BONUS: A Visit to Planet Drum with Mickey Hart

Rich Mahan (0:05)

The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, the official podcast of The Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarnow, exploring the music and legacy of The Grateful Dead For The Committed And The Curious.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast. We have a special treat in store for you this episode. Our guest is none other than master percussionist and member of The Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart.

We hope you've been enjoying this season's deep dive into American beauty. Make sure to visit us at dead.net/deadcast where you'll find all of the American beauty episodes we've released thus far, as well as the 10 episodes from last season, which focus on working man's dead. Please help this podcast by subscribing, hitting that like button. And if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Thank you very, very much.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of American beauty and The Grateful Dead have prepared a three CD set reissue of this classic album. It's out now. It includes a pristine remastering of the album's original 10 tracks, as well as two bonus discs that have an unreleased live show from February 18th, 1971 at the Capitol Theater. Along with this three CD reissue, there's a new batch of angels share audio for American beauty as well. It's all out now. It has the full band acoustic demos, as well as all of the studio outtakes. So you really get a fly on the wall perspective. You're there with the boys as they're recording this great album. These are all available at your favorite streaming service or download provider now.

Well, Jesse and I had the distinct privilege of talking with Mickey Hart recently. And it was obvious to us that this free flowing conversation was perfect for a deadcast bonus episode. So let's just get right to it, shall we?

Jesse Jarnow (2:10)

Mickey Hart needs no real introduction to most of our listeners. Starting in the 1970s, Mickey created an adventurous discography, an incredible universe of sound that includes ancient percussion, contemporary electronics, field recordings, work with the Library of Congress, noise, drones, monks, heartbeats, sonification, songwriters, soundtracks, and of course, the beam, an instrument of his own making. Also, he was a drummer for The Grateful Dead.

Mickey Hart joined The Grateful Dead in 1967, adding a second drum kit alongside Bill Kreutzman, and soon, a whole lot more. He would consistently help push The Dead's envelope, a musical vote for exploration in all its forms. And so, we are beyond delighted to welcome to the Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, Mickey Hart. Here to check in on what he's been up to lately, and also to travel the spaceways of his many projects, going back to the days of American beauty.

Mickey Hart (3:04)

This is, of course, a different season, not a touring season, but it's a composing and studio season, and season to take, you know, just to take a look at musically what you're doing and where you want to go and so forth. And it's been a season of drones for me. I've been working seriously with drones. I'm doing some with Deepak Chopra, some drones with him. And yeah, and working on the next Planted Drum incarnation with Zakir Hussain online. So this has been really, this has been really an adventure. We call it the Sonic Tonic Club.

So it's, it's a hundred and, I think it's the hundred and eighty first edition of the Sonic Tonic Club today. So 86, 81, something like that, but it's in the hundred and eighties. Wow. Yeah, it's a serious thing. So the Sonic Tonic Club meets almost every day. And we exchange drones and work on material. Just investigate the rhythm scape more and more and how we use spatial processing in the music.

You know, just finding new spaces in music. That's really, I love to discover stuff.

That's the most exciting thing, is to create something from nothing or something. You know, that's an amazing feeling. So that's what I've been doing. Also having actually a very fulfilling time with this virus on the loose, actually, composing wise.

Jesse Jarnow (5:13)

That was Mickey Hart playing the beam, recorded October 16th, 1989 at Meadowland to New Jersey on the Grateful Dead live album, Nightfall of Diamonds. The beam is a girder strung with piano wires and set to an open tuning, a giant Pythagorean monochord. For good reason, Mickey Hart is fond of playing it very, very loudly.

It's the source material for many of the drones Mickey's been making lately.

Mickey Hart (5:37)

It's all about the Pythagorean monochord. You know, it's all about the music of the spheres. It's about Pythagoras, who gave us the tempered scale. He also studied the revolutions of the sun and the moon, and he gave it numerical equations, and it's all entwined in the beam.