Guest Book

Jimmy Herring has some interesting things to say about the ABB... San Jose Mercury News (California) September 17, 2003 HEADLINE: Singer Osbourne, guitarist Herring give Dead extra life BYLINE: Brad Kava; Mercury News For new Dead members Joan Osbourne and Jimmy Herring, playing Grateful Dead music is like going back to school. Both have had their share of homework, catching up on a band with 40 years of history and hundreds of songs. ''Out of necessity, I've become a Deadhead,'' says Osbourne, who's playing with the Dead Friday at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. The 40-year-old singer used to hear the Dead's ''Workingman's Dead'' and ' 'American Beauty'' blaring through the walls at New York University. ''I had picked up their songs by osmosis, but now that I've been exposed to them, their songwriting has been impressive.'' Osbourne is singing many of the songs written by the band's leader, Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995. She checks set lists and then runs to a road crew member with a traveling library to study them before the show. Much of what the band does is impromptu, and she finds herself throwing Qawwali music, made-up opera and Yoko Ono imitations into sections of the music. This year, the New York-based singer toured with Motown's Funk Brothers and opened for the Dixie Chicks before joining the Dead, allowing the singing-impaired band to keep signature Garcia songs in familiar keys. Herring brings his own Dead library on the road. Sometimes, his 15-year-old daughter, Cameron, pilfers parts of it. A piano student, she's fond of ''Wake of the Flood.'' Herring heard ''American Beauty'' and ''Europe 72'' regularly on his brothers ' turntables in North Carolina. ''To my 10-year-old mind, the Allman Brothers were more to my liking,'' says Herring, 41, who has stepped into Garcia's lead guitar slot. '' 'Whipping Post' and 'In Memory of Elizabeth Reed' made me want to start learning guitar.'' Herring remains a jam band fan -- and he wanders between his roles as listener and musician. ''It's indescribable,'' he says. ''I never saw this coming. My friends all say that this is as high as music can ever go. It's a dream come true.'' He picked up an electric guitar at 13, shunning lessons because his teacher wanted him to play acoustic. A self-professed ''Dregs head'' -- a fan of the jazz/country unit the Dixie Dregs -- Herring toured with bands in his teens, playing a fusion of jazz and rock. He ended up in Col. Bruce Hampton's Aquarium Rescue Unit. Then, he played with jazz drummer Billy Cobham in a band called Jazz Is Dead, which did jazz covers of Grateful Dead music. That led to a call from Dead bassist Phil Lesh and a tour with Lesh's band in 2000. ''We did a spring tour, and it was the first time I ever made any money,'' Herring says. ''For the first time in 12 years, I was going to take a summer off and cut the grass, load the dishwasher and spend time with my kids.'' Three days into his planned escape, the Allmans called and made him an offer he couldn't refuse, replacing the fired Dickey Betts. ''If Dickey had called me and said it was OK, I would have been all right with it. But he never did. They said it was just for the summer because Dickey is coming back, but he never did. ''I'm an Allman Brothers fan. I wanted him to come back. I felt like I was with someone else's wife. Dickey is a rock star/musician. I'm a musician. I'll never be a rock star. I don't want to be a rock star.'' One lesson he's learned was that both the Allmans and the Dead shot a bolt of energy into some live recordings by speeding up the master tapes when they were pressed to vinyl. ''The Allmans' 'Jessica' and 'Rambling Man' are sped up,'' he says from his Atlanta home. ''So is 'Europe 72.' I asked the Allmans why they did it, and they said it was to make Dickey's voice higher. It also gave the guitars a certain kind of flair. The vibrato is more intense.'' He was surprised, when he rehearsed with both bands, that they played the songs much slower than he was used to hearing them and he tried to speed things up. ''I'd say, 'But that's how it is on the record.' But of course, they never listened to the records. They made them. They never had a reason to go back and listen to them.'' Onstage, the new Dead is more of an ensemble. Rather than deference to the lead guitar player, as there was for three decades, it's more of a musical democracy. Herring finds himself leading sometimes, other times being caught up in the current and trying to stay afloat. His style, with few effects or signature stylings, is so far from Garcia's that he steers them away from comparisons. It's a new unit, taking new approaches to old songs. The result, at least at an Oakland show last December, was a band that made music that mattered again -- jazzy, improvisational and dynamic. Herring says he's heard praise and criticism from Deadheads. ''Every complaint, I guarantee I have already thought of it. People complain that I don't have enough variation of tone. But I can't just start doing that stuff just because Jerry did it. I have to be honest.'' . Contact Brad Kava at bkava@mercurynews.com