Jerry Garcia Foundation partners with Starchive for project
The Jerry Garcia Foundation, in partnership with Starchive, announces a first-of-its-kind fan-enriched Jerry Garcia Archive Project. The Jerry Garcia Archive is a new community resource created to preserve the historical and artistic contributions of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest legends. The organization will begin accepting community contributions this August and host a benefit concert to celebrate the launch.
The archive’s technology partner, Starchive, is the creation of Peter Agelasto, who serves as the lead archivist for the project. Agelasto, a former archeologist and music studio owner, originally developed the Starchive platform to organize and store digital content for his own artistic endeavors. He and Starchive co-founder Richard Averitt are providing their innovative software platform as a gift to the Jerry Garcia Foundation for the development and management of the archive.
“Building this collection with Jerry’s family and global fan base is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see how emerging web3 technologies influence and enrich the artist/fan/collaboration/experiment. No one has innovated more in this creative communal space than Jerry Garcia, and I’m grateful to help serve this culturally significant initiative around one of my favorite musicians and artists,” states Agelasto.
Agelasto and the Starchive team honed their software while working on the creation and curation of the Bob Dylan Archive. In 2021, Starchive was retooled to support any creator from day one for icons like Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia and everyone in between. Today Starchive supports more than 75,000 creators in every medium from around the world.
A musical opening reception for the archive launch is scheduled to take place on the late Jerry Garcia’s 80th birthday on August 1st. In celebration, the David Nelson Band is scheduled to perform a benefit concert for the Jerry Garcia Foundation at the Blue Note venue, located in beautiful Sonoma County, California.
The David Nelson Band has been recording and performing around the country since the 1990’s. Its broad musical palette spans the “almost acoustic” style that Nelson played with Jerry Garcia to roots rock n’ roll and psychedelic country rock. The David Nelson Band performs Nelson’s compositions, and those co-written with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, select covers, and several Grateful Dead classics upon which Nelson appeared on the original album releases.
David Nelson is known as the founding member of the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Moreover, he was a longtime musical partner of Jerry Garcia, dating back to 1962 in the pre-Grateful Dead bluegrass band, the Wildwood Boys. Nelson was a member of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band and appears on its 1988 album release Almost Acoustic and 2010’s Ragged But Right. He performed on three Grateful Dead albums: Aoxomoxoa, Workingman’s Dead, and American Beauty, playing the iconic electric guitar solo on “Box of Rain.”
