Via the Facebook page of the amazing Jake Feinberg, which is a treasure trove of text snippets from Jake’s radio show, which you should listen to and support.
Too Loose to Truck, By Steve Mitchell
I was playing with a piano player 4 nights a week at a club called
“Shipwreck Pete’s.” It was John Allair and myself, we were playing duo
gigs. John sang and played piano and a B-3 organ at the same time.
We’re playing one night and this fella comes in with his saxophone and
he’s dressed all in black and he’s got a black hat on and nobody knows
who he is and he’s standing there in the middle of the dance floor
getting knocked around and he could play pretty good – it turned out to
be Van Morrison.
Van liked what we were doing so he played with
us. He came to our gigs and played with us cause he enjoyed playing and
he wanted to develop his saxophone chops.
I had run into Phil
Lesh at one of Mickey Hart’s gatherings and we talked and he said he
wanted to be able to play when the Dead weren’t on the road.
It was all the Marin County guys, John Allair, Terry
Haggerty from the Sons of Champlin and Van and Phil Lesh. There was a
revolving door of people who were in and out of the band. Most of the
time it was Phil, Allair, Haggerty and myself.
https://www.facebook.com/jake.feinbergshow/posts/1199080536835142
I don’t think I ever knew of a Van Morrison connection in Toulouse Ta Truck (aka Too Loose To Truck, etc.). Did you?
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