The Enduring Promise of an Unfinished Songbook

When Jerry Garcia passed away in August of 1995, so too did the band by the name of “Grateful Dead.” The band ceased operations, and the remaining members began pursuing other projects.

With Garcia’s passing also came a vacuum of sorts; since the mid-Sixties, thousands of superfans had grown accustomed to Grateful Dead’s rigorous and seemingly neverending tour schedule. Averaged out, over the course of nearly 30 years, the band would hit the stage roughly 70 times a year. 70 chances for a tie-dye wearing kid to go get their mind expanded over the course of two sets and an encore. With the closing of the book on the official Grateful Dead apparatus came a void that had to be filled.

Some made the leap to the burgeoning jam stars, the Phish from Vermont. Some began checking out other jamband vehicles that stemmed from a similar strain of blues and folk origins like Widespread Panic, Umphrey’s McGee, Leftover Salmon, and The String Cheese Incident, to name a few. Some even converted their love of improvisational jamming to bands with more electronic influences like The Disco Biscuits.

However for many a Deadhead, these acts just weren’t the same as the band formerly known as The Warlocks from San Francisco.

Where there was once music to fill the air, suddenly there was none. Grateful Dead fans who still wanted to hear the music, for a time, had to go without. However it was not long before that vacuum was filled.

Original members of the group began forming their own acts: The Dead, Further, The Other Ones, Rhythm Devils and Phil Lesh & Friends began touring the music of the Grateful Dead, once again filling halls with the wall of sound fans had been missing out on. Bobby Weir even started a few offshoot groups like RatDog and Wolf Bros, touring some original music alongside Dead tunes.

In 2015, Dead & Company was founded, with Bobby Weir, and the original Grateful Dead drummers Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzmann, alongside Jeff Chimenti on keys, Oteil Burbidge on bass, and some guy named John Mayer on lead guitar, picking up the Jerry tunes. To this day, one of the longest-tenured keyboardists for the Jerry Garcia Band, Melvin Seals, still tours the JGB songbook.

However, when a band with voracious fans like the Grateful Dead abruptly stop touring, and that faucet of neverending live shows is slammed closed, there’s bound to be others not directly associated with the band that pick up that mantle. It was perhaps an inevitability that at least one of those tie-dyed fans who got their mind spun at a show would leave the concert hall, still buzzing from what they had just witnessed, and pick up their own guitar to try and replicate the sound. And it is perhaps another inevitability that they’d find other like-minded musicians who wanted to make something out of it too.

Thus was born a new wave of Dead bands - the tribute acts.

Bands like Dark Star Orchestra emerged, a group who picks individual shows in the Grateful Dead’s history and performs them in their entirety. Their dedication to the bit goes as far as using the same equipment and instruments the band used for those specific shows. If they’re replicating a show from the 80’s, lead guitarist Jeff Mattson will be on a replica of Jerry’s 80’s axe, Tiger, and the sound system will match the setup that was used at the time.

Another fantastic act that sprung forth was Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. The namesake of the band, Joe Russo, played drums for a number of Bobby Weir outfits, and took the songbook to a group of younger musicians to learn and master. JRAD takes the Grateful Dead songs, and applies something of a Phish filter to them - explosive, peaking jams, segueing from song to song with improv sections, often splitting songs open and playing others in between.

Oteil & Friends, formed by Dead & Company bassist Oteil Burbidge, tours the music of both the Grateful Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band. They take the music back to the venues where the it shines best, rock halls and theaters.

What’s so interesting about these acts is the way in which they’ve taken the torch. When you think about tribute or cover bands, the images in your head may be of groups playing in small little venues, or breweries, bars, maybe even the odd small rock club. Both DSO and JRAD have sold out places like Red Rocks, the Capitol Theater, the Hollywood Bowl, to name a few.

What’s more, these bands are beginning to lap the original group. DSO have now played more shows than the original Grateful Dead, and JRAD’s rigorous touring schedule can sometimes pack more shows into a year than the Dead did.

What makes all of this work so well is that the Grateful Dead never truly “finished” their songs. Sure they wrote the music, the structure of the songs, chords and scales to be used. But the same song was never played the same way twice. If they played “Playin’ In The Band” 70 times in a year, each rendition of it was different from the last, and never to be played the same way again.

This leaves a songbook that’s up for the taking. Anyone with an instrument in their hand can make their own contribution to it. Whether it’s John Mayer playing “Althea” to a sold-out Gillette Stadium, or a local Dead cover band playing it at the cash-only bar down the street, each performance of a song comes with its own nuance. Its own degree of uniqueness, generated from the person behind the instrument, shaping it and letting their own personality guide the way the song sounds.

A great example of this in practice is the song “My Brother Esau.” The Bobby Weir tune had been a part of the band’s repertoire since the 80’s. But in 2012, Ohio rockers The National covered the song, making a modification to a couple of the lyrics. Taken by this, Bobby now performs the lyrics The National sang rather than his own. It was a subtle change, but he let another group of musicians take a stab, and loved the way the song ended up.

These songs truly are more blueprints as opposed to final plans. It’s what makes showing up to a Dead show so exciting. Again, it doesn’t matter if it’s a sold-out stadium show or a couple locals jamming in a record store basement - you know that whatever you’re about to hear will be a unique, unrepeatable experience. A one of one limited edition performance.

Art is meant to capture a moment in time, underscoring the urgency and necessity of being in the moment, and then reflecting on that moment. Art should be unique, not mass-produced and repeatable. For the Dead and the enormous army of bands playing their music, these songs and performances bind the audience to the current moment in time and history. They create unique experiences that cannot (and should not) be created again, because we need to always be moving forward. Yesterday will never happen again, so all we can do is hold on for the promise of tomorrow. I’m reminded of this when I go see a Dead band, and they’re about to play a song I’ve heard thousands of times, and I’m still excited for what’s to come.

Let there be songs to fill the air.