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“Will The Circle Be Unbroken” : Banjo, Steel Guitar And A Word About Robert Hunter

The last couple of weeks I have been watching the Ken Burns documentary “Country Music” on PBS (go here to stream all eight episodes – https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music/). Tracing it’s beginnings from the 1920’s through to 1996, it’s an excellent introduction to

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Posted in Classic Rock, Grateful Dead, Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“The Bus Came By And I Got On” . . . : The Rhythm Guitar Of Bob Weir

When I was in college, I roomed for a year with the rhythm guitarist in the Grateful Dead clone band that I was in. It was during many hours of jamming together (yeah, not my best scholastic performance that year)

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Posted in Classic Rock, Grateful Dead, Improvisation, Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“How Will The Wolf Survive” . . : Jerry Garcia’s Wolf Guitar Comes Out To Play

This is a call back to a previous post (https://roymusicusa.com/2019/05/25/pictures-from-an-exhibition-the-instruments-of-rock-roll-at-the-met-part-iii/) where I talked about the custom made guitars of Jerry Garcia. Just recently while Dead & Company were playing here in NYC at Citi Field, John Mayer played Jerry Garcia’s

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Posted in Equipment, Grateful Dead, Jam Band

“Pictures From An Exhibition . . : The Instruments Of Rock & Roll At The Met Part III

Continuing my posts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll”, I think another name for this post could be “Jerry’s Kids”. The guitar pics that I’m featuring in this post were played

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Posted in Classic Rock, Equipment, Grateful Dead

Stick Theory: Dark Star (Grateful Dead Cover) on the Chapman Stick Guitar

I want to announce the start of a new YouTube playlist on the RoyMusicUSA YouTube channel called Stick Theory (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLogHrynqXOvSmeQXOw_SAW0etIHHKV8mX). The playlist will feature solo Chapman Stick Guitar videos performed at the ManRoy studios here at Casa de RoyMusicUSA (okay,

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Posted in Chapman Stick, Grateful Dead, Improvisation, Jam Band

Dawg Music : The Bluegrass Jazz of Dave Grisman and Friends

From the bluegrass/Dead nexus of the previous post, I noe move on to a sub genre of music as singular as it’s name, Dawg Music. The term is what mandolin player Dave Grisman called the music on his 1977 album

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Posted in Grateful Dead, Jam Band, Jazz, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“He took my twenty dollar bill” . . : Bluegrass and The Grateful Dead

My recent Grateful Dead listening phase has gone off road into bluegrass. My first exposure to bluegrass was in the early Seventies by performers who themselves were influenced by bluegrass. Besides the Dead, I remember hearing David Bromberg doing fiddle

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Posted in Grateful Dead, Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“Comes A Time” . . . : Dead & Company at Citi Field, NYC June 24, 2017

I saw Dead & Company last weekend at Citi Field in NYC and I have to say that they were great. I haven’t been to many post Dead related band shows. I listened to many of the shows of these

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Posted in Classic Rock, Grateful Dead, Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis

The Final Frontier . . . . : The Grateful Dead’s Dark Star

“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” My musical roots are in what is now referred to as jamband and at the top of that pyramid were the Grateful Dead. There were however extended periods

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Posted in Grateful Dead, Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“I’m Not Dead Yet” . . . : Neal Casals and Circles Around The Sun

I recently played in a session for a potential new jam band project where a good part of the time was spent jamming on vamps and progressions taken from the Grateful Dead. Being an old Deadhead and having played in

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Posted in Grateful Dead, Music Appreciation and Analysis
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