Side Trips, Volume One is a jazz-rock fusion

Jazz fusion

Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...

 album by Howard Wales

Howard Wales

Howard Wales is an American keyboardist and sometime collaborator of Jerry Garcia.He was a session player for numerous musical acts, including James Brown and the Four Tops.-Selected discography:* A.B. Skhy – A.B...

 and Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia

Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...

. It was recorded live at the Matrix

The Matrix (club)

The Matrix, a renovated former pizza shop, was a nightclub in San Francisco from 1965 to 1972 and was one of the keys to what eventually became known as the "San Francisco Sound" in rock music...

 in San Francisco

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

 in 1970, and released in 1998.

Monday night jam sessions at the Matrix

In a 1991 interview, Garcia said, "So they used to have this Monday night jam session, but Howard gradually sort of took it over. Howard's this amazing organ player — difficult person, but wonderful musician. And for some reason he liked our playing, John [Kahn] and mine. We didn't know each other, John and I. In fact we played with Howard for almost a year before we even actually started talking to each other. Really. We would just show up, plug in, and play. About half the set I'd be whispering to John, I'd be saying, 'Hey, man, what key are we in?' Howard didn't have tunings or anything, he just played. Sometimes he would do these things that were so outside that you just couldn't — unless you knew where it was going, you had no idea where to start. Sometimes they'd turn out to be just these things like four-bar blues turnarounds, relatively simple musical things, but they were so extended the way he'd play them — 'God, what is this?'"

Nevertheless, Side Trips, Volume One contains four relatively accessible jazz-rock improvisational performances.

Track listing

All compositions by Howard Wales.

1. "Free Flight" – 18:14
2. "Space Funk" – 13:12
3. "All for Life" – 24:33
4. "Venutian Blues" – 9:15

Musicians

• Howard Wales
  Howard Wales
  Howard Wales is an American keyboardist and sometime collaborator of Jerry Garcia.He was a session player for numerous musical acts, including James Brown and the Four Tops.-Selected discography:* A.B. Skhy – A.B...
  
   – Hammond B3 organ
  Hammond organ
  The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...
  
  , Fender Rhodes piano
  Rhodes piano
  The Rhodes piano is an electro-mechanical piano, invented by Harold Rhodes during the fifties and later manufactured in a number of models, first in collaboration with Fender and after 1965 by CBS....
  
  
• Jerry Garcia
  Jerry Garcia
  Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...
  
   – guitar
  Electric guitar
  An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
  
  
• John Kahn
  John Kahn
  John Kahn was an American rock bass player. For a period of about twenty five years Kahn was Jerry Garcia's principal collaborator outside of the Grateful Dead.-Biography:...
  
   – bass
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  
• Bill Vitt – drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
  
  

Production

• Produced by Howard Wales and John Cutler
• CD mastering by Jeffrey Norman
• Design by Gecko Graphics
• Photo by Ron Rakow
• Logo photo by Mary Ann Mayer
• Thanks to Deborah Garcia, Herbie Herbert, Steve Parish