Robert Hunter - The Cellar Door, Washington, D.C., September 1, 1980
A big fare you well to Robert Hunter, a lyricist responsible for innumerable great lines and songs. Just looking over the work he and Jerry Garcia did in the late 1960s/early 1970s is pretty astonishing, a whole new canon of American music opening up. Hunter wasn’t someone who actively sought out the limelight, but he did perform live sporadically, offering up his own interpretations of Dead classics, along with other tunes and covers. Listening to this 1980 tape, it’s interesting to hear the echoes of traditional British folk here and there – an influence that got a little bit submerged once the Dead got ahold of these songs. Also, I don’t think I realized that “Touch of Grey” dated all the way back to this period (though it’s quite different here from what it would become later in the decade). And I love Hunter’s spare rendition of “Bird Song,” a tune that I thought of instantly when I heard the news of Robert’s passing yesterday: “Tell me all that you know, I’ll show you snow and rain.”
