Will We Get to See Jerry Garcia Again via Virtual Technology

Late Baronial in 1991, a merry band of Deadheads hiked up ii,000 feet to the top of a mount in Lake Tahoe and hid in the bushes, all to come across legendary guitarist and Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia.

That year, the Grateful Dead toured beyond the country. The band earned $xx 1000000 from touring merely in the first half-dozen months of 1991, according to a New York Times article published that September. They sold out stadiums, including nine shows at Madison Square Garden in New York.

But in betwixt the sold-out stadiums and the mega festivals, Garcia and his side projection, the Jerry Garcia Ring, popped upward to the Sierra Nevada to play two sets — an electric 1 and an acoustic — at the top of a ski resort for one of Lake Tahoe's most legendary concerts ever. This show didn't make New York Times headlines. It was hardly even covered by California newspapers. But its lore lives on among Tahoe's hardcore Deadheads and in the corners of the internet, on Reddit threads and YouTube comments where fans reminisce about a show that seems impossible today.

"If I knew what fabricated u.s. popular, I'd canteen information technology," Jerry Garcia, the famed guitarist and one of the group's leaders, told the New York Times in an interview that twelvemonth.

David Grisman, left, and Jerry Garcia perform at the music festival on Aug. 25, 1991.

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

A week before the prove in Tahoe, the migration of Deadheads into Sacramento's suburbs was well chronicled. One local reporter for a Roseville newspaper followed a ramshackle camper truck with Iowa license plates that was adorned in Grateful Dead stickers; its driver wore a long ponytail and a shaggy beard and was undoubtedly heading toward the last of three consecutive Grateful Dead concerts at Cal Expo.

After the Sacramento shows, the train of Deadheads routed east to follow Garcia upwards and over the Sierra Nevada Crest for a ii-day mount music festival at Squaw Valley Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe. (The ski resort said concluding year they volition be irresolute their name to remove the racist slur; notwithstanding, a new name has even so to be announced.)

The Squaw Valley Summer Music Festival was the brainchild of Bill Graham, the celebrated rock promoter from San Francisco who worked with the Grateful Expressionless, Bob Dylan, Santana and so many more big name musicians from the '60s, '70s and '80s. The Tahoe festival'southward lineup featured the Jerry Garcia Band, Booker T. and the Chiliad.Thousand.'s, Belfry of Ability, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Jimmy Cliff, Rhythm Tribe, David Grisman and the Neville Brothers.

Ski resorts in Tahoe host concerts with big headliners on a fairly regular basis. That's non what made this festival so special. Most of Tahoe's big concerts are on stages set in parking lots. But Graham, ever the visionary, decided instead to build his stage high up in the mountains, in a natural amphitheater that sits beneath rocky peaks and is surrounded by grassy meadows full of wildflowers.

Along with the Jerry Garcia Band, performers included Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Booker T. and the 1000.Chiliad.'s, Belfry of Power, Jimmy Cliff, Rhythm Tribe, David Grisman and the Neville Brothers.

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

To reach the venue, concertgoers had to take the ski resort'south gondola, which Deadheads of course started calling the "Ganjola." The show sold out chop-chop, and nevertheless more than fans kept pouring into Tahoe. With zero chance of getting a ticket to ride upwardly the gondola to the concert venue, many Deadheads decided to kicking it up the mountain instead.

"We left all our gear and guitar in someone's autobus. I took a sleeping bag and Brian took his Mexican blanket," wrote a Jerry Garcia fan named JamJax on a comment beneath YouTube video of the Tahoe festival. When the hiking accomplice of Garcia fans finally fabricated it to the acme of the mountain, they hid overnight from security guards in the bushes.

"As the light came up, it became clear that behind every bush and tree, gully and ditch on that ski bowl was a hiding hippie," JamJax writes. "Silent as mice all night long."

Fable says that Graham admitted all of the hikers into the show for gratis, proverb that if they wanted to meet Garcia that desperately, then they deserved access. He even gave out buttons to people who hiked upwards or down from the show that said: "I scaled the mount for Jerry."

According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, some 10,000 people packed the slopes of the ski resort, except there was no snow. Only music. Another newspaper article says xx,000 people arrived for the weekend.

"It could accept been 1967 all over again, as winding trails of VW buses and tie-dye-clad concert goers led a trail to the Squaw Valley Summertime Music Festival," says one article published Aug. 27, 1991, in the Printing-Tribune, a newspaper in Roseville.

Tickets to the festival were billed as "your ticket outta here." They cost $27.50 for the day, or $55 for both Sabbatum and Sunday's performances. Kids could go in for half toll.

Graham showed up to a press briefing on Sunday morning with his arm wrapped in an Ace bandage, according to an article in the Reno Gazette-Journal. He had been riding up and down the ski resort on a dirt bike and took a nasty tumble on a sandy turn. Nonetheless, he handled questions from the printing as smooth equally ever, wearing wire-frame glasses, shorts and tie-dyed socks.

"I've got to tell you lot that Deadheads are different — they are their own species," Graham said, of the thousands of fans who camped out and climbed mountains. Of course, the festival saw the requisite drugs and complimentary-form dancing that followed Garcia and the Grateful Dead like a shadow. Only if there's one word that keeps popping upwards to describe Deadheads in 1991 it'due south "mellow." Some fans were a couple decades older than they were when they offset fell in beloved with the Grateful Dead in the 1960s, and they swapped weekday work attire for weekend flowing skirts and Birkenstocks. Other fans at the show were young, in their 20s and 30s, a new wave of Garcia fans.

In the oversupply, booths dished upwardly stir-fried veggie dishes, according to the Reno Gazette-Periodical. Others sold environmental literature. One couple drew freehand portraits of Garcia on white T-shirts they were selling for $10.

"The audition thinks we're providing more than music, but we don't let on what nosotros're providing, intentionally," Garcia told the New York Times. "We're elliptical. Someone once wrote that we're a real cheap vacation to Bermuda, which is kind of correct. But insofar as we're providing a rubber context to be together with a lot of people who aren't agape of each other, which is existent valuable, I'd guess, we're important."

The stage was prepare up immediately below the ridge that the ski resort's Headwall Chair climbs, with a view of the Northward Confront and the iconic Palisades visible only behind the speakers and rigging. On Saturday, the Jerry Garcia Band played an electric set, but on Sunday, he invited mandolinist David Grisman onto the stage for an audio-visual set up. The playlist featured crowd favorites, including "Ripple." Fans spread out their blankets on the grass and let the high-altitude sun bake their bronzed bodies.

In the YouTube comments and in newspapers, 1 of the defining characteristics of a show this high up in the mountains was the current of air.

Garcia'south canvass music nearly blew away. Intermittent gusts shook the stage lights and speakers. Waves of dust showered over the crowd (only grit sounds at least better than today'southward wildfire smoke). The sound quality was impacted. And on Dominicus, the band bumped up their start time to play before the wind picked upwardly later in the day.

Wind bated, Graham told reporters he wanted the festival to get an almanac upshot. He said there'southward "better than a 50-50 chance" he'd be back adjacent summer. "Squaw Valley volition rock once again," read one headline.

But two months later, Graham died in a helicopter crash in the Bay Area. He was threescore years old.

The following year, Placer County officials shut down any lingering hopes for a repeat operation by the Jerry Garcia Band in the mountains in a higher place Tahoe. The county slapped on weather condition for the music festival that were prohibitive, including $lxxx,000 worth of fees for "fire and environmental protection." A ski resort official at the time called the fees "overkill," but in a move that could exist seen every bit foreshadowing to today'due south protests against tourists and littering, almost 150 Tahoe residents signed a petition asking the county to withdraw the let for the festival. They cited concerns similar illegal camping ground on forest lands and private property. Some people were rumored to be bathing in Lake Tahoe.

The summertime music festival in 1991 remains one of the about legendary performances that always went down in Lake Tahoe. Bela Fleck, left, David Grisman, Center and Jerry Garcia, right.

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

The Jerry Garcia Band'south performance at the peak of Tahoe was a one and done thing, but it holds a strong place in Tahoe's music history.

In 2009, the ski resort tried once more to host a music festival at the top of the mountains. In its starting time year, Wanderlust, a yoga and music festival, gear up upwardly a stage in the exact same spot equally Graham had envisioned, in the meadows at the top of the same ski resort. The founders of Wanderlust attended the 1991 Jerry Garcia Band show and wanted to recreate the experience. Musicians like Andrew Bird, Broken Social Scene and Jenny Lewis all played beneath the mountains, and I was among the fans sitting in the field of wildflowers (and getting very sunburned). The show was memorable and nostalgic of the Grateful Dead days. Nonetheless, the logistics of hosting a show way upwards there proved again to be too difficult to repeat. In the years after, Wanderlust even so invited big names to play in Tahoe. But the phase was e'er fix downwardly beneath, in the parking lot.

That August weekend in 1991, Garcia wore a black T-shirt and aviators. He strummed before thousands in the mount air.

"The Grateful Expressionless is one of the last run-off-and-join-the-circus things and there isn't much similar it," Garcia said in another interview he gave in 1991, to music journalist Steve Hochman.

"America has been so slow lately," Garcia continued. "These are the Bush years, tiresome stuff and unpleasant mostly. Doors are closing everywhere and the opportunity to exercise something adventurous and fun has gotten narrower and narrower. The Dead hasn't changed much from our bespeak of view, just the world has changed around it."

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Source: https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/Grateful-Dead-Jerry-Garcia-Lake-Tahoe-16367276.php

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