Edie Brickell

In 1993, Jerry hatched a plan to start an improv band, and Edie Brickell signed on to be a key part of it. The band would have headed out on the road with other great musicians – Branford Marsalis, Bruce Hornsby, and Rob Wasserman were also in the mix – without any material, making it all up on the spot at each show. As Jerry explained, Brickell was “even ready to have people in the audience say, ‘I want you to use these words’ or, ‘I want you to make this the subject of the song.’”

Edie Brickell and her band, The New Bohemians, had exploded onto the music scene in 1988 with their debut album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars. The album climbed to number four on the charts and included the top ten single, What I Am.

It was out of this success that Brickell first connected with the Grateful Dead – and Jerry – opening for a few Dead shows in the summer of 1990. This led the way to a collaboration three years later with Jerry and Rob Wasserman on two songs – Zillionaire and American Popsicle – for the latter’s album, Trios.

Working on those tunes, Jerry and Brickell immediately hit it off. As Brickell describes:

We got together at his house the night before we recorded with Rob and just jammed until we settled on the idea of Zillionaire. After a few jams on guitar, Jerry wanted to see what would happen if he played piano. He said he was enjoying the piano and didn’t often write on it. When he played those first chords, I had this vision of a dog on the back of a whale and started singing about it. He chuckled and set his sparkling eyes on me so I kept going. Then we had a song.

The next day in the studio with Wasserman, the three of them recorded Zillionaire and worked up American Popsicle. On the album, the other songs are all top-notch, including Wasserman’s collaborations with Branford Marsalis and Bruce Hornsby on White-Wheeled Limousine and Bobby and Neil Young on Easy Answers. But the two Garcia-Brickell-Wasserman tunes standout with a playful, creative, even ephemeral feel.

With that sort of energy and verve, the improv band would have been incredible. But alas, it was not to be. Deborah Koons put an end to any talk of the new band, and Jerry’s health deteriorated alongside his increasing drug use shortly thereafter. But the collaborative experience with Brickell did have one tangible outcome beyond the two tracks on Trios: Brickell joined the Dead at Madison Square Garden on September 20, 1993.

On that night, Brickell took the stage with Jerry and Phil during Space, adding some mesmerizing vocals. Improvising the lyrics and jamming with her voice, Brickell appears like a haunted ship zooming into the atmosphere, bringing an otherworldly message improperly translated. As the boys transition into The Other One, Brickell adds some additional vocals before going silent for the rest of the song. Then, she comes in for sweet backing vocals on Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad before leaving the stage as Jerry launches into Morning Dew.

Between Jerry’s collaboration with Brickell on Trios and her brief encounter with the Dead, we get just a hint of what was possible. Like Branford and Bruce, Edie really seems to have excited and brought out the best in Jerry, which was often a difficult thing to accomplish as the nineties wore on. And it would have been a pleasure to see what transpired had Brickell, Jerry, and the Dead had more time together. Sadly, the prospects are one in a long string of tantalizing, yet ultimately missed opportunities in the last years of Jerry’s life.