Jerry Garcia Symphonic conductor explains his genius

Jerry Garcia has been dead for over 20 years yet his music lives and the Grateful Dead legacy continues. This summer Dead and Company, which features three original Grateful Dead members and John Mayer playing the role of Garcia (they played Atlanta in November), is doing a tour which includes multiple shows in stadiums. They were also one of the headliners of the Bonnaroo Music Festival in early June. Founding GD member Phil Lesh regularly performs at his club Terrapin Crossroads in California and GD cover bands such as Darkstar Orchestra continue to endlessly tour. The Grateful Dead also have their own SiriusXM channel which plays GD music 24 hours a day, and in 2015 the Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well billed as the final shows featuring the “core four” living members were one of the top grossing tours of the year even though they only played five shows.

Add to the list the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration which visits Chastain Park Amphitheater tonight (Fri., June 24) and features Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter songs along with Grateful Dead classics performed by more than 40 Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performers playing instruments ranging from oboes and bassoons to french horns and violins. The two-and-a-half hour or so performance will feature Garcia/Hunter classics such as “Terrapin Station,” “Birdsong,” “Mission and the Rain” and other songs performed by the Grateful Dead and sung by Garcia like “Morning Dew.”

The symphony will be led by conductor Rich Daniels who will be joined by guitarist Warren Haynes (the Allman Brothers, Government Mule, the Dead), drummer Jeff Sipe and former Jerry Garcia Band vocalist Jacklyn Labranch.

I spoke with the man leading it all, Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration conductor Rich Daniels as he waited for the air conditioner repair person at his mother’s home in Chicago.

Joeff Davis: In Atlanta, you will be performing with the Atlanta Symphony, how does that process work?
Rich Daniels: The music is sent to Atlanta in advance, but they won’t pass it out and look at it until we show up to the rehearsal Friday afternoon. The rehearsal is Friday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. That’s the first time the orchestra sees the music and they’ll sight-read it. It will go down beautifully because they’re great players. That is just standard industry practice, so it’s literally something we put together in one day based on the high level of musicianship we find in venues like Atlanta and with major orchestras like the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

What is the most common reaction from orchestra members who aren’t familiar with the Grateful Dead’s music? Are they like, This is so simple?
The simplicity is never a factor, some of the music is actually complex, the only concern is that sometimes the orchestra members, especially those who play very orchestral instruments, for instance the string players, they’re going to be bothered by the guitar amp, the bass amp, the drum set out in front of the orchestra, but it depends on the attitude of the musicians. Some musicians absolutely adore these programs, some of them look at it as a paycheck. It’s hard to say, you know. It’s not Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven, but it is valid music. Jerry Garcia was a wonderful and talented composer, and this is the interpretation of his music with a symphony orchestra, and the outstanding Warren Haynes and his companions out front, so it’s really exciting music. But far and wide, overall, all the orchestras have been nothing but positive and good vibes. It has been a wonderful experience.

What would you say the difference is between Jerry Garcia’s music and, say, Brahms or Beethoven or Mozart?
They all use the same twelve pitches that exist in western music. The music of our culture, which is Western Europe and America, is based on twelve different pitches. That’s all there are, only twelve different notes. Then it’s all about the length of the notes, the duration of the notes, how you attack the notes, play the notes, arrange the notes, stack the notes. There’s only twelve of them, so anybody from Beethoven to Jerry is taking those twelve and finding interesting ways to write compelling music. The thing about Jerry’s music is that, when you break it down and look at it closely, you come to realize that he was a brilliant musician. He probably wasn’t a schooled musician. He probably wasn’t somebody with a great deal of theory classes behind him. I’m guessing he has none of that, but he’s intuitive, much like Paul McCartney. He can’t read music but he’s extraordinarily intuitive. You know with most of the people we were talking about — Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart — some of them were very well-schooled, but again, they were intuitive as well. It’s all ear, it’s all based on your ear development. Jerry had an outstanding ear. He could hear things that others couldn’t, and he could compile his notes in ways that were musical, compelling, and absolutely outstanding. To me, it was a revelation, because I wasn’t familiar with his music until a couple of years ago. When I started delving into it I realized, ‘My God, this is amazing!’ Obviously that’s why millions of people devoted their attention on the band.

Can you give us an example of that brilliance that you’re talking about?
There are a lot of odd meters in his music, which means 3/4 bars, 7/4 bars, 5/4 bars, measures that have more than four beats in them, which is common, three beats, which is common. And again, the way he composed it, this is what he heard, this is what came out of him, so those meters can be considered complex or they can be a challenge for some musicians. For him, it was natural, just the way the music flowed for him. And a lot of the guys were like that. Bob Weir was like, they were recording and it just came out of them that way. They were just gifted artists, and the things I think that I love about them, you know, I think it was Duke Ellington that wrote: There’s good music; there’s bad music. And it’s beyond category in so many ways. We who listen to the music tend to put categories on it, that it’s rock, that it’s punk rock, classical, baroque. But when people are creating the music, they’re not coming up with categorizations for what it is. It’s just music. It’s either good or it’s either bad, and Jerry’s music was outstanding. His musicianship was clearly at a very high level, and it’s amazing how intuitive he and those guys were. What they were doing was really progressive and really complex on many levels.

What does a conductor actually do?
You know what, I often ask myself that, certain musicians do as well (laughs). The conductor is Elmer’s Glue, I guess. I’m tying it all together between Warren and his guys out front, and the sixty musicians in the orchestra in front of me. It’s my job to tie all of those elements together, to make sure they gel, to make sure the dynamics are observed, that the orchestra isn’t getting buried, to make sure that the band is getting what they need out of the orchestra, to make sure that all the musicians are fully accommodated, and that they’re all on the same page. My job is to line all of the players up in a row and make sure we’re all marching to the same drummer.

What do those hand signs really mean?
When you see a conductor conduct, one thing you see is the beat pattern. We’re defining how many beats are in a measure. The second most important thing is we’re helping to cue when various sections occur through something we call double bars in music. We keep double bars, we cue beginnings and endings, we cue repeats, we cue any number of things that musicians need to know about what they’re looking at. That includes entrances, you know sometimes the conductor will catch the eye of the woodwind section and throw a cue their way, so that we all know that we’re on the same page at all times. It’s a constant process of collaboration, so the conductor is just the non-verbal collaborator amongst all the musicians. Cueing, keeping time, helping everyone get what they need to make the music.

Who decides what the sound is going to be like for instruments that Jerry wasn’t writing for, like violin?
Well, we’re reimagining all of this music for orchestra. We hire talented arrangers to come up with arrangements for the full orchestra, violins, violas, bassoons, clarinets, flutes, oboes, trumpets, trombones, tubas, french horns, percussion instruments. And the arranger’s job is to put all those instruments together to create a sound that’s complementary to what Jerry wrote and to what the band is going to be playing, so that’s all in the hands of skilled arrangers who tell the instruments what to play.

Do you have a favorite Garcia/Hunter song?
“Uncle John’s Band” is just fabulous. I like the hook. It’s just a catchy tune. “Attics of My Life,” that’s another beautiful tune he wrote. We tend to do that one instrumentally with just the orchestra. “Here Comes Sunshine,” again they’re clever tunes, they’re catchy tunes, they’re musical tunes. If a musician says another musician is musical, that’s just about the highest compliment you can give a peer or somebody else in the industry. It means that they have something that’s intuitive, that’s innate, that others may not possess, and Garcia certainly did with his writing abilities.

Who would you say is the Jerry Garcia parallel in the classical music world?
I don’t know if there is so much a parallel as there’s somebody like Yo-Yo Ma who’s out there who does a wide range of world music and embraces all different styles. And you know he would love a show like this, he loves music of this nature. I love any musician who’s going to embrace things well beyond what their comfort zone is. Mozart, if he was alive, he’d probably be of the same mindset, he was somebody who would take on whatever was available.

What’s your biggest surprise in terms of the audience and how they react to the music?
My biggest surprise is the audience reaction, it’s overwhelming. A lot of what I do is always well received, you know it’s pops concerts, commercial music and whatnot, but this is like being in a rock n’ roll show, being part of something that was part of that generation and that culture, and then, to see people absolutely go nuts, it’s a thrill, it’s exciting. The way they embrace this music and embrace the performance by Warren, it’s a rush for all of us on the stage. I think the orchestra enjoys it as much as all of us do.

What is your favorite sound?
As an instrumentalist, my instrument is the saxophone, I play the saxophone in addition to conducting, and so my background comes out of a jazz background. So I was schooled heavily in the works of Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and the big bands of the ’30s and ’40s as well. That all kind of morphed into my love of orchestra music, so if you ask me what sound I really love, I love the sound of an orchestra, and that can be anything from what John Williams writes for some of the great motion pictures we’ve all come to see to the way the orchestra functions behind the Beatles on Sgt. Pepper or the Beach Boys on Pet Sounds. The orchestra’s been a great tool for pop musicians for decades. Michael Jackson, all over the Thriller album, orchestra stuff, you know, on and on, you’d be hard-pressed to name an artist who’s had any measure of success who hasn’t at some point performed with an orchestra. So, it’s the sound of an orchestra, and an orchestra is strings, winds, brass, and percussion. When you put them together, the magic and what’s possible is infinite. It’s like a numbers game, the possibilities are infinite, and the sound is sometimes absolutely glorious. 

Interview has been edited and condensed.

Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration featuring Warren Haynes with ASO. $39.50-$79.50. 8 p.m. Fri., June 24. Chastain Park Amphitheatre, 4469 Stella Dr. NW. www.ticketmaster.com.