10-10-19 Nublu, NYC

Beyond Beyond is Beyond

Listening back to the recording of this show, I remember standing onstage, eyes closed, deep in concentration, hoping everything would hold together the way it’s supposed to. It was the first (and to date the only) time we’d ever played “One Step Behind” live as an ensemble with Tom’s dad, the great saxophonist Bob Malach, who’d overdubbed his contributions to the album version after the basic tracks were already in place. Naturally, and happily, hardly anything went quite the way we expected onstage. The music on this tape is at its most alive when you can hear us abandoning the plan and surrendering to the unknown.

From the outset, we knew we wanted to push ourselves at this show to take “One Step Behind” as far out as possible, searching at its boundaries for previously undiscovered zones. I like to think we found a few. In particular, there’s a groove-oriented stretch in the middle that we played with more openness than ever before, which—for me, at least—has directly impacted the performances we’ve given since then. Perhaps by the time this tape comes out, we’ll be exploring territories of “One Step Behind” that we didn’t even realize existed back when it was recorded. A map only gets you so far. Sometimes you just have to follow the sound.

Andy Cush, Bassist in Garcia Peoples