Kristina Marinova: The Bus Came By and I Got On: Grateful Dead Piano Works
Navona Records

No one could possibly have expected the classically trained European pianist Kristina Marinova to follow her 2023 release Loves Me Not with a collection of Grateful Dead covers. Whereas the earlier release includes material by Satie, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Bach, Schubert, Debussy, and others, the latest one draws for material from 1966, the year of the Dead's inception, to 1972, the year it issued the three-LP Live European Tour. Credit Marinova for seeing beyond the crazed stories about monumental acid trips and associated madness to recognize the incredible potential of the group's catalogue. Admittedly, no one will mistake a track from the new release for a sonata by Mozart or Prokofiev, but the rewards are plentiful nonetheless. There's nothing ironic about these performances either as Marinova delivers the pieces with genuine affection and sincerity. Who would have taken her for a Deadhead?

She smartly fashioned the selection to mirror a typical Dead concert, albeit one created with a seventy-minute running-time in mind (in contrast to the marathons the group, with its penchant for jamming, might deliver). A native of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the NYC-based Marinova successfully translates the band's arrangements into pianistic form—not an easy thing to do when the vocal and instrumental blend concocted by guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and drummers Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart remains so indelible.

That bus Marinova got on? Well, the Dead had one, a 1965 Gillig called "Sugar Magnolia” that operated from 1967 to 1985, but the bus alluded to in the title comes from the Dead song "The Other One,” wherein Weir references Furthur, the 1939 International Harvester school bus famously associated with writer Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and his so-called Merry Pranksters; in the song, Weir sings, “The bus came by and I got on, that's when it all began / There was Cowboy Neal at the Wheel of a bus to never ever land,” the driver, of course, Beat Generation figure Neal Cassady.

Some songs are packaged into medley-like form. The opening piece, for example, bookends "The Other One” with “Cryptical Envelopment” as an eleven-minute odyssey. In the penultimate spot, “Good Lovin' / Turn On Your Love Light / Not Fade Away / Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad” takes the idea even further with an epic twelve-minute rendering. Right from the start, Marinova doesn't let her classical virtuosity get in the way of connecting with the Dead's songs, and the material's melodic richness keeps listening attention engaged. One comes away from the project impressed by how remarkably well-suited her gifts are to the band's music. The album also captures the band's stylistic breadth when the songs span blues, folk, balladry, gospel, psychedelia, and rock'n'roll.

Paired with “I Know You Rider,” the Deadhead favourite “China Cat Sunflower” chimes resplendently, its radiance almost Vince Guaraldi-like. “Black Throated Wind” oozes a similar kind of good-time uplift, as do the ragtime shuffle “Ramble On Rose” and the cheeky reverie “El Paso.” It's easy to understand why “Uncle John's Band” was beloved by Deadheads when its warm melodies resonate so enticingly, and for a band known for Dionysian wildness, the lyrical and soulful tunes “Morning Dew” and “Brokedown Palace” (hear the echoes of “Let it Be” that emerge in the gospel-tinged song's melodies) remind us it could play gently too. McKernan's blues songs were a key part of the Dead's catalogue, and to that end the album includes the moaning “Hurts Me Too,” a perfect outlet for Marinova's bluesy side. As the end approaches, the spirit of vintage rock'n'roll animates the infectious final medley when “Good Lovin'” kickstarts the swinging saga.

June 2025