Mik Bondy, who plays the part of Jerry Garcia in The Garcia Project, said his band’s efforts to recreate the sounds of the legendary Jerry Garcia Band is a work in progress that gets down to the capacitors and resistors of his guitar replicas.
Bondy and The Garcia Project have a pair of shows at the Granada Theater in Minneapolis’ Uptown this Friday and Saturday.
The band will be playing two different historic JGB set lists from two different eras of the band (drawing from either the 70s, 80s or 90s).
He plays with three different replicas of Garcia’s custom guitars: Tiger, Alligator and Travis Bean.
He was gifted the guitars by Andy Logan of Grateful Guitars, first receiving a replica of Garcia’s most famous and most-played guitar, Tiger.
On a side note, Indianapolis Colts’ owner Jim Irsay, who owned the original Tiger, died Wednesday. Irsay famously paid $957,000 at an auction for Tiger back in 2002.
“I have put some of my own work into it, replacing old capacitors inside it for tone, inching closer and closer to the incredibly healing tone that Jerry Garcia had,” he said in an interview today with Jam in the Stream. “It is ever evolving, changing tubes, caps and resistors.”
When he’s out on tour, living out of a van, he sometimes schedules time with various guitar technicians to work on tweaking his guitars.
“We do a little thing called Jerry Camp and play with electronics and keep dialing it in,” he said.
He is ever grateful to Logan and guitar luthier Leo Elliott who made the guitar.
“I believe in manifestation and visualization,” he said of the gift. “I have seen it happen firsthand. I never thought I would get a guitar like that. I have always wanted a guitar like that.”
Logan approached him after a show.
“He asked me why I wasn’t using one of the beautiful guitars he makes, and I told him I live in a van,” Bondy said. “He said if you can have any guitar you would want, what would it be? Tiger came to mind. It is what I saw Jerry play.”
In fact, he followed JGB on tour. He and vocalist Kat Walkerson started the band 15 years ago.
“We both love and miss Jerry so much,” he said. “I was driving a Volkswagon bus and selling grilled cheese sandwiches. I loved it. When they stopped, it took a few years to figure out what to do.”
For Bondy, Walkerson and their bandmates, that is as purveyors of JGB’s legacy.
“We feel it is our mission to do this,” he said. “We have no plans of stopping. There are plenty of bands playing the music, but nobody is doing it the way we are.”
It goes well beyond playing replicas of Jerry’s guitars. They use as much equipment as possible that is like what JGB used, down to the amps and guitar pedals.
“Jerry’s tone is ingrained in my DNA as it is for many people that would go see him,” he said. “That sound would rattle your chest. I haven’t quite got there yet, but I think I am getting closer. We listen to Jerry Band every day. His sound and tone evolved as well. I try to emulate the 70s tone, the 80s tone and the various 90s tones. Jerry was always on a curve in direction. He never went back to anything.”
Even if the band repeats a song on a two-night run such as this weekend’s in Minneapolis, the band would be playing versions from the different eras and would sound different.
“A ’76 “Harder They Come” and a ’91 “Harder They Come” — totally different feel,” he said.
That’s not to say that song will be played this weekend, or that those are the two eras. They were just examples. The band keeps the show they are playing a secret until the very end of the show.
“We always give everybody the opportunity to guess,” he said. “Some people look it up online — they are cheaters. But everybody has fun with it. We keep it surprise. … You never know what you are going to get.”