They are backed by top-shelf professionals who practice, sing in tune, and don’t use hard drugs. Would it be improved by more conventional chord changes, by better voice leading in the vocal harmonies, by in-tune singing, by tighter timekeeping? Or are the unsanded edges essential to the feel? It’s interesting to hear the various Dead cover bands that Bob Weir and Phil Lesh are touring around with. This is a pretty rough and untutored piece of work. It’s a good one! I agree with Nathaniel Ward. In the second bar of this part, Howard Wales stays on Bb instead of going to F, which puts the harmonic rhythm off balance in a lovely way. Then comes the ending (“Doo doot doo…”): ||: F | Bb F | F G7 | Bb F :|| | F G7 | Bb F | There are two more identical rounds of break-verse-chorus. And yet again, the last F is anticipated. It’s almost functioning like a dominant chord. In the second bar, playing G7 for one beat is pretty strange. But again, Jerry doesn’t do the conventional thing, he lands on Bb again. The A7 chord in the first bar has a nice gospel flavor. Here’s the chorus (“In a bed, in a bed…”) | F A7 | Bb F G7 | F G7 | Bb F | And once again, that final F chord is anticipated by a half beat. When Keith Godchaux joined the band, he taught them about diminished chords, and you hear Jerry excitedly exploring them in “China Doll” and “Ship of Fools”.Īnyway, Jerry gets at the main point of the blues cliche, which is the descending chromatic line as the C in the F chord goes to the B in the G7 chord, which goes to the B-flat in the Bb chord, and than lands on the A in the final F chord. It sounds to me like he’s trying to do a descending diminished chord blues cliche, except that he doesn’t know diminished chords: | F7/A Abdim7 | Gm7 F7 | The conventional thing would be to have it resolve to C, which would then resolve back to F. You could think of it as being a continuation of the F chord with the root moved down a half step to E.
The Am is nice, you don’t hear a lot of iii chords in rock. The second half of the verse is harmonically more colorful: | F Am | Bb F | F G7 | Bb F | There’s nothing like a little rhythmic dissonance to liven up a simple chord change. This is all plain-vanilla diatonic F major, but that last change to F is anticipated by a half a beat. The harmony settles down in the first half of the verse: | F | Bb | F Dm | Bb F | But it has been quite a winding path to get there. From here on, the tune stays unambiguously in F aside from a few outlier chords. The intro ends with a little one-bar break on F, which settles the question of what key we’re in. I guess the G and Dm imply that we’re back in G Mixo, but then what? Maybe the Bb and C are bVI and bVII in D minor? Or maybe they’re bVII and I in C Mixo? Or IV and V in F major? It’s ambiguous.Īnyway, the intro continues with another four-bar phrase (“All the birds that were singing…”): | G | Dm | Bb | C | The G and the Am sound like the I and ii chords in G Mixolydian, but then what? Is the Bb from parallel G minor or G blues? Are the Bb, F and C the IV, I and V in F major? I hear C as being the resolved chord, not F, which would indicate C Mixolydian. When Jerry’s vocal enters, there’s this four-bar phrase (“Fare you well, my honey…”): | G | Am | Bb F | F C | This is a favorite modality of the Dead’s. The first part is one and a half bars of gentle groove on G7, establishing the “key” as G Mixolydian. However, taken as a whole, it’s hard to understand what’s going on.
The tune’s intro sounds innocent enough, and the chords all make sense when you consider them pairwise. Phil Lesh sings the high harmony part in the straining falsetto that would wreck his vocal cords in a few short years. Jerry sings lead, and it’s one of his loveliest performances on record. The lyrics and melody are an Americana mishmash. The extremely slow tempo, wide sixteenth note swing, and some of the chord changes evoke gospel music. What genre would you say this song is? It has a strong country-music vibe thanks to Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel guitar and the barrelhouse-style piano part by Howard Wales. But I can see why it isn’t such a campfire song: it’s harder to play, and it’s in the not-very-folk-friendly key of F. “Brokedown Palace” has actual feelings in it. I love “Ripple” too, but its lyrics aren’t about much of anything.
On American Beauty, it comes right after “Ripple”, which is better known and is more of a singalong standard. My sister, stepsiblings and I are going to sing a Grateful Dead classic:įor me, “Brokedown Palace” represents the high point of the Dead’s acoustic folkie side. My stepfather died a year and a half ago, but thanks to the pandemic, we’re only now able to have a memorial service for him.
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