Jerry Garcia, Sandy Rothman, and Geoff Levin performing at The Offstage in San Jose, CA in early 1964. // Photo by Rob Levin, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum collection.
Road Trip with Jerry Garcia
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, my late 1950s interest in folk music and blues turned toward bluegrass around 1958-9. By 1960, I had been “bit by the bug,” as they say. In August of that year, the Redwood Canyon Ramblers, the local college band, gave a concert where I met their singer and rhythm guitar player, Mayne Smith. Like his close friend, banjo picker Neil Rosenberg, he was a folklore student at Indiana University at the time and was home in Berkeley during semester break. Mayne told stories about seeing Bill Monroe and other acts at Bill’s country music park, the Brown Country Jamboree in Bean Blossom, not far from Bloomington and IU. He had even played his steel-bodied resonator guitar on a show with Charlie Monroe in the old Jamboree barn. The scene sounded magical.
Being in the Midwest had given these California boys a real perspective on the music, previously known to us only from records, tape recordings of live shows, and rare appearances by authentic W
