Artist:   Ollabelle
Song:   "Brokedown Palace"
Album: Before This Time
Label:   Yep Roc
Year:    2008

It’s difficult to cover Grateful Dead songs, and not because they’re hard to play or were such big hits new versions have an uphill road to find their own way. It’s more of a vibrational puzzle. The Dead owned their songs, putting such an individualistic stamp on them that later versions usually pale. Luckily, Ollabelle have such a strong magnetic field their music has its own pull, making “Brokedown Palace” sound like a communiqué from the promised land. Opening with a fragile electric piano and ethereal voices, the song is a statement of purpose from people who know there is no going back and it’s only forward from this point on: “Mama, mama many worlds I’ve come since I first left home.” Singers Glenn Patscha, Amy Helm and Fiona McBain form an angel band of voices and capture Robert Hunter’s post-lysergic lyrics with absolute soul, making the cracked dawn seem not so frightening after all. And like so much of the Grateful Dead’s music, “Brokedown Palace” lives on several levels, including most of all a spiritual one. It first appeared on their American Beauty album, at a time when the band was pulling back from their position as psychedelic pioneers and discovering a quieter path. Ollabelle began their career performing gospel songs at a small club on New York’s Lower East Side, so it’s no surprise their journey led them right to “Brokedown Palace,” or the band turned it into a moving anthem of faith. Jerry Garcia is smiling somewhere, knowing the crumbs he dropped are still being followed.