When Jerry Garcia Played Two Bands every Night — The New Riders Experiment
Six Hours of Music: May 1970
Picture this: May 1970, at venues across California. You buy a ticket to hear the Grateful Dead. What you get is six hours of music—far more than the headliner anyone expected. The show would unfold in three distinct sets. First came an acoustic set, intimate and stripped down. Then New Riders of the Purple Sage took the stage with their country-rock blend. Finally, the electric Grateful Dead would close the evening. But here’s the remarkable part: Jerry Garcia was present for two of those three sets, playing different instruments in different bands, inhabiting different musical worlds in a single evening.
This wasn’t a gimmick. For nearly two years, Jerry maintained this extraordinary schedule, often playing in two bands per night while serving as the emotional and musical center of the Grateful Dead. It was a level of musical commitment that speaks to both Garcia’s capacity for work and the creative ferment of the era.
The Pedal Steel Obsession
The driving force behind Garcia’s involvement with New Riders was an instrument: the pedal steel guitar. In the late 1960s, Jerry became obsessed with mastering this complex instrument. He would wake early every morning to practice, his fingers working the strings and the pedals in the intricate dance that the pedal steel demands. Mountain Girl, who lived with Jerry during this period, remembered him rising before dawn, instrument in hand, working through passages and developing his technique.
This wasn’t casual dabbling. Jerry treated the pedal steel with the same seriousness he brought to any musical pursuit. In a house in Northern California, he had set up a room specifically for practicing the instrument. He would spend hours there, wrestling with its subtleties, learning to make it sing with the same expressive power he brought to his electric guitar work.
A Laboratory for Sound
New Riders of the Purple Sage was never simply a side project in the dismissive sense. For Garcia and the band, it functioned as a laboratory—a place to experiment with country-rock fusion at a time when such combinations were still relatively unexplored. The Grateful Dead had always drawn on country and folk influences, but New Riders gave those impulses room to breathe in their purest form.
The band’s lineup included John “Marmaduke” Dawson on guitar and vocals, along with Dave Torbert and David Nelson. Robert Hunter had reportedly suggested the band’s name in a moment of creative inspiration while staying at Jerry’s house. Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart also participated in various recordings and performances, making New Riders something of a Grateful Dead adjacent project in the fullest sense.
The Country Evolution
What Jerry was learning on the pedal steel during those early morning practice sessions would eventually influence the Grateful Dead’s own evolution. The country inflections, the melodic sensibilities, the storytelling approach—all of it seeped into the Dead’s sound. Songs like those that would appear on Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty owed a debt to the explorations Jerry and the band were making through New Riders.
This wasn’t the Grateful Dead abandoning their psychedelic roots. Rather, it was the band recognizing that their musical vocabulary extended far beyond the jamming and experimental music they were known for. The acoustic and country elements weren’t a departure—they were a rediscovery of sources that had always informed their music.
The Unsustainable Schedule
Two bands, multiple nights per week, week after week, for nearly two years—the pace was punishing. Jerry would have to shift his mindset between the intricate, precise work of country-rock in New Riders to the open-ended exploration of the Grateful Dead’s electric sets. His fingers would move from pedal steel to electric guitar, his vocal approach changing with each transition.
That the schedule was unsustainable seems almost obvious in retrospect, but Jerry pushed through it with the intensity he brought to everything. By 1971 and 1972, the New Riders project would transform, with Jerry’s role diminishing as his focus returned fully to the Dead. But those two years of double-duty had left an indelible mark on both bands and on the trajectory of American rock music.
A Brief but Transformative Moment
The story of Jerry Garcia playing in two bands every night is ultimately a story about creative restlessness and the desire to explore new terrain. For a brief, intense period, Garcia attempted to inhabit two musical worlds simultaneously. While the schedule couldn’t last forever, what he created and learned during those six-hour evenings became part of the DNA of the Grateful Dead, influencing generations of musicians to come.
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