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Jerry Garcia – Garcia (1972)

Jerry Garcia – Garcia
Image result for jerry garcia garciaImage result for jerry garcia 1971
After almost five years of being signed to Warner Brothers records, the label began to float the idea that the members of The Grateful Dead should produce some solo work. It made sense, The Dead has always seemed like more of a collective than a straightforward rock band, and Jerry Gracia and Bob Weir seemed like they could probably hold their own on some solo work and try to bring in some more money for Warner. Weir went on to craft Ace, which was basically a Grateful Dead record that he just happened to have control of, with most of the band's members featured in some capacity and Weir singing lead on each song. Dead drummer Mickey Hart eventually released an album too, which also ended up featuring the lion’s share of the band on a few different tracks. When it came to Jerry Garcia, however, it was a little different. Garcia decided to cut half of his songs with his primary lyricist Robert Hunter and devoted the rest of the songs (the weaker half) to collaborations with the other Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann. Besides that though, the vast majority of the album is Jerry singing, playing guitar, bass, piano and even helping out with the mixing, in fact, Kreutzmann's drumming is the only thing you’ll hear on the record that Garcia didn’t play. Garcia functions as a sort of mixed bag in this case, but Jerry does a good job of melding the two collaborators distinct styles together. 

The Hunter songs are the ones that stick out the most, having become ubiquitous within the Dead’s canon in the years following the release of Garcia. “Deal” “Sugaree” and “Loser” are undisputed classics and make for an elegantly poppy first half. The Kreutzmann songs, on the other hand, are a bit different. They make up the bulk of side two and are sonically split. First, Jerry gives us a ten-minute acid rock suite, “Late for Supper/Spidergawd/Eep Hour,” which is something I personally welcome on a solo studio release, even if it only begins to touch on the kind of freak-out the Dead could produce in a proper live setting. Robert Hunter’s “To Lay Me Down” acts as a nice little palette cleanser, a somber pedal steel ballad that is sublimely sweet, while the last two cuts are more atmospheric and in the case of “The Wheel”, more catchy. The sequencing and flow of this record are strong and none of the ideas seem to run on for too long. All in all, Jerry Garcia’s first foray into a proper solo album was a success and in my mind, it can still hold its own against most of the Grateful Dead’s studio albums. Jerry Garcia never had an immense catalog of purely solo material like this one, but he did contribute to countless projects outside of his home band and this just might be his best.
~8.5
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