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“I cut my deck to the Queen of Spades…”

Dire Wolf card front – Kristina Layton – used by permission of the artist

Why does “Dire Wolf” have such staying power?  Without meaning to gloss over Garcia’s rollicking chord changes and melody, I think the answer can most easily be discovered in Robert Hunter’s lyrics.  That’s certainly true if we choose to see the song through the lens of the murder ballad.  If we take Hunter at his word, he didn’t craft this particular song with a narrative or any other agenda in mind – it came through his sub-conscious, and it hits even the casual listener in precisely the same place.  The careful listener finds that, and more.

The setting is Fennario, that elusive fictional boggy backwoods, frozen deep in harsh winter.  The narrator is dead, as the song eventually suggests (and Hunter confirmed.)  He’s telling the story of his own murder, which is otherwise not supernatural.  Neither the ghost nor the retelling of a murder tale are anything new in Anglo-American balladry of course, and so in the narrative sense Hunter’s art intersects with the traditional form.  Yet, for all the wolves, the “black and bloody mire,” the cold, the starvation, the whiskey, and the Queen of Spades, the song itself is jaunty and free.  Simply put, it’s fun.

That as well is not unique to post-modern murder balladry, but there is something different here – the song is not happy in spite of the lyrics, as we often see in more traditional examples: it’s happy because of the lyrics, and because of Garcia’s arrangement which, I hope you heard, is integral.  Jerry didn’t just provide a background melody and chords for inspired words.  His music is, in a way that’s hard to articulate, part of the story.

Nowhere is that more clear than the refrain.

“Whoa-oh what I want to know – Where does this road go?” – from West Dennis, MA – photo by Ken Bigger

“Don’t murder me
I beg of you don’t murder me
Please, don’t murder me!”

That music and those words hold everything together.  The rest of the lyrics tend to take us where we are vulnerable and alone, and eventually the song places us face to face with The Beast –

“When I awoke the Dire Wolf,
six-hundred pounds of sin,
was grinning at my window,
all I said was ‘Come on in…'”

If we identify with the narrator – and the refrain forces us to do just that – then we are metaphorically looking at our killer.

We don’t want violence in our lives.  We don’t want to die.  And yet, violence is out there and death is surely coming one way or another to us all.  The refrain faces that terrifying truth with some joy, in music. It doesn’t arrogantly ‘laugh in the face of death.’  No.  It tells us to sing humbly in spite of fear, in spite of death, in spite of knowing the truth.

It doesn’t make fun of fear – it turns fear into fun.

Interestingly, it ended up working just that way inadvertently for Garcia even as the song was newborn, as Jerry told Paul Krassner in 1985.

The Wolf Came In – Kristina Layton – used by permission of the artist

“I wrote that song when the Zodiac Killer was out murdering in San Francisco. Every night I was coming home from the studio, and I’d stop at an intersection and look around, and if a car pulled up, it was like, ‘This is it. I’m gonna die now.’ It became a game. Every night I was conscious of that thing, and the refrain got to be so real to me: ‘Please don’t murder me, *please* don’t murder me…’

It was a coincidence in a way, but it was also the truth at the moment.”

Perception is reality.  Was Garcia likely to be sent to the grave?  Of course not.  The Zodiac Killer claimed he murdered thirty-seven victims, though only seven are confirmed.  The 1970 Census pegs the population of San Francisco County as 715,674.  The odds were with Jerry, but that didn’t matter!  Deep down he felt vulnerable and fearful of a predator in the dark.  We can all relate.  The odds don’t matter.

In 2014, for example, we were 45% less likely to be injured by or die from violent crime than we were when Garcia passed in 1995.  Our news feeds may be full of terrible things, but 2016 is not much more than a blip of an increase over the larger pattern.  Research shows we just don’t know it!  Of course, it doesn’t take a psychologist to prove that statistical knowledge of relative safety is not at all the same as true relief from fear.  When you know “the wolves are running ’round,” a fire and a circle of friends feels desperately good.

In the Backwash of Fennario – Kristina Layton – used by permission of the artist

Indeed, we need more than numbers and academic understanding, particularly when bombarded with bleeding headlines that persistently remind us of violence and death.  I, for one, need music to find my center and shed fear, exactly as Jerry needed that chorus on the streets of San Francisco – “Don’t murder me!”

That’s why this song endures.  Sometimes, murder ballads can do that for us if we’re willing to listen.

To finish this bit, I’ll link you to another video: a funny though profound story that shows Garcia needed more music than “Dire Wolf” to conquer his fear as well.

Coda: “…while the boys sing ’round the fire…”

I‘ve made the case for why “Dire Wolf” endures, so it should be no surprise that there are plenty of covers of the song out there.  While they tend towards folk and bluegrass, they are certainly not limited to those genres.  There’s even a punk version!  I’ll link you to a small Spotify playlists with those covers, but I’ll close with a lovely performance of the song, in transit, by Nikki Bluhm and the Gramblers.  Check it out and then tell me whether or not you feel a little bit better about the world!

Thanks for reading and listening this week folks!