Deer Creek '89
Night one of Phish's "quad" at Dick's + a new Grateful Dead story
I’ve been hired to represent a jamband. It’s new territory in my booking career, so I went to Denver for some research and attended my first Phish show. I hung out on lot for a few hours, and took in night one of the band’s “quad” at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. Okay, I took in half of night one.
I hadn’t heard a four-night stand called a quad before, but was very impressed when Strasburg the promoter referred to the run that way.
I loved the lot, I gotta say, which was nearly identical to my memories of the Grateful Dead lot at Deer Creek in ‘89, where I lurked as a wide-eyed 14-year-old who had just discovered Deadheads when they flooded the grocery store where I worked that weekend.
The Phish tunes I liked less than the lot, but I’m 1000000% supportive of this band and their fans. It’s a marvel, an unrivaled concert-going vibe. I’ve not been to a more joyful mass gathering in a long, long time. Maybe ever.
In the last mailer, I mentioned I’d have a new story ready for the next one, so in honor of my second dip into lot-life in 30+ years, I’m sharing Deer Creek ‘89. This is part of a larger project which is essentially Christian Rock fanfic, but this chapter borrows heavily from that first jamband experience in Noblesville.
It’s long. You’ll need to make a little time. You could print it? I hope you dig it.
Best,
Adam
Deer Creek ‘89
Double bummer for hippies this summer in Indiana. Jerry Garcia, leader of the Grateful Dead, died this week after suffering a heart attack in his sleep. The news comes just weeks after the band’s annual return to Noblesville’s Deer Creek Music Center turned to chaos when a thousand idiots without tickets tore down the fence around the venue and flooded night one of a sold-out, two-night stand.
Hello again. It’s the Empty Calorie King, Tape 14. Today is August 16, 1995.
Last month, newspapers and local stations all led with the story at Deer Creek. The Dead’s publicist stood with city officials on TV, canceling the second night, and the band issued an open letter to their fans titled “This Darkness Got to Give.” It’s been reprinted widely, locally and nationally. You can find it in the latest Rolling Stone. The short summary? They were pissed! A couple highlights from the missive:
This is the way it looks to us from the stage: Your justly renowned tolerance and compassion have set you up to be used. At Deer Creek, we watched many of you cheer on and help a thousand fools kick down the fence and break into the show… Your reputation is at stake… We’ve never before had to cancel a show because of you… Want to end the touring life of the Grateful Dead? Allow bottle-throwing gate crashers to keep on thinking they’re cool anarchists instead of the creeps they are.
Harsh vibes from our most famous hippies!
The Dead have stopped in Noblesville, the Indianapolis suburb where I live, every summer since 1989 at Deer Creek, when they played the opening season of the new amphitheater here. Since ’89, they’ve been doing two nights, back-to-back. Now, with Jerry gone, a half-played bum-out will be their final Indiana stand.
I don’t give a shit about the Grateful Dead’s music—dogshit, duh—but it’s not like I’d wish Jerry harm, and music aside, the band and their tribe hold a little place in my heart. Here’s my story about the Dead. It’s happier than this summer’s tragic tales.
I hate your band, Jerry, but rest in peace, dude. Noblesville certainly loved you.
The first Deadheads I ever saw were at O’Malia’s Food Market. Regular listeners will know I’m still employed there. I manage the produce section now, but in the summer of 1989, I was newly hired as a bag boy. At employee orientation, Joe O’Malia stood in front of a small group of recent hires, with his tall, easy posture, bald head and liver spots, big smile, and his fly unzipped, all the way down. He gave us a drifty history of his grocery business while the tail of his tucked-in button-down wrinkled and wiggled behind the teeth of his zipper.
Two girls in the row of folding chairs ahead of mine laughed into one another’s shoulders, their big-wave bangs tickling the other’s neck and cheek. When Joe twisted his torso or pivoted to stroll in the other direction across the front of the conference room, the zipper smiled sideways, like a threat. I tried to psych myself up to tap the girls on the back and let them know I saw it, too, but never got up the nerve.
Joe’s been giving this speech forever. When I saw it, he still had a decent outline somewhere up there in his dome, but timelines were getting sketchy. He’s still doing the orientations, every other month. Lately, new employees say he’s skipping words and sentences. Doesn’t matter. Guy’s a local celebrity. He opened his first store in the mid-60s, and by the time I was hired, he’d expanded to eight locations around Central Indiana. Nothing across state lines. 100% Hoosier.
Joe wrapped up his intro and wished us luck, old man junk never coming into view, to the relief and disappointment of all teenagers in the room, and to the applause of two senior managers who jumped in after his speech with further details on store hours, timecards, and lunch breaks.
They split us into two groups, girls and guys, and started training. It was hands-on with the soon-to-be cashiers rotating for their turn on a demonstration register and conveyor belt, and the guys at the end of the lane learning the art of brown-paper bagging.
At the end of the day, Joe returned, pants zipped up, for some closing remarks. He told us of all the things we’d learned, nothing was more important than helping a lady find the pickles. “And don’t just take her to Aisle 3, Side B. Find out what she’s reading in the magazines, where her kids go to school, what her husband does for money.” Joe personally handed each of us a tan and green apron on the way out. It was crispy new and clean, but he told us if we’re working hard, and properly, they’d wear in, get stained, and fade.
A few weeks into the new gig, my mom pulled into the O’Malia’s parking lot to drop me off for work, and there were a shitload of campers and clunky Volkswagens sitting between the white painted lines, far outnumbering the minivans and big sedans I was used to. There were multiple sunburned shirtless dudes—shirtless!—coming out through the front door of the store. Mom was oblivious. “Okay, work hard. I’ll pick you up later.”
O’Malia’s Food Market is Indiana-classy, heartland high-end. Our company colors are brown-paper tan and green, and there’s a shamrock on everything. The stores are carpeted, and when shoppers arrive and select a silver cart, they first come across an alcove with a fireplace and hot self-serve coffee, complimentary. Our carts have cup holders and steady wheels—a jiggly front-left won’t fly. No squeaking, never. There’s a cart mechanic in the store quarterly to tune up the rigs. Everything’s a little overpriced.
It was crowded and rowdy inside the store when I walked in—I’d never seen either—and it smelled terrible. Now I know that this foul funk is a mixture of sour body odor and a cursed oil called pachouli. I struggled with it for half an hour. Gagged a little.
Cary and Kelly were at the registers, and they were beaming. These were the same two from the row in front of me at orientation. After Joe sent us on our way that day, I watched them get into a car together, roll their windows down, and drive off laughing, banging the steering wheel, definitely recounting the zipper thing.
I’d gotten to know them a little bit by this time, working at the end of their conveyors. I’d studied their hairstyles and make-up moves, and the angle of their hips leaning against the register. I knew the backs of their bodies best, their butts, with apron ties resting in a knot on the pockets of their blue jeans. Eventually, I got to know them as actual breathing people, too, but it took a while.
I tried to land at the end of one of their lanes whenever possible. They’d scan pre-packaged items, enter codes for coupons or produce, and send a steady stream of Fruit Loops, canned soup, milk, oranges, butter, and boxes of saltines my way. Bloop bloop bloop, each item sure-handedly directed down the conveyor where I worked to keep up while bagging. A killer cashier won’t even look at their hands. She’ll have tons of eye contact with the customer all throughout the check-out, the cash drawer clanging open before she breaks the spell and turns to put the check in or count out the change. It’s a consistent song the store sings all day long.
As I got to know the cashiers better, sometimes we’d start little fake arguments while I puzzled the pieces into bags. We’d make fun of one another, harmlessly, to the delight of the woman whose own kids are out of the house now, grown and gone, the belt carrying only essentials for her and her geezer husband: fruit, canned coffee, bacon, bread, cottage cheese.
Neither Cary or Kelly are here at the store anymore. Off to college or beyond. Start of a different career. Maybe to a bigger city. Maybe moms?
I held up my hands—What’s going on?—as I walked past them. They both shrugged playfully, in unison. Cary had some guys in beaded vests in her lane, and Kelly was checking out a girl wearing camouflage pants and what must have been a bedsheet wrapped around her chest.
I went past the butcher shop on my way to the breakroom to clock in. I gave Casey, behind the counter, a What’s uuuuuup? look with big-ass eyes.
“That’s The Dead, dude.”
And I’m like, “The what?”
“The Grateful Dead,” he said. “Deadheads. They follow the band.”
Casey was a scum. You might not know the term? I think it’s local, regional maybe. There are other words for it, metalhead or hesher. Similar, I think. It’s mullets and black rock band t-shirts, high-top basketball shoes with the laces loose, jean jackets and cigarettes, silver chains, and Trans Am dreams. Probably boning a lot, you know? Gettin’ tons of handjobs. A scum is in that same lane, but scum also explicitly means poor. God bless the mean Midwest!
Casey would arrive at work in his usual get-up and head straight to the breakroom to transform. He parted his hair, feathered it and added a little mousse, took out his earrings, and tied on a white apron. The butcher boys’ getups were the only departure from the company-standard tan and green. By the end of his shift, the apron was always bloody, and I think Casey got more comfortable with the costume as it collected more drips and streaks.
I got to know him pretty quickly my first few days on the job. He was very curious about my lunch break or end-of-shift order at the deli counter, next to the butcher shop.
“Dude. Plain turkey again?” he started asking after day three. Casey kept an upside-down milk crate behind the refrigerated case. He shuffled it to one side or the other and stepped up to take the customer’s order eye-to-eye. He was very, very short, but made up inches and inches with his deceptively deep chitchat.
He kicked the crate down by the deli and hopped up, and looked down his nose, grinning. “White bread, American cheese, no dressing?”
I shrugged. “Yeah?”
“Why don’t you try an exotic salami, dude? Maybe Lebanon Bologna? Put it on some rye and get weird with some cucumbers or something.” He tried a few times with other suggestions, and he found my refusals funny. “Okay, big guy, I’m gonna let you do your thing with the turkey.”
I liked Casey right away. This was my first work friend, a unique category no one told me about, and I was into it. By my second week, I was timing my breaks to line up with his. We’d meet in the alley behind the store, stand in the empty soda bottle boneyard, hidden from view by towers of empty bakery racks. He’d huff cigarettes—three in a row 1 2 3—and play metal on a handheld tape recorder. He had mix tapes made up on mini-cassettes.
“You ever heard of Tourniquet?” I asked him once.
“Don’t think so. Good?”
“They’re a Christian metal band. I don’t know if they’re good. A guy in my youth group said they’ve got an insane drummer.”
“I don’t know, dude. Christian music’s never really moved the needle for me. It’s bad, right?” He wasn’t mean about it. Just felt like a fact. I didn’t really like his thrashy stuff, but it did sound cool coming through the blown-out little speaker.
“What are you afraid of?” Casey asked me strange shit like that all the time.
“Spiders?”
And he’d go: “No, like a deeper fear, dude.”
I’d chew on it until our next break and try to come with a better answer. “Okay, you know on TV, on the news or something, they’ll sometimes show you pictures of Earth from space? That always tweaks me out, how big it is.”
Casey’d put his eyebrows up on his forehead—not teasing, something kinder—blow wind through his teeth like Whoaaa, and go: “Dude. Very deep. Man, I wish you could work behind the counter. Or at least stay ’til close.”
Now I know what he means, of course. I’ve spent time in all the departments, and I work until closing all the time. Doors locked, clear parking lot, the cashiers relaxed and chatty, the radio tuned to a pop station, and turned up and piped through the speakers in the ceiling. While it is most certainly the best part of the workday, then I was underage for those things, and Casey had me thinking it was a secret world.
That year, Deer Creek Music Center appeared in the middle of farmland on the edge of Noblesville. The place holds 24,000 people—one of these monster modern amphitheaters. It’s surrounded by acres and acres of checkerboard cornfields. Overhead in a plane, a man might say to his wife, “That Ohio, you think?” And she’d say, “Could be. Iowa, maybe?”
Deer Creek’s huge slice of land starts at 146th Street, so that’s one hundred and forty-six streets from downtown India-no-place, as my dad liked to call our nearby capital city. The venue’s in bumfuck nowhere, even by nowhere-town standards.
There were concerns in the community as soon as the venue was proposed that continued on after breaking ground and especially leading up to the grand opening. One newscast I remember had an interview with a 65-year-old lady sitting on her tractor in front of her barn, saying “I don’t want Woodstock in my own backyard.” Her ‘yard’ looked to be about a hundred miles by a hundred miles, but whatever, she was worried.
While prepping for today’s tape, I went to the library and looked at copies of The Noblesville Ledger from early ’89, scanning for advertisements for Deer Creek’s first season. Opening night featured Sandi Patty, a local Christian singer. I’d seen her perform at local events and half-time shows; very family-friendly. But for the farmer lady, it went steeply downhill from there. Maybe she could stomach some of these—The Temptations, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope—but it was gonna be tough to reckon with the hair metal package tours on the calendar: Cinderella, Winger, and the BulletBoys; Ratt and Great White on a bill together; Ozzy with Vixen and White Lion; Metallica with the Cult. Scary!
But there were several articles specifically tsk-tsking the booking of the Grateful Dead. They described what to expect from the impending traveling circus to readers like my parents, who paid the late ‘60s and ‘70s no mind musically. The stories warned of heavy pot smoke, crazy colors, strange dancing, and of the gravest concern, hippies camping in Forest Park.
Aisle 7, Beverages, was heavily trafficked all day. For at least an hour I was on the hand truck wheeling out stacks of bottles, cans, and jugs to replenish different flavors of sodas, juices, and gallons of distilled water.
Fresh fruits and veggies were picked over all day, of course. We got pummeled in the produce section.
We sold out of the tiny stock of Styrofoam coolers in Seasonal, 3B, quickly. Probably only had six or so to start on the shelf, maybe a little backstock in the storeroom. Wasn’t usually a big mover, but I bet we could have sold a hundred that day if we’d had them.
Hot dog and hamburger buns were big. By early evening, when we thought those were gone, a girl in a loose, floor length, sleeveless dress swung a bag of buns above her head in victory. “Found it by the magazines!” That’s 7B, near School Supplies.
Several times, I was called to the Jell-O section, in 5A, to re-face the forty flavors in nearly weightless boxes. Facing is grocery store lingo for making sure every product on every shelf is stacked as high as space allows and layered at least two-deep. It makes for the illusion of a fully stocked store even as items are picked over. Throughout the day there’s always someone facing, in some aisle. It’s like the guys who paint the Golden Gate Bridge, hanging from that thing year-round.
The slightest tap on a Jell-O box can cause a collapse. I was being hazed, surely, the new kid continually called back to rebuild the wall. The hippies weren’t buying Jell-O in droves as far as I could tell, but their general exuberance and numbers meant lots of inadvertent bumping.
Tilly. Aisle 5. Tilly to Aisle 5, please.
I caught up with Casey on one of his smoke breaks, brazenly standing in front of the store instead of out back in the alley. He could get away with it. Must have been more cigarettes butts around O’Malia’s that day than any day in history. His apron was a mess. “These hippies love their meats, dude. Ground beef going out with every order. Steaks. Chops. Already fully out of brats.”
He told me he was going to the park after work. “Show’s not until tomorrow, but the scene starts there tonight.”
I thought the scene was already well underway, here at the store. “Doesn’t it make you a little nervous, at night?”
“Man, look at them,” Casey said, waving his hand and his smoking cigarette across the lot. “Harmless. They’re happy.”
Our store manager, a guy named Larry—gone now, moved to another store—spent the entire day out of breath, running around, a sweaty mess. He was directing cart traffic in the aisles, car traffic in the lot. One group of hippies set up a tiny grill right there in the handicapped spaces and had just dropped a match into the charcoal when Larry rushed out the front doors and shut it down. He was constantly shuffling bag boys around for all the little low-stock emergencies and product spills.
I wasn’t scheduled for a shift the next day, but I asked Larry if he’d need me.
“Oh my gosh, Tilly, yes. I’d love to give you hours. Come as early as you can.”
I overheard her my mom on the phone that night, exaggerating a story she’d seen on the news to some nearby neighbor. “They’re out there having hippie sex in public,” she complained. “It was just on the TV, Debbie.” She was referring to a segment I watched with her an hour or so before. It featured a three-second snippet of two tie-dyed people kissing, nothing more, and no further saucy details from the reporter on the ground regarding public fucking.
The next morning, she picked up on the lot scene, equally happening, and tensed up a little pulling in.
“Mom, it’s fine,” I said, and jumped out of the car.
Inside, again, the store was alive and stinky. The shelves had been re-stocked, and there were rotated endcaps featuring all the things the hippies hit hard the day before. Larry had gotten new stacked displays up in the middle of the aisles, too.
“How you feeling today?” I asked him.
“Oh. Better, I think. We learned a lot yesterday. I was here late last night and early this morning. Re-stocking. Strategizing. Cleaning. I’m ready for ‘em today. Thanks for coming in. I won’t forget it, Tilly.”
“Amazing in the park last night,” Casey told me over the butcher counter. He was busy, but chatty. A hippie was waiting on his packages of meat, wearing, I swear to it, a sleeping bag. “Duuuude,” the guy said, “You were with us last night? Brother, it was heady, huh?”
Casey told him they definitely do it right. “Got no ticket for the show, but I’m gonna go hang at the venue tonight.”
“Maybe a miracle, man. Maybe a miracle for the butcher man.”
“We’ll see,” Casey said. “Hopefully.”
“Even if you don’t get into the gig, you can just cool out on Shakedown Street.”
These two were speaking a different language. I was lost, and headed off to the breakroom to clock in. Casey called after me as I walked away, “You should totally join me tonight, Tilly!”
Word had spread on the telephone lines of all the hippie hot spots, and since no one had been kidnapped or killed, the normies from the community were cruising through the parking lot for a little look-see.
I was loading bags of ice into a shitty station wagon for a ridiculously pretty but filthy woman in a knit bikini only loosely tied to her body. She was mumbling about her best guesses on the set list. “I’m hoping for my first ‘China Doll,’” she told me. I saw a kid from school roll by. His mom and dad were coughing down their sleeves in the front seat, dorky-ass Branson in the back, an inch from the glass, dough-eyed.
At some point, late afternoon, Kelly and Cary came bounding around the corner of 1A to the meat counter, where I was back loitering again. They waved for Casey and me to come quickly. Customers and grocery staff were congregated at the giant plate glass window at the front of the store. Outside in the lot, a crowd of Deadheads and a few more employees were circled around a VW bug, where a 300-pound dreadlocked guy in a drug rug was perched in a lawn chair on the roof of the car, playing a riff on an acoustic guitar. There in the center of the clump of hippies, Joe O’Malia himself danced around, a little jig, pumping his arms up and down and kicking out his knees. All employees, everyone eventually, just totally going bananas.
The rest of the shift was fucking festive. Joe hung around for an hour or two walking around the aisles or hanging in the coffee nook, talking with freaks and his employees.
Casey worked on me all through the day, trying to convince me to come with him that night. I had no intention of actually going—still too afraid—but I let him think he wore me down and said I’d join him. I called my mom from the office phone and told her I had a ride home.
When our shifts ended, I climbed into the passenger side of Casey’s car, a green Chevette in terrible shape. The seats were a plaid fabric for the early ’70s; torn, frayed, and duct-taped. The plastic molding of the dash was sun-cracked. Casey had two copies of the Yellow Pages stacked on the driver’s side where he climbed up behind the wheel. He reached behind his seat and pulled out a briefcase of cassette tapes, and dropped it in my lap. “Pop one in dude,” he said, tapping the tape deck. Quiet Riot and Zepplin were in there. Metallica, of course. I was hesitating, half-way paralyzed by the choice and starting to panic over not yet having a believable excuse for bailing. Casey reached over and pulled out Shout at the Devil. He held it between two fingers and waved it while chanting: SHOUT! SHOUT! SHOUT! He stuck the tape in, turned the knob to blast.
After a few minutes driving, I grunted the music down and told Casey I’d forgotten something important at home, faking worry, badly.
“Uh, definitely calling bullshit, dude. Whatdya gotta suddenly do?”
I mumbled something about the library and books belonging to a neighbor. It made no sense, but he didn’t push me. “I’ll drop you off on the way, but it’s a shame.”
He got miracled, he told me later. “Francis from Michigan, dude. She had an extra ticket.” Casey said he thought the gig was fine, but mostly loved his night in the park with her after the gig. Never would’ve happened if I had been on his wing, I justified.
Like I said, the Dead’s been coming back every summer. We bulk up in advance on all the hippie provisions, and things go smoothly at the store. The Deadheads still come and shop, but it’s always been a lot less gonzo after that first year. Gonna miss them, though, and I know I’m not alone.
You can find a thousand obituaries for Jerry this week. The one in the Indianapolis Star featured a photo collage from the hippie town takeovers the past several years. There’s one of Joe, dancing in the parking lot of his store that day. In the background, grainy in newsprint, I’m almost sure I can see me and Casey. I’ve got my arms folded over my chest, but I think I’m smiling.
Okay, that’s the monolog for today. You know the drill: Flip to Side B for 15 tunes. And don’t worry, I’m not going to play any Grateful Dead. Wouldn’t do it to you. I am, however, going to start with an old Christian Rock song that sounds like what I imagine the Dead might’ve sounded had they started in Ft. Wayne, Indiana in 1972. A song from before this band turned down a hair metal lane. In the beginning, they had ties to the fledgling Jesus People movement, a little hippie-dippy thing that happened for a while. Here’s Petra with “Come and Join Us.” Following that I’ve got new stuff from The Crucified, Joe Christmas, The Throes, and more.
As ever, please be encouraged to make a copy of this thing and pass it to a friend.
Until next time, this is your Empty Calorie King,
Tilly.