Liner notes from The Old Road To HomeSandy Rothman is, and has been, one of the chief biscuits when and where bluegrass music is discussed, scribed, or performed in northern California. I have admired Sandy's musicianship since I first heard him pick banjo when I arrived here from Georgia in the late Sixties. My God, it was all there...timing, tone, technique, great backup, but most of all a deep natural feeling and love for bluegrass that I had only observed a few times before in anyone younger than the first-generation masters of the music. This guy is from Oakland, California? Strange...but true.
Only later did I find out that Sandy was bitten by the bluegrass bug (a blessing...or curse?) at a very early age and, by 1964, had already spent a summer as the guitar player and lead singer with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, an achievement that most pickers can only dream about. (Christmas 1992 again found Sandy with the Bluegrass Boys, onstage at the Grand Ole Opry, filling in for a vacationing Tom Ewing. Surprisingly, on "Mule Skinner Blues," Bill handed Sandy the mandolin while he took up the guitar. Imagine that - playing mandolin with Monroe on the Opry!) This early connection with Bill Monroe was the first of a number of bluegrass apprenticeships Sandy has served, in the Southeast for the most part, and he's the only Bay Area bluegrass musician I can think of who has had this kind of experience.
My friendship and collaboration with Sandy began in the mid-seventies when he produced a couple of programs for my bluegrass radio show, Pig in a Pen, on Pacifica Radio's KPFA-FM, dealing with the early Bay Area bluegrass scene. Among the bands featured were Sandy's and Rick Shubb's 1961 group, the Pine Ridge Ramblers, and later Black Mountain Boys, with Sandy and Jerry Garcia. Over the years he has been a frequent guest and contributor to the show. An ongoing project is our series featuring bluegrass music in Japan, where Sandy has lived and travelled.
While Sandy has performed with bluegrass legends Bill Monroe, Earl Taylor, Red Allen, Jimmie Skinner, Larry Sparks, and Clarence White, among others, he remains criminally underrecorded. This was only partially remedied with the 1992 release of his and Steve Pottier's excellent Bluegrass Guitar Duets (Tone Bar Records 1833, now released as Sierra SXCD 6013). Unbelievably, The Old Road to Home is Sandy's first solo recording project. Ably assisted by Brian Godchaux, LeRoy McNees, and other friends and pickers, this is a thoughtful, tasteful collection of songs and tunes which reflects the respect and admiration that Sandy feels towards the early bluegrass and country music pioneers.
I hope you enjoy The Old Road to Home as much as I do.
Ray Edlund
Pig in a pen, KPFA-FM
Berkeley, California
Spring 1993
Tone Bar Records
- Yokohama Pickin' Party-Masuo Sasabe
- Bluegrass Guitar Duets-Steve Pottier & Sandy Rothman
- The Old Road to Home-Sandy Rothman
- Almost Acoustic-The Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band
- In The City-Rich Wilbur (A Memorial Retrospective)
- Take Me Home-Tom Ewing
CDs are $15, cassettes are $10, postpaid. To order send cash, check, or money order to the address below. For quantity discounts write to:
Tone Bar Records
1678 Shattuck Avenue #29
Berkeley, CA 94709or email: srothman@flash.net
Yokohama Pickin' Party-Masuo Sasabe
Tone Bar TBR-3 * CD only
new release: May 15, 1997
Produced by Sandy RothmanThis is the first solo release by the premier bluegrass and old-time country singer in the Tokyo area, Masuo Sasabe. He's been a leader in Japan's bluegrass scene since the early '70s and is the possessor of a beautiful singing voice. These are home recordings made by Masuo himself, but they are good home recordings. They feature multitracking by Masuo with me on banjo, mandolin, guitar, and/or vocals on 6 tracks. A mix of bluegrass and old-time country stylings, with a strong Delmore Brothers influence, which shows the deep roots and love of American mountain music in Japan today. Recorded between 1991 and 1997. Playing time: 46:26.
"The elements in his voice that mark it as Japanese complement the elements derived from southern Appalachia so wonderfully that it seems as if bluegrass has always sounded this way."-Dirty Linen.
"The '90s/'30s-ish combination of instrumental sophistication and vocal earthiness is very pleasing to hear."-Toru Mitsui, leading American roots music author and professor at Kanazawa University, Japan.
"I've never heard a better, more appreciative, use of the Delmore Brothers' work."-Mayne Smith, musician and author.
Bluegrass Guitar Duets-Steve Pottier & Sandy Rothman
Sierra SXCD-6013 * CD only
(A Tone Bar Production)
Produced by Sandy Rothman & Steve Pottier
Steve Pottier, Clarence White-inspired guitar flatpicker, and I got together for this "guitar conversation" project in 1991. Nothing but two acoustic guitars on two separate tracks, with mandolin and string bass added on a few tunes. Featuring medium and slower tempos over fiddle tunes and speedy breakdowns, this CD has been consistently well-reviewed over the years and is reported to be "good to iron to." Originally the first Tone Bar release, it was sold to Sierra Records and re-released with a "bonus track" in 1993. Playing time: 66:18.
"Bluegrass Guitar Duets is highly recommended for flatpickers suffering from the usual approach of endless streams of hot licks over modernized chord changes that leave the original tune unrecognizable."-Gryphon Gazette.
The Old Road to Home-Sandy Rothman
Tone Bar TBR-146 * CD only
Produced by Sandy RothmanSolo bluegrass album, featuring fiddling and harmony vocals by Brian Godchaux. Guest tracks by original Kentucky Colonels dobro player LeRoy Mack McNees and plenty of multitracking by me on guitar, banjo, mandolin, dobro, and vocals. Recorded and released in 1993, people say it sounds a lot like a bluegrass record, although it does have some Western swing-flavored numbers and other non-bluegrass tracks on it. Includes three banjo-and-fiddle duets (no other instruments) showcasing Brian's passionate violin, which received favorable reviews in the bluegrass print media. Playing time: 40:56.
"This is a thoughtful, tasteful collection of songs and tunes which reflects the respect and admiration that Sandy feels towards the early bluegrass and country music pioneers."
-Ray Edlund, Pig in a Pen, KPFA-FM radio.
**Recommended additional releases of interest**
Almost Acoustic-The Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band
Grateful Dead Records * GDCD-4005 * CD and cassette
Produced by Sandy RothmanBest-selling Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band project from live West Coast shows during our Winter 1987 tour. Garcia's lead vocals and "almost acoustic" guitar with me singing tenor harmony and switching between mandolin and dobro; David Nelson singing baritone harmony and playing second guitar; John Kahn on string bass; Kenny Kosek playing fiddle on some tracks; and David Kemper guesting on snares. Released in 1988, this memento of the Acoustic Band is well-loved by friends and fans everywhere. To some extent this was an augmented reunion of our 1964 band, the Black Mountain Boys. Playing time: 74 minutes.
"Think of it as a progress report...Dedicated to our friends, our fans, and people everywhere who love this music."-Jerry Garcia.
In The City-Rich Wilbur (A Memorial Retrospective)
Sophronie 545 * CD only
Produced by Sandy RothmanRich's name may not be familiar to you, but you'll love this album of his home-grown originals and a few covers, taken from home and studio recordings dating from the early '70s until his untimely passing in 1992. He was a true member of the Bay Area music scene, founder of the blues band Delta Wires and longtime vocalist with High Country, the West Coast's longest-lived bluegrass band. Included are a few original electric tracks Rich recorded in Marin County during the '70s that truly and soulfully represent the sounds of the times. The standout of this album is the stark and stunning "War of Our Worlds," sung with co-writer Penny Wigley, accompanied only by Richard's bone-chilling Telecaster. With a detailed booklet including a photo scrapbook of Richard, lovingly dedicated in his memory by his family. Playing time: 76 minutes.
DD-6889 * cassette only
Tom Ewing is an old friend and picking partner of mine from Ohio who was Bill Monroe's lead singer and guitarist during the last ten years of Bill's life and career. Now playing guitar and singing with the outstanding Alabama bluegrass group the Warrior River Boys, Tom produced this session in 1989 with current and former Blue Grass Boys (including me playing banjo on 6 tracks) and some superb Nashville studio musicians, prominently Glen Duncan on fiddle. Traditional bluegrass with some of Tom's originals and a good sampling of his authoritative bluegrass singing and rhythm guitar playing.
Sandy's WritingsFirst Christmas Without Bill
(Press back on your browser to get back to Sandy's Home Page)
Blueprints From the Big Man(an excerpt)
(Originally from "Garcia: A Grateful Celebration" Presented by Dupree's Diamond News)One of the most remarkable things that ever happened to me because of Jerry Garcia didn't happen while he was alive.
On the occasion of Jerry's death -- a time of great grief for me and untold numbers of friends and fans around the world -- my father gained an instant understanding of him and the band while watching them for the first time at their 1980 Radio City Music Hall concert aired nationwide as a Garcia tribute on August 10, 1995, the day after Jerry's passing. It almost seemed like a religious conversion. He called and held the phone up to his TV in Miami, saying, "I wish you could see them. Boy, they're all so goodHere he is now, Jerry -- he's taking his guitar off, over his head, and the applause is deafening...."
Is this noteworthy? Improbable? There may be other nonagenarian Deadheads out there (and if there are, I'd be interested in knowing about them).
I'll try to explain.
My father is 94. This is a guy who has obviously been around the block a few times, and many of those blocks were the sidewalks of his native New York City, where he lived before moving to Miami around 1940. But he was never very impressed with the Sixties, especially since I not only came of age in them but did so in the Beat-changing-to-hippie environment of San Francisco and Berkeley (where I came with my mother at the age of eight). The drug culture, the politics, the rejection of traditional American values as he knew them, the emphasis on self-expression and the artistic life, the virtual indifference towards personal finances or security -- all of this caused him great concern and worry as I think it did among most parents of our generation.
Maybe it's no surprise that in the thirty-plus years I have known Jerry, my father never expressed any particular interest in him ("The King of the Hippies") or the Grateful Dead. His lifelong interest is commercial finance, but even the well-publicized financial achievements of the Dead were never a subject of conversation. He knew that Jerry and I met in the early Sixties, played bluegrass together in the Black Mountain Boys, and took a cross-country trip in search of the music. (I thought he never asked about these adventures because they came under the general heading of "Things That Happened in the Unfortunate Sixties"; for my part, I certainly didn't write him very many letters while all this was going on.) He knew of our reunion in 1986 and the shows on Broadway the following year. I know he was proud of that, familiar as he is with Manhattan's venerable old theaters like the Lunt-Fontanne. And he understood my debt of gratitude to Jerry for releasing Almost Acoustic after that tour -- it was a sweet reminder of some tender and rare moments as well as an economic lifesaver, a gift from the always-generous old friend. Really it was the experience of a lifetime.
But I never expected anything like my father's reaction.
Now he talks about Jerry all the time. He says he wishes he'd been able to meet him, asks me questions about him, and has his own insights on the whole phenomenon and Garcia in particular.
From everything he's read in recent months he's formed quite an intuitive understanding of Jerry the person. The fact is, Jerry -- a crusty fifth-generation San Franciscan from the old school with his passionate, Spanish/Swedish-Irish heritage -- would have dug my father. He liked having straight-talking East Coast people around and made sure the pacifistic Dead scene was enlivened with enough hard-driving Atlantic energy to balance the laid-back, unsalted California vibe.
He could have talked music and pop standards for days with my dad, who knows every tune in the book. He worked in the WPA Music Projects and met and heard many eminent musicians of the day, with a special love for Al Jolson, "The World's Greatest Entertainer" (his name is Al too), and is at heart a musician who never played an instrument. He's a natural at syncopated rhythm -- a dynamite dancer in his day -- and can still lay down a groove with whatever happens to be handya newspaper, quarters on the back of an ashtray, anything. It would have been fun if the two had met. Jerry would've probably had him jamming on a set of drums immediately. He was always good at pressing people into service. (He talked David Nelson into learning mandolin in the Black Mountain Boys, even providing the mandolin, and asked me to play dobro in the Garcia Acoustic Band although I was a bare beginner on that demanding instrument.)
Here are some edited extracts of phone messages my father left on my answering machine the day Jerry passed away and over the next two days:
From the newspaper coverage, which was more than for some diplomats and presidents, it seems as if everybody had a warm feeling for Jerry. It's just too bad that a wonderful spirit like that had to leave us. But he left wonderful memories, and he has a lot of people who have him in their hearts So many so-called Deadheads were wild about him, and he never really succumbed to all the flattery. I understand from what I read about him that he was always very genuine about everything. I think he really wanted to go on living, and doing what he was doing, but he just couldn't resist that terrible, terrible addictive sickness that he had. I'll bet he never even complained about it. The poor man, it seems like he was trying to help himself, at the last minute. Thank goodness, at least, that he went peacefully, in his sleep. (8/9.)
I couldn't help calling you again -- it's 11:30 at night here. After a PBS show on Bing Crosby I was watching, the Grateful Dead came on. And they're still on! I don't know if you can hear it over the phone. They had a wonderful picture, a close-up of Jerry. He was a wonderful style of singer. It's at the Radio City Music Hall in New York -- I think it was in 1980. Boy, what a show. I can't stop looking at it and listening to it. It's wonderful. I just had to call and tell you. I know, now, exactly what you were connected with -- what you were associated with. Some wonderful types of music. (8/10.)
I know you're in a bad period now with the loss of your dear friend and a wonderful man. From what I hear and read about him, people just love him; this man just spread love all over. He's almost like a spirit. He's spiritual. Most people just couldn't speak highly enough of him.
You told me about his singing and playing, and I'll tell you something else I heard in his singing: He has a wail in his voice, just like Jolson. It was a real wail. And people would just go mad -- they'd scream and jump up and down.
I imagine you must be having a hard time, thinking about him. But then, it could be, if anybody was religious at all, it could be that he was sent here to deliver all of this love, and messages from a higher being, and after he'd completed his job, his orders, it may be that He just took him back.
And you were exposed to that wonderful, wonderful man like that. (8/11.)
Some of these quotes were posted on the Well by Steve Marcus of Grateful Dead Tickets, eliciting heartfelt responses from readers. Eileen Law of the Grateful Dead office pointed out that maybe it was a little late for my father to find out about Jerry, but how fortunate that it happened at all. It's really a wonderful thing. Something about it reminds me very much of that last-minute, seat-of-the-sweatpants, slightly daredevil side of Garcia: At the very last moment of his highly compressed life, the essence of his soul managed to make a surprise impression on a man of 94 who could easily have missed the experience.
Leave it to Jerry to keep on producing miracles even after he's gone from the physical realm. I'm sure many other people will also experience him in this way. Maybe this is truly the legacy of Garcia and his power to mediate and to unite people.
Even as far back as the early Sixties, before he was "Jerry Garcia," the Big Man, there was something special about him. You can see it in his children and his big brother, too. "He was always a fun guy to hang out with," said Rick Shubb (capo inventor and banjo player who once roomed with Jerry in Palo Alto), partly because he liked to take so many off-the-wall chances, in life as well as in music. Only recently it dawned on me that when we left on the cross-country car trip to chase our favorite bluegrass bands the way Deadheads would later track Garcia, his first daughter was only four months old. In retrospect that seems like a fairly reckless thing for a proud new father (which Jerry was) to have done just because the opportunity presented itself. As a friend of mine recently explained, it was 1964, after all, and women were expected to make the coffee and take care of the babies. Still, it seems radical.
And then there were things like the crazy antics in our two-car caravan with Clarence and Roland White and the Kentucky Colonels for part of the tripthe two of us trying to get a job with Bill Monroe even though we were too scared to even talk to himand changing drivers in Jerry's white '61 Corvair, Le Mans-style, while blasting down the highway in the intrepid little beast. But those are other stories.
Totally in character, Jerry waited until the last minute -- or in his case the minute after that -- before getting serious about his health. Finally the plaintive wisdom of the traditional American ballad was not lost on him: A short time to stay here and a long time to be gone. At the funeral, the trainer Jerry was working with (a former minister) told me in great agony and love that he and his son had grown extremely fond of Jerry since he'd been coming to the gym. The way he knew Jerry had taken a genuine interest in making progress was that he'd been starting to show up on timea sign of enthusiasm and sincere commitment. Garcia never did anything unless he felt those things. The last time Jerry appeared for his workout, he had raised both arms in the Tarzan pose and said, "Here I am!"
At the same time, there were signs that Jerry may have sensed something coming. A few close friends had visits from him just before he secretly checked into the secluded treatment center. One reported getting "the best hug ever" from him. Another received a note from Jerry on which the end of his familiar signature was changed to a long upward flourish with the figure of a little bird sitting on top.
Jerry's addiction to the ultimate comfort drug probably had very little to do with the cause of his death at the Serenity Knolls center, a non-medical facility where evidently the staff did not know about his long history of sleep apnea. But his recent times were troubled indeed, and now he doesn't have to abuse any more substances in the attainment of peace.
With his sometimes daredevil unconcern for the physical, it could be said that Jerry was as well prepared for death as anyone might be. He was certainly one of the least materialistic people I've ever known. I'm not a believer one way or the other, but spending time with him at the funeral (I don't say "his funeral," because Bill Kreutzmann reminded us that funerals are for the living) I had the impression that Jerry himself was nowhere near the church that day. It seemed as though he really had made a clean and complete separation from the visible form.
After a two-month period of adjusting to a world that seems substantially changed without Jerry in it -- a world in which it felt at first as if the warmth of the sun or even the amplitude of the entire universe had been turned down a notch -- it's finally clear to me now that Jerry's essential message is just as vibrant as it was when his ceaselessly driven body was still "suffering here below." He has become a piece of whatever we mean by infinity, just as we knew he was when he was here: A constant reminder that it's possible to invent your own kind of life and live it to the fullest. By his unique example, the blueprints he implicitly gave, he showed the world that it was okay to do that, and he did it with abundant measures of passion, compassion, native creativity, audacity, egalitarian fairness, sharp curiosity and extensive self-education, rare common sense, caricature (often of himself), and relentless drive.
Jerry was warm, cheery, restless, engaged, original, self-possessed, private yet expressive, rigorous but forgiving, exaggerated and curmudgeonly. He was intellectually articulate, musically precise, incomparably witty, whimsical, and gloriously demented.
Among other things.
And he was a rascal, too. Steve Parish, Jerry's road manager, wouldn't want me to forget that.
In the words of "Purple Heart," a Korean War song written by veteran bluegrass singer Curly Seckler: His troubles are all over / his work has been well done."From another genre, Phil Ochs's song about John F. Kennedy has the line, It seems as though a friendless world has lost itself a friend.
Jerry once said he'd just like to be remembered as a competent guitarist. Hate to disappoint you, old pal, but nobody's going to let it rest at that.
Sandy Rothman, October 1995
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