While David Gans and the Persuasions were putting together one great collections of Dead songs in a style that no one might have expected, Danny Carnahan was assembling some of San Francisco's best Irish traditional players for a new band, Wake The Dead . Carnahan, who plays guitar, mandolin and fiddle, had found Grateful Dead melodies creeping into the medleys of Irish jigs, reels and airs that are the heart of any traditional session. That medley tradition is highly improvisational in character, and it's not a stretch to claim that Irish traditional music produced the world's first jam bands. Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter had strong roots in Bluegrass, another musical form with a strong debt to Celtic sounds, and perhaps it was thus inevitable that some of their best songs would blend perfectly with the Trad songbook. As the music on Wake The Dead proves, they do, inevitable or not.
Every segue works, and every track is beautiful.
This, then, is the living legacy of the Grateful Dead, great new performances of great songs. Dead songs live, and the lives of listeners everywhere are better for it.