

Appropriately enough, they kicked it off with Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock.” Right off the bat, the band was inspired to jam, and Garcia and Hopkins traded solos and improvised around each other for a remarkable 14-minute take on the song. 180-gram vinyl, debossed foil stamping, textured paper wrap. Garcia founded the band in 1975 it remained the most important of his various side projects until his death in 1995.

While the first night was a rather relaxed affair, this second night found the group playing with a considerably higher level of intensity. The Jerry Garcia Band was a San Francisco Bay Area rock band led by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. These two nights were a feast for Deadhead ears, as Kingfish (featuring Bob Weir) and Keith and Donna Godchaux’s Band, with Bill Kreutzmann on drums, opened these shows, providing local fans the opportunity to catch up on five out of the six primary Dead members’ recent activities. The quartet primarily concentrated on material from Garcia’s three solo albums, with a smattering of Hopkins’s compositions and interesting covers thrown in for good measure. Of his many side projects, this was the main one, until his death in 1995. Garcia Family Provisions, the Jerry Garcia Official Store, is the place to shop for live releases Shop eight volumes of Jerry Garcia Band live music & more 3. He battled for the American soul, out there on the edge of. The Jerry Garcia Band was an American rock band led by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Jerry has been a revolutionary, a warrior, as long as Ive known him. And Elvis was great, but he was a good ole boy, not a revolutionary. This first iteration of the Jerry Garcia Band, which also featured Garcia’s longtime cohort John Kahn on bass and drummer Ron Tutt, only existed for a few months and would prove to be a brief opening chapter for Garcia’s live solo career. The Beatles were great, but they were a studio band. The Grateful Dead had been in retirement from touring for over a year when Jerry Garcia put together a hot little quartet with British piano virtuoso Nicky Hopkins, who played with The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and plenty of others.
