I Know You Rider

Zoomer Roberts: vocals, electric bass
Buddy Winston: vocals, guitar, banjo

Although variants of "Rider" had been in the collective folk consciousness for decades, I first heard it performed by the Grateful Dead on Public Television, circa 1970. In those pre-VCR days, a common method of recording the audio portion of a telecast was to place a microphone in front of the TV speaker and hope the phone didn't ring. The end result was distorted, tinny, and typically had an annoying buzz running through it. Such was the case with the tape I made of the Dead. I kept that cassette for years, and from it learned everything about this song but the words, which I finally got from an LP. Applejack played the song regularly in the late '80s, and we recorded it for a self-produced album. The concert that I taped from the TV all those years ago is now available as a download from the Grateful Dead's online store, and it sounds great.