This week CrutchfieldAdvisor concludes our two-part examination of the innovative and heroic technological efforts incorporated into the Grateful Dead live concert DVD, The Closing Of Winterland (2003). This time around, we follow up our previous Q&A — with audio engineer and co-producer Jeffrey Norman — with an equally engaging conversation with video producer David Lemieux. Lemieux is not only the coproducer of the package, but also the band?s audio and video archivist. As such, he is responsible for the care and feeding of the infamous Grateful Dead tape vault. We caught up with Lemieux at the band?s newly reconfigured digs in Novato, California on Wednesday, November 19, 2003.

CA: David, let?s begin with an overview of your role as co-producer, as well as how you visually augmented Jeffrey?s work.

David Lemieux, video producer of The Closing of Winterland.

DL: For the first two months we basically worked together. Then we each did our own thing. I?d check in with him daily and hear what he?d done on both the stereo and the 5.1 mixes. To put things into a bit more context, Jeffrey told you about the issues he had losing a month of work because of the workstation, right? Well, we were also in the process of physically moving "the vault" 150 feet. In fact, the reconstruction has literally just been completed. It was weird not having access to the tapes for a while, but they are back and all is well.

CA: Did you hit critical mass in the old space?

DL: No, the new owners of the building we are in have leased the area that holds the studio and rehearsal room back to us. However, the space that was occupied by the vault was too valuable to them. So we disassembled and then rebuilt a new vault. We also dispersed their own solo projects to the individual band members. Everyone had a manageable collection, except for Mickey, who built his own vault. Everyone eventually worked out a good solution to their respective needs.

Anyway, that is a bit of insight into what was happening on top of trying to meet our deadlines to have Closing Of Winterland readied for DVD authoring. It was an awkward time between the first of August and the middle of September, because we were getting the vault both emptied and torn down during what was essentially the meat of our work on this project.

CA: Was it all downhill once you got going? My feeling is that you, like Jeffrey, were faced with continual challenges.

DL: That is an understatement. There were so many challenges, it was at times quite astounding. For both of us, it was the biggest and toughest project we?ve collaborated on to date. That might go for all of us at Grateful Dead Productions. It was hurdle after hurdle, which makes it so exhilarating when it ended up virtually perfect. It?s equally satisfying to know that there isn?t anything that anyone would have changed.

CA: You couldn?t even really want more.

DL: Exactly. After we?d made the basic decisions on content, someone commented that we weren?t holding anything back and I replied, "What?s the point?". We used everything that we had in our archives, and what would be the reason not to? If we can get up to three hours and 10 minutes on each disc, then let?s do it. My theory was to make this something that we would not have any regrets about. I didn?t want to go back and say, "Man, I wish we would have included that Bill Graham interview."

We made a decision early in the process that we wanted to present the concert as the main event: First Set, Second Set, and Third Set. Everything else was bonus footage. We are not presenting a strict chronology because we did not want to have the show interrupted. I think of it from the experience as a viewer. You are at home with friends and listening in surround sound and getting a complete experience first and foremost. Then, if you want to watch the extras, they are there as well. That was the premise behind taking the 2 AM interview [with Mickey Hart, Bob Weir and Ken Kesey] out and creating it as a separate side item, for example.

CA: Taken on the whole, it really is more than a live concert on DVD. It is more of a multi-media time capsule.

DL: That is what we want it to be. Especially given the importance that the show had, not only in the Grateful Dead canon, but as a legitimate piece of rock and roll music history. It heralds both the closing of the venue, and the effective end of an era.