OOMF.fyi
Talkin´Money Tree
SongPoem by Robert Hunter/ Story by Uncle John
Late last night layin´in bed
I found an answer to all my ills
A great big tree growing green and free
Full of ten thousand dollar bills
Well, I went downtown to buy some wheels
Bought every car in town
Bought all the gas and all the oil
So we could all drive around
I bought every big department store
And everything inside
You could back up your truck and fill it up
The doors were open wide
It was company policy
We did it all the time
I bought the park and hired a band
To play every day for free
I bought the bars and the trolley cars
And the telephone company
You could call all day, say "How's it going?"
And never have to pay
Send telegrams to your wife and friends
Saying "You don't have to work today"
But after a while I got so bored
I just gave the whole thing back
All I kept was a bar and grill
By the northbound railroad track
You can come by here any time of night
Or any time of day
The second cup of coffee's free
But the first one, you got to pay
It is the Fourth of July weekend 2015, at Soldier´s Field in Chicago. On the Fourth, as I was entering for the show, one of the Deadheads asks me, "What are they going to play tonight?" I reply, "The first time I met Robert Hunter backstage, he sticks out his hand and says "Shake the hand that shook the hand..." He associates the gesture with the Grateful Dead´s "U.S. Blues". It is the final performances of the Grateful Dead, with Trey Anastasio playing lead guitar in Jerry Garcia´s role, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the band.
Leaving Soldier´s Field with 70,000+ Deadheads, at the last of three shows, we are shoulder to shoulder trying to move to the exit. As soon as we reach the way out, I pull away from the tight crowd and climb a very wet slippery hill with my slip-resistant shoes and I am alone on a street above on a breezy day. I notice this tree, recalling how I could clearly hear Jerry Garcia´s voice, who helped me to not take drugs this weekend, a real test, and I notice what looks like a leaf fall to the ground, but a closer look reveals it is no leaf. It is a one million dollar Federal Reserve Note with Jerry Garcia´s portrait on the bill.
TALES FROM THE GOLDEN ROAD
with David Gans & Gary Lambert
Every Sunday 1-3 Pacific time
SiriusXM 23
CALIFORNIA TYPEWRITER
by Uncle John
I saw this documentary, “California Typewriter”. There´s an excellent segment with musician John Mayer that clicks with me. John Mayer eloquently shares with us that it´s not the same trying to write on a computer. John Mayer explains this about his songs, how he has many hard drives with his lyrics and work, and yet he´s never going to go back and look at that. Something typed comes from a different mind process, the song flowing from the typing. You can hold it, touch it, see it, roll and scroll it.
I corresponded with the Grateful Dead office in California. I went to the Lincoln Avenue office in San Rafael and Annette invites me in and has me sit at a desk in an office by myself to wait for a phone call from a band member. The whole place is like a musical wonderland of ideas. What I notice in this room is the Selectric typewriter and its balls of different fonts. When I was in New York, I wrote to the Office asking for the lyrics to about eight of the Grateful Dead songs. They mailed them to me, typed, with a script font from an IBM Selectric typewriter. One of those songs is “Scarlet Begonias” and I´m thinking of this song singing to myself:
Once in a while, you get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it
right
Look at it write, look at it write
John Mayer shares a clip with us from the documentary “Don´t Look Back” that shows Bob Dylan playing the typewriter typing. It´s just like another musical instrument for him, like the guitar and harmonica, John Mayer shares. He is in his own world. I see Bob Dylan writing a song tapping the keyboards on the typewriter and the keys he´s tapping are dancing to his words.
John Mayer was inspired to buy a typewriter to see what it´s all about.
"I realize the reason that I was able to come alive on a typewriter where I wasn´t using a computer, or even a pen, was that you´re at sort of a safe distance where you can express yourself openly without having to edit yourself at the same time. And so it became sort of like a confessional for me where I would sit and just type, and the reason I was able to go deeper into an idea was because I wasn´t stopped anywhere in that writing by a red squiggly line. And what is spell check or grammar check if all you´re really try to do is sort of dig into this sort of mercurial sort of world of what your ideas are."
John Mayer is holding a stack of typed lyrics. "If these were in Microsoft Word I´d never see these again, all these typed out lyrics, some of which made the records, most of which didn´t. " He sings "Queen of California" as we watch him read the typed pages. "It´s almost what thoughts look like."
.jpg)
.jpg)
Willie tours with the Baby Boomers 2026
.jpg)
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - Cover by Midnight North
.jpg)
There´s Always A Story
.jpg)
MIDNIGHT NORTH
PRESIDIO THEATREPerforming Arts Center
Saturday, April 4, 2026
Tickets Available
Uncle John & Phil Lesh
At breakfast in San Francisco with musician Phil Lesh, someone at our table asks him,
"Do you ever listen to the Grateful Dead on the radio?"
"No, never," answers Phil. "When I want to listen to the Grateful Dead,"
he says gesturing with his hands, "I play".
He says that when he listens to the radio, it´s a country music station.
Rooted in the spirit of Pete and Toshi Seeger
Grahame Lesh & Friends
TERRAPIN ROADSHOW 2026
I lived in the Sunset neighborhood of Golden Gate Park
when I took my stepdaughter Mikaela for a walk and we are at the Polo Field.
I suggest to Kaela that we run in the open space here.
When we stop, we sit in the grass and I notice a four leaf clover.
It´s the only one, and I tell Mikaela I don´t want to pick it.
I wish there was a way to get it out of the ground and bring home to repot it.
Mikaela runs into the bushes and she comes out wih a digging tool,
and I carefully cut it out of the ground, bring it home and put it in a flower pot.
Mikaela says, "We should give this to Donna".
She is five years old and saw her first Grateful Dead concert
in the Spring on the road with us at The Fox Theater in Atlanta earlier that year.
We were in the front row and when I look up at the start of the show, I see
Mikaela is sitting on stage on the side of the band in front of the Wall Of Sound.
She stays there for the entire first set.
She says when she looked up all she could see were these giant sky soundscrapers.
At a show on the West Coast in the Summer, she disappears in her independent way,
and returns with stories about being in the ladies´dressing room with Donna and Maria.
A few days after we found the four leaf clover, on the dawn of Christmas eve,
I go backstage after a show, with the flowerpot in hand looking for Donna Jean.
It´s a special show with Robert Hunter and his band opening for Jerry Garcia Band.
Donna Jean joins Robert Hunter to sing "It Must Have Been The Roses".
"Did you hear 'Roses'? Robert Hunter asks Jerry Garcia,
and breaks into the song before he can answer.
"....She had ribbons, ribbons, ribbons in her long brown hair..."
He repeats his question to Garcia and continues the song a cappella...
"I don't know, maybe it was the roses, All I know is I could not leave her there....."
Donna Jean sang this song on stage with Hunter and his band tonight, a very special moment, and Hunter's voice rings through the room with sweet clarity.
"You got any smokes, man?" Hunter asks me. He signals me he's looking for a cigarette and I give him a hand rolled one, marijuana but no tobacco. "It's the best of this year's crop" I tell him. He looks at it like an alien would, holds it, studies it, lights it. "This stuff, heh! The funny stuff." He exhales and takes another toke, and says "OK" and passes it to Garcia who mimics Hunter, and they're both hilarious. Garcia tokes, "Goofitus!" and another "Smoketitus!" laughing and passes the joint along to Donna Jean.
She is in the corner surrounded by people talking to her. When Jerry Garcia passes the joint to her, she holds it a long time without taking a toke. I wait, and capture a glance of her, and she hands me the roach, and I give her the four leaf clover in the flowerpot I’m holding, and share with her Kaela's story. "On the eve of the winter solstice I'm with Kaela in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco when I find a four leaf clover. Five year old Mikaela goes into the bushes and comes out with a digging tool. We cut it out of the ground and repot it at home. Kaela asks me to give the four leaf clover to you Donna". "Were you looking for it when you found it?" asks singer Maria Muldaur. "I found one when I was ten years old, and searched for years after that, but running in The Park this week I stumbled upon this one". "I been looking for one for a long time" Maria says. A few decades later, I found a patch of four leaf clovers on Mt. Burdell in Novato. I brought one to Maria Muldaur after a show at the Sweetwater in Mill Valley one night, reminding her of the one I brought to Donna Jean."
https://www.dead.net/deadcast/donna-jean
Donna Jean
.jpg)
Mikaela Davis
New Single
(Official Visualizer)"drifts in with the unhurried grace of a dream...
Part fantasy, part memory, part myth,
11:11 feels both timeless and immediate.
A singular, beautiful mirage where
sound and emotion bleed into one." -MD
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
TheNeverEndingPool.org
Following Bob Dylan´s Never-Ending TourUncle John: Details for the 2025 - Return To Europe In The Fall When The Frost Is On The Wine
Team: Shakespeare's Attic| 25.11.25 - Dublin | |
| I'll Be Your Baby Tonight | 2 |
| It Ain't Me, Babe | 2 |
| I Contain Multitudes | 3 |
| False Prophet | 3 |
| When I Paint My Masterpiece | 5 |
| Black Rider | 5 |
| My Own Version of You | 3 |
| To Be Alone with You | 4 |
| Crossing the Rubicon | 2 |
| Desolation Row | 2 |
| Key West (Philosopher Pirate) | 3 |
| Watching the River Flow | 2 |
| It's All Over Now, Baby Blue | 4 |
| I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You | 5 |
| Mother of Muses | 3 |
| Goodbye Jimmy Reed | 5 |
| Every Grain of Sand | 5 |
| A Rainy Night In Soho | 3 |
| Concert Total: | 49 (#1) |
| Tour Total (up to this concert): | 1324 (#1) |
MIKAELA DAVIS @ Cafe Du Nord,
San Francisco July 8, 2025
Review by Uncle John
GRATEFUL SHRED
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN
Review by Uncle John
posting soon
Photo by Uncle John
BILL WALTON & MICKEY HART
In the crawl space behind the scoreboard @SF GIANTS Oracle Park
I remember Bill Walton as Father Time on New Year´s Eve.
Elliott Peck,
Bill Walton & Jason Crosby.jpg)
OUMUAMUA
"A messenger from afar arriving
first"The first confirmed object from another star
to visit our solar system
