GarciaLive Volume Six To Be Released On June 24th!
We’re back with a new installment in the GarciaLive series! Volume Six will showcase Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders’ July 5th, 1973 performance at the Lion’s Share in San Anselmo, CA. The new archival release, mastered from soundboard recordings made by Betty Cantor-Jackson, will arrive on June 24th via Round Records as a 3-CD set or digital download in FLAC and MP3 formats.
Recorded just five days prior to the seminal performances celebrated on the Live at the Keystone series, GarciaLive Volume Six highlights a particularly adventurous evening at the Lion’s Share, a 200 capacity club known for its vibrant music scene which drew regulars like Janis Joplin, Phil Lesh, Van Morrison, and many others. The club’s intimacy can be felt throughout the recordings as the band, rounded out by John Kahn on bass and drummer Bill Vitt, frequently launch into extended improvisations fueled by the exchange of energy with the audience. The blistering “She’s Got Charisma” -> “That’s Alright, Mama”, which clocks in at over 31 minutes long, “starts off innocently in familiar blues territory, but very quickly deconstructs into fragmentation and exploration, defying both gravity and expectation at the same time” as writer Benjy Eisen eloquently describes in the releases’ liner note essay. The presence of an unidentified guest on trumpet during the band’s second set adds to the freedom and looseness found within the performance. The guest trumpeter is felt most during extended takes on “My Funny Valentine” and “Merl’s Tune,” both easy highlights of the entire evening.
On full display thought-out is the deep musical connection found between Garcia and Merl Saunders, who Garcia credited for introducing him to new forms of music. Speaking about Saunders, Garcia once said: “He filled me in on all those years of things I didn’t do. I’d never played any standards; I’d never played in dance bands. I never had any approach to the world of regular, straight music. He knows all the standards, and he taught me how bebop works. He taught me music. Between the combination of Howard and Merl, that’s where I really learned music. Before it was sort of, ‘OK, where do I plug in?’ I picked up the adult version of a music attitude from those guys.” And these performances contained within are certainly “adult versions” full of fearless and relentless interplay blurring the lines between genres while simultaneously setting new standards.
GarciaLive Volume Six: July 5th, 1973 Lion’s Share is now available for pre-order at Garcia Family Provisions in advance of it’s June 24th release date. The 3-CD set or digital downloads are available on their own or bundled with an exclusive t-shirt and/or a limited edition 18”x24” screen print by Matt Leunig signed and numbered by the artist in an edition of 500.
