Dead & Company Conquer Foxborough

A long time ago I decided I'd had enough of big rock and roll crowd scenes and there was really no attraction to seeing a band in a hockey rink or a football stadium.  I could have listed many reasons for that, and I was fine with it for years.

One huge reason was thinking that you could really not have a "concert" in such a setting, because it would be too difficult to get the sound anywhere near as good as in a theater or a club.  I remember making an exception to this rule for Dawes opening for Bob Dylan in Lowell in 2013.  Though they got the sound pretty good by the end of Dylan's set, it had been like wet cardboard for Dawes, and my prejudice was upheld.

But then I made another exception for the Fare Thee Well concerts in Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara in 2015 ... this was one concert event that attracted me as an event itself.  And the sound for it was really much better than I'd imagined it would be.  We were about at the opposite 40 yard line from the stage and 20-30 rows up from the field, and I enjoyed the concert immensely, stunned at the quality sound from all the instruments on stage.

Since then we'd seen Dead & Company in a variety of hockey rinks and the sound was excellent each time, and it was very good when seeing them in Fenway.  But even so, I hesitated when they announced that they'd be playing Gillette Stadium on June 22nd in their 2019 Summer tour (which started in Spring, though it was (barely) Summer by the time they got to Massachusetts).  I said, "Well, maybe we shouldn't go this year."  Dave did not hesitate, "Oh, we're going," he said.

Well yeah, he had a good point.  They've been so great for their almost 4 years as a band that it would be foolish to miss them this Summer.  It's not like they'd been going downhill, quite the opposite!  We even thought that we should go for the whole experience, and we got field tickets.  We weren't going to crowd up to the stage, but we wanted to get reasonably close.

The tour opened on the West Coast this year ... in the past they've gone East to West ... and the stop in Foxborough was their 12th of the tour.  We'd heard and seen a good number of the preceding shows as they slowly made their way East, and they'd been stunningly good.  Though they hadn't played as a band since their three shows in Mexico in January, and before that the 2018 Summer tour, they only showed a little rust in their first show, and after that showed absolutely no sign of the plodding, formulaic shows they've been accused of in the past.

In fact, they'd been uniformly inventive and maybe even a little daring.  They'd mixed in riffs from Miles and Coltrane here and there, pulled out Iko Iko to commemorate Dr. John's death, and opened shows and second sets with very non-formulaic stuff, like a standalone FOTM in Indiana, The Other One and Terrapin Station as show openers in Chicago, and an incredible Spanish Jam theme through their whole last set in Wrigley Field.  And though they'd not strayed from the second set Drums > Space routine, the drummers had an absence of gimmicks (ok, we saw Mickey knocking some shoes together at one point).  In short, they had set the bar very high by the time they got to New England, and we were psyched.

That Saturday had been forecast as sunny, hot, and windy all week, but we were a bit dismayed that possible showers and thunderstorms had entered into the fray by the time we left.  We did get a few showers on the way down there, picking up Dave in Quincy on the way and leaving our new kittens to woman the fort.  When we got to Gillette they had closed the huge Northbound-side lot and so we had to settle for the huge South-bound side lot after some twisting around.

We just had time to get out our chairs and crack a beer and then who should show up but Scott and Michelle?  We'd been hoping to get together with them and voila, there they were pulling in 20 or so cars after us, what great serendipity!  They had their chairs out and beers cracked (or whatever) right away and we had a great time hanging in the lot, and talking non-stop.  There were still huge white thunderclouds circling around us and we had seen some lightning and heard some thunder to the South.  And there was a HUGE turkey vulture flying low overhead.  But the thunderclouds passed, the vulture took off for some other site, and before we knew it it was time to go in.  We had to be there when the gates opened for the field!

We had had to switch our tickets to Will Call for reasons I won't go into, but picking them up was painless and then we had a chance to catch the end of soundcheck while waiting with a hundred or so others for the field to open.  When it did, most of the people rushed to the front but we had other plans.  We wanted something to lean against (and to protect us from crowd back and forth), and we were delighted to find that in front of the soundboard was close enough for our standards, and that this meant not only was there a fence right behind us, there was one to our right and so we had a mellow little backwater, close to the stage and with excellent sound.  We got beers and sat down.  Sarah got a great long sleeve t-shirt at the merch tent too (for $60!).

Gillette was nowhere near sold out as one might expect, but visually pretty full by the time the concert started.  They had originally tried to sell some of the top bowl, but ended up closing that off and mostly filling the middle bowl, as well as the bottom one.  The crowd was kind of late arriving, but the guys came on just a bit past 7 and warmed up.  OMG, it was Dead & Company again, we'd been seeing them get closer and closer across the country and they were finally back in town, ready to rock our heads off.

Wasn't soon before they hit us with another inventive opener, and this was the start to a few hours of what seemed at the time to be close to perfection ... and seems like it on reflection too.  Here's the first set:

Eyes Of the World
Deal
Black-Throated Wind
Easy Wind
Loser
Big Railroad Blues
Bird Song
Box Of Rain

Again, Dave's blog contains a lot of great detail about the songs and the ways in which they were played.  But besides that these elicited several strong impressions:

• I realized in a moment that they were opening with Eyes, and that this was a continuation of their adventurous openers.  But I feel this is one of the greatest songs ever written and was afraid it would take a feat of concentration to enjoy it to its utmost from a standing start.  No such delay though, I was immediately thrown into a state of bliss, like jumping into the deep end and finding it warm and fuzzy rather than cold and shocking.
• Oteil was playing his new bass, which had not impressed me earlier in the tour, but sure was fantastic live.  And John was playing as well as ever, effortlessly turning out astounding lead after astounding lead.  And that's not to mention the others.  This was as good or better playing and singing from everyone on stage than I'd ever seen from them before.  For them to all be at their peak at the same time was one of the reasons this show was so excellent.
• And the sound was incredible in front of the board!  We had some great neighbors and everyone was dancing and only a few people tried to barge past and then realize they had nowhere to go.  This was like being in a little living room in the middle of Gillette Stadium.  There were no flags.
• John started off with Big Boss Man when everyone else on stage knew that the setlist said Easy Wind, but he recovered and sang it with panache.  Loser is such a great song and to follow it with Big RR Blues really spoke deep down to the country fan in me.
• I thought the set might end after Bird Song, but then suddenly they were playing that intro and I was knocked flat.  I hadn't realized they had revived Box Of Rain and this was the third time I'd heard it in a few months, Port Chester in March, Bangor a week ago, and then here.  Once again, who are the Grateful Dead and why are they following my life so closely?  Yes, John blew the words and they had to do a "take 2," but that made it even easier to digest.

Ack!  Time for set break and they switched on the glaring football lights, then realized they didn't need to do that and mellowed them out just enough.  It was already almost dark and we needed just a bit of light.  I took off for the bathrooms (way up on the concourse) and the long wait for good beer.  There was only one stand nearby with the good stuff and they ran out halfway through filling my cup with ale! I told her not to dump it, to top it off with some pretty good witbier that was still on, and the result was palatable.

Almost time for the second set by the time I struggled back and again, they came on without much delay ... just about a 40-minute break.  The tuning was purposeful and Dave called it, a powerful beginning to another amazing set:

Help On the Way
Slipknot!
Franklin's Tower
He's Gone
Dark Star
Drums
Space
Stella Blue
Not Fade Away
Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad
Not Fade Away

As wonderful as many DeadCo concerts we've been to have been, this very likely would have to be at the top of the list.  So many things about it were great:

• I can't emphasize enough how fantastic the sound was.  I had to turn around several times to verify that yes, I was in the middle of a huge football stadium, but the harmonics and echoes were tuned just right, like in a concert hall, and the power blasting from the stage was just perfect.
• Slipknot! was remarkable for its inventiveness, length, and democracy.  Everyone on stage had something to say about it.  And He's Gone was sung as beautifully as I've ever heard it, and with an incredibly infectious pace.
• During the jam after He's Gone I turned to Dave and commented that Dreamflower was out of luck.  Dave's friend had never heard a live Dark Star and was there that evening.  They hadn't played it since the 7th in Washington and we anticipated they would that night, but by that point in the set I figured it was too late for them to start it.  And then ... Jeff tinkled the first inkling of it and they all fell into place.  Again, see Dave's blog for more details, but this was one of the best Dark Stars I've ever heard ... and this song is at its best when filling a large space.
• And I have to comment on this Drums > Space segment, which was just fantastic.  Oteil joined Mickey and Billy in a furious attack on the tom-toms, and later Mickey did some amazing things on the beam.  When the band joined them for Space it was a soundscape you could float on.
• I'd predicted either Stella Blue or Morning Dew for the after-Space song, and when they started up Stella Blue it was more perfection.  Bobby's voice was at its strongest and most emotive.
• Crowd pleaser at the end, and this was the full thing, though the transition to GDTRFB could have been a bit more gradual.  Oh well, NFA had the whole stadium on its feet.

We were just gaping with open jaws and stunned expressions at each other and at our neighbors.  In our little living room in front of the soundboard this had been one of the best concerts I'd ever experienced, maybe the best.  Who cares how far away we were from anywhere else, we were where we should have been at that moment.

Very short break before they came back out and lined up for the encore.  They did The Weight and the only regret of the night was that Oteil and Jeff only had their verses on this to shine at lead vocals.  Bobby got the crowd going again with the vocal coda, and this was a great ending to a great night of music.  They waved and namasted and were gone.  We'll see more of the tour from the couch, but we'd just had a great one.

Headed up to the concourse for the bathrooms, and then down the long pedestrian ramp to get out, then up the huge stairway to traverse the shopping area.  But it actually wasn't very far back across route 1 to our car.  And just before we got there, we ran into Dreamflower and friend, and had some company.  The line out of the parking lot wasn't going anywhere, so we pulled out the chairs and had another beer and sandwich.  It had gotten kind of chilly by then.  It had been windy all day and the temperature had now dropped to sweatshirt level, not bad for a late June night.

Finally got on the road and, as expected, they made us go South out of the parking lot!  JFC, this was a pain but we got turned around safely after a while, made it back up past the Stadium, and then finally onto 95, 128, and back home where the kitties were waiting anxiously.  Got to bed around 2:00 or so, not bad for a Saturday night.  Hey, they didn't play that!

Phillie Tour In Bangor

Boy, all this stuff about vacation, travels, and reality had kept us from our true what-we-really-should-be-doing stuff, which is going to concerts.  Specifically, summer concert season.  And the big kick-off to summer concert season this year (even though it’s still very much late Spring in New England, especially up North) was that Willie Nelson’s annual extravaganza was starting their tour in Bangor Maine on June 14th!

If you don’t know who Willie Nelson is and what he means to the culture of this, our planet … I have no idea where to start (well, “The red-headed stranger from Blue Rock Montana rode into town one day…).  And what really blew us away when we first heard about this tour, was that he’d be playing with Phil Lesh & Friends, Alison Krauss, his sons’ bands, and a host of others (Outlaw Music Festival 2019).

They weren’t coming close to Boston, but that’s all relative.  They were opening at Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion in Bangor in mid-June (that's my sister's car dealer!).  And though that’s 3.5 hours away, when you get there it’s just a hop, skip, and jump from our house in Maine.  We signed up as soon as we could and got 7th row seats, though they were disappointingly far left.  This meant we were near the beer, bathrooms, and exit.  But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Anyway, the three of us took that Friday off work and were going to drive up that morning, but at the last minute we decided to go up Thursday after work.  This meant we drove through a Biblical rain-storm, but we stopped at the BBQ place in Augusta for dinner and had a pretty successful trip up … we’ve done this before.

One thing led quickly to another on Friday morning and before we knew it it was time to leave, armed with sunscreen, bug spray, rain slickers, sweatshirts, sunglasses, food, and all kinds of summer concert stuff.  This was Maine after all, and though the mid-June day seemed temperate, the forecast called for scattered showers and lows perhaps dipping into the 40s that night.

Pleasant drive up to Bucksport and up the Penobscot River on 15, and then over to the big city on the 1A bridge and soon we were at the Pickering Square Parking Garage, where we had a late lunch of a few sandwiches while watching the other concert-goers assemble.  Then a nice (but windy!) walk down Main Street to the venue.

This was a real mixed crowd.  There were a number of older people with flannel shirts and cowboy boots (or the Maine equivalent) there to see Willie, a number of people with flannel shirts over tie-dyed t-shirts there for Phil, a number of people with flannel shirts and a polite demeanor there for Allison, and a number of people with flannel shirts and work boots there for the rock bands.  OK, there was a common thread here.  It was a beautiful day on the waterfront in Bangor, and we all milled around.

We three detoured to the park at water’s edge and emptied our water bottles in preparation for going in.  We had our stuff in clear plastic bags as prescribed, and were prepared for one of *those* concert entry experiences.  One woman in front of us did her best to slow down the line, but it was really pretty painless.  It was a long slog past the food vendors and the port-a-potties to get in, but when we got to our 7th row seats things were pretty good.  The beer tent was 50 feet away, the bathrooms 100 feet, and the stage less than that.

Brief paragraph on Darlings’s Waterside Pavilion, based on our subjective observations that day, including a tour around the environs.  Though there were several good things about it, there was a lot that was sub-prime about this place.  If you had a seat in the front few sections the sight lines were very good, but the back and lawn seats were pitiful, you might as well stay home and watch it on TV since that’s what you were going to do anyway.  I think from most of the lawn seats you physically would not be able to see the stage.  The beer was expensive and they ran out of everything except Bud Light halfway through the concert.  The bathrooms were just a row of port-a-potties and sometimes had long lines.  And they wouldn’t let you bring in any food and then when you were inside you had to wait in line forever to get gruesome, fried fare.  Dave waited in line at what should have been a less-busy time but was in line for 40 minutes.

And when we got to our seats we were delighted in some ways, but overwhelmed in others.  The first act, Particle Kid (Willie’s son Micah), had started right on time at 3:30 when we were just entering the venue.  And at our seats the volume was deafening.  I don’t often complain about things being too loud, but this was intense!  Particle Kid is a really fun power-rock (with a little bit of indie or emo) trio with Micah shredding it on guitar, and a driving bass and drums.  And they had it turned up to 11.  We could not hear each other, shouting as we were from one seat to another.

But they were really pretty good and Micah Nelson was being a showman in unlaced work boots, windmilling on his guitar when the mood went from moody to excited, and jumping on the speakers at the front of the stage when he thought people weren’t paying attention.  He had a spaceman wandering around stage and had a filter that made his guitar sound like a laser gun.  A lot of people did pay attention to him and and we gave him and his act a good reception.

As we asked ourselves (and the friends we met at our seats) about most of the acts that day, how you could not like something like that?  They were good musicians laying it down for us and though their genre or song-writing choices might not be to your taste (Particle Kid has a song (and a video) called “Everything Is Bullshit” and the chorus went, “Everything is fucking bullshit,” which was quite the twist!), this was authentic American music with no trace of irony, though it had a lot of angst.

Next up was another of Willie’s sons, Lukas, with his band Promise Of the Real, which has been around since 2008 and is currently Neil Young’s regular backing band.  They delivered a very polished set of country rock at a slightly lower volume, though Lukas had his brother Micah on lead guitar and he tried to rip it up.  Some of their songs are really well-written and this was quite an enjoyable set, as the afternoon threatened to end sometime.  We were shaded by the tent around the stage, but the sun was starting to get pretty brilliant as it got lower in the sky.

It was another one of those experiences when you think that the day will last forever, and suddenly the first two sets were gone.  Next up was The Revivalists, a New Orleans-based rock band (on the poppier side) who have a pretty good sound themselves.  They’re not really the kind of band that grabs me, being not very funky, not very guitar-driven, and not very anything distinctive.  This was just good solid original rock music with feeling and a baritone sax.  And the lead singer looked like a rock guy, he was wiry with a lot of hair.

OK, halfway through and the great part was about to start.  Dave had waited in the interminable food line and got me a decent hot dog when he got there.  The guys were setting up the stage for Alison and this was quite a production.  They lowered a backdrop of some attic windows, brought in a gas lamp and a dollhouse(??), and scattered several Ionic pedestals around.  I think they were going for a “Windy City” kind of visual atmosphere but it mostly fell flat.

This was especially true for us because we couldn’t really see it.  Though we were in the 7th row we were pretty far left.  Not far enough so we couldn’t see and enjoy the musicians (there was even another section to our left), but we were at a severe angle to the stage and there was a cameraman in our way, so though we could see the musicians, we couldn’t really see their setup or the cute bits on the stage.

The cameras (one on each side, pretty close to the action) were there to feed the real-time TV screens flanking the stage, which were probably all the people on the lawn could see, as mentioned.  You could understand why they were there, though the camera on our side was kind of a pain for us, it was right in the way.  As close to the stage as we were, many of the people around us watched the TV screens most of the time anyway.  Not me.  I glanced at them from time to time to (e.g.) see Willie professionally lit or to see Bobbie Nelson on piano (not at all visible from the audience), but most of the time I was riveted on the stage.

So anyway, Alison came on and what a band she had.  We’d been wondering about Phil’s band and there had not been good information about this (see below), but even more lacking was information as to what kind of band Alison would have.  She brought the A-team.  How’s this: Jeff White(!) on mandolin and vocals, Sidney Cox on dobro and vocals (they were both in a “trio” mike arrangement with her at mid-stage), Matt Rollings on piano, Barry Bales on bass, Ron Block on guitar and banjo, and a lead guitarist and drummer whose names we didn’t catch.

Alison was great, though a jarring juxtaposition to the loud and frantic rock that came before her.  As I say, many of the people there were there to see her, and she sure brought the goods, backed up by that incredible band.  They opened with a couple of songs from her latest record to set the pace, and then hit most of her big ones:

• River In the Rain
• I Never Cared For You
• Stay
• Forget About It
• Baby Now That I’ve Found You
• Ghost In This House
• Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson
• The Lucky One
• Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us
• It’s Goodbye and So Long To You
• Angel Flying Too Close To the Ground
• Go To Sleep You Little Baby
• Let Me Touch You For Awhile
• Sawing On the Strings
• Down To the River To Pray
• Gentle On My Mind
• When You Say Nothing At All
• When I’ve Done the Best I Can I Want My Crown

Yikes, this was 18 songs and she did them in at most 90 minutes.  These were all pretty short renditions, and the stage crew was doing the thing of thrusting the instruments for the next song into the musicians’ hands before they’d really finished the one they were working on.  But this pace was great for us and great for the delighted crowd.  Though she did nothing approaching a rocker and so may have put some people to sleep, this was music of the highest quality and had me on the edge of my seat.  Some highlights were the trio vocals and Alison’s fiddle of course, Block’s guitar work, and just amazing runs from Rollings on piano.

OK, time to get ready for what we were really there for.  As mentioned, it was a little mysterious who was going to be on stage with Phil.  He had played with Jorma Kaukonen, John Molo, Rob Barraco, and Grahame Lesh earlier in the week in Port Chester, and that band was going to be with him the next day at Mountain Jam.  Between those two gigs there was this stop on the Willie tour, and we hoped that that same band would be playing.  But we had heard late that Ross James and Alex Koford from his other band were going to be there, so we weren’t sure (I saw Ross and Alex at the beer tent during the first act).

Though we were disappointed that Jorma wasn’t there, Phil ended up playing with the rest of that great band of Molo, Barraco, and Grahame, and also added James, Koford, AND Elliott Peck.  Just say “Elliott Peck” to me and I will be happy.  So let’s say you’re playing “rock stars trading cards” and you get offered the chance to trade your Jorma Kaukonen card for three others: Ross James, Alex Koford, and Elliott Peck.  Would you do it?

Whatever, this band hit the floor running and turned in a neat 90-minute set that had us in ecstasy.  Molo reinforced his nickname of “White Cloud” right before they started, and I tried to emulate him.  Here’s the list:

• New Minglewood Blues (RJ)
• Jack Straw (RJ, GL)
• Box Of Rain (PL)
• Ramble On Rose (AK)
• The Music Never Stopped (RJ)
• The Wheel (all)
• Help On the Way (RB)
• Slipknot!
• I Know You Rider (all)
• Brokedown Palace (EP)

This was just excellent, excellent stuff, a whole evening of Phil Lesh music compressed into a short set.  Ross started it off with a breathtakingly funky take on Minglewood, including growling over the Maine phillies.  The intro to Jack Straw was pure Furthur.  I hope Phil is singing Box Of Rain when I die, or if and when he dies.  Ramble On Rose did not really take off but had Elliott on vocal and her style is enough to knock the wind out of you.  Then what I thought it was an exceptional Music … until Elliott stepped up and sang those parts and it went from great to epic…

There was a woman dancing in front of us, in ecstasy at hearing and being so close to Phil.  Elliott stepped up to the mike and the woman grabbed herself and shouted, “She’s singing the Donna parts!!!”  Yes she was, and she got them down.

The Wheel was done with all the trimmings, and then it seemed like the second set had started when we calmed down from that and Rob got us right back up with an excellent vocal on Help and the band went full tilt into a shortened Slipknot!  Then we all realized it was time to end the shortened Dead show when they wound it down with Rider.  But what would be the “encore?”  Elliott’s turn to shine again and she knocked out a fantastic Brokedown that left not a dry eye in the house.

But what was I doing during all of this?  Watching Phil of course.  Rob was really on that night and Grahame unexpectedly chimed in with some fantastic leads.  Koford is a surprisingly tasteful rhythm guitar player and the interplay between the three guitarists was great (Ross switched to pedal steel for The Wheel and made it sound like first Garcia).  And Molo was great, though I couldn’t really see him.  But as ever, the player of the night was … Phil!  I could just listen to his bass pounding and soaring and coloring my world for a long time.  We were pretty close to the stage, and there were a lot of people and things between me and him, and we were outside in the middle of a huge crowd.  But I was watching him and he was right there, somehow becoming more vivid to me as I watched.  I was looking through a perceptual tunnel and realized what a wonderful time he was having, doing what he likes to do best.  He was ageless and so was I.

I had thought we might get an abbreviated donor rap, but they had a schedule to meet.  They all bowed at center stage like a proper P&F band, and then Phil’s only remarks were to get ready for Willie!  So we did.

Oh boy, were we really nearing the end of the night?  They took forever setting up the stage for Willie, and teased us with a couple of his music videos on the big screen, which didn’t seem to hurry him up at all.  Finally he came on at about 10:20 and treated us to an hour set.

With Willie was his sister Bobbie on tinkling piano of course, a bass player, son Micah on traps, a percussionist, Mickey Raphael on harmonica, and son Lukas on electric guitar.  I have to say that their set was not great, though seeing Willie is an electric thrill.  His tempos were as oddball as ever but this is his style, and when he would take over a song on his beat-up old guitar, which he did not hesitate to do, he was enthralling.

The played very much a “greatest hits” set for the Maine country crowd, opening with Whiskey River and cruising through such stuff as Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys, On the Road Again, Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground (though Alison had covered it earlier that evening), Always On My Mind, Roll Me Up and Smoke Me, It’s All Gone To Pot, etc.  Dave was amazed when he’d be singing a verse, suddenly point his mike to the crowd, and we’d finish it for him.  This was a crowd of Willie freaks, though a lot of people left in the middle of it to try to beat the traffic.

Willie at one point whipped off his hat and threw it into the crowd, and later got a bunch of bandannas that he tossed hither and yon.  This wasn’t a really inspired performance, but what do you expect of an 86-year old musician on the first night of a tour?  Also, it was getting kind of cold by that point.  There had been a few sprinkles of rain, one almost approaching a steady drizzle, and the temperature had dropped.  This was Maine though, and we were all prepared … everyone got out their rain slicker and/or sweatshirt.

And then sooner than expected, it was over!  I’d been thinking we’d go until midnight but apparently there’s an 11:30 curfew for music acts in Bangor and they stopped even before that … must have been 11:20.  I was afraid it would take us forever to get out of the amphitheater but it actually went pretty well, and though it was a long walk back to the car that went well also.

Of course, once we were in the parking garage we realized it would take a while to get out of there.  As anticipated, we were starving and this was a great time to chill out and have a sandwich.  Sooner or later the backup started moving and we joined the end of it.  The drive back to Sedgwick was not too painful and then we were back in our house in the woods, having seen a great concert nearby.  Bed at just about exactly 1AM.