Devendra Banhart's cover of The Grateful Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower,” first released as an Amazon Original in September, is now available to stream and download everywhere. Banhart’s cover is released in honor of the 45th anniversary of The Grateful Dead album Blues for Allah. The song was produced and mixed by Noah Georgeson and recorded with his current touring band: Nicole Lawrence on guitar, Jeremy Harris on synths, and Gregory Rogove on drums and percussion. It was recorded remotely in various studios and home studios around Los Angeles and Stinson Beach, CA.

Banhart says:

More than ever
I find myself
Fighting dread
With the dead ...

We chose "Franklin's Tower" for its opening line, one of my favorite opening lines of all time:

"In another time’s forgotten space Your eyes looked through your mother's face"

This is the gift of the Dead,

The paradox of personal universality …

Wisdom found at the end of a maze,

The bliss of unconditional love and acceptance ...

There’s a Dead for everyone ...

Through the pandemic,
I go on daily immersions
into Blues for Allah, marveling at Phillip Garris’s eerie and alluring cover art,
Help/Slip/Frank guiding me through the weird underworld that the day has become,
& I feel at once remarkably insignificant and the most precious thing in the universe,
A wave, held in the ocean of my mother's eyes ... a child dancing, rolling away the dew ...
Knowing Help is indeed on the way….

In 2019, Banhart released his critically acclaimed album Ma, which Paste called “the most cohesive songs and sophisticated arrangements that Banhart has delivered to date.” On July 24 of this year, he released a new EP, Vast Ovoid, which features three previously unreleased songs from the Ma sessions alongside a Helado Negro remix of the Ma track “Love Song.”