The official team at Dead & Company just shared this gorgeous “Dire Wolf” on the first set of their second night at TD Garden in Boston, MA on 11/19/17.
You can read Gary Lambert’s notes on this performance below and don’t forget to gear up and snag tickets for the summer tour on sale now.
Is “Dire Wolf” the most cheerful murder ballad ever? Quite possibly! A tantalizingly ominous Robert Hunter lyric is wedded, with delightful incongruity, to a jaunty countrified melody by Jerry Garcia. The song, first performed live in 1969 and recorded for 1970’s “Workingman’s Dead,” was created during the all-too-brief period that Garcia was playing pedal steel guitar onstage with the Dead as well as New Riders of the Purple Sage (fun trivia note: since pedal steel required a musician’s full attention to play in a way that anyone would find listenable, it was damn near impossible to play it and sing simultaneously, Bob Weir sang the lead on some early versions of “Dire Wolf” so that Jerry could concentrate on the primary task at hand). Here, Dead & Company deliver the tune with the appropriate twang factor, and a fine John Mayer lead vocal. – Gary Lambert
Video credits are below as well.
Credits
Performed By Dead & Company
Written By Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter
Filmed & Edited By Ross Harris
Produced By Derek Featherstone
Production Company: UltraSound
