'The good ol' Grateful Deadcast', the official Grateful Dead Podcast, launches today
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Los Angeles CA, USA—The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, the official Grateful Dead podcast, has launched today. The weekly series is devoted to exploring the music and mythology behind one of the most enduring, progressive, and influential bands in the history of recorded music.
Produced and hosted by singer songwriter and producer Rich Mahan and author and WFMU DJ Jesse Jarnow, the Deadcast’s weekly episodes will present an aural and oral history of the Grateful Dead’s long strange trip. The podcast’s tagline is “For The Committed And The Curious,” as episodes will invite new fans to explore the band’s enormous mythology in digestible chunks and enlighten life-long Dead Heads about corners of the band’s history they never knew existed. No topic will be off limits on “The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast” as Mahan and Jarnow explore the band’s outrageous history, innovations, and impact from 1965 to today. Many of the unsolved mysteries of the Dead world will also be explained including: which obscure Macedonian folk song Jerry Garcia borrowed the “Uncle John’s Band” melody from; dating the exact writing of “Dire Wolf”; and locating the secret trail between Garcia and Janis Joplin’s houses.
For each episode, the hosts will be joined by special guests from the Grateful Dead universe including Trixie Garcia (Garcia’s daughter), David Lemieux (Grateful Dead legacy manager and archivist), Dennis McNally (author and the band’s former publicist), and Bill “Grateful Red” Walton (NBA Champion and famous Dead Head). Future episodes will also include rare interviews with many who were closely involved in the early years of the band including Stephen Barncard, Steve Brown, Brian Godchaux, and Ron and Susan Wickersham, amongst many others.
“The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast” debuts in step with the 50th anniversary of the band’s classic album, Workingman’s Dead, which was originally released on June 14, 1970. To celebrate this milestone, the first eight episodes will take deep dives into each song on the album individually. The first episode, available now, takes a look at “Uncle John’s Band” with specials guests including Grateful Dead tour manager Sam Cutler, songwriter Jim Lauderdale, Workingman’s Dead producer Bob Matthews, and collaborator David Nelson.
These special Workingman’s Dead episodes also feature some of the newly unearthed studio outtakes from the album’s recording sessions that were unveiled last week in the new digital collection Workingman’s Dead: The Angel’s Share which is available to stream now.
Compiled from dozens of 16-track reels that were recently discovered in unlabeled boxes, the collection includes outtakes for every song on the album, which have been unheard since they left the studio over 50 years ago. The conversations about the album on “The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast” will provide a great companion to these newly uncovered recordings.
Fans have always been a vital part in the Grateful Dead story and “The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast” will continue that tradition by collecting and sharing many of these fascinating stories. Fans can visit dead.net/deadcast to submit their own personal accounts and experiences related to the band and the Grateful Dead community to be used on future episodes.
This is a press release which we link to from Podnews, our daily newsletter about podcasting and on-demand. We may make small edits for editorial reasons.