MELVIN SEALS GETS A SWEET INVITE
He and Jerry Garcia Band playing Mare Island on Saturday
When Melvin Seals got the invite to play with the Jerry Garcia Band, he came from a very structured musician's background and point of view. He had learned how to play the piano on his father's set of keys at home, and graduated to the organ in church, cutting his teeth on classic gospel.
Eventually, the San Francisco native started branching out to what his father always referred to as “Secular Music,” and he began following the career of fellow organist Billy Preston, who went on to play with everybody from Aretha Franklin to the Beatles.
Seals will play with the Jerry Garcia Band at the Mare Island Coal Sheds at 5 p.m. Saturday. Tickets range from $22.50 to $125.
“I knew his background. He came out of the church too, he was kind of rock-gospel, and I could follow that. Everything he did back then, that was a road map for me,” says Seals.
Having worked his way up to performing on Broadway shows and occasionally sitting in with luminaries such as Chuck Berry, Charlie Daniels and Elvin Bishop, Seals had begun to establish himself in the music world. Bishop introduced him to Jerry Garcia and his band and their “different” way of doing things.
“That was the thing with Jerry. Somewhere in the song there's going to be an open jam section. That's what the Jerry band music is, it's something that's not structured like when I did Broadway plays,” says Seals.
“Jam bands, even though we're doing the same song every night, it sounds different. Tempos change and sometimes it's faster. Sometimes it's slower. Sometimes you just don't know
how it's going to turn out.”
Although it took Seals a little while to understand exactly what was going on with his new gig, he eventually embraced it wholeheartedly and played with Garcia for 18 years, until his death in 1995.
“I didn't understand it. We'd have a packed house, and sometimes the band was so sloppy — I thought we could have done a much better job. I had to learn that it wasn't about dotting your I's and crossing your T's, how tight you are. It was about a whole other feeling and vibe that you had to tap in to,” says Seals.
“Jerry would make mistakes and they would roar, they loved that stuff, they would get inside it. It was a whole other love and energy that's still going on today.”
When Garcia died, the last thing that Seals and his bandmates wanted to have happen was to give up playing the music that they had created together — that was something Seals knew for sure, and he decided to keep the band going as a tribute.
“I did it based off of something Jerry said in an interview. He was asked, `What do you see happening once you pass on and you're no longer here?' and Jerry quickly said, `I would like to believe that the music will live on far beyond me.”