By the summer of 1979, the Grateful Dead had settled into one of their most underappreciated grooves. Keith and Donna Godchaux had departed earlier that year after a long, gradual unraveling, and Brent Mydland had stepped in as keyboardist — fresh-faced, powerful-voiced, and immediately transformative. This show at Portland International Speedway falls right in that early-Brent honeymoon period, when the band was still finding its new chemistry but playing with a palpable energy that comes from any lineup shakeup done right. Jerry Garcia's guitar work in this era carried a certain muscular clarity, and the rhythm section of Bill Kreutzmann and Phil Lesh was as locked-in as ever. These were big outdoor festival-style settings, and the Dead knew how to fill them. Portland International Speedway was not your typical concert hall — it was a racing facility pressed into service for large outdoor shows, the kind of venue that defines the Pacific Northwest's sprawling, anything-goes approach to summer concerts. Crowds at these open-air events tended to be loose and celebratory, and the Dead always responded to that energy. Oregon had a loyal and enthusiastic Dead following, and a show of this scale in Portland would have drawn fans from across the region, many of whom had been waiting all summer for the band to roll through.
The one song we have confirmed from this show is Jack Straw, and that alone should perk up any serious listener's ears. Opening the set — which is where Jack Straw almost always lived — it's a song that tells you everything about where a show is headed. When it clicks, the twin vocal trade-off between Garcia and Weir has a crispness and a storytelling urgency that sets the whole night's temperature. In 1979, Weir was singing with real authority, and Garcia's leads on Jack Straw could slice clean and bright or stretch into something more brooding depending on the evening's mood. A great Jack Straw is practically a mission statement for the show. Recordings from outdoor speedway-style venues in this era can be variable — crowd noise and open acoustics sometimes muddy audience tapes — so finding a clean soundboard source for a show like this one is worth the effort. Whatever the source in our archive, there's something quietly special about catching the Dead in this transitional moment, with Brent still learning the room and the band rediscovering itself. Pull up that Jack Straw, close your eyes, and let 1979 carry you somewhere.