Show Tunes

​by Steve Kimock

​When I arrived in California, there were people around who made comparisons between my playing and Jerry’s playing. I just wasn’t that familiar with his playing. I was doing my best to sound somewhere in between Roy Buchanan and Steve Howe. I didn’t relate to “the Garcia thing” as an influence until much later, when I realized how much influence in certain areas we shared. That’s when I said, “I get it: that’s what you’re hearing.”

​I had friends who were into the Grateful Dead back in the day, and they would tell me about it and I didn’t really care. I had no idea and was completely clueless. I came to the game late, which didn’t help.

​For me all of that stuff falls under the category of small-group improvisation. I’m OK if I’m listening to Miles Davis or The Meters or The Grateful Dead: anybody who’s setting up and playing in real time, playing together as a unit. The musicians are going to be working off each other. If you’re working off the musicians and you’re playing for an audience and you’re working off the audience, that’s what’s setting the table for the energy that happens. Everything else is detail.

​A lot of my favorite Garcia songwriting is very much Tin Pan Alley or Broadway show tunes. The introduction to “Mission in the Rain”: it doesn’t get much more Broadway than that. That’s a classic Broadway intro.