The latest installment in the Grateful Dead‘s All The Years Live video series is available now on the band’s YouTube page. This entry highlights the Dead’s performance of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece” at Buckeye Lake in Hebron, OH on June 11th, 1993.
While the mid-to-late 1990s can be something of a musical minefield for the Grateful Dead, the 1993 summer tour was a veritable sprawling meadow compared to what preceded and proceeded it. After taking an extended break in the fall of 1992, the band returned with renewed vigor that December. That vitality carried into the following summer tour and propelled the band into its annual trip to the venue now known as Legend Valley in the town now known as Thornville.
June 11th, 1993 saw the first-and-only back-to-back double Bob Dylan pairing of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. Though Grateful Dead concert setlists had a well-established format—especially by the 1990s—the band still managed to pull some surprises. While it appeared that the first set Dylan ballad slot went to bassist Phil Lesh and “Tom Thumb’s Blues”, Bob Weir immediately followed it with his own rebuttal in “When I Paint My Masterpiece”.
Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux notes in the video’s description,
A rare double-dose of back-to-back Bob Dylan, we’re treated here to Phil and Bob singing lead on a couple of Dylan’s classics. By the late 1980s, most Dead shows featured Bob Weir singing a Dylan song in the first set, and occasionally Phil would fill the Dylan slot with his interpretation of Tom Thumb’s Blues, but at Buckeye in 1993, the fans got both.
Watch the Grateful Dead pair up “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece” at Buckeye Lake on June 11th, 1993.
Grateful Dead – “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” (Bob Dylan), “When I Paint My Masterpiece” (Bob Dylan) – Hebron, OH – 6/11/93
Previous installments of the Grateful Dead’s All The Years Live video series have included: