The Peter Rowan Interview Set II

​The Phantom Ship

​by Peter Rowan

​I started the psychedelic folk band Earth Opera with David Grisman. We did the band Muleskinner for Warner Brothers. Another band, Seatrain, recorded two albums for Capitol Records. That was all within five years of leaving Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys.

​After Seatrain, I left to reconnect in the most personal way with my brothers Chris and Lorin. David Grisman had been producing them for Columbia Records. Jerry Garcia lived up the hill, and I would just wake up in the morning living this shiftless Hippie life. Not even put shoes on, just walk through the sand dunes. It was the end of the trail. There was a 7-Eleven, Ed’s Superette, a post office, and a kind of “live-and-let-live” attitude. We just gravitated there. Stinson Beach wasn’t con-sidered a spiritual capital. In fact, the myth of the time was that when the earthquake comes it’s going to break off at Stinson Beach and we were going out to sea.

​You were away from all the traffic and all the busyness over the hill. You were in this utopia and close to the elements. You had the bird-fly zone: all kinds of migrating birds coming through there. The changes in the weather. That part of the coast didn’t have a fog bank; further up in Tomales Bay they have a fog bank. Stinson would have these incredible sparkling days.

​I’d bring my guitar to David’s house and wake him up. We’d have a “little refreshment” to wake ourselves up and we’d pick. We’d already done Earth Opera, so we weren’t exploring new ground if we played any of that materiel. We were just picking bluegrass and coming back to those roots. One day he remarked, very shortly after getting together, “You know Garcia lives up the hill, and he likes to pick.” I replied, “Let’s go, man.” I had met Jerry on one of my previous West Coast trips. Super nice guy.

​We went up to his house, and there was a sign over the entrance that said “Sans Souci,” which means “without a care.” We walked into his yard and there he was, “Spud Boy,” playing the five- string banjo. He came out of the house playing; it was a joyful get together. We rehearsed and played without doing a live gig for a couple of months. Then we had John Hartford play with us; Richard Greene played with us. We played some local places with those guys on fiddle. We did some gigs, just the four of us; John Kahn on bass.

​Sam Cutler was living around that area, and the Grateful Dead hired him to do bookings. He said, “I got you some gigs, boys. You want to go on the road?” We were like, “Yea, OK, sounds good.” We were starting to make money playing bluegrass. That’s a novelty in itself. That was because of Jerry’s popularity. You talk about the aura of that time. It was one of weird magic. “Weird” meant good in those days. “Hey, far out!”

​The Dead itself was enough to deal with in terms of touring and logistics. Then to have another band that was going to be just like that didn’t appeal to him. Jerry wanted it to be fun. He didn’t want it to become work.

​Mountain Girl told me, even though she wasn’t with Jerry at that time, “It’s very important to Garcia to have this bluegrass band.” I didn’t realize how much it meant for Jerry. To have an outlet that he wasn’t responsible for that could provide him some happiness.