Just as Sandy Rothman saw a longtime creative desire come to fruition with the free download of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band’s version of “Christmas Time’s A-Comin’,” the JGAB mandolin/dobro/banjo/vocalist had to deal with a personal misfortune when a house fire caused him to seek shelter elsewhere and reorganize his life.

When the issue is brought up and sympathies offered, Rothman is resigned and philosophical about the situation. “Nothing can really be done at this point. It’s just what it is.” He’s also still willing to discuss “Christmas Time’s A-Comin’,” a song that he’d been trying to get released since the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band performed it on Dec. 4, 1987 at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theater. Despite playing with Garcia and David Nelson previously in March 1964 in the Black Mountain Boys, the three longtime friends, musicians and lovers of bluegrass never played that particular number until they reunited for those acoustic dates in the ‘80s.

Written by Tex Logan and originally recorded by Bill Monroe in 1951, the song was a last-minute addition and was the only time the members played the bluegrass classic, which has been covered by Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Sammy Kershaw, Rhonda Vincent and Patty Loveless among others.

In the notes that accompany the download Rothman mentioned:  “[We] were starting to feel that old holiday feeling…inspired by Jerry’s well-known love of Christmas. We had Kenny Kosek with us, a fiddler who plays the melody beautifully. I suggested the song while we were warming up. We ran through the chorus and Jerry wrote the title on the set list. We were definitely in our usual seat-of-the-pants mode, so not every word in the verses may be in place—but it was great fun to sing.”

How did that song come to be played that night?
I think we talked about it when we were in New York because we knew December shows were coming up. I remember asking Kenny, the fiddler player, whether he knew that and he said, “Oh, yeah.” He followed the career of the writer of that song. It’s a Bill Monroe song but written by Tex Logan who was a fiddler who lived lived in Boston and New Jersey and worked for Bell Labs. An interesting guy, a fiddle player but he’s also an electrical engineer; an educated guy, a fascinating guy.
We’d known that song forever. We must have talked about in November, probably got together on Front Street and discussed it but I don’t think we ever sang it or practiced it until that day we performed it.

That’s the cool thing about the song. There’s a looseness to it, and even though it was barely rehearsed, like other material by the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, the final result came out so well.
Which is what you pretty much can say about everything  that particular group did. It was all seat of the pants pretty much…and drawing on the trio harmony we had going from the mid-‘60s. It was easy for us to sing anything in three-part harmony because we’d done it years before but I don’t think we ever sang that one before. That was just a onetime thing. You know how bluegrass is, everybody knows those songs. Everybody’s been hearing ‘em their whole lives. You can just do it. We didn’t do it that well. (laughs) Jerry missed most of the words. It was mostly there.

I’m surprised you never did it with the Black Mountain Boys.
I don’t remember any Christmas gigs with the Black Mountain Boys. I bet you we would have thought of it if we had a Christmas gig. It would have come to mind because in bluegrass everybody sings that song at Christmastime. There’s others but that’s a primary one.

Looking back on it, you played that song with Jerry in the Acoustic Band as well as with “Father Christmas” Bill Monroe.
That reminds me of what a lot of people told me, “Hey, you’ve played with Bill Monroe and Jerry Garcia.” [laughs] But that’s also true of Peter Rowan and a few other people.
Back then in the Black Mountain Boys, we all knew Jerry was special but I don’t think anybody knew that he was gonna be the icon that he became. Just good ol’ Jerry.

You’re downplaying it but that’s still a helluva feat. I can’t say that and neither can 99.9% of the musicians out there.
Yeah. I see what you’re saying. [laughs] In terms of the world at large and the way things work those names are very well known.

There was an interesting quote from a Jambands.com interview where in talking about Jerry you said: “This kind of music was what he always turned to – but he loved all roots music. Appalachian music was near and dear to him, as was old country blues and pre-bluegrass old-time stuff, gospel music, R&B. All of it. Jerry was always turning people on to music that they maybe never would have listened to on their own – and he still is.”
Yeah, absolutely. That will just keep on going.

This number, “Christmas Time’s A-Comin’” is just another example of that.
Yeah, I guess you can say that. You can extend that idea with Jerry was constantly turning people on to whatever he was into at the moment. That was a real big Jerry thing. He’d come into a room and say, “Hey man! I just heard this and here’s the tape of it. Check this out.” Always into that.

I read your memories of playing with Bill Monroe around Christmastime and loved the part of him wearing the candy cane looking bath robe around the Grand Ole Opry. In your intro to the “Christmas Time’s A-Comin’” download you mention about how Jerry was very much into Christmas. Could you elaborate on that?
He gave gifts. He bought gifts for people. He bought his brother a car one Christmastime. I haven’t felt it yet this year due to all the crap that’s been going on in the world but you know how it is on a certain day comes along right near the holiday and you suddenly start feeling it? All those songs you’ve been hearing in the department stores and you come out whistling ‘em. It’s suddenly hits you. The spirit of Christmas somehow hits at a certain point.

Jerry was just wide open for it. He dug it. He loved it. I remember the Grateful Dead Ticket Office used to have a Christmas party every year and I remember everybody sitting around, “When’s Jerry coming? When’s Santa coming?” He would show up at some point, he probably was coming from someplace else related to Christmas, and hang out for awhile. He wasn’t wearing a Santa outfit but he may as well have. The line you’re drawing between him and Bill Monroe is exactly the same. Bill was exactly like that with Christmas.

In the write-up on the Jerry Garcia website that accompanies the download, it mentions that this was put together “with the help of Jerry’s long-time friend and collaborator Sandy Rothman.” What did that involve?
I had that idea a looong time ago, back in ’87 when we were playing in that little reunion band that we had, JGAB. As soon as we had done that song, I had this idea, “Wouldn’t it be fun to get that somewhere where people could hear it at Christmas if they wanted and not pay for it? Just have it as a free thing.” I don’t remember if it was Jerry that said, “Yeah, like a gift to the fans.”

It was just an off-the-cuff thing that we did. A seasonal song can’t really go on a CD project. I guess people do that but I certainly wouldn’t want to put a seasonal song on a regular record.
I remember talking to the family and before that it was GDM and various different entities. And every power that’s been I have gotten in touch with them and said, “Hey! Let’s do this at Christmas because we have this song.” Nobody wanted to do anything about it.

Now, Red Light Management, who the Garcia family took on, those guys got in touch with me. I got to know them a little bit through email — Kevin Monty and Marc Allan. I did the same thing I did with the other powers that be. “We’ve got this Christmas song. We played at one of our shows and it was recorded… Could we do something with this?” This was about two years ago. I mentioned it again last spring in an email. Didn’t hear anything for awhile. Then, I got an email saying, “You know there’s a Christmas song that the JGAB did. We were thinking it would be a good idea…”

Now, did you have the original tapes?
They have access to the vault. I would assume they do. They could get ahold of all that. I have it on a DAT tape but they wanted to get it from the original DAT.  They were asking me where to go. I told them the usual sources, Jeffrey Norman or Joe Gastwirt. I’m assuming that’s where they went.

Did you then supervise it?
In a way I did because they sent what they had, which sounded pretty close to what I had and everything I remembered. The only questions there were were things like where to fade it in, where to fade it out. They were really nice about that. They forwarded to me the mp3s and honed in on the length. There was a bunch of noodling Jerry was doing on the guitar before that. I said, “You could maybe include that.”

Then, they sent me three options – one that was cropped really tight to the very beginning, one that was a little bit looser and one that was maybe a minute longer than that that had all that guitar noodling. I didn’t really have a strong opinion. I liked them all for different reasons. I told them that I was happy with any of the ones that they liked, and they ended up choosing the second tightest.

I found out from my friend, Rick, who’s here visiting and is a major collector that that show was never in Deadbase , which I didn’t realize, and now it is in a new edition. That entire show was not public. It was just one of the shows, and I thought all traders had it but evidently not.

That is surprising. That was the only time that you played that number?
I don’t recall doing it any other time. We played again a few times after that before he met his ill-fated end. We probably didn’t play any closer to Christmas then that date.

I see that in 2015 you released “The Red Fiddle & the Silver Banjo” with Brian Godchaux (http://redfiddlesilverbanjo.weebly.com/)
He’s my current musical partner. All I’ve been doing the past several years are duets with Brian. We haven’t done much with it because we’re terrible at business. (slight laugh)
We’re going to play on Haight Street on Solstice Day. We’ve been going up there maybe once a week when we can and play on the street, which is kind of cool. We’re from the era and we look like a couple of old guys who were from back then so tourists and all the denizens of Haight Street watch us, listen to us, and the kids give us money.

It’s very hard to get actual indoor gigs with what we do because banjo and fiddle is not a familiar sound in California. If we were in Charlottesville, Virginia where those Red Light guys are or some town back there or even Columbus or Cincinnati it would be different but out here the sound doesn’t resonate with people. There’s no bass, no throbbing beat. It’s not even bluegrass. It just old time fiddle and banjo music, fiddle music mostly with a banjo back up. We’re into it. We can’t do much with it. Plus, neither one of us is any good at business or getting gigs.

I’ve been playing some with other people – Butch Waller, an old friend of Jerry’s too, and his brother Bob. Butch, Bob and I have been singing together and working on some stuff. We don’t have any plan for a band necessarily, just doing it for our own amazement, singing trios basically. Get together and do that. We’ll probably have Brian come with us, maybe get a bass player, but it’s not like planning a thing. Mostly, it’s just been me and Brian the last three years.

Anything planned for 2017?
Not really. As we started this conversation about the fire, I’m in such a place where I don’t have all my stuff together in one place and I’m just waiting until I can get back into a regular life pattern again. In the meantime, I’ll probably do some traveling and play away from here. Bluegrass or anything related to bluegrass, even the sound we had in the JGAB, is not an easy sell on the west coast, especially in the Bay Area. Oregon is different, maybe Washington, but California there’s not a lot that can done. So, I do go to the Midwest some, spent some time in Ohio and played with some friends there. It didn’t amount to anything economically speaking but it’s sort of for the spirit. I just need to recharge the batteries. I also go to Japan sometimes play a lot over there.
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