Rum Runners Deluxe

Rhino Records is launching a new career spanning archival series honoring Robert Hunter's work as a solo artist with a deluxe reissue of his 1974 debut, "Tales Of The Great Rum Runners". While Hunter is widely revered as the primary lyricist for the Grateful Dead, this series will explore the depth of his solo work, offering a renewed appreciation for his exceptional artistry.

"Tales Of The Great Rum Runners" will be available on June 7th, 2024 from Rhino Records on a 2 CD set and on a 2 LP set. "Tales Of The Great Rum Runners" will also be making its debut on streaming services on the same day.

This new deluxe edition introduces a freshly remastered version of the original album alongside 16 previously unreleased recordings, including alternate versions of album tracks and several session outtakes. All the music has been remastered from the original master tapes by David Glasser, using Plangent Processes tape restoration and speed correction.

Originally released in spring 1974, "Tales Of The Great Rum Runners" marked the inaugural release on Round Records, an offshoot of the newly formed Grateful Dead Records. Among its 13 tracks were several destined to become staples of Hunter's live repertoire, like “Boys In The Barroom”, “Rum Runners”, and “It Must Have Been The Roses”.

Recorded at Mickey Hart's converted barn studio in Novato, California, the album reveals Hunter's multifaceted talents and features him singing and playing various instruments, including guitar, tin whistle, and bagpipes on “Children's Lament”. He was accompanied by a revolving cast of Bay Area musicians on the album, including Jerry Garcia, Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux, and Mickey Hart of the Dead, as well as guitarist Barry Melton (Country Joe & The Fish), bassist David Freiberg (Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Starship), and pedal steel guitarist Buddy Cage (New Riders Of The Purple Sage).

"Tales Of The Great Rum Runners" comes with 16 previously unreleased bonus tracks, offering new insight into the album's evolution. Among these are alternate versions of 6 songs that made the album, plus 10 gems that did not.

In the collection's liner notes, Jesse Jarnow, author, DJ, and co-host of the 'Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast', deftly captures the essence of the album. “The music was as warm and handmade as the tapestries and tie dyes adorning the Barn studio walls, an idiosyncratic continuation of the cosmic folk vocabulary that Hunter and Dead explored on "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty". In an era when the Dead's own studio albums were growing slicker, "Rum Runners" doubled down on organic earthiness”.

On October 8th, 2024, Hachette Books will publish 'The Silver Snarling Trumpet : The Birth Of The Grateful Dead - The Lost Manuscript Of Robert Hunter', which was penned by legendary Dead lyricist Robert Hunter in the early 1960's, but left unpublished in his attic. For decades, passionate fans of the Grateful Dead have discussed the existence of a lost manuscript, a sort of holy grail, the novelistic origin story of the band. The book will feature a foreword by John Mayer, an introduction by Dennis McNally, and an afterword by Brigid Meier, a close friend of Hunter's. Fans will experience the early days of Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and their cohorts, following them into the stacks at Kepler's Books, to rent instruments at Swain's House of Music, and through the countryside on road trips. Readers will witness impromptu jams, inspired intellectual pranks, and dialogue that is, by turns, amusing and brilliant and outrageous. 'The Silver Snarling Trumpet' illustrates how Hunter's psychedelic expression and wordplay became the soul of the Dead. The book will be available wherever books are sold.