An acoustic Birdsong from the Radio City Music Hall (New York) run of 1980. It was featured on the Reckoning album (1981), which I haven't heard.

This version is from the 10/31/80 Halloween show. It begins rather sloppily --no Phil Lesh bass--and the recording (by a member of the audience) is bumpy in places--but the crowd is enthusiastic. The acoustic performance picks up around the 6th track--'It Must have Been the Roses'.

The group opened these special concerts with a special acoustic set at which Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir played acoustic guitars, Brent Mydland played piano, Phil Lesh electric bass, and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart played reduced kits.

Birdsong was followed by Ripple. In the electric set we have a sprightly and energetic Franklins Tower.

The acoustic music deliberately harks back to a period of the band's origins in the folk, bluegrass, and country groups. Though Garcia was the most comfortable with this roots music the band always spoke with a distinctly Western American voice, distilled from American roots of folk, blues, bluegrass, and honky-tonk prior to their esoteric jazz-inspired improvisational runs and the subsequent turn to western-style country music using acoustic guitars and Garcia on pedal steel guitar.