The April 6 edition of Greasy Tracks featured the recently released live gem, Bear’s Sonic Journals: Sing Out! (Owsley Stanley Foundation).
Here’s the archive, while a playlist is here.
The three-CD collection captures Country Joe McDonald, Kate Wolf, Rosalie Sorrels, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart and John Kahn in an acoustic setting on April 25, 1981, at a Seva Foundation benefit presented at a Berkeley Community Theater. The legendary Odetta was also on the bill, but her set is not included on the release.
Berkeley, Calif.-based Seva was formed in 1978 to prevent/treat blindness in countries around the world. One of the organizations founders, Wavy Gravy, organized the benefit.
The recording was done by Owsley Stanley, the long-time sound guru for the Grateful Dead, who was running the front of the house as a volunteer at the event in a venue long considered to be sonically challenging.
This concert marked the last time he recorded members of the Dead. Stanley, best known as “Bear”, began working with the Dead in 1966 and designed their famed “Wall of Sound” which they only employed in 1974.
In addition to some insight from Wavy Gravy, there were interviews with Stanley’s son, Starfinder Stanley who is president of the Owsley Stanley Foundation and OSF board members Hawk and Pete Bell. Starfinder Stanley and Hawk served as executive producers for the project while Bell was an associate producer. All contributed to the extensive liner notes.
Guitarist Mitch Greenhill, who accompanied Rosalie Sorrells at the benefit, is also interviewed.
OSF is a non-profit organization founded to finance the incredible undertaking of digitizing the massive trove of music that makes up “Bear’s Sonic Journals” — 1,300 reels of live soundboard recordings of 80 artists — that Owsley made. Thus far, they’ve gone through nearly 900 reels from concerts in the 1960s through the 1980s by 80-plus acts running the gamut from the Grateful Dead and Miles Davis to Johnny Cash and the Jefferson Airplane.
Previous OSF releases featured on Greasy Tracks included concerts by Tim Buckley and Johnny Cash.