It was cut from the same tree as Jerry Garcia's "Tiger!" Now, 35 years after it was stolen during a riot at a festival in Germany, Moonalice's Pete Sears has his bass back!

Here is the back story of how this came about in the words of Tom Lieber, the luthier at the Doug Irwin Custom Shop who fashioned the beautiful “Dragon” in 1976-77 under the Doug Irwin Shop name. While he was designing and building the Dragon bass, Tom also worked with Doug on the early designs of Jerry Garcia's “Tiger.”

In an exclusive interview with Moonalice News today, Tom said, “It was December 8, 2009, after Pete and I had a familiar (35 year) conversation about the possible fate that had befallen “Dragon.” We thought that now with the existence of the internet our chances were greater in reaching out and finding her. So, we created a post on the Grateful Dead forum “http://www.RUKIND.com.”

Tom continued, "This forum was instrumental in the recovery of the bass! Though it took over 4 years before any information erupted, as it turned out German musician Klaus Wilms had possession of the bass for 20 of the 35 years that it was missing. When he conducted an internet search on the bass he came across our post on www.RUKIND.Com!"

"Pete and I always held out hope that the bass hadn't been burned in the barn fire created by the riot in Germany. And for 35 years it was Pete who insisted he felt the bass was in Germany just sitting in someone’s closet. His intuition turned out to be prophetic; the bass was indeed just sitting in Klaus Wilms’ closet. We were very fortunate that Klaus’s stewardship of “Dragon” was remarkable!"

"Thank you to Klaus! Thank you to www.RUKIND.Com…!!!”

The www.RUKIND.com forum is an amazing community of musicians and store of knowledge. The messages that led to the recovery of Pete’s base can be found in the thread "everything else." The original thread is entitled "76 Irwin Bass."

Tom Lieber (www.LieberGuitars.com) shared two never-before-seen photos of Pete Sears' beautiful "Dragon" bass, one of which shows the hardware removed for restoration.