Talk:Donna Jean Godchaux

Move

what is the reason that this page is named "Donna Godchaux" and not "Donna Jean Godchaux". the title is missing half of her first name.--GURT 22:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, the page should be moved. I've tagged it for now and will request it be moved if there are no objections. Strobilus (talk) 00:15, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I have not seen any objections to the move. You should proceed, if able. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.81.85.82 (talk) 06:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Name?

Why does the article say her name is "Donna Jean (Thatcher) Godchaux-Mackay" when she still uses just the last name "Godchaux" without the hyphenated "-Mackay"? She did remarry a man named David Mackay after Keith Godchaux died, but it looks like she kept her previous name. Timothy Horrigan (talk) 17:25, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe that for a while she was calling herself Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay. Also, per WP:MOSBIO#Names, "the subject's full name should be given in the lead paragraph, if known." With that being said, I'm not sure what her "real" full name is. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 18:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Why the history suppression?

I have a bone to pick, but not necessarily with any of you other contributors, since what I'm about to write is not in any history books (as far as I know), and thus you may be unaware of it. The biographical section reads:

"Shortly after her husband's death in 1980, Donna Jean turned to religion.[4] She married bassist David MacKay (former Fiddleworms member and bassist for Donna Jean Godchaux Band) and the couple moved to Florence, Alabama to work at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios."

Yes and no. For one thing, it's too vague: "religion" can mean anything from Christianity to Zen to Scientology, ad infinitum. Secondly, it blanks out aprox. 15 years of her life. Dave and Donna didn't move to Alabama until 1995 or '96. Another blanked out thing from this period is a rather excellent record she made with her new band (also unmentioned).

But since Donna's own site leaves this entire period blank, I'm not surprised that it's blank on this page. So here's the rest of the story:

I'm a Marin County-raised Deadhead, who at age 17 in 1980, converted not to "religion" in general, but to Pentecostal Christianity in an Assemblies of God church in Novato, CA. The church name was Marin Christian Life Church (MCLC) and the pastor was a man with a dynamic, mesmerizing personality, Roger V. Houtsma. A few months after joining the church, a seasoned keyboardist, James Trumbo (who had played with Van Morrison, etc.) joined. Then came his old friend, Dave MacKay. On the New Years' Eve church service (1980-81) I was treated to a real shocker. Donna Jean Godchaux got on stage and gave her "testimony," which basically went thus: "I'd tried everything; I tried doing drugs, I tried NOT doing drugs, I tried this and that, but I was always empty. Then my husband was killed and Jesus finally reached me." I used to see Donna on stage in Winterland and now she was part of my church! Pretty cool for a 17-year-old Deadhead convert!

James, David and Donna all joined MCLC and enrolled in the church's Marin Bible College. Shortly thereafter the three formed a band named "Zoe" (Greek for "Life") (not to be confused with the Contemporary Christian music group "Zoe Girl"). The lineup was: James Trumbo keyboards and vocals; Dave MacKay bass, guitar and vocals; and Donna Jean vocals. It was also around this time (give or take a few months) that Dave and Donna were married. In 1983, Zoe released an album (LP and cassette) titled "Never Be the Same." (I still have the LP to this day). They played often in our church and in venues ranging from The Sleeping Lady Cafe (Fairfax) to Golden Gate Park. Houtsma also had a short-lived local cable TV evangelism program, "Plumb Line," on which they were featured.

The three of them were already veteran, seasoned musicians, so it came as no surprise that their musical quality was superb. The surprising thing was the genuine profundity of the lyrics and the spiritual dynamics the songs released. Anyone, Christian or not, who was at all spiritually attuned, agreed with this. By late 1981 James Trumbo became my first piano teacher and he was the best of the best. His motto was "Practice makes perfect if you practice perfectly," and he immediately put me to work on the book "The Hanon Virtuoso Pianist."

This was wonderful for a few years, but a subtle shift was taking place. Roger Houtsma was excessively ambitious, and because of the status of the three (James, David and Donna) he was showcasing them to promote himself. He eventually sucked them into his vortex, which destroyed their creativity. Zoe eventually disbanded and James, David and Donna became part of the pastoral and Bible school staff. (All Deaheads know well the song, "The Music Never Stopped." This is when and how the music actually did stop.) Tragically, Donna cut her hair and started dressing and acting like a typical wealthy Marin County woman. This went on for years.

Deep inside, they were the same people, but their true selves were locked away in a fundamentalist cage of Houtsma's making. Donna remained a warm and friendly person though, and when I got married in 1987 she became friends with my wife. Along with another woman from the church, Donna was there at the Vallejo Kaiser Hospital when my daughter was born in May, 1990. I still have a photo of the short-haired Donna holding our one-hour-old baby. Donna's son Zion (fathered by Keith Godchaux) grew up in the church. Last time I saw him he was in 7th grade.

In Jan 1994, Dave MacKay performed my brother-in-law's wedding. Of course, we have all the wedding pictures to document that.

David and Donna remained in this condition until 1995 or '96 (I forget which). This was when they came out from under Roger Houtsma's ether. There was a falling out over Roger's alleged request that Donna give all her continuing Grateful Dead royalties to his World Outreach Ministry. And David also realized that under Roger, he'd become a mere stuffed suit (yeah, the former rocker had short hair and wore suits all the time). That's when they fully woke up, resigned from the church, moved to Alabama and got back into the music scene.

You see, I'm talking about approx. 15 very real years: years that are documented by the Zoe album, by taped Zoe performances in the church, by many photos, and by the recollection of hundreds of Marin Christian Life Church members. One of those former members is my good friend Anne Trumbo, widow of Zoe keyboardist James Trumbo, who died of brain cancer in March 2005. Anne has more memorabilia and recollections than all the rest of us put together. Another witness to all this, who is still alive and well, is bay area musician Pat Craig, formerly of The Tasmanian Devils (http://www.bay-area-bands.com/bab00094.htm). Pat also joined that church and played a few gigs with Zoe.

Every time since 2007 that I've looked at Donna's website, I've been rather dismayed by the omission of (approximately) 15 years of her life, especially that there was no mention of their band Zoe. Zoe is nothing at all to be ashamed of: rather it's a very real part of the S.F. Bay Area music legacy. Why should that history be erased?

And here is something that I find rather odd: An S.F. Gate article from 2008 in which Donna is interviewed claims that she "moved back to her native state 27 years ago" (http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-06-03/entertainment/17165168_1_grateful-dead-band-recording). That equals 1981, the year she joined MCLC. How could the journalist who interviewed her get it so wrong?

The substance of everything I've said here is true and verifiable, and it would be a disservice to the credibility of Wikipedia to exclude it. Let's think critically here: Wikipedia is supposed to be, and does its utmost to be, a reliable source of factual knowledge. If someone deliberately tries to suppress/erase factual knowledge which can be verified by record albums, photos, and the eyewitness testimony of literally hundreds of people, should a Wikipedia article play along with such a game? Or, should it remain true to its mission and tell the truth?

Also, to exclude any reference to the band Zoe is a rude dismissal of the memory of my late friend and teacher, James Trumbo, a true virtuoso pianist. As I said above, It has been especially painful for me to notice the glaring omission on Donna's website. I spent a day with James in their house in Daly City three months before he died in March 2005; when he could no longer play keyboards and could barely speak because the brain tumor was so aggressive. Donna flew back to S.F. for James' funeral three months later; so how could he have never existed?

Let me finish by reiterating that I'm not blaming any of the contributors who have posted to this article. I am only trying to alert you all that something is amiss; that someone is trying to gloss over the reality over more than a decade, and that if this sort of glossing is allowed to go unchecked in an encyclopedia, it will compromise the encyclopedia's credibility.

Finally: do any of you article editors live in or nearby Marin County? If so, you can do a little investigative journalism of your own. Stop by the Novato church. Several years ago MCLC changed leaders and changed its name to New Life Christian Center. It's still in the same location it always was: 1370 S. Novato Blvd (at the crossing of Rowland Blvd). The pastor is an old friend of mine, Caleb Klinge. Ask Caleb if Donna Jean and David were with the church all those years, and if they'd had a band called Zoe. See what he says. Then tell him S.F. Gate Magazine claims Donna moved back to Alabama in 1981. See him start choking.

A few references:

On Marin Christian Life Church:

    1. see pp. 35-38 of Ron Enroth's Recovering From Churches that Abuse. 

The book is now available free in pdf format at: http://www.reveal.org/development/Recovering_from_Churches_that_Abuse.pdf

    2. http://mommylife.net/archives/2007/03/doug_phillips_r.html 

(paragraph 3, near the top of the page)

    3. A Google search on "Marin Christian Life Church" will bring up scores of other pages.

On Donna Jean's MCLC pastor, Roger Houtsma: http://www.wo.org/about_roger.php

On the Zoe album, "Never Be The Same": http://www.musicbychristians.com/6zoe.html

On James Trumbo's earlier work with Van Morrison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Don't_Pull_No_Punches,_but_You_Don't_Push_the_River

On James Trumbo's later work, after he left MCLC in 1999, up to his death in 2005: http://www.jtfm.com/

Mahamaya1 (talk) 03:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for writing all that. It's very interesting and it does explain the "missing years" in Donna Jean's biography. Whether any of it should be included in the article is another question however. Please refer to these pages for a full explanation of why this is:

• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:No original research
• Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons

To summarize, Wikipedia articles should contain information that has already been published in reliable, third-party sources. As it says on the Verifiability page, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." So, if you saw something happen, you know that it's true, but it shouldn't be included in an article unless it can be attributed to a book, article, published interview, or other reliable source. And any investigative journalism on the part of Wikipedia editors should be excluded as original research. This is especially true for biographies of living persons. I don't think that the information you're talking about is being suppressed, although it's quite possible that Donna Jean herself doesn't like to talk about it. If reliable references can be found, then the material can be added. I hope all this makes sense. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 12:42, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

---

Thank you Mudwater for the comments. Yes, it makes sense and it's also a bit frustrating. Do you think a bare-bones version might be workable? What instantly comes to mind is that the Zoe album "Never Be The Same" is already listed in the web page which I cited, so it's not original research. And I can scan the front and back of the album cover. So, supposing that instead of saying she turned to "religion" (which is basically meaningless), I mention that she became a born-again Christian and played with the Marin-based band Zoe; and then mention the album name with the website footnote, and post the scanned album cover? Would that pass the "original research" and "verifiability" test?

Also, as I mentioned above, I have a photo of Donna Jean which I definitely have the rights to since it came from my camera and she's holding my daughter. Currently in the article there's only one photo of Donna, which is quite recent. If we can add one or two photos from her Dead years, then my photo from May 1990, then recent photo can be balanced as part of a progression from young to old. Same with album covers. If there's one picture from an old Keith and Donna album, then a pic of the Zoe album, followed later by the "Donna Jean" album (or another recent one) it would make for a balanced, chronologically sequenced article, without one phase of her life squeezing out the other phases.

If I were to add my photo, the caption might read something like, "Donna Jean Godchaux holding a friend's baby, Vallejo, CA, 1990."

The only other Wiki article I made any major contributions to was Jeffrey J. Kripal, in which I never got close to breaking the rules because I was directly citing his books and his university faculty page. So this Donna Jean thing is uncharted waters for me.

Thanks again...

Mahamaya1 (talk) 14:32, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you're getting into a bit of a grey area. Whether the types of edits you're talking about would be acceptable or not would depend on exactly what they said and exactly how they were referenced, and different editors might have different opinions about them also. While it's okay to have some statements that are not referenced (attributed), it's really better to err on the side of caution. So far I'm thinking that most of what you said should be left out of the article, unless reliable third party references can be found. And I think a picture of Donna Jean Godchaux holding a friend's baby would not support the written material that you're talking about. On the other hand, the existence of the Never Be the Same album can be referenced, so that's probably fair game, but beyond including it in the Discography section, I don't think it proves that much. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 01:17, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Elvis

Donna is NOT listed on "From Elvis in Memphis"'s Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Elvis_in_Memphis Does she actually sing on the album? One of the wiki pages is wrong, either the album or Donna's page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.234.36.72 (talk) 17:41, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Both pages are correct. Before Donna married Keith Godchaux her name was Donna Thatcher, and she's credited by that name on From Elvis in Memphis, and on some other albums as well. That's mentioned in this article, right after the "With other artists" heading. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 21:09, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

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Unique???

Was Donna the only woman formally recognized as a member of the Grateful Dead? PurpleChez (talk) 19:54, 20 August 2019 (UTC)