Live at the Boarding House: The Complete Shows (2013)
Live at the Boarding House: The Complete Shows is a four-CD live album by the bluegrass band Old & In the Way. It was recorded on October 1 and October 8, 1973, at the Boarding House in San Francisco, and contains the complete concerts from those dates. It was released by Acoustic Disc and Acoustic Oasis on October 1, 2013. The album includes 55 tracks, 14 of which were previously unreleased.[1][2]
On AllMusic, Jeff Tamarkin said, "Although OAITW was able to handle a traditional bluegrass number — vocal or instrumental — as well as anyone, the musicians brought a jam band sensibility and rock attitude to the proceedings, extending the instrumental segments with improvisations, something alien to bluegrass up to that point. By doing so, the quintet pretty much invented the concept of progressive bluegrass, taking the music even further from its starting point than the New Grass Revival had the year before while simultaneously paying homage to its founders."[5]
In Relix, Jesse Jarnow wrote, "While it was Peter Rowan's sweet silvery holler and the quintet's close dynamics that sold the Stinson Beach supergroup to audiences, it was Jerry Garcia's presence that sold the band's live LP to hippies, and in turn linked banjos to beardos forevermore.... The real stars, though, are the infinitely warm recordings themselves... Inside a tangible stereo field, the quintet's instrumental mesh is every bit as blended as the harmonies — a high, lonesome wholeness forever haunting the hills of Marin."[6]
