David Nelson

It's that simple.

The guitarist David Nelson remembered Davis walking in at an East Coast Dead show and offering to sign the writers.

Later Nelson asked Garcia about it.

Yes, Garcia said.

It gives no sign at all of what those weeks were actually like.

Lowell George led Little Feet, a band the dead loved, a band that played a loose, funky New Orleans kind of rock and roll better than almost anyone.

He was a remarkable slide guitarist, and a gruff soulful singer.

Blair Jackson describes him as a big furry bear of a guy who always seemed to be smiling.

Did they have any knockoffs they could bring by? They did, and the one that arrived was pink.

there was another quiet precaution in the room that spring the summer before at a stadium show in washington dillon had sat in with the dead and broken a string part way through the first song steve parish went to the guitar stash for a replacement a guitar that had not been used in a long while and handed it over david nelson the dead's old friend from the bluegrass days was watching from the sound booth the guitar was horribly out of tune he said and he knew garcia died a thousand deaths so before the rehearsals garcia called nelson and asked a favor he could not promise nelson any playing but would he come along and look after the guitars keep them strung up and in tune nelson said sure the pink guitar had a short history of its own before it ever reached the rehearsal room a music store man named phil garfinkel a modulus dealer and a friend of the company's founder jeff gould had come out to see the dead's new year shows at the kaiser in oakland and he dropped in at the modulus factory there was a pink guitar there with a graphite neck garfinkel had gotten good at installing pickups and soldering and gould made him an offer if garfinkel could wire bobby's guitar in 30 minutes he would give him tickets for that night's show and here's the odd thing about that night Garfinkel did it, in the half hour, and went to the show.

Years later on the Dead's own podcast, he laughed about it.

So I guess y'all can blame me for the pink guitar, he said.

That is where the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band began, more or less, not on a stage, at a table after turkey.

David Nelson remembered the phone call.

Jerry had asked him to bring Sandy the way they used to and mentioned that John Kahn would be there too.

Nelson and Sandy Rothman had played bluegrass with Garcia back in the early '60s before there was any such thing as the Grateful Dead.

The house had seen the Ziegfeld Follies, The Sound of Music, and Richard Burton playing Hamlet.

It was a stage built for musicals, and one autumn, for about two and a half weeks, it belonged to Jerry Garcia.

The way David Nelson told it, the whole thing started as a joke.

Garcia, Kahn, Nelson, and Sandy Rothman had played four old songs at a San Francisco benefit, and afterward, they were sitting on a couch in the back room when Bill Graham burst in.

On the studio recording of Cumberland Blues, Garcia plays banjo.

A real banjo, tangled up with another musician, David Nelson, playing flat-picked acoustic guitar, the two of them weaving quick lines around each other.

But when the band played the song on stage, Garcia did not bring a banjo.

He faked it.

They stood the band on an old street corner somewhere in the Mission District, a working neighborhood of the city, and they took the picture.

And Kelly remembered, with some amusement, that the band stood there grumbling and griping about the whole business the entire time.

A group of young musicians being made to stand on a cold corner and look like working men from another generation, and not enjoying it in the least.

Now walk up to that corner yourself, in your mind.