Although our purchased lawn seats in Saratoga Springs did not let us see the live humans of Dead & Company, the band put on a great show on its final tour.
In 2022, my wife and I got a babysitter and scheduled a rare night out to see Dead & Company in Saratoga Springs, NY. As we left our home, lacking confidence in my ability to use online tickets, I pulled over to double check I could access the tickets on my phone. But it came up that the tickets were being refunded. My wife did a quick Google search and we discovered that our first post-baby post-pandemic-shutdown live music show was cancelled. John Mayer could not make it due to family health issues that night. So, we ended up going to see a movie, Top Gun: Maverick.
Dead & Company was returning in 2023 as part of their final tour. Although a year earlier we had great tickets, we did not initially get tickets in 2023. So, later when we had to buy them through the secondary market, they were so expensive we settled for the lawn seats at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) on Sunday, June 18, 2023.
I’ve had lawn seating at many concerts. It has always been a good experience, lounging on the lawn even though you see the band at a distance. But soon after arriving at SPAC, I realized something was different. Thousands of people were outside of a building instead of surrounding an open ampitheater. A realization came over me, my wife, and her cousin who had come with us. The band would be indoors out of our view completely.
And that is how we paid $450 for three people to watch a band on a big screen and never even catch a glimpse of the real human forms of Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, John Mayer, Bob Weir, Oteil Burbridge, or Jeff Chimenti.
The Show
So, how was the show? Well I am not an expert on the Grateful Dead and had only seen them twice before this show, including one time touring with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. But like my previous shows, this one was a lot of fun with a lot of good music. And most importantly, the band always has one of the most fun, dedicated, and polite crowds of any live shows.
As Bob Dylan noted in his book The Philosophy of Modern Song, “With most bands, the audience participates like in a spectator sport. They just stand there and watch. They keep a distance. With the Dead, the audience is part of the band – they might as well be on the stage.” So, in a sense, even from our vantage point outside the Center, we were with the band on the stage the whole time. Had it been any other band, I would not have enjoyed paying for tickets to never see the band members live.
Being the last tour, there were a number of classics like “Friend of the Devil” and “Sugar Magnolia.” They played “Drums” and “Space” as they seem to be doing everywhere. Despite the love for those intstrumentals from many longtime fans, I noticed a lot of folks heading to the bathroom during them even as this version of the the Dead did a great job. Mayer, brought his guitar skills and bluesy vocals and love of the Grateful Dead catalog to the songs he sang. In the second set, to appease the longtime fans, Weir did most of the lead singing.
As usual, there were some covers previously performed during the Jerry Garcia days, like Rev. Gary Davis’s “Death Have No Mercy” and an encore of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” If you care to see the full list, you may check out the whole setlist from the show I basically watched on TV.
In conclusion, if you like the Grateful Dead, you should have been there or maybe catch Dead & Company at one of the few remaining shows. It seems while this is the end of this particular version of the many post-Jerry Garcia bands, it is not the last we will hear of Bob Weir. Still, it is sad to know we are nearing the end of this great American band that carved out its own niche of music history and culture.
Overall rating: The band: A. The venue’s lawn seating: C (saved from failing by excellent screen placement and wonderful videography). The fans: A+
Check out a video from the show below. If you invite over a bunch of friends who are fans, you can pack yourself together in your yard and watch your screen to get the same experience I got at SPAC.
Leave your two cents in the comments. What is your favorite show you’ve seen from the Grateful Dead or one of its offshoot bands?
In the wonderful song “Dublin Blues,” Guy Clark sings about a lost love and his own pain. The alcoholic singer sits in Dublin with the shakes wishing he were back in Austin, drinking “Mad Dog Margaritas/ And not carin’ where you are.” The singer ask for forgiveness and recounts some of the sights he has seen, but he cannot forget the object of the song or walk away from her.
“Dublin Blues”
In “Dublin Blues,” the singer lists some of his travels. And Clark notes what he has seen and heard.
I have seen the David, I’ve seen the Mona Lisa too, I have heard Doc Watson Play “Columbus Stockade Blues.”
The line about “Columbus Stockade Blues” caught my ear. Songs do sometimes refer to other songs, but it is not often you hear them compared to the Mona Lisa. Here is Guy Clark singing “Dublin Blues.”
Why Does Clark Reference “Columbus Stockade Blues”?
I was not sure I had heard Doc Watson play “Columbus Stockade Blues.” So I became curious about this song that Guy Clark compares to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the Michelangelo’s David.
“Columbus Stockade Blues” is so old that nobody knows who wrote it. An informative Grateful Dead website notes that the earliest known version is by Darby and Tarlton. On Doc Watson’s album, the song is credited to Jimmy Davis and Eva Sargent.
Jimmy Davis, the Louisiana governor famous for “You Are My Sunshine,” made “Columbus Stockade Blues” popular in the 1940s. But it is the Doc Watson version that haunted Guy Clark so much that he cited it in “Dublin Blues.”
What is interesting about Guy Clark’s tribute to “Columbus Stockade Blues” is that Watson’s song has the same theme as Guy Clark’s song that references it. Those unfamiliar with the Watson song, however, will miss the connection because the title does not give it away.
As in “Dublin Blues,” the song “Columbus Stockade Blues” begins with the singer wishing he were somewhere else, as he sits in Columbus, Georgia wishing he was “back in Tennessee.” He recounts that he thought the woman would love him forever, but he recognizes the woman loves another. Broken-hearted, he tells her to go ahead and “Leave me, little darling, I don’t mind.” But we know he does mind.
The real difference between Watson’s song and Clark’s song comes where we find out the reason for the title, “Columbus Stockade Blues.” Watson’s singer is in prison.
Last night as I lay sleeping, Oh, I dreamd that I was you in my arms; When I woke I was mistaken; Lord, I was still behind these bars.
Inspiration for “Dublin Blues” from “Handsome Molly”
“Dublin Blues” is connected to another song besides “Columbus Stockade Blues.” Singer-songwriter Tom Russell has noted that “Dublin Blues” has its origins in a song called “Handsome Molly,” written by fiddle player D.B. Grayson, who was born in 1887.
Like “Dublin Blues” and “Columbus Stockade Blues,” the song “Handsome Molly” is about heartache. It begins in a similar way to “Dublin Blues” with the singer wishing he were somewhere else. “Well, I wish I was in London,/ Or some other seaport town.” The sound of “Dublin Blues” is similar to “Handsome Molly,” although Clark slows it down to emphasize the agony of the heartbreak.
Clark possibly was inspired to use the tune from “Handsome Molly” because Watson recorded a famous version of “Handsome Molly.” Thus, Clark’s “Dublin Blues” is doubly connected to Watson, referencing a Watson song while using music from another song connected to Watson. Here is Watson playing “Handsome Molly.”
Both Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger have recorded “Handsome Molly.” Below is Dylan’s version of “Handsome Molly.”
Conclusion
Ultimately, Clark’s song “Dublin Blues” is a nice tribute to Watson, who passed away in 2012. Clark honors Watson and the traditional song by comparing “Columbus Stockade Blues” to great works of art while incorporating much of the storyline into his own song.
Clark’s singer sits in Dublin outside the penitentiary, but he remains locked in his own prison of alcoholism, sorrow, and regret. These are two great songs about lost love and the destruction that may result from a broken heart.
And they are both great works of art.
What is your favorite song that mentions another song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Inside Llewyn Davis opens with one of the film’s best musical moments. The camera simply focuses on the title character, played by Oscar Isaac, singing “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” at the Gaslight Cafe. Isaac’s performance of the song is mesmerizing. He immediately draws the viewer into the time and setting of the movie.
Hang me, Oh hang me, and I’ll be dead and gone; Hang me, Oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone; Wouldn’t mind the hangin’, but the layin’ in the grave so long; Poor boy, I been all around this world.
The song stayed with me long after the movie ended. One might argue that no other performance in the film matches it. Check out Isaac’s opening performance from Inside Llewyn Davis.
Versions and Sources of “Hang Me”
The movie performance made me curious to find out more about the song. The Coen Brothers movie is loosely based on the life of Dave Van Ronk. So the obvious first step for anyone interested in the film is to check out Van Ronk’s version of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.”
Van Ronk’s version is a wonderful recording and worth tracking down. Van Ronk’s ex-wife Terri Thai wrote in The Village Voice that one of the best things about the movie is that it will lead people to check out Van Ronk’s music.
You may find Van Ronk’s version of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” on the CD Inside Dave Van Ronk. Check it out below.
Van Ronk did not write the song. If you look for further information, many places just list it as “traditional.” The song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” however, has a long history that takes a number of twists and turns.
There are different variations on the song with different titles. These title variations include “I’ve Been All Around This World,” “The Gambler,” “My Father Was a Gambler,” and “The New Railroad.” Sometimes, the song is called “Cape Girardeau,” from the song’s line “I been all around Cape Girardeau.” Another version specifies the location of the singer’s last stand in “Up On The Blue Ridge Mountains.”
The Grateful Dead used the variation “I’ve Been All Around This World.” The band sang the song in a 1980 New Year’s Eve performance at the Oakland Auditorium.
A Grateful Dead fansite notes that the origin of the song is somewhat unclear. The first commercial recorded version of the song appears to be a 1946 single by Grandpa Jones, who later starred on Hee-Haw. But the song goes back further to a 1937 Library of Congress field recording.
A trip to the Library of Congress website leads to information about this first known recordings of the song. One early version of “I’ve Been All Around This World” (AFS 1531) is by Justis Begley. Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded Begley singing the song at Hazard, Kentucky in October 1937.
The Library of Congress lists another version of the song supposedly “sung” by a person named Dr. David McIntosh with a recording date of May from the same year, although I have yet to find more information about that version. McIntosh seems to have been a collector of folk songs, authoring books called Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks and Singing Games and Dances (1957). (Thanks to Elijah Wald in the comments for pointing me to the McIntosh listing.)
Interestingly, Begley, the man who made the other 1937 recording of this song about a man about to be hanged, served as the sheriff of Hazard. You may hear another Sheriff Begley recording on YouTube, “Run Banjo.”
Begley’s version of “I’ve Been All Around This World” is below courtesy of archive.org and thanks to Stephen Winick at the American Folklife Center for the link. At the end of the song, you can hear the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax referring to Begley as the “composer” of the song.
The line “hang me” probably derived from the American ballad “My Father Was a Gambler.” That song is about an unnamed murderer who was hanged in the 1870s. Like many other versions, the narrator in “My Father Was a Gambler” claims he has been all around the world as he states, “hang me, oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone.”
Below is a YouTube video of someone playing “My Father Was a Gambler.” The song title reflects a paternal gambler theme also found in “House of the Rising Sun” (“My father was a gamblin’ man / Down in New Orleans.”). A gambling father also appears in the Allman Brothers’ song “Ramblin’ Man” (“My father was a gambler down in Georgia”).
What Hanged Man Inspired the Song?
Unfortunately, sources do not disclose the name of the condemned man or men who inspired the various versions of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.” The book Outlaw Ballads, Legends & Lore (1996) by Wayne Erbsen claims that the song was inspired by a man hanged in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Some versions of the song mention that location.
Apparently the hanged man’s name has been lost to history. But the book claims that the execution occurred sometime during the decade of the 1870s. The author notes that the famous hanging judge Judge Isaac Charles Parker might have pronounced the sentence because he served as judge at that location during 1875-1896.
One may speculate further about the person who inspired “My Father Was a Gambler” and the “hang me” lyric. Examining a list of people executed in the Arkansas, one finds a large number of men hanged for murder in Arkansas in the 1870s. Most were black men or Native Americans (also illustrating the discriminatory way the death penalty is used).
If we try to narrow down the time period, the famous execution may have occurred sometime during 1873-1876. During that period, executions at Fort Smith were open to the general public. For these public executions, thousands of people could hear the condemned person’s last words.
But even if we narrow down the song’s inspiration to the years of public executions, it is still challenging to determine the name of the condemned man who inspired the “hang me” lyrics. For example, one may guess that the song could be about Sidney Wallace. As something of a folk hero, Wallace and his execution may have captured people’s imagination.
Or maybe the song is about Daniel Evans. He had connections in Missouri, which might have inspired the song’s reference to Cape Girardeau. Evans also joked about his execution, which might have made it memorable to a potential songwriter.
Or maybe the song is about either William Leach or William Whittington. Both of those men gave final speeches to a crowd blaming their vices and discussing their reform. Further, Leach’s lingering 10-minute hanging may have prompted extra attention. (See Roger Harold Tuller, “Let No Guilty Man Escape”: A Judicial Biography of “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker.)
A good guess is that John Childers may be the inspiration for the song because of his final request to be hanged. Childers spoke for sixteen minutes on the scaffold in 1873. Then his request came after the marshal made him an offer.
The marshal explained that he would spare Childers if the condemned man would reveal the names of his accomplices. Following his own code of honor not to rat on others, Childers swept his hand and asked, “Didn’t you say you were going to hang me?” After the marshal answered in the affirmative, Childers replied, “Then, why in hell don’t you!”
The Childers execution continued to attract attention after Childer’s death. Some claimed that Childers escaped. Others claimed that after Childer’s body fell through the trap, a bolt of lightening from a storm cloud struck the scaffold.
But we may only guess how much of the song we know today is based in fact. For example, singers may have added the gambling reference in some versions as a morality lesson for listeners.
The Song and Hangings Today
Other versions may contain clues about the origins or may just feature additional details added long after the execution. One of the versions called “Working on the New Railroad” refers to railroad work. Below, Crooked Still performs their version of “Working on the New Railroad,” which also has some of the “hang me” lyrics.
There are a number of other good versions of “Hang Me” and the various variations, including ones by Amos Lee and Yonder Mountain String Band. Also, reportedly, Bob Dylan performed the song during the 1990 leg of his “Never Ending Tour.”
The Deep Dark Woods made a lively version of the song the title track of their 2008 album, Hang Me Oh Hang Me. I like what they do with the song. Check it out.
While hangings may seem a relic of the past, hanging is still an option for executions in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington. In many ways, other current methods of killing prisoners also seem barbaric vestiges of the past.
States now have lethal injection as their primary method of execution. But such executions still are not civilized, as shown by a recent 26-minute execution in Ohio.
Whether or not we will ever see a song about lethal injection that rivals “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” may depend on how much longer some states continue to kill prisoners.
What is your favorite version of “Oh Hang Me”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In 2011, the U.S. Post Office used the wrong “Statute of Liberty” on a stamp, while many on the Internet quote the wrong Walt Whitman quote about liberty, courtesy of the Grateful Dead.
They used the correct flag.
In 2011, the U.S. Post Office issued a new Statue of Liberty stamp honoring the 125th Anniversary of the American symbol, which was dedicated on October 28, 1886. But the Post Office used the wrong statue for its stamp!
The stamp’s image was not of the landmark in New York harbor. Instead, the stamp mistakenly featured a replica statue from the New York-New York Casino, which opened a little more recently in 1997 in Las Vegas.
The Statue Mix-Up
The real Statue of Liberty and the casino statue are similar. But there are some small differences between the two, including the eyes.
The Post Office subsequently reevaluated its stamp selection process, but it stuck with the Las Vegas statue. One representative said they like the stamp. The rep claimed they still would have selected this picture even if they knew it was not the real statue. Somehow, I doubt that is true. The Post Office would look worse if it intentionally selected the wrong statue for the tribute.
I was not too upset about the mix-up. It still is a nice looking stamp and nice tribute, although the error is funny. We do wish to assure Chimesfreedom readers, though, that the statue we sometimes use to promote this website is the real deal. Our new motto: “Chimesfreedom: More Authentic than the U.S. Post Office.”
The Grateful Dead’s “Liberty”
Below is something else that is the real deal. The Grateful Dead singing “Liberty,” with words by Robert Hunter and music by Jerry Garcia. “Ooo, freedom / Ooo, liberty / Ooo, leave me alone / To find my own way home.”
Like the U.S. Post Office stamp, the Grateful Dead song also indirectly raises some questions about authenticity. There is nothing wrong with the song, but such questions come up in relation to a quote connected to the song regarding a quote in the band’s original liner notes . . . .
Walt Whitman in the Liner Notes
In David Dodd’s Annotated Grateful Dead, he wrote that in the original release of the song “Liberty,” Robert Hunter included the following alleged quote from Walt Whitman in the liner notes: “We must all be foolish at times. / It is one of the conditions of liberty.”
The Whitman quote pops up in several places around the Internet. But nobody lists the original source.
From what I can find, the quote appears in an April 21, 1888 letter from Whitman, which is included in With Walt Whitman in Camden, Volume 1, by Horace Traubel, Sculley Bradley, and Gertrude Traubel. In that letter, Whitman used the words in a parenthetical discussing another person.
Future Post Office plans include a tribute to this NYC gift shop statue.
Whitman’s actual language differs slightly from the Dead liner notes version, making foolishness “the one” condition instead of “one of” the conditions. Whitman really wrote, “[W]e must all be foolish at times — it is the one condition of liberty.”
Interestingly, it seems the incorrect Grateful Dead version of the quote has spread more than the correct Whitman version, with the incorrect version appearing in various valedictorian speeches posted online. Even the best of us make mistakes.
I am sure that somewhere Old Walt is smiling at the foolish mistake made by the Post Office. Me too. Have a good day.
Do you think it is a problem that the Post Office used the wrong Lady Liberty? Leave a comment.
. Check it out below.
(1996) by Wayne Erbsen claims that the song was inspired by a man hanged in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Some versions of the song mention that location.
