August 19, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage (FDGH '69 XIV)

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For the previous entry (August 15-17, 1969 Mike Bloomfield/Taj Mahal) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

Owsley Stanley captured the second ever New Riders gig on August 1, 1969--before they were even named--and both sets were released in their entirety

August 19, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Riders of The Purple Sage (Tuesday)
While seminal Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally had discovered this New Riders date as part of his original research, I had doubted the likelihood of it actually having been played. For one thing, the New Riders had played the previous Tuesday (August 12), and exactly none of the available papers had any listing for the Family Dog on August 19. To top it off, the Grateful Dead were at the Woodstock Festival over the weekend, and their set at had ended after midnight Saturday, plus the band had played a gig on Wednesday in Seattle. It seemed highly unlikely that the August 19 show would really have been played, if it had even been booked. So I always discounted the event as spurious.

Nonetheless, the Owsley Foundation has a tape, so Garcia and Hart got home, and it happened. Owsley, by the way, was famous for scrupulous accuracy on his tape boxes, so if he wrote "August 19 1969" on the box, that was the date. So, we know nothing about the show, but we know what the New Riders played.
    The Next In Line
    The Mighty Quinn
    Fair Chance to Know
    Last Lonely Eagle
    The Lady Came From Baltimore
    Henry
    Six Days On the Road
    All I Ever Wanted
    Whatcha Gonna Do
    Truck Drivin' Man

The New Riders of The Purple Sage had arisen from Jerry Garcia's willingness to learn pedal steel guitar by backing his old Palo Alto friend John Dawson when he played his original songs at a Menlo Park coffeehouse. Old pal David Nelson had joined them on electric guitar in mid-May, and they kept playing around. With the some tentative variations involving different players, the band had settled on a lineup by July

• John "Marmaduke" Dawson-acoustic guitar, lead vocals
• Jerry Garcia-pedal steel guitar
• David Nelson-electric guitar
• Bob Matthews-electric bass
• Mickey Hart-drums

Matthews was one of the band's sound engineers, and another old friend from Palo Alto days. The group's first gig was opening for the Dead at Longshoreman's Hall (July 16, 1969), followed by two shows at the UC Berkeley Bear's Lair on Friday, August 1 (when the Dead were booked at the Family Dog, but Garcia was looking to avoid any confrontation with the Light Show Guild picket line). Thanks to soundman Owsley Stanley, there is an excellent tape of both Bear's Lair shows, and they have been released, so we have a pretty good idea of what the band sounded like. They still didn't have a name--at Berkeley, they had been billed as "Marmaduke with Jerry Garcia."

The next week, the band had played Wednesday through Saturday at the Matrix, and they had been billed as The New Riders of The Purple Sage (we have a tape of one of those nights as well). The name was apparently suggested by Robert Hunter. The prior Tuesday night show at the Dog (August 12) had been just the band's 7th show, and just their second booking under the New Riders name. To top it off, the band had been billed with the New Lost City Ramblers, who were musical heroes and primary influences for both Garcia and Nelson, and the pair had jammed with the Ramblers as well. It must have gone alright, as the New Riders returned for another show.

There weren't many rock club gigs at the time. The New Riders would spend the Fall of 1969, in between Grateful Dead shows, playing what venues there were for them. The Family Dog was one of them. and they would play a number of Tuesday nights throughout the year.

I presume that there was an opening act, but I don't have any idea who it might have been.

For the next entry (August 22-24, 1969-Wild West Makeup shows), see here