Last weekend’s post “On the Bus with the Garcia Band” looked at the November-December 1983 JGB tour’s extensive ground travel – everything was by bus, 3,000 miles on the road in a few weeks in the eastern time zone. Commenter Nick asked a great question comparing that tour with earlier ones, pointing out Ozzie Ahlers’s recollections of limos and such on the early 1980 tour. In comments, I noted that that one had been a multimodal affair:
2/13 fly commercial DC-Albany
2/14 drive 165 mi. to Boston
2/16 drive 140 mi. to New Haven
2/17 charter plane to Syracuse
2/20 fly commercial to Hartford
2/21 fly commercial to Newark
2/23 drive 90 mi. to Philly
2/24 drive 110 mi. to Long Island
2/26 drive 180 mi. to Provy
2/27 drive 180 mi. back to NYC
Nick raises the question of whether the later tour maybe just wasn’t generating the same amount of cash, so that the bus was a budget-conscious choice. (Corry offers an alternative hypothesis.)
I’d love to be able to compare the money on the two tours, but I lack the ’83 piece. I can lay out the ’80 piece, and it is quite impressive. Somewhere I have Dennis McNally calling the Garcia Band a “little cash cow”, and the numbers affirm.
 |
| Table xxx. Jerry Garcia Band Touring Revenues, February-March 1980 |
In 2015 dollars, that’s just over $571k for three weeks’ work, not bad.
The last column may also be of interest. $19k (1980$) cash out on the road would have bought Our Hero a lot of cigarettes and chili dogs.
Leave a Reply