DESCRIPTION:
Today, in partnership with Telefunken, JamBase is pleased to publish the first video of our Grateful Dead covers project Songs Of Their Own. Over the past few months we recorded fantastic sessions with touring bands as they passed through the Bay Area to play at mainstays in our thriving local music scene. With the excitement building for the upcoming Fare Thee Well shows, we thought the best way to contribute was to pay tribute to the the Grateful Dead’s influential original songbook. Expect these videos to keep hitting your screens day after day leading up the final Fare Thee Well show in Chicago on July 5th. These videos were shot at JamBase’s San Francisco office and in empty venues and backstages around the Bay Area, as well as a few shot remotely which are in the pipeline. We started with a list of 100 Grateful Dead originals (exclusively their tunes, not covers they made famous) and no songs were allowed to be covered twice.

Leading off, our first video is Anders Osborne and Luther Dickinson performing “Black Muddy River” from the In The Dark album. Anders and Luther stopped by our SF office before their show with N.M.O. at The Fillmore a couple of months ago. They hadn’t fully decided on their song selection and were toying with the idea of either “Bertha” or “Black Muddy River.” After hearing just a couple bars of “Black Muddy River,” the JamBase team strongly encouraged the pair to cover it. Right before we pressed record, we mentioned to Anders that “Black Muddy River” was the last song Jerry Garcia sang with the Grateful Dead at Soldier Field in 1995. After a heavy pause, he simply replied, “Wow, I wish you hadn’t told me that before we recorded this.” What followed was one-take and an absolutely heartfelt rendition of the song.

Audio and video recorded and edited by: Jake Alexander