Weir Here Now

Presence Through it All: I'm Gonna Miss Bobby

“Do you ever wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it!” Daisy Buchanan utters this claim while indolently wiling away a hot summer afternoon on Long Island. I can relate, not to the indolence necessarily, but I often fail to fully notice solstice, the late or early sunset, the apex or nadir moments of light. Usually, it's the fallout that I notice. In January, light gradually lingers; by late July, dusk is thick. Being present is not easy, but it has me thinking about Bob Weir.


For most of my Deadhead years, Bob, Robert Hall Weir, has been referred to as "Bobby." He was the youthful element, the "very, very, youthful, ebullient, but a very, very dirty softball player," as Bill Graham referred to him at the Felt Forum in 1971. He was the guy I could count on for a smile, a gaff, and a shrug. Bob was the athlete sweating profusely at center stage trying to whip up the audience or fire up his band mates. To some of my friends, disgusted with what they considered histrionics, he was "Hollywood Bob." To a tape trading friend, way back when, he was the guy Jerry kept around for "vocal support." To me, especially now, Bob Weir was the guy who never missed the moment.


Stationed between the cacophony of Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia, the thrashing of two drummers, first Billy and then Mickey, the wildly disparate keyboard players Pig Pen, Tom Constanten, Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland, Vince Welnick, and Bruce Hornsby, Bob was always already there. Someone has to be the keel on the rudderless ocean, and at some point in time, that keel, more and more, became Weir. Naturally, these were not my first thoughts as a fan of the band. When one first falls into this music, it is one thing, a singular sound, an organism of its own.


As a GenX Deadhead, I fell into the Grateful Dead mid-career. Like many Deadheads, I didn't mean to be a Deadhead; it just happened, little by little. My sister's first show was Bobby and the Midnites. It turns out that they were sharing the bill with the Jerry Garcia Band. It was 1982. We listened to Shakedown Street a lot, and Dead Set was my understanding of a Grateful Dead show. The music was the music, and the people were the people, and in my imagination, it was all one thing. Still, if I'm honest, it was Bob who pulled us in and Jerry who set the hook. And for us, Bob was there, setting the tempo, finding the middle, anchoring the path, opening the door.


Music and consciousness are funny. We animate sound visually in our listening imaginations idiosyncratically while finding common ground on the dancefloor. After falling into deep Dead listening by 1985 and 1986, when I heard the old 1960s recordings, and after I had begun to piece together who was who doing what, Phil and Jerry protruded diagonally on a vertical like two combustion chambers complete with cooling fins while Bob was the meeting point above the drive shaft. All that energy has to pulsate downward and drive the machine forward. It has to be bolted down to a chassis, too, lest it spin off forever into dissipation.


Bob was the uptempo songster to whom we could relate. "I Need a Miracle." "Music Never Stopped." "Good Lovin'." "Sugar Magnolia." "Estimated Prophet." When I first fell into the Grateful Dead, I had no idea who Pig Pen was. That came later. Collecting tapes helped expand my palette, helped add color to the inner canvas of understanding what it was that I was hearing. Bob singing "Dark Hollow" on 4/29/71 or hitting that China Cat riff in "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad"; Bob building the China> Rider transition bridge; Bob pulsing downbeat tempo on Dead Set's epic version of "Greatest Story." Bob dangling his legs off stage after falling during "Sugar Magnolia" on 3/21/86. Naturally, that was panned by friends as "Hollywood Bob." I sorta liked it.


This past March when the 40th anniversary of my first three-night run at the Hampton Coliseum (1986) passed me by, I once again missed the moment. I didn't bliss out on headphones for each corresponding date. Instead, I caught snippets where I could during the morning commute, between class prep and assessment work, shoveling snow and doing dishes, conducting parent-teacher conferences and figuring out how to teach post-pandemic 21st century A.I. saturated teens, taking care of family. I caught sound snippets between worries about my mother and grandchildren. I missed the moment; cluttered mind, I wasn't present.


Perhaps this was Bob Weir's greatest gift: being present. Knocking on the door of Morgan's Music on 12/31/63. 17 or 18 at the Acid Tests. Fired and yet not leaving his band in 1968. Remaining ever joyful and silly and present between the serious maestros Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia. Resisting the rejection or dark dismissal that was Mickey and the Hartbeats. Softly approaching the mic for "Dark Hollow" in an acoustic opening set on 2/14/70. The die was cast, and the Grateful Dead's anchor was set along the keel of Bob Weir's presence.


Showing up and being present is not something that garners rewards. There are no jobs that I know of where you earn Employee of the Month by simply showing up. Yet, as a teacher, I know that this is one of the most important duties I can serve. Teenagers go through volcanic and seismic transitions on a daily basis, and day after day, we are there for them. It's not glamorous. It's not rewarded. And everyone in society at one point says, "I could do that. Nothing to it." To those folks, I say, "Try it. . . . For fifty years." It isn't always something that works, but it's the foothold, the constancy "nailed to a pine wood floor" that holds it together.


In many ways, Bob held it, the machine, together. He carved the path of the keel. He chose to find the middle, the compromise between eccentric polarities, the negotiated center of the conversation, the common ground that we are seeking despite our gripes. Musical minds seek resolution, the bow that brings all disparate elements to the coda, the final punch line of the poem. This, too, is an underappreciated role that Weir played over the years. Bob, the hot cylinders firing on either side of him, has to channel it down to the drive shaft. At some point, it has to connect and make sense.


For years Mr. Weir's thousand mile stare made no sense to me, as if the residue of Longshoreman's Hall hadn't been shed. Now, though, what I see in that blank stare is listening. I see a self dissolving in the moment and becoming one with the music, plotting the course that is no course, setting ego aside. Bob's thousand mile stare is about someone who mastered being in the moment, never missing the little tidbits passing by in time and absorbing them. Why do we miss the equinox? Because we ego-seek it, trying to map it, trying to clasp the "gold ring" that "just slips away." Bob's mastery was to be there, present in the moment, navigating the space of waiting to see what evolves, being here now.


Weir's signature distant stare while playing is the image of presence, of truly not thinking about what came before or what will come, latching on to the moment that is. It is anushasanam, ego death, flow state, an amoeba metamorphosis in time signatures to bring us back. As any athlete knows, it doesn't always happen. Sometimes, you fall off the stacks and hit your butt and dangle your legs off the stage; sometimes, you're bug-eyed pushing the volume, and the trailer has become unhitched. But when it's working best, you and those around you don't even notice. It's a presence which seems to have always been there. And now it's gone.


More than ever, I'm grateful for the time I spent with Bob Weir. Grateful Dead, Bob and Rob, Ratdog, Furthur, Dead and Co., Wolf Brothers. There may be more. As long as I show up and listen, now, make myself available to the moment, erase my needs, be present in my own time, I will honor him. And I will miss him. Dearly.

Furthur Throwback: Summer 2010 Highlights

 While clearing off a hard drive for work, I came across this rambling record of Furthur rambles from the summer of 2010. Something struck me as I first reread this: I have no photographs of these shows or settings. Why was that, I wondered? Then, it hit me: I did not own any form of cellular telecommunications device. No cellphone would rest in my palm until the summer of 2011 when I moved off of the island of North Haven. Bouncing back and forth on the ferry to and from the mainland, scheduling job interviews and house showings all over Knox, Waldo, and Hancock County, I needed connection. Prior to this, I had a completely different way of navigating the world. I always saw who I needed to see, arrived where I needed to be, and then recorded the events later from memory. How different. Any photos I may add come from the public domain or are linked to their original source. 

2010: Wow, different times (for me).

Coney Island

Somehow, I’ve made it back home in five pieces.  One of me is still gawking at the Cyclone on Coney Island.  Another of me is a whirling dervish on a surreal platform above the Lowell Spinners’ outfield.  Yet another is scattered all over Oxford, Maine.  A fourth chunk of my consciousness has reconnected with old friends out on the road, while this rubble has sat down to the computer to write on a hot July night.

It all started when I wrapped up an accelerated on-line course on June 24th.  That, combined with work, was a six week marathon grind without pause.  That afternoon, I was heading down from Midcoast Maine to the Portsmouth, N.H. area where I could dump my car and catch a bus to New York.  I didn’t want the experience of a Brooklyn-Queens Expressway bummer caught in traffic or anything like that–not to mention alternate side of the street parking.  Besides, I can’t read while driving, though I see people trying to do so all the time.

Stepping out of Port Authority after having been in an air-conditioned bus from northern New England is like walking into a concrete steam bath Brueghel painting.  I wasn’t about to complain: Nancy and I had Brooklyn digs lined up and tickets for two nights of Furthur on Coney Island.  Still, for this Maine wood sap, it’s a shock to the senses.

After a leisurely, and sweaty, Saturday of stocking the fridge with necessary provisions–hummus, baba ghanoush, tabouli and dolma from Sahadi’s on Atlantic Avenue; tasty brews from a corner deli–we hit the F train.  I was still wound so tight from work and so deep in a New York subway mode that I did not feel any tingle of recognition that I was heading to a Furthur show.  Rather, I was still in navigation mode.

Luckily, we were heading to Coney Island.  Exiting the train, the first thing that was immediately apparent was the honky-tonk atmosphere of summer beach boardwalk.  The Cyclone was raging, the Wonder Wheel was spinning, and crowds were out in force for Nathan’s.  Deadheads were a footnote to the human parade spilling out over the streets to catch a ride, bite, brew or ocean breeze.  On the boardwalk, the Coney Island Dancers cranked tunes and cut moves despite the 90˚ heat, kicking it to a variety of tunes I’ve never heard before, yet bearing threads reminiscent of many familiar genres.  They had just the spirit we needed, though.

After a time, we settled into a sandy beer garden, had a few pints, and chatted with the heads in our midst.  Still, I couldn’t anticipate anything.  Coney Island.  A small baseball park.  The boardwalk.  No-see-ums biting ankles.  Sandals.  Blazing sun.  “Shoot the Freak” sideshow weirdness.  Where the parking lot scene began and the Coney Island scene ended was anyone’s guess.  More to the point, they all swirled together.

Saturday night, we had tickets in the stands.  Thankfully, that zone was general admission and we found a respectable spot behind the soundboard and the foul ball screen.  The “stadium” was a lot smaller than I’d hoped it would be.  It was like a Merriweather or Great Woods, but inverted.  The lawn was in front of the seats.  Actually, it made for decent sound where we were, though it might have been a little bit light.

Of course, many, many people looked (and were) familiar.  But there’s definitely a generational swirl to these Furthur shows.  Some gents behind us, young enough to be our children, and still full fledged “adults” living in the city, were calling songs faster than I was.  Dang.  How’d they learn all this stuff without having been to the Grateful Dead?  A quick survey revealed hours of listening to archive.org, satellite Dead radio and discs.  They’d had the same mad jabbering conversations in dorm rooms that I’d had some 25 years before!  Those heads 25 years my senior were politely ignoring our conversational glee.

A Saturday standout: Black Throated Wind.  Not only hadn’t I heard this song performed live since my final Grateful Dead show in 1995, Bobby nailed it.  John Kadlecik got it swirling in the end, and Phil laid some deep bottom.  Russo was solid, and I realized the 1974 connection to one drummer.  Yes!  It was a crisp, clear, clean, open sound, so much so that Jeff Chimenti’s bass notes on the grand piano were distinct and easily distinguishable from the rest of the pack.  I figured that good things must come from a first set that starts with China-> Rider, and I wasn’t disappointed.

In a surprise reversal of my Cornell experience in February, late in the first set Bobby began strumming a melody my new-found college friends insisted was Throwin’ Stones.  I thought it was the fake-out that had thrown me off this past winter, and I called Ashes and Glass.  Just like that, Throwin’ Stones kicked in, and I was laughin’ and dancin’ and groovin’.  It was played with a 1984-87 conviction that I hadn’t heard since then.  Something clicked in me, some gut bucket steepy groove slunk out, and I knew I was going to be dancing (I mean dancing) to this band for the next week!

Fresh off the Greyhound bus and still a little wet behind the ears, the phenomenal second set list was a bit lost on me.  I almost couldn’t keep pace.  Shakedown-> Caution?  I love it; I just wasn’t ready for it, not yet in the zone.  Jack Straw, Playin’-> Dark Star-> St. Stephen-> the 11-> Dark Star, what’s not to like?  I was a dancing fool in hog heaven, yet I still hadn’t quite caught my sea legs.  By the time they kicked in to the Terrapin, though, I was alert to every note.

I had heard Ratdog play the Terrapin suite a couple of times.  Mostly, they broke the two main sections apart so that I can’t recall ever having seen the entire Terrapin as it appears on the album in one fell swoop.  This was not something to be missed.  Earlier, a groovy dancing neighbor had pointed out the amber moon playing in and out of the low-lying coastal clouds.  I fixated on it as we danced.  Ratdog’s Kenny Brooks was a solid addition to this Terrapin, too, his sax melding with Jeff Chimenti’s synthetic keys and JK’s fret fanning during the Terrapin Flyer segment.

At a Siding was something I’d always wanted to hear live, and I wasn’t disappointed: “While you were gone / these spaces filled with darkness / the obvious was hidden / with nothing to believe in / the compass always points to Terrapin.”  For me, this haunting passage has always referred to that darker side of love and self-awareness.  We drift far from our core needs and values, forgetting to cling to the lower rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy in order to climb toward self-awareness.  Imbedded in this, too, is the Dead scene, the element that can snap me back into recognition of those forgotten core values and needs.  This version was delivered with such conviction that it cut through all the head noise baggage I’d brought along, rechristening me anew.

In a testament to work exhaustion and what the first show brought, we awoke on Sunday around noon.  I hadn’t slept that late in eons.  Luckily, our basement pad was relatively cool compared to the inferno brewing outside–79 as opposed to 99˚.  I am definitely better acclimated to Maine.  No matter, we stuffed ourselves on that sumptuous food from Sahadi’s, and headed out to Smith Street to catch the F again.  Little did we know that the Smith Street Fair would be happening.  What the heck.  We grabbed a pint, strolled through the vendor booths and even caught a couple of great musical acts.  My favorite was the Django Reinhardt influenced string band in the now-ubiquitous straw Fedoras.

Back at Coney Island for a second round, we were now in tour mode.  Slightly listless from the heat, moving from one conversation to another with vendors and friends, we slid into a sweet spot on the floor, right up in the Phil Zone.  No fuss, no muss.  Earlier we’d seen a lead security guy berating his underlings for being too thorough in their searches.  By the time we transitioned through the line, it was a smooth procession that dumped us on the field right where we wanted to be.

From Sunday’s first note of Golden Road, I could tell that the band was in the pocket.  There was command in the performance.  It wouldn’t matter that major show stopper songs had been rolled out the night before, we were going to groove, big time.  And groove we did, holding back just enough so as not to be a soppy mess of sweat.  Though disconcerting at first, I grew to appreciate the beer vendors plying the stewing brew of dancers.  A cold, 16 oz. Budweiser can hit the spot on a hot day; and at $7.50 a pop, consumption is seriously curtailed.

To single out songs when these boys are in such a deep pocket seems superficial.  However, a Sugar Magnolia coming in the middle of a first set when the machine is dialed?  I had a grin as wide as the circle I was dancing.  Scarlet Begonias was splendiferous, and I half expected to melt into a puddle of Fire, but was pleasantly surprised when it gelled into Magnolia Mountain.  This is one of Ryan Adams’ finest songs, and JK did it serious justice.  Spine tingling chills accompanied the first breeze I’d felt the whole day.  The closing Uncle John’s had to double clutch into the transition, but it proved to be its always ebullient self once it blossomed.

Despite some stop and go to the flow of the second set, all I can say is that it was ridiculous.  Unbroken Chain was played as if Phil and JK knew exactly how I’d always wanted it to be played and let me conduct.  Let it Grow was like a powerful river sweeping us downstream.  Fire on the Mountain popped and crackled to finish that earlier thought of the first set.  The Other One was followed by a fully realized Cryptical.  Why not reverse them?  Blues for Allah was concise!  What’s going on here?  Morning Dew?  Once they slid into Eyes of the World and Help Slip Frank’s, I was deeply involved in an ancient, ecstatic dance ritual.  Even security was boogeying.  Box of Rain reminded me how far we travel and how hard we work for these ephemeral moments: “Such a long, long time to be gone / and a short time to be there.”  Let’s not even go into the eternity/mortality duality it brings to mind.

After spending a sweaty day wandering Manhattan and attending the disappointingly limited Otto Dix show at the Neue Gallery on Monday, it was time to hit the road again on Tuesday, and Nancy and I reluctantly boarded our separate busses.  The spectacle of boiling New York had cleared my senses, and the Sunday night show had left me grooving and full of tour hopes again.  The lot scene had been virtually unmolested, to a fault.  N₂O was all too abundant, leaving a trashy memory of what could have been a much groovier scene.  Perhaps psychedelic spin dancing to fantastic music is not Nepenthe enough for some of our more tightly wound brethren.

Lowell

Back in New Hampshire, someone had both turned on a fan and cranked the thermostat up.  Winds were howling, wild storm clouds brewed on the horizon, heat wavered in undulating lines above any paved surface.  I prepared for the inferno as any decent houseguest would, treating my hosts to Mount Gay and tonics and keeping them up later than they had any desire to be.  But hey, I had stories to tell.  And, to make matters easier, we’d be seeing Furthur in Lowell the next day.

After completing an essential detour into Charlestown, Phil and I reached Lowell about 4pm.  I was quietly uptight about getting there early, but this paid off well.  As it turned out, those who showed up less than half an hour after our caravan were mired in traffic.  There’s really only one narrow road in and out.  Hey, it’s a small New England mill town, folks.  Prepare.  Fortunately, the main lots were all full, and we were shunted off to a parking garage astride the Lowell Spinner’s ball park.  The thought of a nasty parking garage darkened my spirits until we arrived on the top deck.

Public domain image from the upper deck.

The magic of the top deck wasn’t just the northwest breeze that was swaying every large deciduous on the horizon.  It wasn’t the view of the mighty Merrimack which Thoreau detailed for his progeny.  It wasn’t the fact that we had a clear survey of all Ti Jean’, Jack Kerouac’s, mill building splendor.  It wasn’t just the cool neighbors around us mingling and enjoying the bird’s eye view of the funky little baseball stadium.  No, the crowning glory was every bit of that experience coalescing around seeing Phil Lesh soundcheck his new song Colors of the Rain with Furthur.  One or another of the musicians was out on the stage at one point, tuning, and suddenly there was a full soundcheck.  The coda of the song jumped into Slipknot!, and I knew we were in for a good night.

The other thing that the top deck of the garage afforded was a view of how strange the show’s setup was.  Out in deep center field lay the stage.  In front of it, there was a little metal pit, as if you’d squared off the width of the stage.  To get there, we’d have to walk these aisles of metal flooring.  Behind the tapers and the board at the end of that “floor” pit, the infield was ENTIRELY empty.  Thus, if you were in the stands dead center, there was at least a 120’ gap between you and the board.  Weird.  No matter, we squeezed down front and stayed there.

Half Step, Friend of the Devil, Tennessee Jed, Deal, Bertha.  There were 5 Jerry tunes before Bobby struck up his first signature, Minglewood.  “It’s T right here in New England . . .”  Enough said.  Doin’ that Rag and Sugaree closed out the first set in fine fashion.  So much Jerry and Robert Hunter made us think that Kerouac wasn’t far from Jill Lesh’s mind.  Perhaps there’d been a pow-wow on this set list.  Nonetheless, it was deep Jerry, deeply connected to On the Road and the entire Beat experience, and we were in the zone again, thinking about how fortunate we were to be jabbering about ole Amerikay with friends of friends of Kerouac.

Weaving their magic threads.

For me, most of the second set songs were repeats from Coney Island.  Of course, there had been Penn’s Peak in between, but something struck me as being different.  In 1986 or 87, chances were good that repeats would pop up in the same rotational slot.  Here, I was seeing repeats without even realizing it.  Wait, did I already see them play this or am I remembering February tour?  At that point, with the playing at such a high caliber, who cares?  We just danced.  The big oaks and maples and hickories behind the stage were bending in a stiff northwesterly, the air was sharp and clean, the crowd was full on in the groove.  It was all that mattered at that moment.  It’s what brings us back.

As far as songs that stand out, oddly, So Many Roads.  It isn’t so much that the tune wasn’t a repeat, but that the ghosts of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Kesey, Cassady, Garcia and many others who led or walked in their footsteps were bending the limbs of those big trees behind the center field wall.  Standing on the shoulders of giants, supporting the tired backs of beleaguered giants, coaxing dance out of the walking dead, Furthur was there on stage breathing new life into an old dream.  We could feel it, and that made it feel new.  A shooting star even tipped its hand during the Ripple encore.

Of course, many of our parking garage friends never bothered to make it down for the show.  Instead, they dragged coolers to the edge of the top deck, fired up ‘ques and took it all in.  But what the hay, they were there.  Of course, by the time we made it back up to the top deck, everyone was gone.  No sense in driving out right away if you don’t have to, I always say.  Lowell often seems closer to the Portsmouth area than when on a late night mission; but it wasn’t like we were on a mad dash to talk to all the cool cats in San Francisco on a four day bender drive with radio dial spin madness anyway.  Right?  (Btw, they didn’t have interstates in the late-40s.)

Well, we managed to continue the vibe through Thursday night by dropping in on the Stone Church in Newmarket, N.H.  The band playing (sorry guys, senior moment on the name) wove funky grooves that were sprinkled with homage to the greats of our time.  Clearly enjoying themselves, they couldn’t help but bring out the Pranksters in our 40-something asses, and the long, strange trip continued . . . 

Nateva

Friday, I was a little rusty, trying to muster the wherewithal to make the trip up to Oxford for the crowning glory of my short tour.  Nateva.  While festivals have been sprouting up around the nation like milkweed or vetch, Maine has faced a relative dearth.  OK, I missed Up North a couple of years ago, but I had a good reason.  Nothing was going to keep me back from Nateva, except for a little groggy fatigue that was setting in on that hot Friday.  Am I really going to a festival alone at my age?  Oy.  Shake the dust off, get it together, pack, organize space and thoughts again, the phone rings.

Me: “Hello?”

Phil: “What’s up, man?”

Me: “How’s work?”

Phil: “Same old foolishness.”  Long pause.  “Say, are there tickets still available for Nateva?”

Just like that, a foray into the Furthur machine becomes a full fledged plunge into the world of our budding festival circuit.  For us, it’s the closest thing we’ll find to the old camping out in the lot of Alpine Valley or some other 80s oasis.  It didn’t take much arm-twisting, and the next thing I knew, we were back on the road.

The road this time was decidedly more pleasant: little winding New Hampshire streets that dip in and out of the border of Maine; little hamlets with stunning 18th century farms; hillocks; river valleys; random pubs.  The setting had worked its magic on us by the time we rolled through the gates of Nateva, fully stocked for Armageddon.  Of course, we’d landed the back vendor gate perfectly with nary a scrap of traffic, and then were sent on some wild goose chase in order to obtain wrist bands, but that’s neither here nor there.  The upshot is that we landed in family camping, and that was the place to be: cool grass, quiet farming folks, a respite from the pandemonium down in the center of the vortex.

moe. was slick.  We barely caught their set, what with all the shuffling around we’d done.  Late night, that night, was decidedly off kilter seeing as how we’d just arrived.  We were far more interested in all the shenanigans spinning off in every direction we could see, despite the nice electronic jams pouring out of every nook and cranny of the festival.  Ridiculous.  More than anyone could hope to absorb in any given moment.  More than anyone in their right mind would want to subject themselves to, except for the fact that those neurons are hungry.  It had been a long winter, and Maine was in full blossom.

Of course, as we navigated the dusty paths and tent stakes, there were old friends popping up out of the woodworks.  It worked both ways.  “Holy shit!  How are you, man?  Wow.”  We don’t even tally the years anymore except in the quieter moments of reflection, not wanting to emphasize an already powerful deficit in contact.  Then again, this country, this world, there are so many scenes unfolding that it’d be impossible to keep in touch with every single one at all times.  Unless, of course, you simply lived on the festival circuit.  By 2am that night, it was looking like a younger man’s game.

Saturday’s heat was something people write home about.  We found scraps of shade wherever we could and hid like mangy dogs on Mexico’s afternoon streets, panting.  There wasn’t a band powerful enough to draw us to the main stage while the sun was still shining.  Yes, I missed a lot of music, but the thought of 12 hours exposed was too overwhelming.  We took spray baths under our local garden hose as if we were preparing to enter the most enshrined mosque imaginable at every hour.  Water.  Toward late afternoon, we found our friends under a canopy and stayed there basically until STS9, a band who impressed me mightily.

Don’t get me wrong.  It isn’t that we didn’t care about hearing all the other music.  We did.  It was just too hot to serve up our brains to an open field under the beating sun.  Besides, from our friend’s campsite under an elaborate shade canopy, we could hear a lot of the proceedings.  But when we emerged from the shade, STS9 confirmed a lot of things we’d been thinking for more than a few years now.

Remember when Phish went funk and rap was king?  Those elements may have tweaked a deadhead or two, but guess what?  Tweaking someone was a big part of the Pranksters’ business.  It just now happens to be the younger tweaks freaking the older heads!  STS9 had the deep dance grooves and tempo changes that any head could appreciate: something to keep the vibe alive, stir the big swirling pot of creativity, and they did it in spades.

As the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne bubbled his way into the audience, we just started laughing.  It was a catalyst moment.  Something broke.  Having seen them only once in 1989 or so, I was loving the transition the Fearless Freaks had made, though I still wanted to step back a bit from the confetti.  The peace and love scene was ranted on with a sprinkling of praise for the cleanliness of the Port-a-Potties, and Coyne was rollin’.  The only problem was, I wanted to get poll position for Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad.

One thing about a festie like Nateva, you’re definitely going to put some miles on your legs if you have missions.  No mission?  Posting up at the main stage?  Cool.  Missions?  Prepare to hike.  Luckily, we were well prepared.  After restocking for the stroll to the Port City Music Hall Stage, we found Giant Panda in full force.  It was just what the doctor ordered: dub, d.j.-style swirling sounds, syncopated breaks, irie appreciation.  I have rarely seen 2,000 people groovin’ that hard at 1am.  It was fantastic.  Thanks to some fine folks from Damariscotta, we had space right in the sweet spot with plenty of room to groove.  Awesome.

After that set, we were spent, again, and another full day awaited us.  Sunday, 4th of July.  A crew of folks painted the Nateva sign in a facsimile of the Betsy Ross flag so that there was a circle of stars on the now blue N.  We started saying, “Pateva,” giggling sarcastically.  It was a phrase we were to hear later on in the day, regularly.  It was day 4 for some folks, those who’d arrived on Thursday.  Since we’d arrived late on Friday, it was day 2?  Day 3?  Day 1.5?  We couldn’t tell, but we’d gotten our sea legs and grasped the lay of the land.

We ducked in and out of shows, reserving our energy, gathering our head of steam.  By the time Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks came on, we had our turf in front of the soundboard, and we were ensconced.  Of course, these guys were amazing.  A tinge of guilt settled in too, as I acknowledged the fact that I hadn’t partaken of every ounce of musical genius and madness of the whole weekend.  But then again, I was never a dial twister who could hold seven conversations at once and come through an intersection unscathed.  Nope.  I’d sought shade and only come out with the vampires, or potentially sunburnt north country people.

Tedeschi and Trucks were beautiful.  Man, the stories they could tell trickled through intonation and subtle phrasings.  They both have chops.  They nailed it.  It was a golden, shining moment of pause that made me reflect upon the fact that at a festival, we’re more than half the show.  Hell, we’d spent more time goofing with folks and chatting and mingling than we did seeing bands.  It helped that the Nateva set up made it so that as you skirted the perimeter, gamming with random neighbors, you could hear each show, perfectly.  Thus, it wasn’t a matter of seeing bands.  Derek and Susan reminded us, though, that there had been a lot more to see that we’d even scratched.

Waiting for Furthur, we couldn’t help but notice the heaps of bodies that suddenly started piling around us, along with backpacks, blankets, chairs, every object conceivable to obstruct pedestrian traffic.  Thus, we decided we’d chosen the right spot.  Soon enough, there was a pile of backpacks able to swallow a giant crocodile.  Seriously.  It was a good zone for grooving as the octopus of unseen obstructions swallowed up a pushy space invader or two, even stealing a woman’s shoe.  She gave up looking for it as we broke into peals of laughter.  A lot of help.

When Furthur graced the stage, the push was on in earnest, and the area around the stage filled in appreciably.  I reflected on all that I had seen in 2.5 or however many days: the Solar Café, a Deadhead bookstore, food vendors galore, Hoola-hoops, coffee vendors, T-shirts and stickers, groovy imports, trippy late-night electronic jams.  All of it, in my twisted view of things, springs from the source of Grateful Dead tour.  Of course, there was a cornucopia in the 1960s.  But I didn’t do this, then.  To me, this was 80s Dead tour mingling with Phish festivals and blowing up on a whole new scale; and here were the maestros to be the capstones to a very spacey weekend.

Well, if I were those guys, I would have been even more exhausted than I was feeling at that point.  After Lowell, they’d gone back out to the midwest to play in Ohio, and just 24 hours previous, they’d done a monster show at the Gelston Castle in Herkimer, N.Y.  How do they do it?  Talk about being in the zone.  What were they thinking as they stared out at half-frayed festival freaks who had been going tough for 3 full days?  Celebration.  The Hunter/Lesh collaboration from 2001 seemed to be the appropriate kick off: “Celebration, like days of old / When everything was solid gold / . . . Let a fresh wind tear through your soul / Swallow your sorrow and deliver you whole / Give you reason to believe again.”

Clearly, they believe.  Delivering a solid first set with an awkwardly reworked Samson, a phat Half Step-> Cold Rain-> Ramble on Rose, a decisive Masterpiece, they hit on a Cumberland groove that both caught me off guard and surprised me.  I found myself thinking that this wasn’t like the versions of the fabled Q (Phil Lesh and friends from fall 2000-2003), but then again, I remembered that that was a long time ago, already!  JK, Jeff Chimenti and Russo were the shit this night, holding down a platform that their muses wove over, above and through.  How can a “band” keep reinventing itself in this many forms?  After a time, it simply seems to become a culture, and we just happened to have two heroes of our culture guiding the flame.

We were in tears of joyful laughter on the understated comment, “I love a second set that opens with St. Stephen.”  It was meaty, decidedly Grateful Dead but decidedly not Grateful Dead.  The classic riffs were insinuating themselves into new pathways, finding new routes home through older heads and newer crops of folks who’d never seen any manifestation of the Grateful Dead in any way.  Somehow, the enormity of all that sentiment was captured in Days Between, connecting to my Kerouac musings of a few days before.  Eyes of the World was more of a nod to Maine, that “lazy summer home.”

Mashed in the dancing hordes toward the front, I saw a scene I don’t think I’ll see again any time soon: a mellowed festival crowd, dust rising from bare feet, steam rising off the humid bodies, plumes of smoke, bubbles, beach balls, folks of all ages, birth to 75, all dancing together.  The field trip experience was almost strong enough to overwhelm the musicians’ sense of paying attention to the business at hand: Bobby staring off at the floating candle balloons; Phil studying the faces in the crowd; JK surveying the whole spectacle; Russo transformed from his scene into a psychedelic Animal; Chimenti crossing great rivers with Bobby to reach this moment.

And thank goodness for Jeff Pehrson and Sunshine Becker!  Their vocals were amazing.  Spinning us through an intricate fabric of sonic delight, Furthur ended their second set with one of the tastiest morsels of all: And We Bid You Goodnight.  But they didn’t just sing this as a little ditty to tack on to the end of the festival, the sang it with incredible force and purpose.  I could hear strains and memories of the Jerry twist, “Walkin’ in Jerusalem just like John,” and all the other filagree they added back in the day.  The audience was so spent at this point that we could barely clap.  Cheer, whistle, shout a little.  It wasn’t a sign of “no appreciation,” rather it was a sign of, “You’ve wrung out our last drop.”

Accordingly, taking the stage for the last official musical performance of the festival, Bobby walked out like a zombie Frankenstein.  Who was the zombie?  Was it us?  Were we a zombie audience?  Was it them playing in the heart of the rainforest swamp of the Northeast?  Was it the combination?  Had we little left to say to each other?  We already got there?  The perfunctory U.S. Blues, though, was anything but perfunctory, and the way the audience clicked in, I realized that we could have all gone on for a lot longer.  Furthur, however, had to hit the road for another show.

The one awkward moment came during the fireworks.  No one knew whether to look at the band and thank them, as many of us did, or check out the budding fireworks show.  The much needed love these guys should be shown for all their hard work was spent on too soon 4th of July fireworks.  And that was it, save the late night silent disco which turned conspicuously unsilent.  An enormous spectacle was swallowed into the humid Maine night.  We dragged our way back to our campsite, eventually, and giggled at the rants of DJs who were unofficially performing until the first birds of an Oxford County dawn.

What else to do on July 5th, one of the hottest days in memory, than decamp and find a good swimming hole?  We did so.  What to do the week following than reconvene with old friends who were still in the area after the festival?  Check that.  Though we wanted to sail on Midcoast schooners, the fog was too thick to head out.  I’m not even going to probe the depths of that potential metaphor.

"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."