Just shy of two years ago the JamBase Grateful Dead 50th anniversary cover series Songs Of Their Own concluded with the release of the 50th installment. Starting on May 17, 2015 and continuing each day through the final Fare Thee Well – Celebrating 50 Years Of Grateful Dead concert held at Soldier Field in Chicago July 5, 2015 a video was shared featuring a specially recorded arrangement of a song originally performed by the iconic Bay Area rock band. This edition of Sunday Cinema revisits our tribute to the Grateful Dead and their remarkable songbook.
JamBase partnered with Connecticut-based TELEFUNKEN to produced Songs Of Their Own, with recording taking place at a number of locations including JamBase headquarters in San Francisco, other venues around the Bay Area, TELEFUNKEN Studios in South Windsor, Connecticut and additional locales. Each participating artist was able to choose the song the covered and each song had to be a true Dead original and could only be covered once.
Luther Dickinson & Anders Osborne covered “Black Muddy River” at JB HQ, which served as the introduction to the series. JamBase also hosted performances by Hot Buttered Rum, Strangefolk, The Brothers Comatose, Con Brio, Reed Mathis & Cochrane McMillan, Alex Bleeker & The Freaks and others.
Several participants headed to TELEFUNKEN studios to lay down their SOTO recordings. The East Coast roster included the likes of Max Creek, Beau Sasser’s Escape Plan, The Z3, West End Blend, FiKus, Ryan Montbleau & Stephane Wrembel, ShwizZ and Todd Stoops & Hayley Jane.
Terrapin Crossroads, the music venue/restaurant owned by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, hosted SOTO performances at many locations within the space located in San Rafael, California. Keller Williams, Leftover Salmon, Incidental Animals and Midnight North were among those who set up in San Rafael. Other Bay Area locations – like Yonder Mountain String Band at the Fox Theater in Oakland, Jackie Greene at Great American Music Hall, Holly Bowling at the Cadillac Hotel, John Scofield & John Medeski at Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium and Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers at High Sierra Music Festival – were also selected for the series.
JamBase teamed with Playing For Change for the Songs Of Their Own finale, a global rendition of the beloved Dead classic “Ripple.” The international recording pieced together input from David Crosby, Jimmy Buffett, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Jerry Garcia’s daughter Keelin Garcia and Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, among many others. “Ripple” was released on July 5 and shown during the Fare Thee Well webcast as well as included on the official DVD/Blu-Ray release.
View the complete set of 50 covers in the playlist below:
