Dead Songs in Depth

    
Dire Wolf
w: Hunter m: Garcia
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/direwolf.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/DIREWOLF.HTM
  

    
Dire Wolf 
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Jerry Garcia

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

In the timbers of Fennario the wolves are running round
The winter was so hard and cold, froze ten feet 'neath the ground

Chorus:
Don't murder me, I beg of you don't murder me
Please don't murder me

I sat down to supper, 'twas a bottle of red whiskey
I said my prayers and went to bed, that's the last they saw of me
[chorus]

When I awoke, the dire wolf, six hundred pounds of sin
Was grinning at my window, all I said was "Come on in"
[chorus]

The wolf came in, I got my cards, we sat down for a game
I cut my deck to the queen of spades but the cards were all the same 
[chorus]

In the back-wash of Fennario, the black and bloody mire
The dire wolf collects his due while the boys sing round the fire 
[chorus]
  

    
Posted on behalf of Matt O'Neill:

David,
 
I am particularly fond of the song "Dire Wolf" and have enjoyed
reading your annotations to it. The section on "Red Whiskey" got me
thinking about other possible explanations to the term besides the very
eloquent one offered by "David" on your website (which I happen to
think is very plausible and even quite possible). I have two ideas,
first, "Red Whiskey" could be referring to the mixed drink by that name
whose ingredients include: sloe gin, whiskey and lemon juice (the sloe
gin gives the drink a red hue due to the gin being flavored with sloe
berries  - the fruit of the blackthorn - which give off a deep red
color). A second possible explanation of the term "Red Whiskey" is that
perhaps Johnnie Walker Red Label whiskey which is the worlds most
common whiskey (a purported favorite of Winston Churchill when mixed
with soda - but I digress) could have been the term used to describe
"their whiskey" or "a whiskey of quality" or even the band's "favorite
whiskey." I would love to know what you think about either idea. 
 
Cheers,
 
Matt
 
Matthew C. O'Neill
  

    
Could be, sloe gin and scotch has been called a red whiskey. Or maybe
"red" fitted the rhythm scheme best.
  

    
There's also the old term "red-eyed whiskey" that my grandpa used in
his drinking days.
  

    
"Fun fact: 
Dire Wolves May Not Have Been Wolves At All
The now-extinct dire wolf was common across North America until
allegedly 13,000 years ago when much of the continent’s megafauna
vanished amid natural climate changes. Dire wolves were comparable
in size to today’s largest gray wolves, but they had bone-crushing
jaws and may have focused on big prey like horses, bison, ground
sloths, and mastodons.

Dire wolf fossils suggest a strong resemblance to modern gray wolves
and based on morphological similarities, scientists have long
assumed the two were closely related. In early 2021, however,
scientists revealed surprising results after sequencing DNA from
dire wolf subfossils. Dire wolves and gray wolves are only very
distant cousins, they reported in the journal Nature, and their
similarities seem to be the result of convergent evolution rather
than close relations. Dire wolf DNA indicates a “highly divergent
lineage” that split from living canids 5.7 million years ago, the
researchers wrote, with no evidence of interbreeding with any living
canid species."

Source: LinkedIn, FWIW
  

    
Interesting!  Thanks.
  

    
!
  

    
Wow—cool!
  

    
https://www.dead.net/deadcast/workingmans-dead-50-dire-wolf
  

    
Dire wolf brought back from extinction thanks to ancient DNA
https://www.thetimes.com/article/8118ca77-420c-460c-9067-54393ff1b16b
  

    
and Deadheads everywhere started to sing when they saw the news...

so crazy.
  

    
I got a request for the song and I sang it in my live set yesterday. Why not?
  

    
Note that "brought back from extinction" may be an exaggeration.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/7/2315241/-That-is-not-a-Dire-Wolf?pm_
campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
  

    
There's a Stephen King/Michael Crichton novel right there.
  

    
there's a photo (AI?) of GRRM holding one now