Personnel: Jerry Garcia (vocals, guitar); Tony Rice (guitar); David Grisman (mandolin).

Recorded at Dawg Studios, Mill Valley, California on February 4 & 5, 1993. Includes liner notes by David Grisman and Tony Rice.

All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.

The setting is February 1993, at mandolinist David Grisman's Dawg Studios in Northern California. Grisman has gathered Jerry Garcia and newgrass guitar wizard Tony Rice for an informal jam session, bringing the two pickers together for the first time. Soon thereafter, a local pizza delivery boy pilfers a cassette of mixes left out on Garcia's kitchen counter... and so begins the years-long, bootlegged journey of the recording dubbed THE PIZZA TAPES.

Unlike the popularly traded version, this official release offers excellent sound quality and editing, including some wittily-placed bits of banter. Indeed, the Garcia-Rice repartee offers a window into an offhand and intimate musical encounter in a very specific time and place. The chosen material evidences Garcia's late-'80s/early-'90s revisiting of the American folk and bluegrass songbook. Doc Watson's "Shady Grove" opens with copious space-noodling before yielding to a hot-blooded jaunt rife with quick-picking. The three continue their spirited improv duel as they delve loosely into the jazz songbook with George Gershwin's "Summertime" and Miles Davis' classic modal vehicle, "So What." Favorite spirituals such as "Drifting Too Far From the Shore" and "Amazing Grace" take on a special, bittersweet overtone as sung by an ailing Jerry, while the summery "Rosalee McFall" is as sweet as ever.