The Grateful Dead

So Many Roads (1965 - 1995)

(GDCD 4066)

Press Release
Scheduled for release on November 9, So Many Roads (1965-1995) is the first-ever retrospective of the unparalleled 30-year career of the Grateful Dead, one of the most successful — and most experimental — rock groups in history.
The 5-CD set will feature all previously unreleased concert and studio recordings, including several original tunes and covers that have never appeared before on a Grateful Dead album in any version. So Many Roads (1965-1995) contains many of the Dead's most inspired live performances. The set also marks the release of the last songs composed by guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter, as well as the final song written by the late blues great Willie Dixon, a collaboration with Dead rhythm guitarist Bob Weir called "Eternity." Tracing the band's evolution from its roots in the '60s folk and Haight-Ashbury scenes to becoming the most widely heard and recorded rock act in history (playing over 2400 shows to sold-out crowds world-wide), So Many Roads (1965-1995) unfolds chronologically through three decades of peak performances that transcended musical boundaries.
The selections range from the raucous proto-punk of "Cream Puff War," to the reggae-influenced "Estimated Prophet," to the massive funk of "Shakedown Street," to the jaunty "Liberty," an irresistible and irreverent pop tune in the tradition of such Dead classics as "Touch of Grey" and "Uncle John's Band." A studio version of "Mason's Children" calls to mind the timeless, joyful sound of such albums as Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, while a version of the epic "Playing in the Band" explodes into an atonal exploration of the frontiers of sound. Saxophone great Branford Marsalis makes an appearance on "Bird Song," and Bruce Hornsby leads the band through an impromptu melody recorded during a celebrated stand of shows in 1990. The set also features Dead concert favorites like "Dark Star," "Stella Blue," "The Other One," and "Terrapin," as well as some of the band's most passionate and focused free-form jamming, including the Dead's legendary soundcheck jam from the Watkins Glen Music Festival in 1973, the largest concert in history.
A 60-page hardcover booklet containing dozens of never-before-published photographs will accompany the museum-quality package, including insightful appraisals of the Dead's significance and the arc of their career from noted cultural observers Eric Pooley (chief political correspondent for Time magazine), Mikal Gilmore (author of Shot in The Heart and Night Beat), Richard Gehr (a regular contributor to Spin and The Village Voice), Gary Lambert (editor of the Grateful Dead Almanac), and Steve Silberman (contributing editor of Wired magazine). The set's classic archival packaging was designed by Geoff Gans, who designed Bob Dylan's Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind, and box sets for Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, and John Coltrane.
The performances on So Many Roads (1965-1995) were selected by the Dead's late tape archivist Dick Latvala and Deadhead scholars Blair Jackson (author of the new best-selling biography, Garcia: An American Life), David Gans (host of the nationally-syndicated Grateful Dead Hour and author of three books on the subject), and Steve Silberman (co-author of Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads).
A must-own for committed fans, and a landmark for anyone interested in one of the most daring sustained experiments in the American musical tradition, So Many Roads (1965-1995) will turn on a whole new generation of listeners to the legacy of the Grateful Dead.

Excerpts from the essays for So Many Roads (1965 - 1995):
"Watching [the Dead] that afternoon, it seemed that the group members played as if they had spent their whole lives learning to play music as a way of talking to one another, and as if music were the language of their fellowship, and therefore their history… Here was a band that had seen a long, hard, glorious and matchless road, and that they had learned to hold together and forge music as the bond of their affiliation."
-- Mikal Gilmore, "Notes From an Outsider"
"The Dead's instruments didn't just talk, they finished each other's sentences, stole each other's lunch money, stood best man at each other's weddings, made each other gallop and fly, bitch and laugh, scream and whisper and cry. Applying jazz principles to simple American songs, they discovered a new kind of musical freedom."
-- Eric Pooley, "Red and White, Blue Suede Shoes"
"That was the distinctive Grateful Dead signature: half baseball game, half church."
-- Steve Silberman, "A Place of Our Own"
So Many Roads will be available November 9, 1999 at record stores everywhere, on Grateful Dead Records (distributed by Arista) at $79.98 retail, or from Grateful Dead Merchandising at 1-800-225-3323.

So Many Roads (GDCD 4066)

Disc One (1965 - 1970)
Can't Come Down Autumn Records 11/3/65
Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) Autumn Records 11/3/65
You Don't Have To Ask San Francisco 7/16/66
On The Road Again 1966
Cream Puff War San Francisco 7/16/66
I Know You Rider San Francisco 1966
The Same Thing San Francisco 3/18/67
Dark Star> San Francisco 3/16/68
China Cat Sunflower> San Francisco 3/16/68
The Eleven> San Francisco 3/16/68
Clementine Portland, Oregon 2/2/68
Mason's Children 1970
To Lay Me Down 1970

Disc Two (1969 - 1974)
That's It For The Other One San Francisco 2/27/69
Beautiful Jam Port Chester, New York 2/18/71
Chinatown Shuffle Rotterdam 5/11/72
Sing Me Back Home Veneta, Oregon 8/27/72
Watkins Glen Soundcheck Jam 7/27/73
Dark Star Jam> Miami 6/23/74
Spanish Jam> Miami 6/23/74
U.S. Blues> Miami 6/23/74

Disc Three (1974 - 1984)
Eyes Of The World San Francisco 10/19/74
The Wheel Chicago 6/29/76
Stella Blue Lexington, Kentucky 4/28/78
Estimated Prophet Morrison, Colorado 8/12/79
The Music Never Stopped San Francisco 10/14/80
Shakedown Street San Francisco 12/31/84

Disc Four
Cassidy East Rutherford, New Jersey 11/10/85
Hey Pocky Way Greensboro, North Carolina 3/31/89
Believe It Or Not 1988
Playing In The Band Monterey, California 7/29/88
Gentlemen, Start Your Engines 1988
Death Don't Have No Mercy Mountain View, California 9/29/89
Scarlet Begonias> Hamilton, Ontario, Canada 3/22/90
Fire On The Mountain Hamilton, Ontario, Canada 3/22/90
Bird Song Uniondale, New York 3/29/90
Jam Out Of Terrapin Richfield, Ohio 9/8/90

Disc Five
Terrapin Station New York City 9/12/91
Jam Out Of Foolish Heart New York City 9/18/90
Way To Go Home Auburn Hills, Michigan 7/31/94
Liberty Atlanta 3/30/94
Lazy River Road Rehearsal 2/18/93
Eternity Rehearsal 2/18/93
Jam Into Days Between Rehearsal 2/9/93
Days Between Rehearsal 2/18/93
Whiskey In The Jar Rehearsal 2/16/93
So Many Roads Chicago 7/9/95

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