Famed English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello has announced Elvis Sings Hunter-Garcia, a pair of intimate shows in San Francisco, CA benefiting the Prader-Willi Homes of California. These special tributes to the music of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, the songwriting team behind much of the beloved Grateful Dead repertoire, will take place at The Great American Music Hall on Friday, September 30th at 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., respectively.
“We are so lucky to have Elvis as a friend and adviser to Prader-Willi Homes of California,” PWHC executive director Austin de Lone said in a statement. “This is a momentous occasion, as we have purchased our first home and are making the final push to fund renovations and give our first residents the specialized care they and their families have been dreaming of. The overwhelming requests for placement in this first house reinforces the importance of PWHC’s mission to purchase and support the multiple homes for the large number of California residents with PWS who lack the kind of housing they need.”
Elvis Costello has never been shy about his appreciation for the songwriting prowess of Garcia and Hunter. In fact, in a 1991 Musician magazine cover story featuring himself and Garcia, Costello revealed that his experience at a four-hour Grateful Dead show during a 1972 festival in Greater Manchester’s Wigan had inspired him to start his own band.
As he noted in the 1991 interview about getting into the Dead from England, “The real esoteric people were into West Coast bands. ‘Cause it was mysterious, it was like collecting stamps or something. You have this message from the other side of the world and you have no way of verifying it. And I made almost this willful decision, maybe ’cause I’d had the record through the years: I went, ‘Right, I’ll go further out now. Nobody will follow me to this one: the Grateful Dead,’ [laughter] You know, this music almost nobody can dig.”
Elvis Costello has gone on to record and cover various Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter songs in the time since. In 2000, he contributed a pairing of “Ship of Fools” and “It Must Have Been The Roses” to the tribute album, Stolen Roses: Songs of the Grateful Dead. He also performed with Garcia a handful of times before the latter’s passing in 1995. Below, watch a full-show video of a 1989 Elvis Costello & Friends show featuring Garcia at Mill Valley, CA’s Sweetwater Saloon.
Elvis Costello & Friends ft. Jerry Garcia – Full Show – 4/24/89
[Video: Christopher Hazard]
Tickets for the two Elvis Sings Hunter-Garcia shows at The Great American Music Hall are now on sale here. All proceeds will benefit Prader-Willi Homes of California, formerly known as the Richard de Lone Special Housing Project, a nonprofit that helps establish and support residential living for individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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