"Final Tour" D&C and Phish Tonight (long thoughts)

This post first appeared on the Phish.net forum on July 16, 2023.

Mostly, I was responding the phenomenon of these different scenes I've known chasing each other around for so many years that it's been difficult to keep track.

1985 was the year that the Grateful Dead really turned my head around. It happened on November 1st to be exact. My entire understanding of music shifted like tectonic plates suddenly quaking after the pressure had been building for years. Almost simultaneously, a dear friend was seeing his college band Phish for the fourth or fifth time. He has quite possibly exceeded 300 shows at this point but doesn't really keep track. There's a lot to keep track of in that nearly 40-year time span.

Here's the thing, though. I didn't see Phish until 1987, one of my biggest three "touring" years with the Grateful Dead. That was a whopping 18 shows. I'd never done anything like it before in my life. Every other band was just a single whistle-stop hit, except for Phish who I saw twice that summer. The funky cassette packages a friend would later mail from Vermont starting in 1988 and 1989, complete with elaborately painted j-cards, were like telegrams from a blooming scene. Something cool was happening in Vermont.

At the same time Phish was finding their touring sea legs, the Grateful Dead were having a third or fourth wind. From a Pearl Street apartment in Burlington (where I was living that summer of 87), we watched with horrified glee as Touch of Grey played on MTV repeatedly. There were mini-docs about the "scene," appearing later in the summer as the "Day of the Dead," and their only top 40 hit ever was smearing the classic rock and pop radio airwaves. The band who I saw at Nectar's, Phish, was cool. Somehow, they fit into my then growing pantheon of neo-hippie bands such as New Potato Caboose, Living Earth, Max Creek, and so on. Phish was a little different, though.

Fast forward to 1990, my biggest touring year with the Grateful Dead, and I managed to fit four Phish shows into the schedule. By this point, I knew their music well, had my favorite tunes and listened for new ones, but my life was heading in a new and different (i.e. post-college) direction. Still, at any given point from 1991 through 1995, if I was going to see live shows, multiple live shows, I was going to have to choose between my big three: JGB, the Grateful Dead and Phish. There were countless other bands I could see locally no matter where my transience took me (D.C., Maine, New York, Colorado, Oregon), but these were the two bands I'd travel for.

All of this ended in 1995. Jerry's death was a crushing blow, and it signaled the true end of an era for me. I pretty much hung up the traveling shoes for good. The Dead were no more. Phish? I loved them, but I wasn't going to tour. Life had to move on to the business of adulting. Ratdog in 1996 was the last Dead-related show I attended outside of a small handful of Zen Trickster parties until 2001. My Phish shoes were hung up in 1998. I was done. It was done. I didn't even seek out live recordings or anything. Past was past.

OK, it's never really over, is it? In 2001, a friend convinced me to drive over a thousand miles to Asheville, NC from Rockland, ME to see two Phil and Friends concerts. How did she convince me? A FedEx package delivered crisp FOBs of Phil's April 1999 Warfield run with Trey and Page. I couldn't believe that my two camps had actually teamed up and made music together. And what music! After a rough winter at a new job in an isolated community and failing relationship, the road trip made sense. It led to a second act as a music fan I would never have thought possible.

First of all, Phil Lesh's Quintet from 2000-2003 was something to behold. No one had ever heard this catalog interpreted in this manner. At the second show I attended that spring, Phil played a nearly 45-minute Dark Star-> Blues for Allah-> Dark Star that left me speechless and wondering what it was that I had been missing. Earlier in the day, I'd stood baffled in front of someone's van, trying to i.d. the year on a particular Dead recording (I have a knack for this), only to discover that everyone was laughing at my reaction to Dark Star Orchestra (DSO). I'd never even heard of them at that point. This was a voyage of (re)discovery.

While I missed seeing Phish live during the 2.0 era, my concert life was reenergized with Phil, DSO, and some memorable Ratdog shows. The machine was up and running again. In 2006, worlds collided for me when I saw Phil Lesh and Friends at Great Woods. The Gordon Russo Anastasio Benevento (G.R.A.B.) collab opened, and it was a rocketship experience for me. Where had this been in my life? Missing, it turns out. Still, I very much enjoyed hearing Mike (one first set sit in) and Trey (the entire second set) jam with Phil. It was vindication, in many ways. While some Deadhead friends turned up their noses, I was enamored. This felt like a very special moment in time.

When Phish reunited in 2009, I was equally stoked by the possibilities signaled by the latest iteration of the Dead. What had been a one off, Terrapin Station: a Grateful Dead Family Reunion in 2002, led to a tour of the Dead in summer 2003 and 2004. The 2008 election brought the "Core Four" back together in support of Obama. This iteration was to add Warren Haynes and start touring in April of 2009 on the heels of Phish's triumphal return at Hampton earlier in March. The worlds were overlapping and knitting together once again.

The Dead Worcester 4/19/09

The Dead were a bit disappointing in 2009, Warren Haynes unable to propel the momentum forward for me. No matter, I had some Phishin' to do that summer! What a blessing to have had them back, I thought, just as the Dead grow stale. Then, in a move I would never have anticipated, Bobby and Phil partnered up with John Kadlecik, the sanguine soul of Dark Star Orchestra, and Joe Russo, the propulsive element behind G.R.A.B. Worlds were colliding again, and now summer plans were knit around choosing between a Grateful Dead act and Phish. Wait, what century is this?

Summers of 2010, 2011, and 2012 were busy ones, and the show balance fell in a band's favor only because it fit with my schedule. Thus, summer 2010 saw a ton of Furthur with a little Phish in the fall; summer 2011 featured a little bit of both since I was preoccupied with moving; summer 2012 found me hitting four for each band, weaving their schedules together for a convenient Northeast loop. Ratdog shows, when they toured, were a seasoning that had been sprinkled in ever since I returned to the fold in '01. 2007 was a particularly strong year for Bobby (re: Steve Kimock guested), and it came at a time when neither Phish or Phil were out there much (OK, except Mountain Jam).

Somewhere along the line, and I'm not exactly sure where or when or how, Phish's gravity had begun to pull a bit harder. My focus for 2013 was zeroed in on Phish, and the Furthur shows just didn't fit my schedule. Fall in Worcester was nice, and padded enough summer that late in the year to get me through winter. Still, that summer, I was having to choose between my beloved camps. Not easy choices, choices I had been making since about 1987 or 1990, and here it was 2013. The following year, I was vaguely aware of a Ratdog tour, but Randall's and Chicago all but erased that possibility, and I was satisfied. Randall's was as close as I'd been to a Phish fest yet, and I was loving it.

Nothing prepared me for 2015, though. Worlds collided again. Trey would be playing in Fare Thee Well? Rumors had been flying in late 2014. Steve Kimock. John Kadlecik. Mark Karan. I've forgotten the others by now, but there were others. Trey? All right. My mind immediately went back to those April 1999 discs I'd received way back when, and I was very excited at the prospects for what this would bring. So, it seemed, was the rest of Boomer and Gen X America. Purportedly, a fairy at the GDTS TOO got us in, and for the first time in a long time, I was having "that" sort of anticipation. I mean . . . come on. Fifty years? And one of Phish is at the helm?

Summer of 2015 is a bit of a blur, now. It just happened to coincide with my introduction to medical cannabis. It just so happened that I couldn't resist Magnaball. The biggest Grateful Dead even in ages, and a Phish festival? It was a lot to process, and I don't think I have fully processed it except to say this: I thought that was it. Fare Thee Well was a goodbye, right? Adios? Well, by fall of 2015, Bobby and the drummers were already making up new vows, enlisting John Mayer, and that brings the audience to 2023.

For the past eight summers, there has been an audience tug of war between Dead & Company and Phish for some. Searching Phish.net for Dad & Slow (Dead & Co.) one can see that complaints and bickering debates over who is more worthy of hard earned cash have been raging the entire time. Musical debates aside, no one can argue that these two cultures haven't grown exponentially. Phish has been selling Dick's out the entire time, while Dead & Co. fill stadiums and sheds with their multigenerational tribe.

In 1985, Twenty Years So Far seemed like a long time for any rock band, let alone the notoriously dissolute Grateful Dead. In 2023, it's a head scratcher still how all of this continues. Who knows what Bobby & Company will bring to the world musically over the next few summers, but it won't be as monumental as this "Last Tour" has been. The Shakedown Streets, mad vending and carnival atmosphere will subside more than likely. The silky smooth stadium sound system Slipknots will be a recorded memory. The tough choice some were making this weekend–Alpharetta for Phish or San Fran for Dead & Co.–won't exist. Period.

There will be other iterations of Phil and Friends, but let's be clear: Lesh is 83. Bob will tour his Wolf Pack, but at 75, it's hard to imagine how much this will capture the Deadhead nation's imagination. There will always be Dead cover bands, too, but they cannot possibly capture the weight of what I'm considering, here: the Grateful Dead and Phish scenes have interwoven and overlaid themselves in my life for almost forty years.

That's a lot of joy through music; let's "keep the mother rollin' / One more time."

Where Have all the Deadheads Gone?

 Written in December of 1997: "Keeping Those Lamps Trimmed and Burning."

On Aug 9, 1995, thousands of mourners gathered at Portland, Oregon's Memorial Coliseum to pay homage to the late Jerry Garcia. At the time, there was no question as to the presence of Deadheads and the strength of the wide-reaching community. I saw them, three generations' worth, tossing long-stemmed roses and pixie-dust toward a make-shift shrine for Jerry.

Almost three years later, many Deadheads have been cut adrift, having to pick through new and different scenes scattered across the nation. And the search for those tough-to-describe moments of standing on mystical thresholds of possibility that the Grateful Dead helped to facilitate in such abundance continues.

Is there any way that now, we–who are it and definitely on our own–can continue to create environments that open up those thresholds of magic? Can it be Dead-related or should it be something entirely new? Dan Cohen-Peltier, owner of the Portland-based tie-dye and memorabilia shop Think Good Thoughts, is definitely experimenting. His efforts to bring the community together at local music events have been wading through the murky areas of these tough-to-answer questions, providing insight into some of the possibilities. Cohen-Peltier's focus is zeroing in on the Zen Tricksters.

***

Obviously, the binding force that glued the amorphous body of us Deadheads (by the 1990s, numbering well into the hundreds of thousands) together was the Grateful Dead. Described as everything from an "audience with a heightened sense of adventure" to a group of freeloading, stoned-out gypsies to a cult, we are a phenomenon that developed alongside the band. Indeed, the Grateful Dead were never a band in any way disassociated from their audience. Rather, their initial beginnings were inimitably linked to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the Hell's Angels, and the parties mutually thrown. Certain Fillmore tapes reveal make and PA problems due to the excess numbers of fans on stage while on the Haight-Ashbury scene, the Dead threw innumerable free concerts. Audience and band were one.

Throughout their development and growth in popularity, some physical separation between band and audience was inevitable, but the psychic spirit of the Acid Tests endured. My sister Jean always said that waking up in the "lot" scene of a Grateful Dead run was like waking up in your favorite neighborhood. "There we'd all be, in our pajamas greeting a new day. After breakfast, you could be out and about amongst all your favorite people, and all you had to do was get ready for a show."

Though Jean's tastes may not have been universal for Deadheads–some preferred the isolation of room-service hotels while others never went on tour–it is undeniable that a key ingredient to the statement "There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert" was the audience. Deadheads made for a comfortable and colorful cushion between the compressed limitlessness of a Dead show and the cold, harsh reality of urban America's concrete corridors waiting outside. Deadheads created the ambiance to which the band members adjusted their tone and output. Deadheads fostered the situation that prompted Bill Graham to quote one of his ushers at the 1971 closing of the Fillmore East as saying, " 'The Grateful Dead aren't just music, they're an environment.' "

As such an important component of the scene, one would think that we could gather in a field and just make it happen. Right?

***

For the past two years, Cohen-Pletier has been gathering names for a growing mailing list announcing upcoming Deadhead-related events. The Think Good Thoughts logo, featuring the easily distinguishable Steal Your Face, also appears in local newspaper club listenings beside names of national jam bands. A few recent shows Think Good Thoughts has been promoting include Zuba, God Street Wine, the JGB Band, David Grisman, and the Crystal Ballroom New Year's Eve extravaganza with the Zen Tricksters.

Cohen-Peltier has a vision; he would like to set up environments where the spirit, the magical IT that kept people coming back to Dead shows year after year, can happen. The mysterious IT was something like music; it was an organic tapestry weaving past and future into the fabric of the present moment. The IT was that curious blend of people and music that could turn a temporal, non-event into one of magical timelessness. The IT was the experience that Cohen-Peltier recognizes as being impossible to describe. "Trying to explain IT in words," he says, "is to limit what is ultimately an infinite experience." (Unfortunately, language is almost all we have.)

During a Dead show, "there would be that one moment of 'Oh yeah!' " says Cohen-Peltier. "Suddenly, you would remember the reasons why you came." He describes a psychedelic coalescence of forces that assisted one's ability to "push the envelope" of his or her consciousness. The Dead were conducive to such an environment as they created an open and enormously emotive musical landscape. "Most music, for me, is like standing on a beach with the waves lapping at your toes. But when listening to the Dead, it was like being fully submerged in the ocean." As far as continuing the possibility for these expansive, psychedelic experiences in the future, Cohen-Peltier says that "creating forums like the Dead experience is a way to get there, it's a forum that I know."

Initially, Cohen-Peltier's vision inspired him to establish UDHOPE (United Deadheads of Portland and Everywhere). The idea was to have an amorphous body of Deadheads contributing whatever ideas they had concerning local and worldwide events that would pull the community together. That way, the community would mirror the spirit of the Dead where they actively dissuaded leadership and celebrity monomania; it would be a collective endeavor. With little feedback and low participation in UDHOPE, Cohen-Peltier's next step was to begin promoting shows under the locally recognized heading of Think Good Thoughts.

While the shows have been quite successful, Cohen-Peltier has been looking for more. Not all the spinoff bands from the Dead scene–the JGB Band, Ratdog, and Second Sight, among them–are able to "step aside" and allow themselves to become a conduit for the bigger, transcendent sounds of the psychedelic experience. Cohen-Peltier calls that ethereal sound the "seventh member" of the Dead.

Not finding that experience initially did not leave Cohen-Peltier without hope. Instead, it fostered a fascination for a band that was able to get close the oceanic musical experience: the Zen Tricksters. Hailing from Long Island, New York, this Dead-cover band initially seems to be an unlikely candidate for rallying the community spirit. Cohen-Peltier recognizes Phish's ability to "rip holes in the cosmic fabric of the universe," but they have their own gig. Phish are creating their own environment with their own music. The Tricksters, on the other hand, are allowing themselves to be conduits for what it is that the Dead's music is able to conjure. "In fact," Cohen-Peltier notes, "they hit the nail on the head." Not only that, but Cohen-Peltier feels that the music should be played. And why not? Did chamber groups and symphonies stop performing Mozart merely because he died?

The focus on Cohen-Peltier's end of assisting the Deadhead community to continue is now coalescing around the Zen Tricksters. His new management company, Peak Experience, will be booking them nationally. Here in Portland, we are blessed with the annual New Year's Eve concert, advertised as an event "for Deadheads," encouraging the beer swilling, party crowds to poke around elsewhere for their New Year bacchanalia. The question still lurks, though, does the Deadhead experience have to be closely linked to the Grateful Dead's music?

***

On a dark, wet November night, a crowd gathers outside the Portland Art Museum's Grand Ballroom where the David Grisman Quintet is scheduled to play. A woman with dreadlocks and a patchwork dress is quietly vending handmade clothing. She is one of many with the tell-tale index finger poised high for a miracle. A congenial, long-haired chap, Eli, who says that he hails from the "Deadlot," is also waiting on potential loose tickets. 

For Eli, it was the fact that everyone had one thing in common that made the Dead scene special. He acknowledges that related events do provide some of the same talismanic keys, but they are not quite the same. "The Hog Farm's parties are true," he says. And you can do it yourself, "you can still have an Acid Test, but Jerry's just not there." Eli adds that Rainbow Gatherings potentially provide that special release for people, but "unless you're an avid drummer, you can't really do it. You can't get there."

In Eli's version of the IT, he makes no bones about the special presence of Jerry. It is for this reason that he doesn't avidly search after a Grisman ticket. When asked if we can create such an environment agin, without Jerry, he looks wistfully up the block with the sounds of ankle bells and quiet requests for tickets trickle through the halogen-lit rain. "Well," he says, pondering, "it has to be an environment where you can let go of the day-to-day control and be willing to take risks to be different. It has to be that P.T. Barnum-carnivalesque where anything could happen."

Perhaps the Zen Trickster's New Year will deliver some of the magic. Perhaps the show will open the thresholds of wonder and possibility, making for one more "transitive nightfall of diamonds." Perhaps Cohen-Peltier is on to something and together with the Tricksters will be able to live up to his vision of "taking the best bigs of the and bringing them into the future."

***

Inside the Grisman show, deep green and rich purple lights saturate the stage. Blue smoke billows forth in thick clouds, and the Ballroom echoes with sanguine harmonies. A special feeling wanders the aisles and lifts with Grisman's tremulous licks. It is obvious that this is a different type of event. Larry, one of the Ballroom's friendly ushers, says with a smile, "We normally get the shirt and tie crowd, but these folks are from the 70s: love, peace, and happiness." A couple of Grisman's longer pieces from Dawg '90 get the full workout, finding psychedelic, discordant breakdowns that reconnect to the melodic ballad structures through gentle teasings. There are even clusters of gyrating dancers on the balcony where they can find a little space to move. Still, Eli's words about that single-focused audience and carnival atmosphere ring true: this Grisman show is a sit-down event.

The audience-band interaction comes mostly with the request to dim the house lights. Grisman responds sardonically, that "we have to have the 'dawn-of-man' lights." After the laughter and cheers subside, Grisman finds the quiet moment to introduce his next number, Dawg's Waltz, adding, "This one's for Jerry."

TIGDH: 9/25/76

This post first appeared on the Phish.net Forum on September 26, 2024.

Fall. It simply oozes nostalgia and the fleeting threads of summer that got away. Here in Maine, there are plenty of mums, zinnias, black-eyed Susans, and dahlias splashing color beneath the final remnants of summer's green leaves to keep the vibe alive. While memory doesn't serve me well anymore, I recall frosts the final week of August or early-September when I was a kid. If that made for earlier foliage, I can't remember. Regardless, New England's fall air still retains that unmistakable crisp morning dew which can give way to Colorado blue-sky heat in the afternoon. It is bright and wistful; and when it comes to tour, this is, hands down, my favorite season.

Is my bias toward fall shows due to the fact that I saw my first Grateful Dead show in September? The sky was robin egg blue with lowland mist in fields when we skipped school for our big adventure. Portland, Maine's afternoon light cut at a low angle, and I still recall cracking that first, warm, brown-bottle Budweiser at about 1pm. The day unfolded like Dead shows do, something I was soon to learn more about. The short-order cook from York Beach who had alerted me to this event popped by to share a doob. High school friends wafted past; it all seemed so . . . natural. After the show, the once-burdensome jean jacket came in handy for the cold.

(9/17/82 a night to "sort of" remember.)

It is convincing that this is what seared in me a deep connection to fall shows, but I can't be sure. It may just be habit. Each year thereafter, as summer faded into piles of pumpkins and parched corn husks, there was a recap of spring and summer tour. A toast. Deadheads, I soon learned, were spoiled. One could argue that a date like September 17 actually precedes autumnal equinox, while weather nerds will say, "But it's meteorological fall on September 1st." No matter which side of that argument one takes, change is in the air. Summer is passing, and school is in session. Whatever timeless float one felt during that last week of July, the calendar has been sweeping it away like fallen leaves trailing tailgates. And the Dead would tour.

Phish fans like Deadheads were once spoiled, too. I can still recall the unparalleled joy of seeing Phish at Thunderbird's on a cool October night. We wandered our New England brick city, feeling the need for a sweater or hat, shooting pool in the Old Port, bright red ivy on granite. A tinge of fish rot and salt used to permeate the air above Fore Street, mixing with cigarette butt cat piss apartment aroma, depending on the street. (Walking, walking, always walking.) Still finding sea legs after the Grateful Dead's fall tour, somehow, Portland, ME, and UNH the following night, evoked a deeper sense of fall. Few memories pop up in as much sepia as those tequila-twinged high-nights in early-October.

(Did I really see Phish at the UNH Field House? Wow.)

Living in D.C. during the fall of 1986 without a Grateful Dead tour on the docket, the time was a bit lonely and yet expansive (what would I do?). D.C. was more summer-like than anything in Maine, and yet it still conveyed that essence of change in light, even if cicadas still chattered and buzzed afternoons. Brent Mydland showed up with Go Ahead, but that was it. Stepping up my tape trading game at the time, a friend spun me the "must have" 9/25/76 from the Capital Center. I had yet to see a show there, but my imagination reeled down aisles of hockey-arena hippie stills, complete with '76 wedge haircuts and long plaid collars protruding from sweaters. Happening just ten years prior, the show's essence was like an older sibling's whisper about a college Halloween party you had missed, something evoking orange oaks shedding under street lights.

Listening then, though I had a budding 1976 collection, Landover stood out. It was a fluid, yet locked-in sound, thundering and delicate. Songs waned like long afternoon light. I knew nothing about the Travis Bean back then, but 1976 had a specific signature. When Jerry broke out the slide on Cosmic Charlie, for example, it was metallic, tinny but rich, fragile and strong, wandering but tight. It, for me, became a sound of autumn much like Portland '82's tuning up for the second-ever Touch. It's inexplicably autumn, like the hiss of tires on a cold, wet street. Half-Step ushering in a new season. Dancin' a capstone of the summer before, yet almost expressing relief at the temperatures subsiding.

(Maxell XLIIs burned this into my DNA.)

It's striking how a tape collected in the fall from a fall tour can mesh so wholeheartedly with the essence of fall that it becomes an unshakeable element of the music in the listener's imagination. First set's Cassidy and Peggy-O embody this by never rushing their watery 1976 diminuendo. The second set drifts and dreams like the final floating of fuzzy seeds from Balloon milkweed. Like the season, fall tour was a routine I took for granted until the day Garcia died. There would be fall tour. Period. Disrupted in '86 and '92, it remained a fact of Grateful Dead life until my final fall run in 1993. After a friend helped me find Phil Lesh again in 2001, I rediscovered the autumn groove in Lewiston's Central Maine Civic Center. I declared it a beautiful dump. It was magical, running into friends absent for years. "What are you doing, here, man? Where ya been?"

Autumn is summer's sunset; and that's how I remember the shows. Donning a fleece for Furthur at Red Rocks; toasting the dimly lit smiles of TAB fans inside Fredericton's Molson Tent; spying Jupiter's moons through a telescope in Augusta on Phish's fall 2010 run; sleeping in my sister's truck on Philly lot in 87; seeing Furthur one November at the Cumberland County Civic Center before they changed its name (catching TABoose there, and in Lowell after exploring a former mill converted into breweries and shops); walking off Thanksgiving to the Dunk in Providence; the Warlocks; wading through a self-inflicted haze one October in Charleston; finding joy again in Worcester, 2013, fall is where I want to be.

It's easy to imagine similar emotional evocations from splitting wood, tailgating at football games, stoking fire pits after clearing brush, or catching glimpses of foliage under the stress of a penalty kick. For me, the skid of a leaf across sidewalk concrete will always suggest another chance to chase the sound and look for familiar faces beneath the barren brush.

See you out there.

Set Your Soul Free -> What's the Use (Part 2)

The Journey Home

Sometimes, the more serene emotional landscapes of my life have come after great internal stresses and tensions. Entheogenic journeys are like this, too. Untying the Gordian knot inside one's head is no easy feat. Sometimes, entheogens prove to be like Alexander's sword, severing the blockages with the edge of Occam's razor. Earth-shattering epiphanies can be as simple as the realization that one need only be grateful for health and love.

Still, we sometimes create our own hells. Trey was eager to remind me of this on night two in Berkeley, opening the show with Olivia's Pool. Whatever transgressions against self and universe had taken place, they were in on the emotion and poked my eye. However, the healing had already begun thanks to the previous night's journey (and a little help from my friends). Some time after 11 am–fortified on the still good New York bagels Jeremy brought from Staten Island–we headed up the hills to find the Nimitz Trail in the Tilden Nature Area.

This walk was inspirational, and, as an East Coaster, mind-boggling. Yes, we all know that West Coasters have access to amazing public parks right from their doorstep. Little, however, prepares an Eastie for the vast expanses of public land available. Just a few miles from my Air BnB, here was terrain that stretched for miles. The areas were vast enough that it is conceivable that a broken ankle or wrong turn could prove costly, very costly. Signs warned of mountain lions and spotty cell service, and the amount of public land surrounding us easily exceeded the size of Catskill Park or the White Mountain National Forest. Nice.

Tilden Nature Area astonished this Eastie.

The wet winter made the hills verdant. Wildflowers dotted the meadows, and I had a moment of acceptance. I could have made a life for myself on the West Coast back in the 1990s. Portland, OR was home, and Mt. Tabor provided a wee taste of what Berkeley was now flashing. Still, the walking and the air and the sun all helped me relax and flow. The vast expanses of the Western landscape can be reassuring, a good reminder that "[t]here are more things in heaven and earth . . . [t]han are dreamt of in [our] philosophy" (Hamlet.1.v.). We are but small players on that stage.

By 2:30 or so, Jeremy and I were itchin' to hit the line. We thought that maybe there was a chance that the mad rush had died down a bit. After being dropped off, I walked back down La Loma to find that I was situated rather closely to the Greek. Not bad. I found Jeremy waiting on the corner of Hearst and Piedmont, a long, long way from the gate. At least this afforded time to pop down the hill and grab a bhán mì. This was both lunch and dinner, and the line was slow. When we started moving in, at least the feeling was more relaxed, having been sated the previous night. The nitrous mafia was out in full force, and (naturally) there was copious cannabis smoke. Folks were not shy about drinking, either, and at one point, I bought myself a Heady Topper. It had come all the way from Vermont in a cooler.

It's difficult not to be impressed in Berkeley.

Having chilled and hiked and gotten our ya-yas out the night before, the upper bowl lawn seemed fine. No need to clamor for the rail. There isn't a bad seat in the Greek, anyway. Seriously. By the second set, we were at the "rail" of the lawn, a perched vista taking in the whole scene. The Campanile poked above the skyline, and the Bay was visible in bits and pieces, reminding me of an old Greek poster from 1983. We were free to boogie, and the songs were imbued with the very reflections I was still mulling from the previous day. After Olivia's Pool, the serene Seven Below from my favorite LP Round Roo, helped open and calm the heart. The messaging is in the pacing and temperament: reminding one to keep it all on the down low. Trey's and Page's interplay defined this as a distinctly 2023 sound, and my chest was the cavity in which it echoed. All heart.

A classic view of the Greek with the Campanile.

Never one to simply leave calm resolutions, Maze was up next, another reminder of my angst, abuses, and thinking traps. Spinning round and round, stuck in a labyrinth of my own making, the message here is clear. You won't get out, so why not let all obstructing emotions go? Easier said than done, and Berkeley has been at the center of such healing arts for more than half a century. Somewhere, in a backyard down that very hill, Japhy Ryder extols the virtues of Zen Buddhism and meditation. Somewhere, in a backyard down that hill, Japhy Ryder prophesied a backpack revolution of Dharma Bums seeking enlightenment far from the material ladders their 1950s peers obsessively climbed. 

I thought of the Ishmael Reed poem I had stumbled across in the midst of my angst despair on Saturday on Addison Street, not too far from Ellsworth St.

East meets West.

Though it had little to do with the poem, the sentiment made me feel content for having chosen to go back to Maine all those moons ago. East. And just as I'm letting these thoughts go on the breeze, Mountains in the Mist appeared. Linked to an ineffable longing connected to my summer 2021 break from previously locked thinking, the Trey and Page December release both saddened and reassured me. Pandemic grief, my own slow growth, the fits and starts. Like a puzzle piece, it kept the meaning flowing.

(Anastasio/Marshall)

© Who Is She? Music, Inc. (BMI)

several times unconsciously I've stumbled on the path

and seen a mountain in the mist

rain falls on my shoulders, sun rises in the east

I'm worn and bruised but I am here at least

I guess I'm just an obstacle, a thing to overcome

if I can sneak around myself again I'll know I've won

the moment seems to hand and float before me with no end

till I'm released, awaken beast, I'm on the road again

but now I'm soaring far too high

A speck of dust up in the sky

where tiny clouds go sailing by

pull me down today

pull me down today

woven in the fairy tales we fabricate each day

are little golden strands of truth that glimmer in the light

the colorful material you hold a certain way

can keep us from the cold and help to get us through the night

but now I'm soaring far too high

A speck of dust up in the sky

where tiny clouds go sailing by

pull me down today

. . .

The last line of the first verse shatters me, and I can rebuild my understanding about sneaking around myself and tricking the soul (no matter how deep that fallacy). It's a beautiful melancholy that I feel as though I can live with for some time. Hike, mist, view, water, respire, accept. Is it possible? Did Han Shan reach a state of stasis and contentment? It is daily practice, daily practice, daily practice I repeat, muttering on repeat. Letting go of desire.

OK, it is true: I am among those "who love to take a bath," and the goofy joy of Bathtub Gin makes it all fun. Afterall, that's why we're here right? It's a dance party everywhere you look. The Greek doing what the Greek does best! Bliss. Friendship. Warmth. Movement. Knowing through kinesthesia. Smiles. Scattered bits of talk and laughter. A stray clap. The sounds of feet in dirt. Sun setting. This is why we came. The rest of the set simply works that way.

Set two night two continues my ruminations. The Kill Devil Falls-> Fuego-> Light trifecta carries meaning, more than may meet the eye at first glance. The first song, a reflection on the consequences of binging and lacking enough empathy to see its impact on loved ones, propelled me into a joyous letting go in that I'm not alone in experience. Many of us have traveled these pits. Trey has traveled these pits, dragging skin and soul across the broken glass barnacles of self-induced despair. We heal, too, though. Fuego, for me a celebration of all good things 2014 and my evolving version of adulting, takes a nice journey into the Light. It's something to be mindful of, to step into the light, to walk the bright side of the road.

In the end, for many, this can be a Lonely Trip. Mind meld. The show and my mind are one at this point, and it's mostly the dancing that congeals the experience. Phil gives me a big hug on Numberline (we're logging 40 years of friendship as of this year), and it feels like celebration. We've pushed through darkness and travails, and here we are: stars, lights, color, happy feet dancing in the grass. It's a great reminder, too, how the athletic side of the dance is sometimes enough. And I don't know how I hear it, but Ghosts of the Forest sounds are echoing all around the bowl. The Greek catharsis is mourning loss and celebrating life all in one.

Day three, we all woke late. I ate a huge breakfast and drank coffee while overlooking the Bay. (I could do that every day.) We walked around the campus. Waited on line. Read. Soaked in the sun. It was finally warm, the weather I'd been hoping for from California. Met up with people from here and there. Sneered at the balloons littering the beautiful streets. Ate something, nothing too memorable, and found our way back to a similar spot on the lawn far earlier than we had been on previous days. I think that they started opening the gates earlier and earlier each day. By now, we were in the zone, spaced and patiently waiting for whatever would happen. The band opened with I Never Needed You Like This Before, and it was an expression of truth. I needed the scene: the fans, the smells, the sounds, the circus, friends, and music. 

The second set was equal parts joy and reflection. I was feeling the contentment that comes from a sense of not needing. Anything. So when I heard the first strains of Beneath a Sea of Stars, I pinched myself. It was a song I had predicted, oddly, and it delivered what I needed. It's an expression of our gathering, spinning off on that cosmic dust of whatever it was that exploded outwardly in 1965 from this very land, Muir Beach a mere 25 miles to the west, and the Harmon Gym a snowball's toss away. We were Emerson's transparent eyeball, the wavelengths passing through, feet grooving. Dust between the toes feels like a good filth. Earth.

Searching for life.

Weekapaug grooving got me fired up all over again, sweating away the night with the right tempo. Abandon. Joy. But wait, Cool it Down comes next, a standard favorite from the Velvet Underground's Loaded. This is a song that I never thought I would see, and yet it was perfectly placed. Emotionally, cool it down, man, bring that energy down. They were speaking to me, "lookin' for Miss Linda Lee," needing "to use up the night." Still, man, you got to slow down, "cool it down," hide your love away, one could say. Put that desire and wounded need back where it belongs, even though "it makes no difference." 

Does this make me a "genuine asshole," or just someone struggling to keep up? "Unhead the knee!" Sometimes, even the absurdist humor hits pain. It's like throwing darts or seeing what sticks to the wall, but this first hearing of Don't Doubt Me felt like a celebration of all things modern Phish. Absurd and poignant simultaneously. Sadness imbuing psychedelic mind-meld with confused nostalgia. What year is it? Where am I? And just like that, a switch is flipped, and I'm being admonished to Set Your Soul Free. Damn. It's a sober message. Let go of desire, the root of all suffering. While I wasn't hearing a message about the Eightfold path, Japhy Ryder was nagging me about the four noble truths.

“I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures . . . ” Jack Kerouac

"The darkest hour is just before the dawn."

In a very peculiar fashion, WTU? basically suggested the cut of both sides. What's the use in sobering up? For what? For whom? What is all this cosmic joke? On the other hand, what's the use in trying to escape the inevitable? It's all right there in front of us. Maslow knew. Our needs are simple. We can be whole with very little as long as we change our minds. Waste your time, why not? It's not like someone's going to give it back to you; "you don't get a refund if you over pray." Come out and play. And it's not a waste, really. Remember, it's all about love, and we don't need that much. "Just one drink, and I'll fall down drunk." Doesn't take much.

Such a lovely place.

On Thursday, we were weary, happily weary, and we drove to Outer Sunset. Again, my East Coast defenses were down, and I could see how absolutely magical this neighborhood is. Phil's cousin had a house with a view of the surf. When the waves are right, just amble on down. Wow. I know of nothing like it. "Unhead the knee," indeed. And just like that, SFO looms. An afternoon of airport ambling, feeling far less fancy than all the tech nudnik's buying lattes. Unable to read or process, a stunned sitting and waiting, Chicago, and from Chicago, Bangor. It's like a study in contrast.

Bangor, like a glorified bus station, embraces the 70 or so passengers who arrive. The TSA guard monitoring the exits says, "Welcome to Maine." Clearly, I don't look like I belong. It's mid-morning the next day, one of the first warm mornings of spring, and the ground is greening up. The trees, bare, look so different from California that it's difficult to process. Winter has been here but not there? The mud at home is thick, and the recent construction is finished on our foundation. I inspect every inch, celebrate the return by sitting in the sun and reading Blitzed by Norman Ohler. There's a WWII elective on my roster for the fall. Sleep is elusive.

Friday, wide awake at 5 a.m, I need to psych myself up for the coming crush that is the end of the school year. The barber up the hill, Stacy, has an open seat. She kneads my scalp a bit and asks, "The regular?" All I have to say is, "Yup." We chit chat as she trims, and then she slows and pauses. "How well did you know Drew?" Suddenly, it's back to me, the world I left before stepping on that plane one week ago. Drew. Dead. Suicide. "Really well," I try to say. And then the tears come.

It's been one week since I left home to visit friends for some shows in California, and I'm sobbing in the barber's chair. It all flushes out in one grand push, and she's astonished but not surprised. "That well, huh?" she asks. When I compose myself, she shares the manner of death, the time, what was happening between Drew and his wife, their families. It all came out, and I went home and showered, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I was ready for students to return.

Conservative, in a Good Way

This blog post originally appeared on the Island Oasis Farm website, now decommissioned. Not sure if it translates over, but I did want to preserve some of that writing (2020-2024). 

February 19, 2022

Mainers are conservative, in the old school, practical definition, by design. We reuse bits of lumber scraps for shelving or hodgepodge pieces of furniture. Cut ends whittled down to little pieces make for good kindling in the wood stove or maybe even a birdhouse or boot scraper. We already reduce and reuse.

Beyond that basic practicality, many of us also wonder, What will cause the least amount of damage? We love our lands. Plus, it's a legitimate question to ask for many an endeavor in the twenty-first century. It's a question that is not unlike the Hippocratic Oath's proclamation to do no harm. All of us share this earth, air, and water. Doing no harm would do us all a favor.

It turns out that hemp plants can sequester the PFAS chemicals found in Maine's soil and waterways. According to research being conducted with the Aroostook Band of Micmac and Upland Grassroots, hemp plants are capable of sequestering toxins lodged in soils. As with the nutrients they take in, the plants can draw chemicals from the soil and store them away in the heavier fibers of the plants' stalks.

While many of the plant's medicinal uses have been touted lately, this added layer of soil cleansing provides further evidence that Cannabis sativa needs to be a staple agricultural product in North America. The uses take off from there. One of the most tangible products, one that most Mainers have a stake in, is lumber.

Used in composite flooring, layered timbers, and even as the fiber in "hempcrete," there are all manner of applications for this amazing plant. Maine still has a thriving timber industry, employing nearly 1 in 25 working adults, but that has been on a gradual decline for decades. Why not give a boost to our builders and wood product manufacturers by expanding this industry right here in Maine? As the fourth coldest state in the nation, we could even be brainstorming ways to make biomass pellets for our stoves!

None of this technology is new, per se. Their production, however, is the result of a shift in mindset. If we can keep that shift going, give it light and air, we could see new growth in these industries. As the pandemic has shown, there is no end to the demand for homes in Maine. Lumber isn't getting any cheaper, either, and we definitely need alternatives for heating our homes. Why not go all in on hemp?

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, coal was the primary source for heating homes, either in stoves or boilers. We couldn't imagine walking around a river valley town under a weather inversion packed with coal smoke now. Perhaps some day, we won't be able to imagine chimneys belching out effluents from non-renewable resources. Perhaps, some day, the smoke would issue from something a bit sweeter.

A familiar New England scene.

We're only one small piece of the puzzle here at Island Oasis, but the picture is coming together.

Prohibition Fears: When Will They Subside?

This blog post originally appeared on the Island Oasis Farm website, now decommissioned. Not sure if it translates over, but I did want to preserve some of that writing (2020-2024).

January 24, 2022

Maine has had a medical marijuana program for 22 years now. The state has enjoyed legal, recreational marijuana since the close vote on Question 1 in 2016. While that measure only passed with .6% of the vote (a difference of some 4,000 votes), it was enough to seal the deal. In 2012, when Martin Lee published Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana–Medical, Recreational, and Scientific, it was stunning to many Americans that both Washington and Colorado voters pulled for total legalization. Now, ten years later, only 14 states remain where both medical and recreational marijuana are illegal.

Reading Lee's book ten years after publication, it's amazing to consider how much ground medical and recreational marijuana efforts have gained. Already, in three of those 14 prohibition states mentioned above, marijuana possession has been decriminalized, a step toward a humane treatment of cannabis users. People of a certain generation can be forgiven for being absolutely flabbergasted by walking into a store and hearing the spiel of a seasoned budtender. It's a sea change. But one thing that Lee documents which is difficult to forgive? The years U.S. law enforcement agencies spent ignoring science at the highest level. 

Lee makes the war against marijuana seem clearly ill-considered.

Lee's project draws the reader in with a great rendering of Louis Armstrong's life as a dedicated jazz performer and "viper" (1920s slang for someone who puffed). Satchmo's story is compelling no matter what, but what makes this angle work here is that Armstrong smoked gauge his whole life without suffering ill effects. His personal physician, Dr. Jerry Zucker, publicly signed off on the trumpeter's good health, and Armstrong took to calling his daily doob his "medicine." Having grown up with tonics made from dandelion greens and tinctures of nettles, this other plant medicine made sense within the pantheon of home remedies.

“It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics. . . . It’s a thousand times better than whiskey – it’s an assistant – a friend,” Louis Armstong.

One of the more disappointing threads leading to outright prohibition following the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is the issue of race in America. Pushed onto Congress by Harry Anslinger, the zealous leader of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), the 1937 act set a tax rate so high on the creation and sale of medical or recreational marijuana products that no one could rightly produce this medicine without being afoul of federal law. In addition, by this time, 24 states had passed prohibitions of their own and temperance wasn't the only thing on their minds. 

These state's prohibitions followed in the footsteps of El Paso, TX, "which passed the first city ordinance banning the sale and possession of cannabis in 1914." The city had seen an influx of Mexicans following the Revolution of 1910, people in search of steady work and a quieter, safer life. They followed a long-standing tradition of cannabis consumption in the New World: laborers seeking a break from the tedium of their lives at the end of the day. However, in the context of early-20th century America, anti-marijuana and "vagrancy statutes, in addition to legally sanctioned segregation in housing, restaurants, and parks, comprised what [UCSD historian Curtis Marez] described as 'a web of social controls' that were 'mobilized to police Mexicans.' "

Meanwhile, the fact that marijuana and its derivatives had been used as a home remedy for centuries was willfully ignored. As early as 1860, an Ohio State Medical Society cataloged the various maladies cannabis helped patients manage and made recommendations to physicians accordingly. These maladies include, but are not limited to, bronchitis, rheumatism, postpartum depression, migraine headaches, nausea, menstrual cramps and insomnia. And yet, the federal government relied primarily on the testimony of FBN chief Harry Anslinger, who "fed titillating tidbits [of depraved pot crimes] to reporters, who wrote articles that the FBN chief would then cite in making the case that society was in imminent danger of moral collapse because of marijuana." Mostly, Anslinger was afraid of the FBN losing funding, and fear of racial mixing in the Jazz Era was an easy card for him to play.

Harry Anslinger inspecting a big haul.

The only authority in Congress back in 1936 who challenged Anslinger's fear mongering of miscegenation and deviance, was a doctor. "Dr. William Woodward, the legislative counsel for the American Medical Association (AMA), . . . challenged Anslinger's claim that cannabis was a dangerous drug with no therapeutic value." Thus begins a 70-year-cycle during which the federal government repeatedly ignored, suppressed, and even buried the very studies that they, themselves, had commissioned. The continual pattern throughout this period is that when the feds would commission a study that would purportedly make weed look bad, and when the medical community and scientists would offer evidence to the contrary, law enforcement and members of the executive, legislative, and judicial branch would ignore said study.

Here are a few examples:

In 1944, the New York Academy of Medicine published a report commissioned by then mayor of NYC Fiorello La Guardia studying what, if any, threat cannabis use posed to New York City. The report found that not only did cannabis not pose a threat, but instead "Americans had been needlessly frightened about marijuana's supposed dangers." Moreover, the report noted that "marijuana is not addictive and it does not cause insanity, sexual deviance, violence, or criminal misconduct." 

As a result of the La Guardia commission's report, Anslinger tailored his marijuana narrative to meet the needs of Cold War fear mongering about communism. In 1948, he testified that " 'Marijuana leads to pacifism and Communist brainwashing.' " This came some nine years after he had testified that marijuana was " 'the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.' " Not satisfied with that assertion alone, Anslinger went on to beat the drum of the "gateway drug" theory–pot smoking leads to the injection of heroin or cocaine in a few simple steps–a theory that the La Guardia commission had handily debunked.

In 1951, Congress passed the Boggs Amendment which raised the stakes on the casual user. Dealers, users, opiates, cannabis, no distinctions were made. All drugs (except for alcohol and tobacco, naturally) were painted with the same broad brush, and anti-American, international communists were to blame. All this despite the fact that America's #1 anti-communist, Sen. Joseph McCarthey, was himself a morphine addict. By the time the Kennedy administration commissioned yet another study of drug abuse in 1963, "the White House Conference on Narcotics and Drug Abuse concluded that the hazards of smoking marijuana were 'exaggerated.' "

The social upheaval of the 1960s led to an even sterner federal approach to marijuana. J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon sought to rein in any social dissent through the prosecution of narcotics. Marijuana was an easy target. So, as part of the Controlled Substances Act of 1971, the federal government initiated "a National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse . . . to establish the dangers of cannabis." Much to Nixon's chagrin, the "Shafer Commission," as it came to be known, "found no evidence that marijuana causes physical or psychological harm or any tortuous withdrawal symptoms following the sudden cessation of chronic, heavy use–no brain damage or birth defects, no compulsion to use hard drugs, and no evidence that a single human fatality has resulted solely from marijuana intoxication." Nixon never even read the commission and forged ahead with stepping up federal law enforcement. He enlisted the benzodiazepine and opiate addicted Elvis to be his pop-culture icon to boot!

Despite Jimmy Carter's attempt to backpedal on the federal law enforcement approach to marijuana, Reagan fired up the war on drugs, taking federal interdiction to a whole new level. In an effort to eradicate cannabis cultivation throughout the nation, "Reagan broke with long-standing legal tradition, which forbade the U.S. military from engaging in domestic law enforcement." In keeping with many of his predecessors, Reagan also ignored the findings of the National Academy of Sciences six-year study "which found 'no convincing evidence' that marijuana damages the brain or nervous system or decreases fertility." This did not stop SWAT and CAMP teams from terrorizing rural landowners from Maine to California every fall.

Dennis Peron, pioneer of the California Buyers Club and promoter of Brownie Mary’s healing edibles.

When, in 1988, the DEA's chief law judge pronounced that there is no reason why marijuana should remain a Schedule I substance, he was ignored. After having commissioned a rescheduling hearing on the matter, and after hearing testimony from cancer, HIV, and epilepsy patients, the Reagan-Bush team ignored the findings of their own study. George H.W. Bush also ceased the Compassionate IND program (the federal government's initial foray into medical cannabis with 8 patients), favoring instead the potential uses of the recently patented pharmaceutical Marinol (a THC pill).

From here on out, Lee's exhaustively researched history follows two lines. The first documents the rise in marijuana use for medical purposes through Buyer's Clubs and finally California's Proposition 215, which effectively legalized medical use. The other documents the federal government (often in secret collaborations with local law enforcement agencies) arresting, harassing, and targeting medical cannabis users and caregivers. We have come a long way.

The long shadow of this era of demonization, though, is still with us. It is reflected in the fact that Maine's vote to legalize came down to less than 1% of the vote. It is reflected in the fact that in many towns and counties, opposition to legalization constituted more than two-thirds of the vote. The anti-marijuana tactics of fear mongering, ingrained into several generations of Americans, will take time to overcome. 

In this manner, maybe then Maine's slow roll-out of legal, recreational cannabis is a good thing. Mainers may begin to recognize that this is not a demon in their midst, but perhaps a new opportunity to develop better relationships with our own scientific community.