I missed reading these recent messages "live" last month; I was just checking my "tracer-ed" threads and found this great stuff today.

I have nothing to add about "I Know You Rider," but I feel obligated to pass along the information that I very recently heard an unfamiliar (i.e., new-to-me) recording of "Cold Rain and Snow" on Sean O'Meara's Saturday morning Celtic-music program on WWOZ. The lyrics and melody were exactly what I would expect, but the tempo was extremely slow and the chords were strikingly different ~ slightly dissonant (probably due to DADGAD guitar tuning) ~ resulting in a wholly unfamiliar and very melancholy sound.

The recording conveyed the flavor of a very ancient Celtic song, but was undoubtedly a recent production. It was so different from the Dead's rendition, as well as from any conceivable 60s-era folk performance, that it took me several verses to realize that the melody had not been changed at all, or at least not significantly.

Setting the familiar melody against a highly-produced, extremely echo-ey multi-instrumental background featuring a completely reworked harmonic structure (chord progression) turned it into a very different song.

Sorry; no info on the artist, label, etc. ~ I heard it on the radio! I may be able to email the DJ to learn more.