Tuesday, April 24, 1973: Old And In the Way featuring David Diadem (Grisman), Jerry Garcia and Peter Rowan played the Inn of the Beginning at 8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA, 94931. George Edwards opened. This was billed as a “Special Show” (as 3/5/73 had been) and the $2.50 ticket price was just about the most expensive the Inn had ever offered.
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| April 1973 Inn of the Beginning Calendar, courtesy of Mark Braunstein. |
OAITW had just come off their first weekend gigs, April 20-21, 1973 at the Lion’s Share (60 Red Hill Avenue, San Anselmo, CA, 94960), and would do another Friday-Saturday in a few days, the 27th and 28th at Keystone (2119 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94704). (See Corry’s post at LLD on the 4/27/73 billing, with broader analysis.) This is what I call the second period of OAITW’s too-brief existence, during which they are trying to integrate fiddle into the band, working specifically with Richard Greene during this period. But Greene was and remains a very busy musician, and my imprecise reckonings suggest that he was around or not pretty sporadically. Here’s how I currently code Greene’s presence/absence during this period, though none of this is very firm.
4/12/73 Granada Theatre, Santa Barbara: present (stuff | listening notes)
4/15/73 Boarding House: present (“Four Nights at the Boarding House”)
4/16/73a Boarding House: present (listening notes | “Four Nights at the Boarding House”)
4/16/73b Boarding House: absent (“Four Nights at the Boarding House”)
4/19/73 Lion’s Share: present
4/20/73 Lion’s Share: present
4/21/73 Lion’s Share: present (listening notes)
4/23/73 Orphanage: absent (see below)
4/24/73 IOTB: absent (see below)
4/27/73 Keystone: present
4/28/73 Keystone: absent (I think)
4/30/73 Orphanage: absent
5/8/73 Eugene: present
5/9/73 Portland: present
5/18/73 Homer’s: present
5/25/73 Bimbo’s: present
Then Vassar comes in, and as far as I know Richard is done. For more on April 1973, see “Twenty-Four Performances in Twenty-Four Days: April 6-30, 1973”.
The 4/23/73 gig at the Orphanage (807 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA, 94133) was reviewed by Philip Elwood in the San Francisco Examiner (1). Scan below.
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| Elwood, Philip. 1973. A New Country Ear-Opener. San Francisco Examiner, April 24, p. 26. |
Among other things, he notes that the band needs a fiddle and that Greene occasionally sits in to fill that need, implying that he was not there on the night in question. So much for Monday 4/23.
How do I reach the conclusion that Greene was not present for this Inn gig on Tuesday 4/24/73? Well, Richard Greene and Friends would play the Inn on August 2, 1973, and in that month’s Inn of the Beginning Flyer, we are told that “Richard Greene played the fiddle with Seatrain the last time he was at the Inn.” I think Mark Braunstein wrote that blurb, and I highly doubt the remark was an oversight. If Richard Greene had played the Inn with OAITW on 4/24/73, the blurb probably would have told us so, and certainly would not have told us anything to contradict that. Combined with the fact that such a gig was not in Richard Greene’s own contemporary datebooks, I am about 99.9% sure he was not there on the date in question.
REFERENCE:
(1) Elwood, Philip. 1973. A New Country Ear-Opener. San Francisco Examiner, April 24, p. 26.
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