David Gans
Biography
Folklore stretches across generations. Satire sharpens the mind. And political humor lingers like a nasty boil on a hot summer day. So why did folk music fall out of grace in America after its heyday in the 1960s? Well, David Gans, chief Deadhead best known for his nationally syndicated radio show Dead to the World, showed throughout his music career in the California Bay Area that there's still a place for self-expression in well-spun songs about family life, death, and itinerant Deadheads. Gans dusted off his acoustic guitar in the mid-'90s with the aim of resurrecting his music career. Most of the music he had performed as a soloist earlier in his career fell into the folk idiom, but he started to perform improvisational and jam music with a full band starting in 2001.
Gans first became a fixture on the Bay Area music scene in the '70s. After traveling across the country setting up computer ticket systems for BASS in 1976, he turned to journalism, writing for MIX Magazine and BAM and serving as West Coast editor for Record Magazine. During a 1985 radio promotion for his first book Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead, he played some rare Grateful Dead tapes and eventually took on the long-running KPFA radio show The Grateful Dead Hour.
Selected Discography
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