HOFFSTACK PLAYLIST #14 - Jerry Garcia Band, "Ain't No Bread in the Breadbox"

Oh, God, he's gonna' start talking about the Grateful Dead ...

Jerry Garcia is not a world of music, he’s a galaxy. There are libraries of literature analyzing the changes he made from a March to May of any given year and I have limited interest in adding to it. But goddamn he was great.

In November 1991 the Grateful Dead (a band you may have heard of) was falling apart. Brent Mydland’s death the year before really hit Jerry Garcia hard, and carrying the torch of the the counterculture 1960s in his cramped diabetic hand was nothing he wanted to do. He wanted to play music (and go scuba diving) and not be a quick symbol for lazy journalists, and that’s why his best work in the end years is with his side gig, the Jerry Garcia Band or with chums like David Grisman and Tony Rice. Rolling into Giants Stadium with a corporate behemoth on his back was never part of the plan, but he was not one to cancel a party. Jerry’s death may have been a preventable tragedy if we all didn’t push him so hard, man.

Some Grateful Dead of the era is strong—the heartbreaking “Standing on the Moon” from July 7, 1989 in Philadelphia is one of the greatest performances in rock, mostly because it’s sung by a man exhausted by the world he’s created for himself—but a lot of it ain’t so hot. As Bob Weir himself once told me, the double-drummer situation, once one of the Dead’s selling points, got so bad by the end that “Jerry told those guys it was like playing with a popcorn machine.” In the 1990s, by and large, the better material was with the JGB, which at this point included Melvin Seals on keyboards, John Kahn on bass, Dave Kemper on drums and two women, Jaclyn LaBranch and Gloria Jones, singing backup.

Their November 1991 show in Milwaukee has been mixed and re-released and is available for all to stream, and it’s a treasure. Of the 15 tracks on there only five from the Grateful Dead repertoire (if you include “Tangled Up in Blue.”) There’s a really peppy “Lay Down Sally” on there as well as a cover of Van Morrison’s “Bright Side of the Road” that crushes the original as far as I’m concerned. If you like the heartbreaking stuff there’s a cover of Bruce Cockburn’s “Waiting For a Miracle” that’s spectacular. (I came very, very close to making that today’s PLAYLIST pick.)

But the standout for me is the dopey tune “Ain’t No Bread in the Breadbox.” Even though there’s no Phil Lesh or Bill Kreutzmann playing, it’s still got that loping Grateful Dead beat, the kind of rhythm that makes you walk like John Lennon down the Rue D’Antibes in 1971.

John Lennon wrote and recorded a lot of good music, but sometimes I think the best thing he ever did was violate the laws of physics and walk like this one time.

“Ain’t No Bread in the Breadbox” was written by someone named Norton Buffalo (not his given name), a Bay Area musician who was associated with a lot of cool people but never really had a hit on his own. He played harmonica on albums by the Steve Miller Band and Bonnie Raitt, and toured with Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. He pops up in the movie The Rose, I’m told, which sounds about right. At some point Jerry came across “Ain’t No Bread” and put it into heavy rotation. The Milwaukee version is the peppiest and my favorite.

I love it because Jerry, a man I know was in great pain at this point in his life, is clearly having a blast here. Can a guitar lick laugh? I believe it can, and you can hear that here. It’s an expression of total joy from a man that spent most of this period suffering from addiction, infirmity and depression.

And, as such, the song just does. not. end. It’s way way longer than it has any right to be. There’s no real development after the third or fourth minute. But nobody’s near done. On and on it goes, another chorus, another solo. It’s just a carnival. The lyrics are equally playful, too. “There ain't no bread in the bread box/’Cause we ain't got no dough.” Funny!

I had the good fortune to listen to this recently on my big bluetooth headphones as I galavanted down 5th Avenue on a clement day before plantar fasciitis recently appears to gum up my stroll. (Don’t ask.) I can not tell a lie, I was singing and dancing while waiting for red to turn to green near all the tourists at St. Patrick’s and Rockefeller Plaza. There’s a good chance I’m on some Zoomer’s TikTok with a “look at this dingus” caption. I’ll take it. “It’s time to move along.”

You may think you hate Jerry Garcia. You may think you hate the Grateful Dead. But if you’ve read this far and haven’t pressed play, please do so. I can’t imagine anyone not liking this.