Growing up in Mississippi, one thing was for certain: everyone listened to jambands. And if there was one jamband they liked more than all the rest, it was The Grateful Dead. 

I could never understand why all these frat boys from Ole Miss and the University of Georgia were driving around in their Jeeps and Tahoes listening to a band full of hippies from the Haight in San Francisco, but they were. It makes sense though when you think about it because The Dead’s largest influences were Mississippi blues legends. People like Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters heavily influenced Garcia's riffs. Not to mention the Dead have tons of songs that represent the South. "Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo," "Alabama Getaway" and "Tennessee Jed" are songs that talk about the South in a positive light. 

The first time I heard the Dead, I was hooked. And once I heard the live stuff, my whole world changed. That was the day when I realized that there were two kinds of music: live music and the studio kind. 

With the Dead, every live song was different. Shows were like good wines: the venue, date, weather, people, changed everything. It wasn’t like a Taylor Swift show where it was just about the lighting, pyrotechnics and outfit changes, the band literally played a different setlist every time they went on stage, plus different versions of the same songs. 

As a hardcore Deadhead, when asked about what my favorite songs are, a million live versions come to mind, but there is one that stands out above all the rest. 

This jewel happened on May 2 in 1970 at Harpur College. There, the band transitioned from "China Cat Sunflower" into an acoustic rendition of "I Know You Rider" that still haunts me every time I hear it. Jerry just wails on this song, and the hurt in his voice is astounding. At the end, I always replay the following verse a hundred times, “I’d rather drink muddy water, sleep in a hollow long, than stay here in Frisco, be treated like dog.”