Wake of the Flood
A band starting over from scratch
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan died in March 1973. He was the Dead’s first frontman and their blues anchor. His liver failed at twenty-seven.
The band had been road-testing new material for eighteen months. Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux had joined. The sound had changed. They needed a room that matched where they were going.
Why they chose Sausalito
The Dead lived fifteen minutes north in San Rafael. They’d watched the New Riders record there earlier that year. They trusted what they heard coming out of it.
Gary Kellgren built the Record Plant at 2200 Bridgeway in 1972. Studio B had a cloud ceiling. The control room sat inside a converted Victorian. The whole building felt like it belonged to the Bay Area.
Tom Flye engineered. Dan Healy ran sound. The tracking sheets survive. The whole process stayed within a few miles of home.
- Mississippi Half-Step
- Weather Report Suite
- Eyes of the World
- China Doll
- Here Comes Sunshine
- Row Jimmy
- Stella Blue
- Weather Report Suite Pt. II
- + a 36-min unreleased instrumental
Their own label. Their own rules.
“We already owned our sound system and handled booking in-house. We saw no good reason to give creative control away.”Phil Lesh · Grateful Dead Records, GD-01
Wake of the Flood was the first release on Grateful Dead Records, their own independent label. Rick Griffin designed the cover and the raven label. The whole package was theirs.
It charted higher than any previous Dead studio album. The Angel’s Share, released in 2023 for the 50th anniversary, opened the session tapes to the public for the first time.
The building made it possible.
The Dead didn’t pick a commercial facility. They picked a room fifteen minutes from home, built by someone who understood what Bay Area music needed to sound like.
Old and In The Way broadcast live from the same building that summer. KSAN put the Plant on FM radio. The building served the Dead’s whole extended community, not just one act at a time.
The tracking sheets from August 8, 1973 still exist. Studio B. Engineers Dan Healy and Tom Anderson. Takes for Eyes of the World, Pistolshot, I Am the Rain. The room is documented. That’s why 2200studios.us exists.
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