photo credit: Jim Mimna

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“At its essence, I’m a big fan of the idea that great music is great music, whatever labels we put on it,” says conductor Scott O’Neil after a special collaborative show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. On June 29, the Jerry Garcia 80th Birthday Symphonic Celebration teamed the Colorado Symphony with two longtime Garcia Band members—Melvin Seals and Jacklyn LaBranch—as well as Tom Hamilton, Dave Schools, Duane Trucks and Lady Chi.

Seals, a colorful presence on organ for nearly two decades with Garcia, notes, “In everything I did with Jerry there was fire and charisma but we were all working out of Jerry’s mind. So the opportunity and the challenge here was take all of that and be true to it now that we’re no longer in the room with that great mind. At Red Rocks, I think we did right by him and that wonderful music.”

TOM HAMILTON: Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead wrote the soundtrack to America from 1965 to 1995. Kids are going to be studying the lyrics to “Touch of Grey” and “Reuben and Cherise” in school 100 years from now. They’re going to be talking about “Ripple.” The lyrics were literature and the music was a masterclass in songwriting.

MELVIN SEALS: I think Jerry would be fascinated by what we did with the orchestra. If you believe that he’s up there in heaven then he’s certainly up there listening and smiling.

Jerry never spoke with me about working with an orchestra but I’ve heard what they did on the album with “Terrapin.” The orchestration that was done on the record was great, although that was before me.

So much has come out of what he created. I’ve seen tons of variations of the classic songs. At one point, they only would have been done one way but now someone will take that same song and make it reggae. Or they might add a shuffle feel where it wasn’t a shuffle. Or take a ballad and now it’s not a ballad. That’s what this material allows you to do. You can play around with these songs and identify with them in a new way.

SCOTT O’NEIL: All musicians lie somewhere on the spectrum of how precise and strict they play or how free and flexible they play. Rock bands, especially jambands, have a much greater element of freedom and flexibility, while the symphony is much more precise. So there needs to be good communication, which there was with this show.

We added a lot more improvisatory elements into the show. We changed many of the charts—some of which had already been written, including ones by me—after rehearsal. We wanted to open things up, although every time you tell the orchestra to stop, you’ve got to start them again.

There were a lot of moments where I had to decide, “OK, I think they’re wrapping this up. I’m going to start to bring in the orchestra so that we line up when they peak out this jam.” So it was a little experimental on stage. Nothing unsafe, but, at the same time, the product that we put on stage was definitely in the spirit of a jamband. It was a lot of just, “Hey, let’s just read from what happens in the concert,” which is not what orchestras usually do.

TH: After the first day of rehearsal, we hung out for another couple hours and talked about these ideas, so that the band could do what the band does as far as improvising.

We wanted to deliver the songs, which really are the essence of it all, but then add the excitement of a high-wire act. People come to jamband shows to see if the jam’s going to work, if it’s going to land. We wanted to find a way we could do that and still feature the orchestra. We worked together on how to make that a reality and I think we stuck the landing. I think we really Mary Lou Retton-ed this thing.

MS: I never saw this coming. It was a dream come true in my mind. I love orchestras. I’ll sit at home and just listen to the cellos and the strings and the French horn, how they’re supposed to sound and how they play. A lot of keyboard players will only play chords with a string sound but strings actually move. So I study, not in the classically trained way, but by listening. That’s what I’ll try to pattern my playing after. So to sit up there and see it come together was electrifying for me.

TH: A good way to describe what we were doing is to think about the end of “Morning Dew.” That’s the jam. You bring it down, then you get it percolating, and by the end you’re at the top, so you really belt it out. It feels awesome.

The way the score had been written was when we’d get to that last verse, we would sing “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway” four times. Then there would be two passes through the progression, which would allow for a quick little solo before the end of the tune.

But what we decided to do was put in a stop point after singing “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway” those four times. That’s where the orchestra would pause, hang out and let the band do what the band does. It would allow us to take our time and do a thematic build, going from zero to 10. Then when we would get to around seven in that jam, I would cue Scott. So that on the next pass he would cue the orchestra to come back in. That would enable us to improvise and build all this emotion.

So what happened was the band was doing what we were supposed to do, listening and morphing this jam. Then I gave Scott the look and he brought in the orchestra. Now all of a sudden there was this extra layer that just came in on top of the jam. You could hear this huge presence of an orchestra really bringing the jam from seven to 10. It helped us reach this incredible peak because once the orchestra comes in, we have two more passes. It picks up where the score left off, so we have two more passes to get it to the money shot. Then we hit the end and the big, “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Man, it chokes me up just thinking about it. The whole night was very emotional. Talking about it gives me goosebumps.

SO: “Shakedown Street” was one of my favorites because it’s so funky, it’s so much fun to perform. It’s close to my normal wheelhouse of what I like to do and this particular band and this particular orchestra do funk really well. It’s like the center of the plate strike zone for them.

It was also a little bit later in the concert. During your first piece, you’re still kind of feeling each other out. But by “Shakedown Street” everything had gelled to a point that there was a true symbiosis. When we hit “Shakedown Street” I couldn’t tell who was leading. There was a pocket for this groove that we started the piece in and we never left it. The whole thing was just euphoric, we were so locked in rhythm. There were so many great peaks coming out of the improv but that one really stands out.

TH: After the first rehearsal when Scott and I were talking about the stop points and start points, it’s when we also realized the Melvin factor. I mean, he’s the star. Without him the Garcia Band would never been what they were. He really was our ace in the hole and we realized we needed additional Melvin time.

MS: I didn’t want to clutter things. The lines I would normally play at another gig would be too busy with the orchestra. That’s because I’m thinking of an orchestra in my style of playing. At the beginning of a chorus, I may pull out some flutes and a softer tone, then add some French horns and trombones, so it gets bigger and brighter. Then at the end of the verse, there’s a big organ sound. That’s the orchestra I’m creating. I’ve been doing that sort of coloring my whole life. But at rehearsal I realized I had to change it up immediately and focus more on the chords because their version was written in script. They didn’t have the ability to improvise like I do.

TH: Melvin is a smart musician who listens, and one of the things that he said after the first day was, “There are things that I can’t necessarily do because of what the orchestra is doing.” He was being more restrained and that actually helped us in a big way because Scott and I had already opened up a couple songs with the start points and stop points, but we realized that we needed to go back to the drawing board to find more spots for him.

One of them was at the end of “Shakedown Street.” We opened that up more and were able to jam off that chorus vibe. Another one was “Cats Under The Stars.” I tell you, if you give Melvin an opening, that guy is going to deliver every time. He’s the Karl Malone of musicians: The Mailman. It was incredible.

SO: Of the songs I arranged, “Reuben and Cherise” was my favorite.

It goes back to the idea of it’s not just great jamming, this is a great song. That piece has a lot of meter changes in it that I love. Many songs are written in common 4/4 time and they force the words, the lyrics, to fit 4/4 even if they don’t really fit. But with that song, they just let the rhythm be the rhythm of the words. So the downbeat might be in a very awkward place for a musician, but it fits the words perfectly.

Another thing is that it’s a story song. So, in orchestrating it, I really did as much as I could to bring out the story.

So when they talk about the mandolin playing, a harp is adding delicate stuff to the background. At another point where they talk about “the breeze would stop and listen in,” I wrote a wind feature.

I probably had the most fun with this song in terms of imagination. It goes all the way back to Strauss doing Don Quixote, which is one of his tone poems. It’s a lot of tone painting with the orchestra, so when Don Quixote is fighting with the windmills, you hear a windmill in the orchestra. It comes from that kind of tradition, so when they’re talking about the wind stopping in to hear their music, we put the wind into the orchestration.

TH: “Bird Song” was another one like “Morning Dew” where we had the orchestra hang out for a while. Then when the time felt right—when everyone was listening and everything made sense—they helped us peak the shit out of the jam. Man, it was a great moment.

SO: “Bird Song” was one where even in rehearsal we did a dry run and it just like, “Wow, I hope we can do it like that in the concert. That was awesome.”

It’s one thing to tell the orchestra to sit there and don’t play anything and we’ll tell you when you’re allowed to again, but this was one where we actually had part of the harmonic progression that was supporting the jam written into the orchestration.

So I wasn’t just listening to a conversation to determine when they are done and when we can now speak as well. It was when are they are starting to reach their peak and how can we support them? I had to bring in the orchestra midway through the jam to help peak out the top of the jam. So as they’re peaking, I’m giving my hand signals to show exactly where the chart is, so that they know where to bring in the chorus. It’s one of those things that can be wonderful or it can be a train wreck.

It’s like that phrase, the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. Well that was baked into that cake. So the fact that not only did it work out well, but the best we had ever done it, that moment will stand out as, “OK we hit a home run there.” I don’t have words to describe how that climax felt.

TH: For me, music’s at its best when you don’t know if it’s gonna work, you don’t know if it’s gonna land. We’re all taking chances. We’re pushing that boulder up the hill together. But in this case, it wasn’t just the band because all of a sudden we had this 75-piece orchestra coming in and helping us push it up. And when it got to the top, man, it was incredible.

We did it as a team. It wasn’t the orchestra and it wasn’t the band. It was the whole unit and it was awesome.

But again, it was all sparked by the songs, they were the real showcase. It was a true Jerry Garcia symphonic celebration.

MS: Jerry planted a seed that is still growing. Across the nation in every city, in every town, there’s a Grateful Dead cover band. It seems like anywhere I go, there will be a little bar where someone is playing “Deal” or “Touch of Grey.”

I don’t think that music will ever die. It goes on and on and on. That’s the seed he planted and it’s still being watered. It’s growing wild and it grows differently but the seed he planted is still going strong today. Wow!