I am sitting at the bar in Corte Madera, California, after a New Riders of the Purple Sage show and David Nelson, the musician, sits down on the stool next to me. He whispers in my ear cryptically, "Vitamin B-7". We talk about Robert Hunter.

David Nelson met Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia in the 1960´s music coffeehouses and bookstores where folks gather to play music, sit and read and discuss the Irish situation.

David Nelson´s band, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, hired a road manager from Dublin, Ireland, Chesley Millikin, who once was a member of the Royal Irish Jumping Team. He later became Robert Hunter´s manager. He was talented with a unique personality, funny and fun to be around.

The first time I meet Robert Hunter, he appears like a guardian angel to a girl in distress. It is 3 AM Christmas eve morning under a full moon in Berkeley. I am driving down an alley with Trey and Irish photographer Kim McCarthy. A girl stands in the road with her car hood up and we stop to see if we can help. She asks if we have jumper cables. "No, sorry" I said, and suddenly in the shadows, from behind a tree, steps out a man in a long Irish coat, with jumper cables in his hands. It´s Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter! He hands the cables to the girl and says "Take a hit off of him," and gestures to me, and asks, "Got any booze?"

He has a genuine love for Irish poet W.B. Yeats work, and is a direct descendant of poet Robert Burns, who wrote the New Year´s eve anthem "Auld Lang Syne". The Grateful Dead always hold that special time of year with their own traditional celebration, starting almost every New Year with their song "Sugar Magnolia".

I spent one New Year´s eve with David Nelson and his band at a small bar in western Sebastopol, California, the home of the world´s best apples, the Gravensteins. It is a memorable night. Barry Sless and Mookie Siegel play in this band and Pete Sears shows up with an accordion to help on a song. They perform Grateful Dead tunes Box Of Rain, Cumberland Blues, The Wheel, Peggy-o, Iko-Iko, and Van Morrison´s Into The Mystic, and New Rider of The Purple Sage songs, but the most amazing moment of the evening is at the stroke of midnight when we look back to say farewell and welcome the New Year. David sang this song, the one sung more than any other song in the world that night:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquantaince be forgot

And days of auld land syne?

For auld lang syne my dear

For auld lang syne

We´ll take a cup o´ kindness yet

For days of auld lang syne

For auld lang syne my dear

For auld lang syne

We´ll take a cup o´ kindness yet

For auld lang syne