u/folderol-de-riddle

i was listening to a 1990 book signing discussion with robert hunter when he released his book 'box of rain'. i know there has been a question in the past of the meaning of fennario. i also noticed some discrepancies with the complete annotated grateful dead lyrics mention of it. so i thought i would post what robert hunter said.

Robert Hunter on Fennario: "... people were asking me where does that come from and, you know with all the peggy-os and the fennarios and the things that that come in and out of it, and best I could think is it goes back to the chateau and in the tunes that we were playing back then and some of those mournful, quasi mystical feels of those songs the jack-a-roe and fennario ballads and ... 

"you do know what fennario is don't you? yeah well if you read in Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America fennario is a four syllable generic term for a place in the sticks. so when a songwriter needed four syllables he would use fennario. if he needed three syllables he would use fyvie-o. this was a tradition. now you know more than you knew before unless you knew that before."

for reference, the sticks is defined as 'an area in the countryside that is far from a town or city'

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also just wanted to add a few interesting excerpts a from a 1980 relix article on the writing of a few songs:

Robert Hunter on Dark Star: "That was the first song I wrote with the Grateful Dead. We were down in Rio Nido [Calif., in September 1967] and I heard them playing it in the hall they were about to play. I just started scratching ideas on paper and got the “Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes” part and I said, “Why don’t you try this with it?” It worked well and then they wanted more verses. I finished up the second set of verses back in San Francisco. I got up—I was staying at 710 Ashbury— one morning fairly early, about 10:30 or 11, and stumbled over to the Panhandle at Golden Gate Park. I was sitting there, getting stuck on a verse, when along came a hippie who handed me a joint. He asked me what I was doing and I said I was writing a song called “Dark Star.” He said, “Oh.” That’s pretty much the story."

Robert Hunter on US Blues and Saturday Night: "I originally wrote it for the song which became Weir’s “'One More Saturday Night.' He took the lyrics and wrote some rock-and-roll changes behind them, and then he decided to rewrite the lyrics. This was well and fine, but then he asked me if he could use the title 'United States Blues.' I said, “No, man, that’s mine.” So he called his song 'One More Saturday Night' and I took the title 'United States Blues' and rewrote it again. And I gave it to Jerry this time."

Robert Hunter on Friend of the Devil: "I was playing bass with the New Riders, although I never did actually get to the stage with them. We were sitting around practicing one night and I had “Friend of the Devil” more or less already written. I said “Try this out,” and David Nelson and John Dawson helped by smoothing out some of the rough changes. I still have the recording of that evening and it’s not that different. Then, we went down to get some coffee and Marmaduke said, “It’s a real good song but it has that one repeating line.” The line was, “It looks like water but it tastes like wine,” and he asked me if I could get anything punchier. I said, “I got it” and came out with “A friend of the devil is a friend of mine.” He said, “You got it; that’s it.” So I took the tape back to the Larkspur house where the Riders were staying. When I got up the next morning, I heard Garcia listening to the tape. He had that funny look in his eye. The next thing you know, he’d written a bridge for it, the “Anne Marie” part. Before that, it was the same melody all the way through. The next thing I knew, the Grateful Dead had snatched it up, much to the New Riders’ dismay."