Alumni Voices: Truckin’ on, Andy Logan ’88 Keeps the Legacy of Jerry Garcia Alive

Photos by Bob Minkin

 

By day, Andy Logan is a psychotherapist with a practice in Woodside, Calif. But on nights and weekends, he is a devoted Deadhead, whose passion for the band dates back to the first time he attended a Dead concert when he was a Fifth Former at Westminster. 

For all three of his years on the Hill, Logan lived in Memorial Hall, where his classmate, Willy Miller ’88, first introduced him to the music of the Grateful Dead. “He gave me my first bootleg tape in the spring of 1986,” recalls Logan. And he was hooked.

“A bunch of us went to watch a Dead show in Worcester, Mass., but it was so crowded we couldn’t get in. So, we went to the mall next door where they had the show piped in on speakers. My first official live concert was the following year, my senior year at Westminster. We went to Hartford, on a Sunday night of all nights, which was surprising that the school let us do that back then when curfews were strict,” he says. 

“The administration requested that we had to meet with the deans after the show to talk about the experience, and I remember they asked if we saw any drugs. My knee-jerk reaction was to say no. But it was the 80s so of course we did.” 

Both Miller and Logan went on to attend St. Lawrence University, where they became members of a rapidly growing community of Grateful Dead followers. After graduating, Logan worked in high-tech marketing for successful startups in California before becoming a psychotherapist. All the while, the music of the Dead was a constant in his life.

When Jerry Garcia died in 1995, many of his fans worried that they wouldn’t hear his music being played live at the same level of quality by other bands. But, as Logan explains, the Dead had already spawned other jam bands, including Phish. The remaining members of the Dead eventually formed a band called Dead and Company, which gave their final tour last summer. There were other iterations of the Dead, bands like the Other Ones, the Dead, Further and thousands of cover bands around the world that have kept Garcia’s music and the Dead scene alive and thriving.

“To me, that is so unique about the Dead. I can’t think of any bands that have a tribute cover band scene that’s at all like the Grateful Dead’s. It is a global phenomenon. There’s even a website that lists every Dead tribute band in every state and their performance dates,” says Logan. “If you wanted to, you could go to a Dead show every day of the year.” 

The increasing popularity of the Dead after Garcia’s death was the impetus for the Grateful Guitars Foundation. Logan first noticed tribute band musicians lacked the caliber of instruments that could produce the same sound quality of Garcia’s custom-made guitars — which range from $10,000 to $25,000 each.

By 2009, Logan had begun to acquire custom-made copies of Garcia’s guitars for his own private guitar collection.

“There were a lot of luthiers out there who were Deadheads who were building custom guitars, like Tiger and Wolf guitars that were famously owned by Jerry. So, I started to collect those replica instruments. Then, the bands that were playing Dead shows from the 60s, 70s, 80s or the 90s wanted to use those same guitars because they sounded very close to Jerry’s,” he explains. 

So when he ordered a custom replica of one of Garcia’s guitars for his collection, he would order a second one for a musician, which became the impetus for starting and sustaining Grateful Guitars. Later, he expanded to include guitar replicas used by Garcia’s counterpart and long-standing rhythm guitarist, Bob Weir. “So, I pretty much have the exact same models of the guitars that Bobby and Jerry played over the entire course of the band’s career,” Logan says. 

Through the foundation, he is now able to offer those instruments to musicians who need them. Logan himself owns about 75 Dead-related guitars, including two of Garcia’s actual guitars: a 1955 “Alligator” Fender Stratocaster and a 1943 “Jerry’s Herringbone” Martin D-28 that was used to record the legendary album “American Beauty.”

“A lot of collectors have said to me, ‘You are crazy to let anyone touch the originals. They should be handled with white gloves and locked away,’” says Logan.

“But I think these guitars were made to play. One of the biggest reasons I am into the Dead is the ethos that they held so dear. It was an ethos of genuineness, not of being shallow, greedy or selfish.”

When musicians receive a guitar from the foundation, they are inspired. “It’s a great feeling to see how they’re lifted, and the fans see it, too. The crowd cheers and the band notices and plays a little harder. So, it has a reciprocal effect,” he says. 

Through the Grateful Guitars Foundation, Logan hopes to inspire a new generation of jam bands carrying on the Deadhead tradition. He has the support of his two sons, Wyatt, 19, and Hayden, 22, who help him transport gear to concerts and volunteer at the foundation. Growing up, the two boys were not fans of the music. More recently and “kind of by osmosis, they are slowly becoming Deadheads,” Logan says. 

He has been the executive producer of successful documentaries, notably “Andy Irons: Kissed by God,” about the world-champion surfer who died at age 32 after a lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder and addiction. He is especially excited about his next film on Grateful Dead tribute bands and the healing aspects and musical legacy of the Grateful Dead.

The film pays homage to Garcia’s legacy, of course. But Logan hopes people who aren’t fans of his music gain a deeper understanding of the ethos of the band and “why the community remains so strong –– and how it can help humanity as a whole,” he says.

“Community is a big piece of being a Deadhead,” he says. “And kindness is a part of the Dead scene, along with respect for people and their individuality. We all need way more of this in these divisive times.”

As for Logan, he plays guitar and the drums when he has time. But his real passion is ensuring that the music of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir lives on as a new crop of musicians attract a new wave of younger Deadheads.