After 55 years, Bay Area songbird Jeannie Piersol is ready to soar. What’s more the far-out singer is taking flight without even leaving The Nest.
The Nest is Piersol’s first-ever career-spanning 12-track collection of ‘60s-era studio outtakes, demos, live performances, and sought-after solo singles, originally released via Chess Records’ psychedelic Cadet Concept subsidiary.
Issued this month by High Moon Records, the greatest-hits catalog features the smoldering yet funky title track, a chill-out favorite for DJs, musicians, and podcasters alike, and psych-soul standout “Gladys” (originally penned for Jefferson Airplane and featuring guitars from Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White). Both tracks are backed by soul songstress Minnie Ripperton.
“Minnie Riperton was awesome,” says Piersol. “I loved her. We had fun together.”
It seems easier for the gifted singer with the honeyed vocals whose music has been described as a “hip hybrid of rock, soul, and Indian flavors” to champion the talents of others than her own.
“I like ‘The Nest,’” she says. “I think it’s a lovely song. I think my voice is OK. But the song that I got to Chicago on was ‘Gladys.’”
“Gladys,” which was cut at Ter-Mar Studios in the Windy City’s Chess Records building, was inspired by a visit Piersol and her husband made to tour a potential rehearsal space at a warehouse along the Embarcadero.
Dressed like Sonny and Cher, they asked the receptionist named Gladys about pricing for one of the available spaces but were quickly turned away because of their radical ‘60s attire.
The Nest also includes material by the singer’s two bands, The Yellow Brick Road and Hair, and a 16-page booklet, featuring liner notes from 5X Grammy-nominated archivist Alec Palao and rare photos, detailing Piersol’s creative journey alongside members of Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Born Jean Gross in Mountain View, she met her future husband, writer Bill Piersol from Palo Alto, at a poetry reading at the nearby Menlo College in Atherton in the late ‘50s. She was quickly smitten.
“He had long hair, looked Dylan-esque, and smoked a cigarette,” says Piersol. “He was just really cool-looking. So I went there with a friend who knew him, and we thought, ‘Oh, he is really cute.’”
It didn’t hurt that he was already part of an interesting artistic community in his hometown.
In Palo Alto, Jeannie met Grace and Jerry Slick, and Jerry Garcia. When the Piersols married in 1962, Grace Slick was Jeannie’s maid of honor. Eventually, Jerry’s brother Darby, best known for writing “Don’t You Want Somebody to Love?” for Jefferson Airplane married Jeannie’s sister Carol.
The couples all became part of a bohemian set that was too radical for the more conservative Peninsula. Moving to San Francisco, and later Marin, was mandatory for any young adult itching to bust out of their suburban confines and expand their artistic horizons.
While Bill Piersol and Jerry Slick studied at San Francisco State University and made films, they’d regularly ask their wives to come out and assist. Sometimes it was to flesh out crowd scenes, and other times it was to help with choreography or backing vocals.
En route to the set of Everybody Hits Their Brother Once, Jeannie and Grace practiced singing together. It was at that moment that Piersol realized that she was a promising vocalist.
Before she knew it, she was duetting with Slick in an embryonic lineup of early Bay Area outfit The Great Society, which held practice sessions in Marin County.
“Grace was beautiful and smart,” she says. “She was just a king mixer from the word go. But I was kind of shy.”
Unfortunately, the drives over the bridge to practice were not so great, leading to Piersol’s departure.
“It was terrible,” says the singer. “I had to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge with Darby. He’d stop at a liquor store and buy vodka, and then he’d smoke some weed with other drugs in it. So one day when we were driving back across the bridge, he almost hit a car, and I knew I was done.”
With so many bands forming in San Francisco’s nascent Psychedelic scene—Big Brother, Grateful Dead, The Charlatans, and Jefferson Airplane in 1965 alone—there was always another one to join.
For Piersol, it was The Yellow Brick Road and Hair, both of whom worked the clubs and ballrooms of the emerging SF circuit, including such legendary venues as Avalon Ballroom and The Matrix.
“Everyone was kind of new at the game,” she says. “There were not a lot of sharks in the water. It was just more relaxed. All of us were not great musicians. We didn’t study or practice for 20 hours a day. It was just fun.”
Some artists, however, were exceptions.
Folk singer Joan Baez once confided in Piersol that her “robotic libretto that just would not quit” was the result of hours of practice. Then, of course, Janis Joplin had a naturally killer voice.
Piersol remembers going to band practice in an apartment off the Panhandle where Joplin let out one of her signature wails. All of a sudden, two policemen came knocking at the door and demanded everyone’s identification after receiving calls that a woman was being murdered there.
“We laughed for about an hour after,” says Piersol. “It was just incredible.”
Sharing the lineup with Joplin at the Avalon, Piersol vividly recalls how the powerful blues singer made music without using her mouth.
“She walked in while we were going through our set and everything stopped and everybody looked at her,” she says. “She produced music just walking with jingle jangles on her hair and arms. She was a force.”
With her band The Yellow Brick Road, Piersol opened for Grateful Dead at a UC Davis show.
When the crowd wasn’t wowed by the band’s lackluster musicianship, Piersol had her first inkling that she wasn’t going to be the next Sonny and Cher.
After signing to Cadet Concept as a solo artist, she released “The Nest” and “Gladys” and even made a couple of early music videos.
When her singles failed to achieve commercial success, she felt abandoned by the label and considered quitting, but her husband—her number-one champion—convinced her to keep going.
At some point, rather than succumb to the immense pressure, Piersol decided to put her music career behind her and live a normal life.
“Maybe I lacked self-confidence,” says Piersol. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m kind of flaky, and it came and went—and goodbye.”
In the ensuing years, she became a mother of two, lived in Mill Valley and later, Oregon, and lost contact with all her friends and music.
But after cancer took her husband eight months ago, she is glad to be back in California, living in picturesque Sonoma and getting another chance at stardom.
“Here I am 100 years later,” she says. “I don’t have a lot of expectations because I’m old. Although Joni Mitchell is old, too, and she’s back doing it. I think it’s lovely to get press at this stage of my life and I think the music is pretty good. I didn’t sing too badly.”
Her kids though are over the moon about the High Moon Records compendium and are currently planning a release party for their mother in Marin.
“The sad thing is my husband is going to miss the party,” she says. “He wanted this album to come out so badly. But my kids, Sabina and John, just love the idea that their mother’s a rock star.”
You can order Jeannie Piersol’s ‘The Nest’ from local record shops or here.
