uaded Garcia to let him use a guitar from the store and they started jamming. By the end of the evening they decided to assemble a jug band.Needing another member for their band they enlisted Ron McKernen, a local harmonica player, better known as “Pigpen”. Pigpen grew up listening to his father’s blues collection, and learned how to play blues piano and sing the blues. The name of their band was called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. Hunter had the biggest part in naming the band. To the dislike of Garcia, Pigpen brought a lot of his own style to the band, which was radically different from the folk bluegrass style brought forth by Garcia. Far from being a conflict for Garcia, it became a source of musical growth. Mother McCree’s stayed a jug band for almost a year, then by Pigpen’s influence they went electric. With Garcia on lead guitar, Weir on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Pigpen on harmonica, keyboards and vocals, all the band needed was a bass player and a drummer.Arriving back at Dana Morgan’s music store they ran into Bill Kreutzmann, a drummer, who was at the time teaching with Garcia. Garcia asked him to join the band and he replied, yes. Needing a bass player they were desperate, so they asked the owner’s son, who was playing bass for only a short period of time. Although, together the band members had been playing for a long time, they were all basically teenagers. In fact, both Kruetzmann and Weir had to get fake ID’s because they were too young to play in clubs that served liquor. They were all serious musicians and took the band seriously.It was right before New Year’s when the band went electric, renaming the band The pp 7Warlocks. The band used the equipment from the music store that Garcia and Kruetzmann had been working at. They began to work on a set of cover tunes, which are songs already written by a previous artists. The Warlocks beg...
