Cover Wars: Sitting In Limbo Edition

David Gans: Gans is best known for his role as producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour radio program, but he’s also a musician and makes his CW debut this week (The first of many Garcia/Dead-related bands). Source: 8-17-2002

Jerry Garcia & David Grisman: I think it’s safe to say that the majority of the bands included this week were inspired to play this song by Jerry Garcia in addition to Jimmy Cliff. Source: The Garcia Discs/Jerry Collection (A Track from 1992)

While I chose to include a track of Garcia/Grisman in the playlist, the tune was also a staple of most Garcia side-bands and here is a video from 1980 that is up on YouTube of JGB doing the tune. (The video starts rolling 0:36 into the clip):

The Neville Brothers: The Neville Brothers throw down a short and tight rendition here taken from the most recent Gathering Of The Vibes. Source: 8-3-2008

Railroad Earth: A very tasteful performance from RRE that includes some double-saxophone action from Andy Goessling. Source: 10-1-2003

Ratdog: Told you there would be a lot of Dead-related bands. Ratdog is also making their CW debut this week. Normally, if the Grateful Dead are an available choice for Cover Wars, I’ll skip over renditions that their side-bands have also played. But since the Dead never played Sitting In Limbo, and there’s no personnel overlap from the Jerry renditions, I can happily include this. Source: 4-7-2005

Trey Anastasio: There have been a number of covers featured from Trey’s first post-Phish-break-up tour in April-May of 2005. This is yet another in a long line of well-picked tunes that depicted the emotions Anastasio was going through after the dismantling of his primary band.

Willie Nelson: Last but not least is the Red Headed Stranger laying down a strong take that comes to us off of a Farm Aid compilation, which coincidentally just took place this past weekend in Mansfield, MA. Source: Farm Aid: Vol. 1

And that’s all we’ve got this week, please scroll up to the top to place your vote. I leave you with a link to a great Jimmy Cliff video (embedding is disabled so you must navigate to YouTube for this one).