More Phil's Birthday; 2019 part 3

As mentioned in yesterday's post, it was another mellow morning in the La Quinta of blogging and internetting after a textbook hotel breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, sugary blueberry muffins, and strangely flavored coffee.  So we were psyched, and figured we just had to get out after we were done to get some exercise and/or see the sights.  The pre-show on Saturday was Jay Blakesburg's photo trip (which we'd seen) followed by more Deadgrass (which we'd seen), so our schedule was wide open that March 16th afternoon.

The decision, not a hard one, was to go back to the Butler Sanctuary, just a few miles North of there.  We'd been there back in the past, and it's really a wonderful place.  It was a beautiful day with large, high fluffy clouds blowing past quickly through a blue, blue sky.  It was warm when you were in the sun and out of the wind, but could get quite chilly if you lingered in a shady spot which the wind had insinuated, and you realized that there were still freezing clumps of snow around that would last until well into the eventual Spring.  We didn't go there though, we went out the Red Trail and back on the Blue (more on that later), through an impossibly hilly and turbulent landscape that must have been livestock farms in the past but now featured majestic ashes, tough oaks, ephemeral maples, and luminescent beeches.  The farmers had also left a network of narrow and high stone walls, apparently meant to delineate plots and/or fence in livestock rather than being middens of agricultural discards.

We saw absolutely no wildlife though, except for a few people with their dogs, and a few birds, very high up in the sky.  Perhaps there were a few chirps in the branches, though it might have been trees rubbing against each other in the gusty breeze.  But no chipmunks or squirrels, no insects, no toads or salamanders, just the healthy forest and rocks, and the lichens and fungi growing on them.  This is a beautiful place of hidden dells, hollows, and swamps.  Most of the trees you see are deciduous, but there are pockets of grand conifers in there too.  The most impressive to me were some old, huge ashes that were barely paying any attention to winter ... it was just a season.  One fallen tree had at least 150 rings.

The trails were alternately icy and muddy, but we were making good headway.  Back on the Blue Trail though we got a little too enthusiastic and overshot our return on the Red Trail, even when Dave warned us.  We ended up walking way downhill towards the Byram Lake Reservoir, and then had to struggle way back uphill to get back to the parking lot.  In all, a great hike.

OK, back to the hotel and time to get in a decent nap.  Then it was off to the concert after getting a cup of coffee or two.  Parked in the same lot behind Kiosko under a definitely bulging moon, and trundled on in for another Mexican dinner.

As discussed in earlier posts, we may be loco to go back to Kiosko all the time, or we may not be.  They serve great food and have a very large menu, so it's not like we're eating the same thing every time we go there.  But we take our trips to see P&F seriously, and we value our observations of the music and the experience of it.  To a certain degree, you want to set a routine, a baseline for observations, and eating dinner at Kiosko is part of it.  We know what to expect there and it's comforting, and this is part of the routine of going to the Cap and hearing a concert.  How we evaluate the concert should not be pre-judged or affected by the dinner we had just before it.

So there we three judges were, lining up to get into the Cap after another Kiosko dinner that couldn't be beat, feeling totally normal.  And what a normal!  Just in time I remembered that I didn't want to get busted by the Cap security people for having ibuprofen in my pocket, and ducked around the corner to swallow the last two tabs that were in there.  Jeez, drugs can be so complicated.

We barely turned an ear to what was going on in Garcia's, and just meandered on up the ornate staircase, and into the balcony area.  Our seats were on the left that night, row F, and as it turned out, Lorien was sitting in exactly that row, across the aisle.  We had pretty good neighbors that night, though the guy to my right had a big cane and was barely mobile (but knew how to wave his cane around, alarmingly).  Oh well.

There was an opening act, and they came on right after 8.  Phil had mixed it up a little for his third show of the stand and Luther Dickinson was replacing John Scofield, though the other players were the same (and in the same spots).  I'm not even going to start trying to think about whether that was an upgrade or a downgrade.  They're very different players, but are both world class musicians with distinct styles.  Dickinson also sings, very well, and so might edge a few points out ahead for that, but Scofield has a better beard.

Anyway, Luther's latest band is Sisters Of the Strawberry Moon, with Amy Helm and Birds of Chicago (several other players also appeared on their recent album, that had been in the can for three years).  Who knows if this is a one-tour thing or a lasting partnership, but let me just say that when we read they were going to appear with Phil, that was the end of any thought of us not attending that weekend's celebration.  I mean, Amy Helm and Allison Russell with Luther Dickinson playing some funky guitar?  Sign me up!

And there they were, with the other half of Birds, JT Nero, on guitar, and with a proto-Bird, Drew Lindsay (JT's brother), on piano.  And they were excellent.  The highlight of their set may have been Luther's Song For Peace or JT and Allison's Alright Alright, including of course some wonderful clarinet.  Here's what their setlist said, though I don't think they did all these songs:

Real Midnight
Mojo
Breathing
You're Not Alone
Try
How Glad I Am
Prayer for Peace
Gloryland
Alright, Alright

I think a lot of Capitol denizens weren't ready for this.  One guy in the bathroom groused, "What's up with the opening act to a Phil show?"  But his outrage was a minority view and people everywhere were gushing about them, how could you not gush about Allison?

OK, their gear was cleared away pretty quickly.  Grahame had sat in with them on bass, played through his father's rig (I can imagine the conversation between them and the threats of withheld allowance).  He was excellent, and this brought the delightful sight of Levon's daughter, pounding away on the drums and singing right next to Phil's offspring on bass, the two of them holding down the beat and grinning at each other.  Luther's a second-generation musician himself.

But now Grahame was back on guitar and they lit into a wonderful first set.  Perhaps I'll eventually feel this was a better show than Thursday's ... which is very high praise.  It was hard to evaluate at that level at the time, but in any case, it was a sterling finale to the stand.  Phil had led the band through a couple of adventurous sets on Thursday, which worked like a charm.  And then he'd put the same band through a more straight-up show on Friday.  On Saturday it was time for him to step back a bit and let the opening act, Luther, Benmont, and Jackie shine, before taking it over at the end.  And that's not to mention his delightful female singers!

Anyway, here's the first set (see Dave's blog for more details on the songs):

Deal
Operator
High Time
I'm a King Bee
Tennessee Jed
Brokedown Palace
Sugaree

Deal is thrown into GD sets all the time, but every once in a while stands out, and this was one of those times; it was a perfect warm-up for this particular assortment of guitar sounds.  And Operator is becoming a sine qua non in a Phil set, especially with the sly kind of vocal Luther can give it.

After these two openers they played one of the most amazing High Times I’ve ever seen/heard.  Jackie again brought his own style to it but toned it down … he was singing about being low and wanting to be high.  And Luther’s atmospheric guitar brought some amazing sounds and textures, naturally abetted by Phil.  This was just jaw-droppingly good and though some crowds would have been made restless by the slow pace, this crowd was riveted.

Luther then did his thing on I’m a King Bee, and Jackie did his on Tennessee Jed, with the dual Lesh backup shining again and the jam at the end another nifty guitar showcase.

Then the level of excellence took another quantum leap.  We’d been wondering WTF Amy was … we thought she was going to be part of the Saturday ensemble and couldn’t believe she wasn’t out there for Tennessee Jed (which her Dad had recorded, with her backup).  But there was a vacant vocal mike and she sidled up to that, leading a star-struck Allison Russell by the hand, who lined up at Jackie’s mike.  Grahame stepped up to his mike also, and started off the song: an amazing rendition of Brokedown Palace with him taking the lead and the women taking us into the stratosphere.  You’ve gotta see this.

Wow!  Our minds were totally blown by that and I barely even noticed another great Sugaree, which closed the set.

Time for the last setbreak of our wonderful trip to the Phil/Port Chester Island.  It was definitely warm in there at that point, though not stifling like Friday night.  I took one last trip to the upstairs bar for another (local) Captain Lawrence Hop Commander and one last excursion to the beyond-funky upstairs bathroom.  No trip to the smoking areas was necessary for me that weekend, navigating the crowds upstairs were enough.  But luckily Dave had his vape pen, which I inspected closely a time or two.

We discussed the first set a bit.  At that point we realized we might eventually consider this to be as good as Thursday’s concert had been, which was hard to imagine, but could be.  Alternately they could still fall flat on their faces in the second set!  Actually, I don’t think Phil would have let them do this.  And then they came out and performed …

Viola Lee Blues
Jack Straw
Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)
Truckin’
China Doll
Terrapin Station
Morning Dew

Oh geez, how am I going to describe this set that again, meant so much to me?  How about a few bullet points:

• The over/under on whether a P&F band (or any current GD band) will play Viola Lee is pretty low.  You won't get rich betting on that.  But this song never fails to deliver and somehow is both a cathartic sing-along and a vehicle for the deepest jamming.  They did some pretty deep jamming here, but they had a long set in front of them and so didn't dwell.
• Beautiful transition from the funky end of Viola Lee into what's become the customary, long, mellow intro into Jack Straw.  Grahame/Shannon started the vocal interplay and Jackie took the Bobby part.
• As you might imagine, Dave and I had been goading each other to come up with setlists for the stand, and mine always started and ended with Caution, especially knowing that Luther would be there for one of the nights.  Sure enough, deep into the second set and here it was!  Luther has his own way of mumbling the blues, and if we didn't know the story we might have been puzzled about why he ended up with a mojo hand, but that's Luther for you (in fact, he has a current song called Mojo).
• It had occurred to me Saturday morning that they were going to play Truckin' on Saturday night and so they did.  Phil wrote it you know (well, along with the rest of the band).  This was a quick and breezy take, a respite from the seriousness of the rest of the set.
• And then the level got upped even more!!  Benmont so far hadn't uttered a syllable and then suddenly he was playing a beautiful introduction to China Doll and then singing it to rival Oteil.  His piano part on this superseded genre and the song was arranged as a duet between that and a strident Phil Lesh bass part that played around it.  And on top of it was lovely singing with a world-weary voice.  The other guys contributed too, but at a lower volume level and the ensemble sound filled the hall.  This was one of the most perfect songs of the night.
• Then a beautiful Terrapin featuring struck in steel guitar parts from Jackie and Luther, and the top-level vocals we'd been hearing all weekend.  Grahame started singing about that bitch throwing her fan into the fire and expecting the military to get it back for her.  But when it came to the meat of the song, the Lesh Brothers took over.  From "Since the end is never told" to the very end, the pair sang in unison with Benmont wandering all around them (and Jackie contributing the high part when he could).  Wow!
• And I hate to repeat myself, but then they upped the musical level even fucking more!  Dew is always a possibility when it comes to P&F, and this time Amy and Allison came back out for it.  It occurred to me when hearing Larry and Teresa sing this with Phil several years ago that it could be done as a call and response (as they did Peggy-O that day), and that's what Grahame and the women did.  Amy and Allison sang in incredible harmony the questioning part about what was going on, asking why they couldn't walk out in the morning dew.  And Grahame answered them with the detachment and panache that you need in a nuclear disaster, I guess.

Well, perhaps I'm not taking this as seriously as I should.  That was an incredibly performed, emotion-laden, and meaningful second set.  And as before, my eyes and my ears kept on turning back to Phil, even when Allison Russell was leaving her heart on the stage.  To see him singing, "The spiral light of Venus rising first and shining best," diving into the netherworld (and beyond) with Viola Lee, marvelling about what a long strange trip this had been, dropping bombs on Dew, and so forth, was what we were there for and might become only memory at any point.  We were living it at that moment though.

OK, the experience was almost over and I wasn't about to sit down.  I stood and waited for Phil to come back out, and he gave the most stumbling, repetitive, easily distracted old-man, heartfelt donor rap ever.  He was overcome by the emotion of the moment also and was perhaps a little embarrassed by this, but then it was time for the encore and he stuck his ear-plugs back in with glee.  Good old Phil.

Amy and Allison came back out and they cruised through a classic Midnight Hour.  One thing I'd noted was that they stuck to the Grateful Dead songbook all weekend.  The only songs before this night that were not GD-penned were Public Domain songs (or Minglewood), and then this night they went a little farther afield with King Bee, Morning Dew, and Midnight Hour, but these are still solidly in the GD canon.  No Dylan, Furthur songs, or semi-country for that stand.

And speaking of the GD canon, everyone stayed on-stage at the end of that song and scratched their asses, and then Luther started up the real closer: Turn On Your Love Light.  Another short, perfect version of a classic Dead song, like the guys (and ladies) had been doing all weekend.

They got to the end, put down their instruments, gathered at center stage, and bowed to us.  They started drifting off and though Phil was immediately involved as ever with the careful dismantling of his rig, suddenly he disappeared!  I looked around and he had just then remembered his responsibilities as band-leader apparently.  He rushed after Amy and the star-struck Allison, who were gabbing at the back of the stage.  Phil thanked them respectfully and then hugged them.  Perhaps all of us old guys will have opportunities to be as gracious.

What else is there to say?  The Capitol guys screwed up for once and had us all line up to go down the wrong staircase because of fire laws or something.  But soon we were back out on Westchester Avenue under a now almost-oval moon, and then back in the lot behind Kiosko, and then driving away.  Lorien declined a ride back to her hotel that night, and we had a quick trip North, up the few miles to Armonk.

Was this my favorite time at the Cap?  Maybe.  We'll see what happens next, because that's what music is all about.

Here's a link to Sarah's pictures, including lots of shots of the ethereal trio of Grahame, Amy, and Allison.