This may be blasphemous to say but I’ve never been a Grateful Dead fan.
Surely, some people out there are gasping, covering their mouths, and falling over in a musical moral panic, but hey, different strokes, right? Well, it turned out Sturgill Simpson shared my opinion until earlier this year, when an experience with the remaining band members, modern-day collaborators, and other artists completely changed his perspective.
After a multi-year hiatus due to Stu releasing his final album as a solo act and a serious vocal cord injury, Sturgill played one of his first live shows since the break (the only other I know of being Farm Aid, where he sang “Life Of Sin” with Margo Price) at Dead Ahead Festival in Cancun, Mexico back in January, teaming up with a number of musicians for some good old fashioned jamming. There was “Big River,” “Mama Tried,” and “Call Me The Breeze,” and many others and the entirety of the sit-in looked beyond incredible, if only because it got Stu back on stage.
But as it turns out, the Dead Ahead Festival was a major turning point in Sturgill’s career, as we got to learn from an article in Uncut magazine, a publication based out of London.
Turns out that appearance, at least in his head, was going to be a one off as he still wasn’t that interested in returning to music full time, until the music absorbed him and he had a big realization about Jerry Garcia’s guitar playing.
After the Dead Ahead Festival, he said:
“I wasn’t doing anything and I was asked, did I want to go to Mexico for a couple of days and play guitar for the Grateful Dead? I wasn’t really familiar with them, because in my early twenties in Kentucky there was a jam band scene which I dismissed as unstructured noodling, and I lumped the Dead into that.
Then when Bob sent me 60 songs I had to learn, I thought, why is this so easy? It’s almost like I could anticipate where Jerry was going. And it was because Jerry played folk, country, bluegrass and blues, the same way I play guitar! He is now my favorite guitar player.
And after I got home from those shows, all I could think about was playing guitar for 10 hours a day again. I called my booking agent and said, ‘I wanna go on tour.’ Jerry Garcia, I hate to say it, might have saved my life!”
Jerry Garcia was a founding member, principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and vocalist of Grateful Dead for their entire 30 year career, which ended in 1995 with his death from a heart attack at just age 53.
What a cool flip it is to go from “I don’t really like this scrambled mumbo jumbo” to “Wow, this music literally makes me want to hit the road, rip guitar solos, write songs, and make albums again.” I’m going to have to give The Dead another shot, if only because of what they did for Sturgill’s career, and in turn for us as fans.
Us in country music sure owe a large debt of gratitude to the Grateful Dead and the late Jerry Garcia.
Make sure you head on over to Vivid Seats and grab some tickets when Johnny Blue Skies is in town…
Here’s Stu playing “Big River” with Bob Weis at Dead Ahead Festival in January of this year.
And my favorite song from Stu’s latest album, Passage Du Desir, “Scooter Blues”
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