Great Caesar's Ghost looks to its roots

From dingy dive bars to the world’s finest recording studios, the practice of playing cover music has long provided musicians with a way to pay tribute to their heroes from the past.

During the past year, Great Caesar’s Ghost, a local jam band from Bridgehampton, paid homage to two iconic rock bands with a pair of album releases that climbed the charts on satellite radio and impressed the marketing machine behind one of the greatest American rock bands of all time.

“First There Was a Mountain,” a tribute to the Allman Brothers Band, was released in December, and features eight new interpretations of some of the Allman Brothers’ most popular songs. The album followed the release last year of “Better Off Dead,” a collection of Great Caesar’s Ghost’s best Grateful Dead covers from the last five years.

Both albums have enjoyed critical acclaim, with “Better Off Dead” remaining near the top of the charts on both Jambands.com, which charts radio stations from across the country, and the Deep Tracks channel of XM/Sirius radio for most of 2009. This month, both albums were listed in the Top 25 most played songs by Jambands.com, along with tunes by the likes of Government Mule, Tom Waits, Flaming Lips and String Cheese Incident.

Great Caesar’s Ghost (GCG) has always had a special relationship with the Allman Brothers, Larry Schmid, the band’s guitarist, lead singer and de facto marketing manager, said during a recent interview. Five years after a group of professional musicians gathered at Mr. Schmid’s Bridgehampton recording studio, the band has evolved while staying true to its roots of playing improvisational rock music that draws strongly on elements of jazz and blues, a style that was instrumental to the success of the Allman Brothers Band.

“Butch Trucks came down here one day and paid us a visit,” Mr. Schmid said, referring to the longtime drummer of the Allman Brothers who is widely considered to be one of the best rock and jazz drummers of all time. Mr. Schmid said Mr. Trucks listened to the 2006 GCG album “One More Ride,” saying that the album captured the spirit of the Allman Brothers.

“That was a tremendous honor,” Mr. Schmid said. “We’ve been listening to the Allmans for 40 years, and it’s certainly the sound track to our lives.”

Rob Johnson, the associate publisher of the Allmans’ online magazine, 


Hittin’ the Note, wrote the liner notes for “First There Was a Mountain.” Before the album was produced, he told Mr. Schmid that members of the Allman Brothers had given their personal stamp of approval for the album.

“Every now and then a new band comes across our radar that has the rare ability to ‘hit the note,’” Mr. Johnson wrote in his liner notes. “It is even more rare for us to come across a band that can play the Allman Brothers’ music so well that it gets our attention. Great Caesar’s Ghost is such a band.”

When Duane Allman died at the age of 24, the Allman Brothers had just released “Live at Fillmore East,” which started the band on the road to superstardom. But until that point, the band had enjoyed little commercial success as it set out to fuse traditional jazz elements into the rock idiom, a style that broke new ground at the time.

The goals set out by GCG were similar in some ways, notably in the fact that the band members did not prioritize touring or commercial success at the start. Their main goal, according to drummer Ed DiCapua, was to create the music they loved regardless of the commercial outcome.

“We’re obviously doing something right, though” said Mr. DiCapua, who plays alongside Shawn Murray on the double drums, another signature of both Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers music. “It’s astonishing to me, personally, how this thing has mushroomed into this wonderful experience. It’s been a very uplifting situation.”

When GCG set out to record “First There Was a Mountain,” the intention was to play classic songs like “One Way Out,” “Little Martha” and “Les Brers in A Minor” with an altered improvisational approach. Some of the recordings, like “Whipping Post” and “Mountain Song,” are live recordings from years past. The album features performances by horn player Mario Cruz, former Saturday Night Live musical director G.E. Smith and local guitarist Peter “Bosco” Michne, a former member of the band.

Most of the tracks feature the band’s original members, including Mr. Schmid, Mr. DiCapua and Mr. Murray. Ray Penney is the band’s lead guitar player, Larry Hunter plays bass and Keith Hill is on the Hammond B3 and piano. Together, the musicians have proven they can take these existing “canvases,” as Mr. DiCapua called the songs, and make them their own.

“It boils back down to the whole philosophy of the be-bop musicians,” Mr. DiCapua said. “Much of what they played was the reworking of another artist’s composition. That was the approach we used with this Allman Brothers music. Other than the musicianship, you have to have a certain spirit. It’s about giving the music the dignity that it deserves.”

Mr. Schmid, who has worked tirelessly to get GCG heard beyond the local music scene, said the band has not placed a strong focus on playing live, but that he regrets letting an opportunity to play at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center slip by. He said the band would welcome another opportunity to play at the PAC, and that there would likely be enough following to fill the seats.

“Ed is always saying to give the music the dignity it deserves, and the music does come first for us,” Mr. Schmid said. “We may not set the world on fire with record sales, and we may not be famous, but I will sit on the porch at Shady Acres one day and say, ‘I was in a band once, and we were pretty good.’”