring Creek Tunnel to join the Sacramento River at Keswick Dam . Along the way the water drops some 1,500 feet (460 m) through three hydroelectric plants, generating nearly one billion kilowatt hours each year. Water flow data for the Judge Francis Carr hydroelectric station located at
16960-641: The Trinity River Basin and consist of even younger rock formations, chiefly the Franciscan Assemblage . The Franciscan formation consists of more unstable sedimentary and igneous rocks and soils that are highly breakable and prone to erosion. They formed even more recently in geologic history than the Klamath Mountains, primarily due to uplift along the Cascadia subduction zone . The Natural Resources Conservation Service refers to
17172-673: The Trinity River Division of the Central Valley Project. In 1955 Congress authorized an annual diversion of 704,000 acre-feet (0.868 km ) of water (56 percent of total flow) from the Trinity River, stating that the water could be exported "without detrimental effect on the fishery resources" of the Trinity. In 1957 the Bureau of Reclamation revised the export volume to 865,000 acre-feet (1.067 km ). Construction of Trinity Dam started in 1956 and
17384-519: The Trinity River and the Hyampom Valley on the South Fork – some of the few flat lands in a region otherwise dominated by rugged mountains. A Yurok village called Weitspus stood at the site of present-day Weitchpec at the confluence of the Trinity and Klamath Rivers. The Hupa traded with the coastal Yurok and Karok by using canoes to navigate the Trinity and Klamath Rivers. The trade arrangements with neighboring tribes were complex and involved
17596-506: The Trinity River area. Their traditional lands included much of the upper (eastern) Trinity River in the present day area of Shasta-Trinity National Forest . There were nine major groups of Wintu spread across the Trinity, Upper Sacramento, and McCloud River valleys as well as parts of the South Fork Trinity River and its tributary Hayfork Creek . The Trinity River Wintu were known as nomsu's ("those being west"), and
17808-807: The Trinity River canyon near its confluence with the New River. They were enemies of the Hupa, but had friendly relations with the Wintu. The now extinct Chimariko language was of Northern Hokan origin, in contrast to the Athabaskan dialect of the Hupa and the Wintuan languages spoken by the Wintu. Carl Waldman describes in Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes (2014) that "the Chimariko occupied one of
18020-415: The Trinity River country led to conflict with indigenous tribes, many of which saw severe depopulation due to fighting and foreign diseases. In the following decades logging and ranching, combined with mining runoff, significantly changed the river's ecology and led to the decline of its fish populations. The Trinity River is an important water source for irrigation and hydroelectricity generation, as well as
18232-409: The Trinity River country, but most of the timber produced was used locally. After World War II , logging greatly increased both due to high demand for housing domestically and abroad, and the introduction of more advanced technologies. In 1959 alone, loggers took 439 million board feet from Trinity County. The rate dropped after that, but logging continued at 200–300 million board feet per year well into
18444-460: The Trinity River each year. Native peoples also made meal of berries, seeds and acorns, and hunted game animals such as deer and elk that were drawn to the Trinity River. Due to their proximity to trade routes in and around the Central Valley, the Wintu came into frequent contact with European explorers, traders and settlers. These initial meetings were peaceful, but the Wintu population – along with many other Central Valley tribes – were decimated by
18656-696: The Trinity River in order to protect fish. However, the use of Trinity River water remains a contentious issue, especially in years of drought. The Trinity River begins deep in the Scott Mountains , in Trinity County , at the confluence of High Camp Creek and Chilcoot Creek. It flows south through a deep valley between the Trinity Mountains to the east as well as the Salmon Mountains / Trinity Alps and Scott Mountains to
18868-467: The Trinity River valley were heavily opposed to the dam, but they had no recourse against eminent domain used by the federal government (although property owners were paid for their land). Many buildings in Trinity Center were moved to a new location on the western shore of the reservoir. The dam blocked salmon runs to 109 miles (175 km) of habitat in the upper Trinity River basin, destroying
19080-563: The Trinity River watershed is federal land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management . The remaining 20 percent are privately owned; about half are owned by logging companies. The overall climate is Mediterranean , with cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Annual precipitation over the Trinity River watershed averages 57 inches (1,400 mm). Precipitation ranges from 37 inches (940 mm) in lowlands around Weaverville and Hayfork, to as high as 85 inches (2,200 mm) in some mountain ranges close to
19292-473: The Trinity River watershed. The annual discharge , averaged over the 1964–2013 period, was 4,849 cubic feet per second (137.3 m /s). The average discharge between 1912–1960, prior to construction of Trinity and Lewiston Dams, was 5,618 cubic feet per second (159.1 m /s). The maximum flow was 231,000 cubic feet per second (6,500 m /s) on December 22, 1964, during the Christmas flood of 1964 , and
19504-469: The Trinity did not feature prominently in the early European colonization of California, but the gold rush in the mid-1800s brought thousands of gold seekers to the area. The river was named by Major Pierson B. Reading who, upon reaching the river in 1848, mistakenly believed it to flow into the Pacific Ocean at Trinidad Bay . During and after the gold rush, the influx of settlers and miners into
19716-705: The Tubes , joined as a band member, while Bruce Hornsby , who had a successful career with his band the Range, joined temporarily as a bridge to help Welnick learn songs. Both performed on keyboards and vocals—Welnick until the band's end, and Hornsby mainly from 1990 to 1992. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis played five concerts with the band between 1990 and 1994. The Grateful Dead performed its final concert on July 9, 1995, at Soldier Field in Chicago. Jerry Garcia died on August 9, 1995. A few months after Garcia's death,
19928-573: The United States by a single act for 47 years. Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux left the band in February 1979, citing artistic differences. Following the Godchauxs' departure, Brent Mydland joined as keyboardist and vocalist and was considered "the perfect fit." The Godchauxs then formed the Heart of Gold Band , before Keith died in a car accident in July 1980. Mydland was the keyboardist for
20140-710: The United States in 2003, 2004 and 2009. The band's lineups included Jimmy Herring and Warren Haynes on guitar, Jeff Chimenti and Rob Barraco on keyboards, and Joan Osborne on vocals. In 2008, members of the Dead played two concerts, called " Deadheads for Obama " and " Change Rocks ". Following the 2009 Dead tour, Lesh and Weir formed the band Furthur , which debuted in September 2009. Joining Lesh and Weir in Furthur were Chimenti (keyboards), John Kadlecik (guitar), Joe Russo (drums), Jay Lane (drums), Sunshine Becker (vocals), and Zoe Ellis (vocals). Lane and Ellis left
20352-461: The Wintu population had been reduced to about 1,000, from an estimated 12,000 prior to European contact. The Chimariko also suffered heavily when European prospectors entered the region in the 19th century searching for gold. After clashing with the Europeans, many members of the tribe were dispersed to Shasta territory or killed. Some returned to the Trinity River in the late 19th century, after
20564-699: The Zodiacs (on bass), the Black Mountain Boys, Legion of Mary , Reconstruction , and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band . Garcia was also a fan of jazz artists and improvisation : he played with jazz keyboardists Merl Saunders and Howard Wales for many years in various groups and jam sessions, and he appeared on saxophonist Ornette Coleman 's 1988 album, Virgin Beauty . His collaboration with Merl Saunders and Muruga Booker on
20776-426: The accordion for a Danelectro with a small amplifier at a local pawnshop. Garcia's stepfather, who was somewhat proficient with instruments, helped tune his guitar to an unusual open tuning . After a short stint at Denman Junior High School, Garcia attended tenth grade at Balboa High School in 1958, where he often got into trouble for skipping classes and fighting. Consequently, in 1959, Garcia's mother again moved
20988-433: The acrimonious collapse of the band's independent record labels over the next two years, Garcia became increasingly dependent upon both substances. These factors, combined with the alcohol and drug abuse of several other members of the Grateful Dead, resulted in a turbulent atmosphere. By 1978, the band's chemistry began "cracking and crumbling", resulting in poor group cohesion. As a result, Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux left
21200-470: The album Seastones (released by Ned Lagin on the Round Records subsidiary) and L , an unfinished dance work composed by Ned Lagin. In 1970, Garcia participated in the soundtrack for the film Zabriskie Point . Garcia also played pedal steel guitar for fellow-San Francisco musicians New Riders of the Purple Sage from their initial dates in 1969 to October 1971, when increased commitments with
21412-769: The album's success, the band soon went back to the studio, and in June 1974 released another album, From the Mars Hotel . Not long after, the Dead decided to take a hiatus from live touring . The band travelled to Europe for a string of shows in September 1974, before performing a series of five concerts at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco in October 1974, and delved into various other projects. The Winterland concerts were filmed, and Garcia compiled
21624-471: The amount of sediment carried into the rivers. Dam building has had the opposite effect, by blocking natural sediment sources to a long section of the Trinity River. Both have had notable impacts on river geomorphology , altering the development of riparian zones and fish habitat. The Trinity River watershed borders several major California drainage basins; these are the Mad River and Redwood Creek to
21836-502: The area and their encounters were generally friendly. Early maps of the area label the South Fork, the lower Trinity and the lower Klamath as "Smith's River". The name was later applied to the Smith River further north, which Smith also crossed on the same expedition. Harrison Rogers, a member of Smith's party, called the Trinity "Indian Scalp River" although the reason for this name is unknown. The Old Trinity Trail, which crosses
22048-521: The artwork of Jerry Garcia. Perhaps the most widely seen pieces of Jerry Garcia's art are the many editions of men's neckties produced by Stonehenge Ltd. and Mulberry Neckware. Some began as etchings, other designs came from his drawings, paintings, and digital art. Garcia's artwork has since expanded into everything from hotel rooms, wet suits, men's sport shirts, a women's wear line, boxer shorts, hair accessories, cummerbunds, silk scarves and wool rugs. Garcia met his first wife, Sara Ruppenthal, in 1963. She
22260-876: The band modulates to a new tonal center . Some of the Dead's more extended jam vehicles, such as " The Other One ", " Dark Star ", and " Playing in the Band " almost exclusively make use of modulation between modes to accompany simple two-chord progressions. Following the songwriting renaissance that defined the band's early 1970s period, as reflected in the albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty , Robert Hunter , Jerry Garcia's primary lyrical partner, frequently made use of motifs common to American folklore including trains, guns, elements, traditional musical instruments , gambling, murder, animals, alcohol, descriptions of American geography , and religious symbolism to illustrate themes involving love and loss, life and death, beauty and horror, and chaos and order. Following in
22472-441: The band in 2010, and vocalist Jeff Pehrson joined later that year. Furthur disbanded in 2014. In 2010, Hart and Kreutzmann re-formed the Rhythm Devils , and played a summer concert tour. In the fall of 2015, Hart, Kreutzmann and Weir teamed up with Chimenti, guitarist John Mayer , and bassist Oteil Burbridge to form a band called Dead & Company . Mayer recounted that in 2011 he was listening to Pandora and happened upon
22684-531: The band in February 1979. Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in Palo Alto, California in 1965. Known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues , jazz , folk , country , bluegrass , rock and roll , gospel , reggae , and world music with psychedelia , the band is famous for improvisation during their live performances , and for their devoted fan base, known as " Deadheads ". According to
22896-614: The band in-form, but commercial success did not come until Workingman's Dead and American Beauty , both released in 1970. These records largely featured the band's laid-back acoustic musicianship and more traditional song structures. With their rootsy, eclectic stylings, particularly evident on the latter two albums, the band pioneered the hybrid Americana genre. As the band and its sound matured over thirty years of touring, playing, and recording, each member's stylistic contribution became more defined, consistent, and identifiable. Garcia's lead lines were fluid, supple and spare, owing
23108-410: The band included Tom Constanten (keyboards from 1968 to 1970), John Perry Barlow (non-performing lyricist from 1971 to 1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards and occasional vocals from 1971 to 1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals from 1972 to 1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards and vocals from 1979 to 1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards and vocals from 1990 to 1995). Bruce Hornsby (accordion, piano, vocals)
23320-578: The band tours. In a 1991 Rolling Stone interview, Garcia stated that "we haven't really lived together since the Seventies". During the autumn of 1978, Garcia developed a friendship with Shimer College student Manasha Matheson, an artist and music enthusiast. They remained friends over the following nine years before initiating a romantic relationship in Hartford, Connecticut on the Grateful Dead's spring 1987 tour. Jerry and Manasha became parents with
23532-409: The band's intellectual property and merchandising rights. At Kant's recommendation, the group was one of the few rock 'n roll pioneers to retain ownership of their music masters and publishing rights . Trinity River (California) The Trinity River ( Yurok : Hoopa or Hupa; Hupa : hun') is a major river in northwestern California in the United States and is the principal tributary of
23744-794: The band's "advance man" and publicist, was dismissed by the group in 1984 for enabling Garcia's addictions and for allegedly embezzling the Garcia Band's profits. Another housemate was Nora Sage, a Deadhead who became Garcia's housekeeper while studying at the Golden Gate University School of Law . The exact nature of their relationship remains unclear, although it is believed to have been platonic due to Garcia's addictions. She later became his art representative. While they would briefly reunite following his diabetic coma, Garcia and Adams ultimately divorced in 1994. Phil Lesh has subsequently stated that he rarely saw Adams on any of
23956-407: The band's extended, psychedelic improvisation , likely inspired by John Coltrane and other jazz artists' interest in the sitar music of Ravi Shankar . Lesh was originally a classically trained trumpet player with an extensive background in music theory , but did not tend to play traditional blues-based bass forms. He often played more melodic, symphonic and complex lines, often sounding like
24168-410: The band's live performances. The Dead's live performances featured multiple types of improvisation derived from a vast array of musical traditions. Not unlike many rock bands of their time, the majority of the Dead's songs feature a designated section in which an instrumental break occurs over the chord changes . These sections typically feature solos by Garcia that often originate as variations on
24380-480: The band's money; Kreutzmann was once again as the sole percussionist. Hart rejoined the Grateful Dead for good in October 1974. Tom "TC" Constanten was added as a second keyboardist from 1968 to 1970, to help Pigpen keep up with an increasingly psychedelic sound, while Pigpen transitioned into playing various percussion instruments and vocals. After Constanten's departure, Pigpen reclaimed his position as sole keyboardist. Less than two years later, in late 1971, Pigpen
24592-503: The band's reward was recording a song. They chose " Raunchy " by Bill Justis . Garcia stole his mother's car in 1960 and was given the option of joining the U.S. Army in lieu of prison. He received basic training at Fort Ord . After training, he was transferred to Fort Winfield Scott in the Presidio of San Francisco . Garcia spent most of his time in the army at his leisure, missing roll call and accruing many counts of being AWOL . As
24804-415: The band's use of cocaine accelerated throughout the early 1970s. After using heroin in a brothel in 1974 (likely on the band's second European tour), Garcia was introduced to a smokeable form of the drug (initially advertised as refined opium ) colloquially known as "Persian" or "Persian Base" during the group's 1975 hiatus. Influenced by the stresses of creating and releasing The Grateful Dead Movie and
25016-410: The beaver furs he can from them", suggesting that beaver were then plentiful on the Trinity or at least in the surrounding area. The Trinity River was once known for its prolific anadromous fish ( salmon , steelhead and sturgeon ) runs. The actual number of fish returning to the river each year to spawn, prior to European settlement, is uncertain due to the lack of records. During the first half of
25228-582: The birth of their daughter, Keelin Noel Garcia, on December 20, 1987. On August 17, 1990, Garcia and Matheson married at their San Anselmo, California home in a spiritual ceremony free of legal convention. In 1991, Garcia expressed his delight in finding the time to "actually be a father" to Keelin in contrast to his past relationships with his children. A year later, Garcia dedicated his first art book, Paintings, Drawings and Sketches , "For Manasha, with love, Jerry." In January 1993, Barbara "Brigid" Meier,
25440-496: The car; and Alan Trist, a companion of theirs. After speeding past the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital, the driver encountered a curve and, speeding around 90 miles per hour (140 km/h), crashed into the guard rail, sending the car rolling turbulently. Garcia was hurled through the windshield of the car into a nearby field with such force that he was literally dislodged from his shoes and later unable to recall
25652-583: The children to the Eugene, Oregon area, living near Kesey, in 1978. Following Adams' departure, Garcia had an affair with Amy Moore. She was a Kentucky -born member of the extended "Grateful Dead family", and the mistress of Texas oil heir Roy Cullen. Their affair lasted circa 1980–1981, and inspired the Garcia-Hunter song "Run for the Roses." Adams and Garcia were married on December 31, 1981, largely as
25864-407: The coast. The high rainfall combined with the rugged geography results in extremely fast runoff and a high risk of flooding during winter storms. Large volumes of rocks and sediment carried by floods are spread along the rivers forming wide alluvial channels. In general, human activities such as mining and road construction have increased the rate of erosion within the watershed and consequentially
26076-455: The complex "jumble of different rock types" that characterizes the region today. Rocks commonly found in the Trinity River area include gabbro , chert , granite , diorite , limestone , sandstone , serpentine , schist and marble . Gold -bearing quartz veins are widespread in local metamorphic rock formations; the richness of the area made it among the focal points of the California Gold Rush . The Klamath Mountains, which make up
26288-547: The damming of nearly every river in the North Coast region of California, chiefly the Trinity, Klamath and Eel. The Ah Pah Dam would have flooded the canyons of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers to form the largest reservoir in California. These grandiose plans culminated in the Pacific Southwest Water Plan of 1964, which sought to comprehensively link the water systems of California and the rest of
26500-413: The days of the " Acid Tests ", these improvisations were a form of exploration rather than playing a song already written. Later in life, Garcia struggled with diabetes . In 1986, he went into a diabetic coma that nearly cost him his life. Although his overall health improved somewhat after the incident, he continued to struggle with obesity, smoking, and long-standing heroin and cocaine addictions. He
26712-464: The deep, long-term friendship between Garcia and Grisman. When Garcia and Grisman released Not For Kids Only, Hamilton produced their interview and concert for NBC. After several years of producing stories on the Grateful Dead and band members' side projects, Hamilton interviewed Bob Weir for a feature on Garcia's death marking the end of an era. Other groups in which Garcia participated at one time or another include Jerry & Sara (with his first wife),
26924-458: The direction the band's improvisation would take on a given night. Weir and Garcia's respective positions as rhythm and lead guitarist were not always strictly adhered to, as Weir would often incorporate short melodic phrases into his playing to support Garcia and occasionally took solos, often played with a slide . Weir's playing is characterized by a "spiky, staccato" sound. The band's two drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann , developed
27136-640: The dynamic range of the human experience (Heaven and hell, law and crime, dark and light, etc.). Hunter and Garcia's earlier, more directly psychedelic-influenced compositions often make use of surreal imagery, nonsense , and whimsey reflective of traditions in English poetry . In a retrospective, The New Yorker described Hunter's verses as "elliptical, by turns vivid and gnomic ", which were often "hippie poetry about roses and bells and dew". Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally has described Hunter's lyrics as creating "a non-literal hyper-Americana" weaving
27348-530: The eastern (upper) valleys of the Trinity River around Weaverville, as the hostile Native Americans and treacherous gorges around Burnt Ranch precluded the transport of rations and equipment to places further west. For about two decades the area was extremely productive, second only to the Sierra Nevada (the Mother Lode ) itself. The rate at which gold was extracted, and new methods pioneered to access
27560-438: The eastern part of the watershed are quite young in geologic terms, no more than 2 or 3 million years old. The present shape of the mountains was highly influenced by underground volcanic activity, which created batholiths , domes of igneous rock formed by cooled magma. They raised the elevation of the terrain above and created the widespread granite and diorite formations found in the area today. The higher mountains, including
27772-406: The ejection. Lee Adams, the driver, and Alan Trist, who was seated in the back, were thrown from the car as well, resulting in abdominal injuries and a spine fracture, respectively. Garcia escaped with a broken collarbone, while Speegle, still in the car, was fatally injured. Lee's reckless driving and crash served as an awakening for Garcia, who later said, "That's where my life began. Before then I
27984-399: The end of Trinity Tunnel indicates an annual average of 1,257 cubic feet per second (35.6 m /s), or 910,700 acre-feet (1.1233 km ), diverted from the river between 1963 and 2013. The filling of the reservoir flooded the town of Trinity Center, one of the original main population centers of Trinity County, as well as the smaller communities of Stringtown and Minersville. Residents of
28196-477: The extra water was not yet needed. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation took over the Central Valley Project from the bankrupt state of California during the Great Depression in 1933 as a federal public works project, and in 1942 it began investigations to dam the Trinity River. However, the Trinity River plan was dropped in 1945, after the completion of nearby Shasta Dam . As the 1950s began, demand on
28408-574: The family to a safer environment, to Cazadero , a small town in Sonoma County , 90 miles (140 km) north of San Francisco. This turn of events did not sit well with Garcia, who had to travel by bus thirty miles (50 km) to Analy High School in Sebastopol , the nearest school. Garcia did, however, join a band at his school known as the Chords. After performing in and winning a contest,
28620-659: The fiction of Jack Kerouac , whom Garcia later cited as a major influence. In June, Garcia graduated from the local Menlo Oaks school. He then moved with his family back to San Francisco, where they lived in an apartment above the family bar, a newly built replacement for the original, which had been torn down to make way for a freeway entrance. Two months later, on Garcia's fifteenth birthday, his mother bought an accordion for him, to his great disappointment. Garcia had long been captivated by many rhythm and blues artists, especially Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley , leaving him craving an electric guitar. After some pleading, his mother exchanged
28832-424: The first bands to have a Usenet newsgroup. Hal Kant was an entertainment industry attorney who specialized in representing musical groups. He spent 35 years as principal lawyer and general counsel for the Grateful Dead, a position in the group that was so strong that his business cards with the band identified his role as "Czar". Kant brought the band millions of dollars in revenue through his management of
29044-641: The first of over 2,000 concerts known to have been recorded by the band's fans was a show at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on January 8, 1966. Later that month, the Grateful Dead played at the Trips Festival, a three-day psychedelic rock weekend party and event produced by Ken Kesey , Stewart Brand , and Ramon Sender , that, in conjunction with the Merry Pranksters , brought the nascent hippie movement together for
29256-540: The first time. Other supporting personnel who joined early included Rock Scully , who heard of the band from Kesey and signed on as manager after meeting them at the Big Beat Acid Test; Stewart Brand , "with his side show of taped music and slides of Indian life, a multimedia presentation" at the Big Beat and then, expanded, at the Trips Festival; and Owsley Stanley , the "Acid King" whose LSD supplied
29468-409: The fishing economy that had sustained local people for generations. Other residents welcomed the dam project for the economic benefits it would bring via hydropower and tourism, as the gold mining industry that had long supported the region was greatly diminished by the 1950s. By 1986 tourism in the Trinity River country accounted for 50–75 percent of business in the summer and 25 percent in
29680-491: The five-year period in which he lived with his grandparents, Garcia enjoyed a large amount of autonomy and attended Monroe Elementary School. At the school, Garcia was greatly encouraged in his artistic abilities by his third grade teacher: through her, he discovered that "being a creative person was a viable possibility in life." According to Garcia, it was around this time that he was opened up to country and bluegrass music by his grandmother, whom he recalled enjoyed listening to
29892-405: The footage into The Grateful Dead Movie , a feature-length concert film released in 1977. In September 1975, the Dead released their eighth studio album, Blues for Allah . The band resumed touring in June 1976, playing multiple dates in small theaters, rather than the stadium shows that had become common, and had exhausted them, in 1974. That same year, they signed with Arista Records , and
30104-432: The footsteps of several American musical traditions , these songs are often confessional and feature narration from the perspective of an antihero . Critic Robert Christgau described them as "American myths" that later gave way to "the old karma-go-round". An extremely common feature in both Robert Hunter's lyrics, as well as the band's visual iconography, is the presence of dualistic and opposing imagery illustrating
30316-455: The gold seekers had left. People of Chimariko ancestry continue to live in the region, although the tribe functionally no longer exists. Because of the geographic isolation of their homeland, the Hupa had few interactions with early European explorers, although they later came in conflict with miners looking for gold. Even after California became a US state in 1850, the Hupa continued to live on their traditional lands and were eventually granted
30528-433: The harder to reach deposits, was feverish. Author James Hilton remarked that Weaverville was a "Shangri-La, that strange and wonderful somewhere which is not a place but a state of mind." The area was soon profiting $ 1.5 million a year, with hundreds of claims along the Trinity River equipped with flumes, waterwheels and other apparatus to separate fine gold from river gravel. The Great Flood of 1862 largely obliterated
30740-967: The knee when he attempted to block a train carrying weapons to military dictatorships in El Salvador. Having previously studied at the San Francisco Art Institute as a teenager, Garcia embarked on a second career in the visual arts in the late 1980s. He created a number of drawings, etchings , and water colors . Garcia's artistic endeavors were represented by the Weir Gallery in Berkeley, California from 1989 to 1996. During this period, Roberta Weir (unrelated to Garcia's bandmate Bob Weir) provided Garcia with new art techniques to use, sponsored his first solo show in 1990, and prepared blank etching plates for him to draw on. These would then be processed and printed by gallery staff and brought back to Garcia for approval and signature, usually with
30952-532: The likes of Jefferson Airplane (most notably Surrealistic Pillow , Garcia being listed as their "spiritual advisor"). Garcia himself recalled in a mid-1967 interview that he'd played the high lead on "Today," played on "Plastic Fantastic Lover" and "Comin' Back to Me" on that album. Others include Tom Fogerty , David Bromberg , Robert Hunter ( Liberty , on Relix Records), Paul Pena , Peter Rowan , Warren Zevon , Country Joe McDonald , Pete Sears , Ken Nordine , Ornette Coleman, Bruce Hornsby , Bob Dylan , It's
31164-514: The local timber industry, whose decline has partly been attributed to more stringent environmental regulations. As early as the 1930s, the state of California had floated the idea of diverting water from the rainy north to support irrigation in the fertile, but dry San Joaquin Valley . A diversion of the Trinity River was contemplated in order to boost the available water supply for the Central Valley watershed, but planners eventually determined that
31376-479: The lowest was 162 cubic feet per second (4.6 m /s) on October 4, 1931. The peak flow in 1964 was greatly attenuated by the Trinity Dam which had just started reservoir filling at the time, perhaps by as much as 100,000 cubic feet per second (2,800 m /s). However, the record-breaking rains of that winter swelled tributaries below the dam and contributed to a crest fully 20 feet (6.1 m) higher than
31588-464: The lyrics to all but a few of Garcia's songs. Garcia was known for his "soulful extended guitar improvisations", which would frequently feature interplay between him and his fellow band members. His fame, as well as the band's, arguably rested on their ability to never play a song the same way twice. Often, Garcia would take cues from rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, remarking that "there are some [...] kinds of ideas that would really throw me if I had to create
31800-488: The major deposits were gone; even today, recreational gold panning remains a popular activity along the Trinity. One Mr. Jorstad who had been mining in the Trinity River country since the 1930s, continued to live in a small cabin at Pfeiffer Flat on the North Fork until his death in 1989. Jorstad's cabin was an important rest stop for miners, hunters, hikers and fishermen along the North Fork for many years; it remains as
32012-539: The midst of a solo depending upon the chord changes played underneath, though he nearly always finished phrases by landing on the chord-tones . Jerry most frequently played in the Mixolydian mode , though his solos and phrases often incorporated notes from the Dorian and major/minor pentatonic scales . Particularly in the late 1960s, Garcia occasionally incorporated melodic lines derived from Indian ragas into
32224-460: The mountains between Redding and Weaverville (approximately where State Route 299 is today) was used by Native Americans for generations before Europeans came to the area. Hudson's Bay Company fur trappers may have used this route in search of beaver as early as the 1830s and 1840s; trapping was common in the area until about 1845. The trail pioneered by Smith was also used by fur trappers, including mountain man Ewing Young in 1832. Today part of
32436-483: The musician and writer Lenny Kaye , the music of the Grateful Dead "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists." For the range of their influences and the structure of their live performances, the Grateful Dead are considered "the pioneering godfathers of the jam band world". The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area during the rise of the counterculture of
32648-411: The name, it quickly spread by word of mouth, and soon became their official title. Garcia served as lead guitarist and one of the principal vocalists and songwriters of the Grateful Dead for the band's entire career. Garcia composed songs such as " Uncle John's Band ", " Dark Star ", "Franklin's Tower", and " Scarlet Begonias ", among many others. Robert Hunter, an ardent collaborator with the band, wrote
32860-553: The new contract produced Terrapin Station in July 1977. The band's tour in the spring of that year is held in high regard by its fans, and its concert of May 8 at Cornell University is often considered one of the best performances of its career. Their September 1977 concert at Raceway Park in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey was attended by 107,019 people and held the record for largest-ticketed concert in
33072-664: The occasional high elevation thunderstorm. The Shasta-Trinity National Forest encompasses nearly the entire Trinity River watershed with the exception of private inholdings and the small area in Humboldt County. Large mammals found in the national forest include black bear, mountain lion, bobcat, coyote, gray fox, Columbian black-tailed deer (mule deer), and elk. River otters inhabit most streams. Other mammals include ringtails , raccoons, skunks, jackrabbits, martens and many squirrel and rat species including northern flying squirrel . Several species of bats are also found in
33284-465: The oldest evidence of human habitation in Northern California. This site is believed to be part of the early Borax Lake Pattern culture. Archaeological evidence in the Whiskeytown area also indicates human presence as early as 5000 BC, although it is uncertain at what point the ancestors of modern Native American tribes arrived here. The Wintu people are the first recorded indigenous group in
33496-441: The placer mining claims along this part of the Trinity River, spurring prospectors to push west, establishing a pack trail to the area around the New River and the South Fork of the Trinity. In fact, the New River was named thusly for being a "new" river to explore for gold. Although the river gold petered out by the 1870s, lode gold was discovered in the 1880s in the mountains above the Trinity River country. Because hard rock mining
33708-601: The principal road connecting Redding to the Humboldt Bay area. At Burnt Ranch it receives the New River from the north. At Salyer the South Fork , its main tributary, enters from the south, nearly doubling the flow. At the confluence of the South Fork, the Trinity River turns sharply north, entering Humboldt County . It flows through the wider steep-sided namesake valley of the Hoopa Valley Reservation , past
33920-565: The record for most Top-40 albums on the Billboard 200 chart. Rolling Stone ranked the Grateful Dead number 57 on its 2011 list of the " 100 Greatest Artists of All Time ". The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and a recording of their May 8, 1977 performance at Cornell University 's Barton Hall was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2012 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2024, Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann, and Hart were recognized as part of
34132-410: The remaining members of the Grateful Dead decided to disband. Since that time, there have been a number of reunions by the surviving members involving various combinations of musicians. Additionally, the former members have also begun or continued individual projects. In 1998, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Mickey Hart, along with several other musicians, formed a band called the Other Ones , and performed
34344-472: The roughneck reputation of their neighborhood at the time, Garcia's mother moved their family to Menlo Park . During their stay in Menlo Park, Garcia became acquainted with racism and antisemitism , things he disliked intensely. The same year, Garcia was also introduced to rock and roll and rhythm and blues by his brother, and enjoyed listening to Ray Charles , John Lee Hooker , B. B. King , Hank Ballard , and, later, Chuck Berry . Clifford often memorized
34556-412: The second highest peak, recorded in December 1955. The other USGS gages are located at Coffee Creek (above Trinity Lake), below Lewiston Dam , above and below Douglas City , at Junction City , at Helena , and at Burnt Ranch . The Trinity River's 2,936-square-mile (7,600 km ) watershed drains a rugged, forested region of California's North Coast . The highest point in the watershed
34768-414: The shifting lineup of the Other Ones also included guitarists Mark Karan , Steve Kimock , and Jimmy Herring , keyboardists Bruce Hornsby , Jeff Chimenti , and Rob Barraco , saxophonist Dave Ellis , drummer John Molo , bassist Alphonso Johnson , and vocalist Susan Tedeschi . In 2003, the Other Ones, still including Weir, Lesh, Hart, and Kreutzmann, changed their name to the Dead . The Dead toured
34980-442: The smallest homelands, if not the smallest, of any distinct linguistic group in North America." The abundant salmon, steelhead and sturgeon runs in the Trinity River were central to the lives of indigenous peoples along the entire length of the river. Fishing provided their primary sustenance as well as goods for trade. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, native peoples took as much as 2,000,000 pounds (910,000 kg) of salmon from
35192-473: The song's melody , but go on to create dynamic phrases that resolve by returning to the chord-tones. Not unlike traditional improvisational jazz , they may occasionally feature several solos by multiple instruments within an undecided number of bars , such as a keyboardist, before returning to the melody. At the same time, Dead shows almost always feature a more collective, modal approach to improvisation that typically occurs during segues between songs before
35404-415: The spring of 1993. They married on February 14, 1994, in Sausalito , California. Garcia and Koons were married at the time of his death. Because of their public profile, Garcia and his collaborators were occasionally singled out in the American government's war on drugs . On October 2, 1967, 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco (where the Grateful Dead had taken up residence the year before) was raided after
35616-416: The streets doing funny things and just having a helluva time". During this time, Garcia also studied at what is now the San Francisco Art Institute . At San Francisco Art Institute, Garcia was taught by Wally Hedrick , an artist who came to prominence during the 1960s. During the classes, he often encouraged Garcia to draw and paint, noting that Garcia had skill in both areas. Hedrick also introduced Garcia to
35828-406: The towns of Willow Creek and Hoopa . It joins the Klamath River at Weitchpec , 44 miles (71 km) above the mouth of the larger river on the Pacific Ocean . The confluence marks the point where the Klamath turns from its generally southwesterly course to flow north towards the sea. As the crow flies , Weitchpec is situated about 30 miles (48 km) northeast of Eureka . The Trinity River
36040-605: The trail also forms the route of California State Route 36 . Major Pierson B. Reading (for whom the present city of Redding is named) explored the upper Trinity area in 1845 and is credited with the modern name of the river. Reading mistakenly thought that the Trinity flowed west to empty into the Pacific Ocean at Trinidad Bay . In 1849 prospectors confirmed the actual path of the river to flow into what, twenty years earlier had been called "Smith's River"; however, Reading's name stuck. In July 1848, not too long after James Marshall's famous gold find at Sutter's Mill – which started
36252-419: The upper Trinity River; Oregon white oak is widespread throughout lower elevations. Fir forests comprise almost 74 percent of the forests in the Trinity River watershed; pine and hardwoods account for 13 percent each. There are also limited amounts of chaparral , brush and grass/rangeland within the basin. Wildfires are common in the dry summers which receive little to no precipitation, aside from
36464-400: The use of dentalium shells as currency. The Tsnungwe people, also known as the South Fork Hupa, lived pre-contact in the South Fork of the Trinity River area and Burnt Ranch/New River area. After the Gold Rush of 1849, many years of battles occurred between the Trinity River Indians and the miners/soldiers. Most surviving Tsnungwe were taken to the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation. By 1900,
36676-725: The use of electric guitars. The Grateful Dead's early music (in the mid-1960s) was part of the process of establishing what " psychedelic music " was, but theirs was essentially a "street party" form of it. They developed their "psychedelic" playing as a result of meeting Ken Kesey in Palo Alto, California , and subsequently becoming the house band for the Acid Tests he staged. They did not fit their music to an established category such as pop rock, blues, folk rock, or country & western. Individual tunes within their repertoire could be identified under one of these stylistic labels, but overall their music drew on all of these genres and, more frequently, melded several of them. Bill Graham said of
36888-484: The use of pressurized water to demolish hillsides in search of gold bearing ore. This had an enormous impact on the landscape – leveling forests, carving huge gullies and burying streambeds under dozens of feet of sediment – which still characterizes the area today. Elaborate flume, reservoir and tunnel systems were built to supply the massive quantities of water required by these "hydraulicking" operations. The La Grange Mine which began operating in 1862 on Oregon Gulch,
37100-498: The vocals for his favorite songs, and would then make Garcia learn the harmony parts, a move to which Garcia later attributed much of his early ear training . In mid-1957, Garcia began smoking cigarettes and was introduced to marijuana . Garcia would later reminisce about the first time he smoked marijuana: "Me and a friend of mine went up into the hills with two joints, the San Francisco foothills, and smoked these joints and just got so high and laughed and roared and went skipping down
37312-437: The volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza . In 1884 the California legislature banned hydraulic mining as the flow of tailings from hydraulic mines in the Sierra Nevada was silting up the Sacramento River , making it unnavigable. However, the Trinity hydraulic mines escaped this ban, as the remote and swift flowing Trinity River was not considered a navigable watercourse. Nevertheless, the largest deposits had been played out by
37524-471: The watershed, little brown bats being the most common. The area around Trinity Lake has a significant nesting bald eagle population. Beaver also inhabit the Trinity River watershed although their numbers were much higher before fur trappers came to the area. In 1828, the Jedediah Smith expedition was helped across the Trinity River by the Yurok and camped on the east side of the Trinity River. His clerk, Harrison G. Rogers wrote, "Mr. Smith purchases all
37736-419: The watershed. Less than 2 percent of the watershed is urbanized . About 86 percent of the Trinity River watershed is in Trinity County. As of the 2010 census, the population of Trinity County was 13,786. With a population density of 4.3 people per square mile (1.7/km ) it is one of the least densely populated counties in California. Only 415 square miles (1,070 km ), or about 14 percent of
37948-439: The way the melody does; my phrases may be more dense or have different value, but they'll occur in the same places in the song. [...]" Garcia and the band toured almost constantly from their formation in 1965 until Garcia's death in 1995. Periodically, there were breaks due to exhaustion or health problems, often due to Garcia's drug use. During their three-decade span, the Grateful Dead played 2,314 shows. Garcia's guitar-playing
38160-486: The west, the Salmon River and Scott River (tributaries of the Klamath River) to the north, and Clear Creek and Cottonwood Creek (both tributaries of the Sacramento River) to the east and south, respectively. Fir, oak, and pine forests cover about 92 percent of the watershed. Chaparral and shrubs account for slightly over 5 percent, and grassland and barren land each cover approximately 1 percent. Riparian zones and wetlands encompass 0.5 percent of
38372-421: The west. The river picks up its first large tributary called Bear Creek near a series of large spring filled meadows roughly one mile from the headwaters. The short but steep Bull Creek comes in just shortly down stream from the West. Cedar Creek is the next major tributary that meets from the East. The river continues to flow in a Southwestern direction picking up numerous tributaries before entering Trinity Lake ,
38584-427: The western part of the basin, is in Humboldt County. The part of the Trinity River watershed in Humboldt County is also sparsely populated, with the exception of the Hoopa Valley Reservation, which was home to 2,930 people as of 2011. Extractive industries such as mining and logging, and to a limited extent farming and ranching, have been the main economic drivers in the Trinity River basin since European settlement in
38796-824: The winter. Many locals remained "so bitter about the dam that they tore down signs and misdirected tourists" for many years after the dam was built. With the exception of rocky alpine regions in the highest mountains, the Trinity River watershed is almost entirely forested. Mixed coniferous (fir and pine) forests dominate the landscape at elevations of up to 6,000 feet (1,800 m). Common tree species include ponderosa pine , Jeffrey pine , Douglas fir , white fir , red fir , sugar pine , knobcone pine and incense cedar . The watershed also includes some hardwood forests, typically located along canyon bottoms and streams, which are home to California black oak ( Quercus kelloggii ), madrone , tanbark oak , canyon live oak and bigleaf maple . Stands of Port Orford cedar are common along
39008-405: The world at its completion in 1962 (it was surpassed by Oroville Dam , also in California, in 1968). Trinity Lake can store a maximum of 2,447,650 acre-feet (3.01913 km ), or about twice the Trinity River's flow at this point. Below Trinity Dam is the much smaller Lewiston Dam , the actual point at which the water is diverted. The 10.7-mile (17.2 km) Clear Creek Tunnel conveys water under
39220-498: The world music album Blues From the Rainforest launched the Rainforest Band . Garcia spent a lot of time in the recording studio helping out fellow musician friends in session work, often adding guitar, vocals, pedal steel, sometimes banjo and piano and even producing. He played on over 50 studio albums, the styles of which were eclectic and varied, including bluegrass, rock, folk, blues, country, jazz, electronic music, gospel, funk, and reggae. Artists who sought Garcia's help included
39432-432: The youngest original member of the group, played rhythm guitar . Ron "Pigpen" McKernan played keyboards , percussion , and harmonica until shortly before his death in 1973 at the age of 27 . Garcia, Weir, and McKernan shared the lead vocal duties more or less equally; Lesh sang only a few leads, but his tenor was a key part of the band's three-part vocal harmonies. Bill Kreutzmann played drums , and in September 1967
39644-487: Was "the love of his life" while paying her final respects, whereupon Meier and Ruppenthal, who were both in attendance, simultaneously exclaimed, "He said that to me!" The affair with Meier marked the breakup of Garcia's family life with Matheson and Keelin. Garcia ended the affair with Meier forty-five days later while on tour in Chicago with the Grateful Dead after she confronted him about his drug use. Shortly thereafter, Garcia renewed his acquaintance with Deborah Koons in
39856-654: Was Bob Matthews, who later engineered many of the Grateful Dead's albums. Matthews attended Menlo-Atherton High School and was friends with Bob Weir , and on New Year's Eve 1963, he introduced Weir and Garcia. Between 1962 and 1964, Garcia sang and performed mainly bluegrass, old-time , and folk music . One of the bands Garcia performed with was the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers, a bluegrass act. The group consisted of Garcia on guitar, banjo, vocals, and harmonica, Marshall Leicester on banjo, guitar, and vocals, and Dick Arnold on fiddle and vocals. Soon after this, Garcia, Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan , and several of their friends formed
40068-614: Was a touring member from 1990 to 1992, as well as a guest with the band on occasion before and after the tours. After Garcia's death in 1995, former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as The Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and as The Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band's 50th anniversary in a series of concerts in Santa Clara, California , and Chicago that were billed as their last performances together. There have also been several spin-offs featuring one or more core members, such as Dead & Company , Furthur ,
40280-425: Was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance. Then I got serious". It was at this time that Garcia began to realize that he needed to begin playing the guitar in earnest—a move which meant giving up his love of drawing and painting. In April 1961, Garcia first met Robert Hunter , who would become a long-time friend of and lyricist for
40492-525: Was announced that Martin Scorsese would produce a documentary film about the Grateful Dead, to be directed by Amir Bar-Lev . David Lemieux supervised the musical selection, and Weir, Hart, Kreutzmann, and Lesh agreed to new interviews for the film. Bar-Lev's four-hour documentary, titled Long Strange Trip , was released in 2017. Barlow died in 2018 and Hunter in 2019. Lesh died in 2024. In 2015, Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann, and Hart reunited for five concerts called "Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of
40704-458: Was asked to play by longtime friend and fellow musician, Pete Sears, who played piano with all the bands that day, and also procured all the other musicians. Garcia, Mickey Hart and Steve Parish played the show, then were given a police escort to a Grateful Dead show across the bay later that night. Garcia also played with Nick Gravenites and Pete Sears at a benefit given for Vietnam Veteran and peace activist Brian Willson , who lost both legs below
40916-418: Was completed on December 23, 1963. The reservoir was originally named "Clair Engle Lake" to commemorate United States Senator Clair Engle , who played a crucial role in shepherding the Trinity bill through Congress; however, the name proved unpopular with locals, and it was changed to Trinity Lake in 1997. Trinity Dam, an earth embankment structure 538 feet (164 m) high, was the tallest embankment dam in
41128-463: Was eclectic. He melded elements from the various kinds of music that influenced him. Echoes of bluegrass playing (such as Arthur Smith and Doc Watson ) could be heard. There was also early rock (like Lonnie Mack , James Burton , and Chuck Berry), contemporary blues ( Freddie King and Lowell Fulsom ), country and western ( Roy Nichols and Don Rich ), and jazz ( Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt ) to be heard in Garcia's style. Don Rich
41340-400: Was exchanged for imported supplies and services. The initial discoveries were placer deposits, carried by the river to settle in gravel bars. The Trinity River gold rush is also noted for the large number of Chinese miners attracted to the area, as many as 2,500 by 1854. Many of the Chinese were from the Pearl River Delta ( Guangdong region). Mining activity was initially concentrated in
41552-422: Was happening in the late Fifties and early Sixties, like Freddie King." Garcia's style could vary with the song being played and the instrument he was using, but his playing had a number of so-called "signatures". Among these were lead lines based on rhythmic triplets (examples include the songs "Good Morning Little School Girl", "New Speedway Boogie", "Brokedown Palace", "Deal", "Loser", " Truckin' ", "That's It for
41764-407: Was herself born in San Francisco. His parents named him after composer Jerome Kern . Jerome John was their second child, preceded by Clifford Ramon "Tiff", who was born in 1937. Shortly before Clifford's birth, their father and a partner leased a building in downtown San Francisco and turned it into a bar, partly in response to Jose being blackballed from a musicians' union for moonlighting . Garcia
41976-481: Was involved in a car crash near Twin Peaks in San Francisco. Garcia, who was recording the album American Beauty at the time, often left the sessions to visit his mother with his brother Clifford. She died on September 28, 1970. In the midst of a March 1973 Grateful Dead engagement at Long Island's Nassau Coliseum , Garcia met Deborah Koons, an aspiring filmmaker from a wealthy Cincinnati, Ohio -based family who would much later marry him and become his widow. After
42188-412: Was joined by a second drummer, New York City native Mickey Hart , who also played a wide variety of other percussion instruments . 1970 included tour dates in New Orleans , where the band performed at The Warehouse for two nights. On January 31, 1970, the local police raided their hotel on Bourbon Street and arrested and charged 19 people with possession of various drugs. The second night's concert
42400-411: Was joined by another keyboardist, Keith Godchaux , who played grand piano alongside Pigpen's Hammond B-3 organ . In early 1972, Keith's wife, Donna Jean Godchaux , joined the Grateful Dead as a backing vocalist. Following the Grateful Dead's " Europe '72 " tour, Pigpen's health had deteriorated to the point that he could no longer tour with the band. His final concert appearance was June 17, 1972, at
42612-504: Was like a realization that just made me feel immensely relieved." In 1965, Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions evolved into the Warlocks, with the addition of Dana Morgan, Jr. (soon replaced by Phil Lesh) on bass guitar and Bill Kreutzmann on percussion . However, the band discovered a record by another group (possibly the future Velvet Underground or Z.Z. Top , both of which used the name in their early days) called The Warlocks. In response, Garcia came up with "Grateful Dead" by opening
42824-455: Was performed as scheduled after bail was posted. Eventually, the charges were dismissed, except those against sound engineer Owsley Stanley , who was already facing charges in California for manufacturing LSD. This event was later memorialized in the lyrics of “ Truckin' ", a single from American Beauty that reached number 64 on the charts. Hart took time off from the band in February 1971, after his father, an accountant, absconded with much of
43036-409: Was raised as a Catholic . He was influenced by music at an early age, taking piano lessons for much of his childhood. His father was a retired professional musician and his mother enjoyed playing the piano. His father's extended family—which had immigrated from Spain in 1919—would often sing during reunions. In 1946, two-thirds of four-year-old Garcia's right middle finger was cut off by his brother in
43248-632: Was ranked at #46. In 2023, Garcia was ranked 34th by Rolling Stone . Garcia was renowned for his musical and technical ability, particularly his ability to play a variety of instruments and sustain long improvisations. Garcia believed that improvisation took stress away from his playing and allowed him to make spur of the moment decisions that he would not have made intentionally. In a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone , Garcia noted that "my own preferences are for improvisation, for making it up as I go along. The idea of picking , of eliminating possibilities by deciding, that's difficult for me". Originating from
43460-497: Was released on Warner Brothers in 1967. On May 3, 1968, the band played a free concert at Columbia University during the anti–Vietnam War student protests during which students occupied several campus buildings. In order to play, the band, equipment and all, had to be “smuggled” on campus in the back of a bread delivery truck. “We were already jamming away before the security and police could stop us.” Classically trained trumpeter Phil Lesh performed on bass guitar . Bob Weir ,
43672-406: Was required to access the gold bearing veins, new industries such as iron forges and stamp mills prospered in the region. Another profitable way to access gold was hydraulic mining operations, which sprang up across the Trinity River country starting in the 1860s. At one point, there were 307 hydraulic mines in Trinity County alone, of which 145 were "fully operational", all of which depended on
43884-442: Was staying in a California drug rehabilitation facility when he died of a heart attack in August 1995, just eight days after his 53rd birthday. Garcia's ancestors on his father's side were from Galicia in northwest Spain. His mother's ancestors were Irish and Swedish. He was born in the Excelsior District of San Francisco, California, on August 1, 1942, to Jose Ramon "Joe" Garcia and Ruth Marie "Bobbie" (née Clifford) Garcia, who
44096-423: Was the Mantra-Rock Dance , a musical event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. The Grateful Dead performed at the event along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami , poet Allen Ginsberg , bands Moby Grape and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin , donating proceeds to the temple. The band's first LP, The Grateful Dead ,
44308-427: Was the last member to join the Warlocks before they changed their name to Grateful Dead, replacing Dana Morgan Jr., who had played bass for a few gigs. Drummer Mickey Hart and non-performing lyricist Robert Hunter joined in 1967. With the exception of McKernan, who died in 1973, and Hart, who left the band from 1971 to 1974, the core of the band stayed together for its entire 30-year history. Other official members of
44520-647: Was the sparkling country guitar player in Buck Owens 's " the Buckaroos " band of the 1960s, but besides Rich's style, both Garcia's pedal steel guitar playing (on Grateful Dead records and others) and his standard electric guitar work, were influenced by another of Owens's Buckaroos of that time, pedal steel player Tom Brumley . And as an improvisational soloist, John Coltrane was one of his greatest personal and musical influences. Garcia later described his playing style as having "descended from barroom rock and roll, country guitar. Just 'cause that's where all my stuff comes from. It's like that blues instrumental stuff that
44732-533: Was very high. The concerts were simulcast via various media. The Chicago shows have been released as a box set of CDs and DVDs. The Grateful Dead formed during the era when bands such as the Beatles , the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones were dominating the airwaves. "The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band", said Bob Weir. "What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing." Former folk-scene star Bob Dylan had recently put out
44944-762: Was working at the coffee house in the back of Kepler's Books , where Garcia, Hunter, and Nelson regularly performed. They married on April 23, 1963, and on December 8 of that year, their daughter Heather was born. They divorced in 1967. Carolyn Adams , a Merry Prankster also known as "Mountain Girl" or "M.G.," had a daughter, Sunshine, with Ken Kesey in 1966. Adams married another Prankster, George Walker, but they soon separated. She and Sunshine then moved into 710 Ashbury with Garcia in late 1966 where they would ultimately live together until 1975. Adams gave birth to Garcia's second and third daughters, Annabelle Walker Garcia (February 2, 1970) and Theresa Adams "Trixie" Garcia (September 21, 1974). In August 1970, Garcia's mother Ruth
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