For the first time ever, Side Trips: Volume One, the celebrated live collaboration between Jerry Garcia and keyboardist Howard Wales will be reissued on vinyl and made available at streaming services on Record Store Day (November 24th). Side Trips: Volume One is the latest in a line of special reissues, live recordings, concerts and events planned throughout 2017 & 2018 in celebration of Jerry Garcia’s 75th birthday.
Originally released on CD in 1998, Side Trips: Volume One presents over an hour of exploratory instrumentals that infuse elements of jazz, rock, blues, fusion and funk. The improvisational performance was recorded during one of the legendary Monday night jam sessions at the Matrix in San Francisco during 1970 with bassist John Kahn and drummer Bill Vitt, who also anchored the lone Garcia/Wales studio effort, Hooteroll?. That 1970 album was Garcia’s first studio recording outside of the Grateful Dead after forming the band. The impact of Wales’ influence on Garcia could not be overstated, “Howard did more for my ears than anybody I ever played with because he was so extended and so different.”
Wales said of the performance around the 1998 original release, “Back in 1970 I was asked to put a Monday night jam together down at the Matrix, a club on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. So I invited Jerry down to play, as well as Bill Vitt and John Kahn. I put this thing together so that we could jam down there as well as with other people that came in. Many local musicians would show up and play with me on jam nights at the Matrix. We worked it into a beautiful scene. People came down, really enjoyed themselves and played a lot of really good music. It was a very free environment, capturing many great musical moments that have stood the test of time.”
The Record Store Day edition of Side Trips: Volume One is a 2-LP set pressed to 180-gram vinyl by MPO with gatefold packaging in a limited edition of 2,500. For more information on Record Store Day and a list of local, independent record stores where the release will be available, go to RecordStoreDay.com.
