"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."