Story by Art Howard

  

 
     
  There are two David Gans. One is the guy who compiled a Grateful Dead boxed set, wrote several books about them, hosted a radio show based on their music for 15 years and was named "Chief Deadhead."

The other David Gans is the guy who told the San Francisco Examiner, "I'm so sick of being identified as a Deadhead, an 'expert.' I didn't 'grow out' of the Dead, but there's more to life than that." This David Gans likes John Prine and Elvis Costello as well as Jerry Garcia, and would rather be known as a modern folk singer than as a repository of information on Jerry. This David Gans invites you to learn more about him.

  
     
Gans began playing music in the late `60's at the age of 17, and was resolved to become a professional musician. The first detour was taken when a Russian rock band immigrated to his hometown of San Francisco. He was a fan and became their sound man. The band's manager also ran Bass Tickets, similar to Ticketmaster today. Young Gans became a "computer geek" for Bass Tickets until the job ran out.
     
 

  At that point, rather than continue in the computer world, he began freelance writing for various California music periodicals and met the Grateful Dead, a band he had long admired. A book, Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead, co-authored with Peter Simon, followed. At the same time, however, he was drawn to the singer-songwriter movement that had exploded in the early `70's.
     
In the mid-`80's he was a guest on a local Grateful Dead-oriented radio show in Berkley, California. Gans was such an enthusiast that he began hosting the show and, due to his chutzpah, "The Grateful Dead Hour" became nationally syndicated.
 
 
Two more Grateful Dead-oriented books were written: Conversations with the Dead and Not Fade Away: The Online World Remembers Jerry Garcia. On the musical side he had the honor of being part of the team that compiled the Grateful Dead boxed set, So Many Roads (1965-1995).

Now, at the age of 47, Gans feels that his past endeavors in writing, radio hosting and boxed set-compiling have been but side trips from his true goal: to play original acoustic music in front of appreciative audiences. Voyager talked with David Gans about this lifelong dream and his new CD, Solo Acoustic, in a phone interview.

  
 
 

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