Dead & Company, Hartford 2016

The zeitgeist is so strong right now, but if I read this post in a few years it might not be as obvious ... but in 2016, Deadhead Nation have been dying to see Dead & Company again.  Their summer tour has been VASTLY anticipated.  As posted before, we saw them in Worcester last year and I have not heard one bad thing about them.  In fact, everyone I've talked to about Dead & Company has gushed about them.  Their return is BIG news among Deadhead-dom.

The Fall 2015 tour was amazing; they didn't do a Winter or Spring tour, and when they finally announced a Summer 2016 tour (back in March?), many people got tickets immediately.  Especially with the historic venues they were going to play, including three major league ballparks (correction: two major league parks and one Div 1 football stadium).  One of these is Fenway Park and we've got "turf" tickets for both shows there this coming July.  But never mind that, we also got tickets to see them in Hartford this June 28th!!

They've been on tour since June 10 and Hartford was basically the end of the first leg, hitting up various places on the East coast and as far West as Indiana.  After the Hartford show they have a few days off and then surface in Colorado, from where they'll depart for Wisconsin, Michigan, and then back East to Fenway for the last dates of the second leg of their tour, which will resume a few days after that out in the Pacific Northwest.

But enough setting the scene, we were VERY excited to see them, to have tickets, and to have the date be so wonderfully positioned to kick off our summer.  The present day tried to fuck things up of course, including Dave being sick and the traffic being amazingly oppressive for a Tuesday afternoon.  But we were eventually trucking down to Hartford with Dave and his friend J, and arrived there through a final madhouse of cars trying to get into the parking lots by 5:30 or so for the 7:30 show.  It was mobbed!

Perfect timing apparently to get the farthest spaces in the parking lot from the venue itself (which is partly good but mostly bad).  I suspected that the parking lot was built on a toxic waste dump.  And there were no porta-potties!  But whatever, we pissed in the woods by the railroad track, set up our chairs, and had a few sandwiches and beers while the authorities did a few desultory sweeps of the lots and a few vendors strolled by with their wares.

Rain and thunderstorms had been forecast, and we sure experienced some rain on the way down there and the way back, but that evening the rain mostly held off and luckily, the lightning was being very lazy and didn't come close.  OK, done with the hanging out, time to trek over to the venue: Xfinity Theatre.

The official t-shirt stands were set up in the plaza in front of the amphitheater, and Dave ended up getting a good one.  We entered and found our seats, which were close to the stage but as far right as could be, up against the wall.  Oh well, wish we could have seen better (a lot was blocked by Jeff's keyboard setup and we couldn't even see him that well), but the sound was fine and we had a wonderful, wonderful time.  Our seats way over on the right were $85 and I saw that almost every other seat in that section was $150, so we couldn't complain.

Wandered up to the lawn to check things out.  The far side of it overlooked the load-in lot and there were 5 tour busses parked there (which of the band doesn't get his own bus?), and at least 10 identical tractor trailers with sleek, red cabs.  Then eventually wound back to the seats.  By then our section was pretty filled, though people were still streaming in at 7:30.  The show started pretty much on time anyway.  What can I say, the guys came out and lined up as expected and we were flying!  Here's the first set:

Hell In a Bucket
Cold Rain and Snow
Queen Jane Approximately
Big River
Row Jimmy
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
Cumberland Blues

Dead & Company are phenomenal, and the most fascinating thing about the phenomenon is John Mayer's playing.  Great songs have a depth of melodic possibilities, and one of the great things about Garcia was that he could plumb all the melodic possibilities of a song and present them in a freaky order that had you standing on your ear.  Mayer can do the same thing, with the same songs, exposing different melodic possibilities and standing on different ears.  He plays the whole song, not just drifting on top of it but exuding the guts to dive deep under the dark surface and emerge with a gem.  Person after person I've talked to says he's the best fill-in for Garcia they've heard since Garcia's death, and then quickly follow that up with, "But he's more than a fill-in!"  I'm in total agreement.

• Hell In a Bucket was not the most dynamic start to a set, though this song can really rock and they warmed to it very quickly.  Fantastic Barlow lyric.
• Cold Rain and Snow has always been a favorite of mine.  This song has *possibilities* (see above) which have been plumbed by some great guitarists over the years, but Mayer has plenty to add and he went right to it.  Listen to these leads!
• This was one of the best Queen Jane's I've heard, one of the classics from Dylan's finest period.
• Big River started off really funky, or disorganized, or both, but then they got it together and killed it.
• Row Jimmy and Mississippi Uptown came from outer space and thundered through our souls.  What I said about John; and Oteil on bass and harmony was incredible, and the drummers were just hammering stuff, and Jeff was so in sync with everybody...
• BUT don't forget Bob Weir.  He played it all a little mellow, not using an aggressive guitar sound, and not over-expressing on his vocals.  But when you speak of melody or rhythm or dynamics or anything musically ... well, you just have to listen to him.  I was listening to him as hard as I could, never mind the other incredible musicians on stage.
• Cumberland was great too, though we knew it signalled the end of the first set.  This was possibly not as good as the first set we saw in Worcester last Fall (which was AMAZING), but still beyond belief.

They've been trying to keep up the pace of their shows, being old guys playing an ambitious schedule.  Bob did a short plug for registering to vote (they had booths on the plaza), and announced a short break.  For once, we believed him!  Time for a piss and beer, but they came back pretty soon.

There had been a lot of conjecture about what they'd play, and dismay at the fact that they'd played all their best songs over the weekend and so wouldn't be repeating them.  But come on ... all their best songs?  They have so many great songs they could play for a long time at a high level without repeats ... and they did.  We anticipated Estimated and Eyes, and that's how they started:

Estimated Prophet
Eyes Of the World
Deal
Viola Lee Blues
Drums
Space
The Wheel
Black Peter
U.S. Blues

• Not the best Estimated I've heard, but I've heard a lot and this is one of those ineffable Grateful Dead songs.  The harmonies all night were great, with John contributing spacey (spooky in this case) overtones (and lead!) and Oteil reinforcing the tenor.  But the thing that stood out the most here was Weir's vocal, done in a subtly sad tone rather than a frenzied or preaching one.  It was like the apocalypse had already occurred and he was just repeating what he'd been telling us for decades.
• OK, this was a great Eyes.  Again, I've heard so many, and there has to be a feature for one to stand out.  The feature here was that Oteil did a mellow, funky, spacey, perfect solo, deep into the second jam.  You have to hear this.
• Deal has become part of the second set-Estimated-Eyes palette for them,  Still not sure how I feel about this, but this was a great cover.  They opened the second set in Worcester with it, and this wasn't quite to that level, but great.
• Viola Lee Blues!  So glad that they're continuing to do this song, though the casual observer would have had a hard time believing that John was really up for a solid year.  He just doesn't look that tough.
• Drums and Space were good, with Oteil (maybe someone else??) contributing some African-inflected rap and Jeff actually beating away on the drums.  Mickey got out his kalimba or something again.  As mentioned, we did not have the greatest sight lines, but we could hear the clown horns going at full tilt.
• And then we were treated to their evolved cover of The Wheel, which was one of the high points of the night.  John does a "Stay just a little bit longer" tag (that is, he sings "Try just a little bit harder" with that melody), and then they shift it into a reggae beat that stands the song on edge.  And this song is pretty good anyway, to say the least.
• I've come to realize that Bobby is going to sing Black Peter to me until I like it.  Search "Black Peter" in this blog to see all the times he's tried that.  I put this song near the top of my Dead pantheon and I continue to be a bit bothered when Bobby sings it and doesn't get the gravitas that Garcia (or Jim Lauderdale, listen to his cover) gave it.  But though the lead vocal wasn't there for me, it was closer, and the playing and harmonies and arrangement of this were just top-notch.  This cover of Black Peter spoke to me the way you want a great song to do.
• Pretty quick U.S. Blues to end the set, sung by John.  They were getting tired and so were we.

OMG, what a fantastic experience!  They were on a tight schedule again, and barely left the stage before coming back for a short and tight Touch of Grey.  Then they gave quick waves and were off to Colorado.  See you guys at Fenway Fucking Park in a few weeks!!

Let the crowd exit for a bit.  One of the good things about our seats was that we were right near the exits.  Long trek over the toxic waste to our car, where J was waiting.  He'd scored a pit ticket!

We got out the chairs (and beer and sandwiches) and had to wait about 45 minutes before the line started to move at all, and then we eventually loaded up and got in it.  Long crawl to the highway before we broke free and headed back to Massachusetts.  I slept most of the way back (as did J), but Dave coached Sarah very well through torrents of rain, and the bus made it back.  In bed by 3:30 or so!

Dolly Parton At the Wang Theater

Until Tuesday night (6/21, the first full day of summer and the anniversary of my Mom's death) at Boston's Wang Theater, I had never seen Dolly Parton.  And this was HIGH on my personal list of "have never seen" grievances.  I mean come on, she's got to be in the top 10 of the list of great American [music] writers of my generation, and even higher on the list of ones I think are great.  She's had 25 #1 hits in her life, and has written a bunch of songs I would put in my top 100.  Coat Of Many Colors, To Daddy, Down From Dover, Jolene, My Tennessee Mountain Home ... she writes the real country blues.

Anyway, time to stop gushing and to say that she announced a North American tour this summer that she says herself is the most extensive she's done in 25 years.  I don't remember her ever coming to the Northeast.  She announced a date in Tanglewood and one at Bangor's riverside amphitheater early on (both too far away for me), but then said she'd be adding dates drip by drip and agonizingly was not coming any closer to Boston.  Finally she announced a date at the Wang and I jumped on the opportunity to get tickets, as did a lot of others apparently, since the best seats I could get were third row in the balcony (behind the first rows of the balcony, which is called the mezzanine at the Wang).  Whatever, they were fine seats and we were psyched!

Drove into the city after work on a Tuesday and we walked through the crowded Common in beautiful early summer down to Jacob Wirth's, where we realized we were a little tired of it.  Had a nice meal despite that and then walked around the block and snuck in the back way to the Wang, which had people pouring in, many dressed in their best cheap country glamour.  Found our seats, got a beer, stared at the over the top theater (just like Dolly!), and then the show started.

Signs warned us that haze and smoke would be used in the performance, and there were several other artifices used, such as a drum machine and a taped chorus on one song, and a teleprompter that blocked off part of our view.  In some situations I would find these things objectionable or hokey, but Dolly was so up front about it, telling us at length how a drum machine (used on 4-5 of the songs only) was cheaper than bringing along a drummer, joking about her costumes and enhancements, and telling us, "But this is what you wanted to see, right?"  She was right.  And what's not artificial about the electric guitar filters, light shows, and sampling/looping we would hear and dig at rock shows?

And one of the great things was that the whole theater was a rainbow parade of horny heterosexuals, demure women who really wanted to be like Dolly, and gay guys who thought she was fabulous, as well as some people like me who think she's a plumb musical genius.  She was definitely whacked with the song stick (and the show-person stick) early in life and represents a great story of a woman singer persevering and conquering in a male-dominated world.  And that's not to mention her parents, whom she spoke of many times: an illiterate father and a mother married at 15 and with 12 kids by 30 who encouraged her daughters and sons to be themselves.  That's America.

So she came out from a gauzy haze to great applause, wearing a white jumpsuit with many rhinestones, white heels, and see-through calves.  They did a really short "Hello Dolly!" introduction and then she jumped right into her first song.  She did two sets and here's the first:

• Hello Dolly
• Train, Train
• Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like That
• Jolene
• Pure & Simple
• Precious Memories
• My Tennessee Mountain Home
• Coat of Many Colors
• Smoky Mountain Memories
• Applejack
• Rocky Top/Yakety Sax
• Banks of the Ohio
• Medley: American Pie / If I Had a Hammer / Blowin' In the Wind / Dust In the Wind / The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
• The Seeker
• I'll Fly Away

The show was precisely orchestrated, and the setlist was almost identical to what she's been playing at other stops on the tour.  She was accompanied by a small band: Richard Dennison on keyboards (mostly a grand piano), organ, percussion, and vocals; Tom Rutledge on electric guitar, acoustic guitar, electric bass, double-bass, banjo, and vocals; and Kent Wells on lead electric/acoustic guitars, bass, and vocals.  It was really amazing how many instruments each played and how agilely they switched between them on every song.  They even had a riser set up for the absent drummer ("He's at home in Nashville, trying to figure out how to remove a rhinestone-encrusted high heel from his be-hind"), and Kent popped up over there at times for variety.

But all eyes were on Dolly and she sure showed her versatility, opening on acoustic and killing it on Jolene.  Her stage manager then wheeled out a "throne" for her to sit on and she accompanied herself with dulcimer on My Tennessee Mountain Home, autoharp on Coat Of Many Colors, and recorder on Smoky Mountain Memories.  The throne was wheeled offstage and she got out the fiddle for Applejack and then a small saxophone(!) for Rocky Top.  This was amazing.

Highlights of the set for me musically were her band's country funk on Why'd You Come In Here, her guitar on Jolene (as mentioned), her incredibly tasteful dulcimer on Tennessee Mountain Home, and her vocals!!  My Dog, she is ethereal in her down-home way.  Her headset mike was not set right for the first few songs (she's been playing a mix of venues and it showed), but then they got that right and she showed us the power.  Smoky Mountain Memories would have floored me if I wasn't sitting down and packed in like a sardine, she wrung the emotion and horror out of the traditional Banks Of the Ohio in two short verses (how did she do that?), and of course some of the classic songs she sang were beyond being emotional touchstones.

The band joined her for the crowd-pleasing country-pop medley, and then she wound down with a couple more songs and then strutted off stage for the break, showing off her enhancements of course, as she had at orchestrated times.  The announcer warned us the break would be only 20 minutes, but that was enough time for a quick beer and bathroom break.  There were many people wandering around that theater with huge smiles and not a negative sentiment could be heard.

Back for the second set and she came out with a black fringe skirt and tight white top, strumming an electric guitar!  She even ripped off a lead on the first song, as if we didn't know already that this woman had it together.  Here's the second set:

• Baby, I'm Burning
• Outside Your Door
• The Grass Is Blue
• Those Memories of You
• Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
• Little Sparrow
• Two Doors Down
• Here You Come Again
• Islands in the Stream
• 9 to 5

This was a shorter set, but she mostly stuck to the hand-held mike and took over with her singing, as a great vocalist will do.  Her stage manager wheeled out a white grand piano with gauzy drapes for The Grass Is Blue, which is one of her best songs.  She was humble enough to point out that Norah Jones had done it better than she can, "But it's my song!"  She then hammered it out and showed that though Norah may be more precise, Dolly can country-croon like you wouldn't believe.

The band clustered around one mike for her mini-set of songs done by The Trio (her, Emmylou, and Linda Ronstadt in the 80s ... which will be re-released with 20 extra tracks this Fall(!)).  And probably the moment of the night that will most stay with me is her singing along with the boys but DOMINATING on one of her most excellent songs ever, Do I Ever Cross Your Mind.  She then laughed and told how they'd worked that out on the bus and, to stave off boredom, then did a "33 at 78 rpm" version of it that was hilarious chipmunk squeaks.

OK, the moment of the night was perhaps the next one.  She took the hand-held mike over to the side of the stage, told us she was going to bring us all down, and then sang an a capella version of Little Sparrow that brought chills up your back.  This was serious, this was the country blues straight from a master.

OK, time for the rocking, good-time end to the show.  Two Doors Down was perhaps the first song of hers that made me really consider her a musician rather than a novelty act and I was very glad to hear that one.  She had to do Here You Come Again, Islands In the Stream (a BeeGees song), and then 9 To 5, which had everyone singing along.  Talk about an anthem for the people!  Not many of us really work in coal mines, especially in Boston.

Dolly did the old person's (she's 70) nod to walking off stage, waiting for the applause, and coming our for an encore.  That is, she walked to the back of the stage, folded her arms, and then made a show of re-entering ... we all got it, she was almost done.  As soon as she said "Whitney" the crowd went nuts and then she did possibly her greatest hit (though that was Whitney Houston's cover), I Will Always Love You.  She did not leave any of her vocal power on the shelf for this one, it was magnificent.

Dolly strutted offstage with a "See y'all next time!" (we can only hope so), and the band did a last few turns of the chorus and then hit the bricks themselves.  Long tour still to come for these guys.

We headed out of there quickly ourselves, along with a crowd as stunned by the excellence of the evening as I've ever seen.  This concert was so many things in a heady mix.  We were out of there and back up the hill through the Common soon, then home and to bed before midnight.  What a show!

Ol' Brown Shoe In the Wind

Great friends M&G were in town for a speaking engagement by G and it just so happened that this coincided perfectly with Ol' Brown Shoe (with our friend Larry) playing at the Black Lobster in Salem on a sunny Sunday late-Spring afternoon (6/12), with the tide coming in!  What could be better?

Well, it might have been better if it had been a little warmer.  The wind was wicked that day and I texted M&G that they should wear sweatshirts, which weren't really enough.  M wore his winter coat and seemed to be the only comfortable one on the patio at the Black Lobster, including some braving the wind with t-shirts and sandals and not really succeeding.  Oh well, there's only so much chilliness that beer and dancing can't fix!

Ran into Larry in the parking lot when we arrived a bit before 3 for the afternoon show.  They set up pretty quickly and M&G showed up just in time for the opening number, Bertha.  We'd grabbed a table "in the sun" but the clouds moved in, the wind kept up the pace, and it started raining by the end of the afternoon.  By then we'd moved to a table under the canopy though, and we were fine ... we're New Englanders.

JeffL was missing for a family celebration, but the band didn't miss a beat, with Larry and Tim filling in the rhythm and the vocals.  Highlights were another excellent Shakedown, another great cover of What's Going On, another fantastic turn on Southbound by Larry, and Toussaint's Get Out Of My Life Woman.  M and Larry had a chance to hang out at break and catch up, and we all had a beyond-wonderful time.

The elephant in the room was that the Dead & Company summer tour has started, and there was some buzz about that, who's going to Fenway for what nights. etc.  They opened in Charlotte on Friday night (6/10) and when we got home we watched the webcast of their set at Bonnaroo.  Just fantastic stuff, and Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay sang on a number of tunes!

Jorma Sings the Shirley Blues

We were stunned a few years ago when Hot Tuna played the Bull Run in Shirley, and stunned again last year when Jorma Kaukonen played there solo.  I mean, many people would agree with me calling him one of the best musicians in the world (I probably wouldn't get as many people agreeing with me that Tim O'Brien is one of the best musicians in the world), and then he announced another stop in Shirley, this June.  To see him with some regularity in a small club in North-Central-Wherever Mass is awesome!  You can bet we got tickets as soon as we found out, and even so did not get one of the best tables, though we got front row left.

The Bull Run sold out of course, and there were a lot of very psyched (and some very drunk) Jorma fanatics there.  I had heard a story about him being picky about his chair, and he sat on the same chair we'd seen him on before, perfectly positioned between two classic acoustics, the same we'd seen him play last time.  He took a little while to warm up when he came on a little late for the listed 7:30 start (usually 8 at the Bull Run), but then he shivered a bit in his flannel shirt, smiled at the crowd and apologized for cobwebs, hunkered down a bit more over his old guitar, and played and sang one of the most masterful blues shows I've seen.

Jorma and Jack had been the second attraction at the Dark Star Orchestra Jubilee at Legend Valley, Ohio this past [Memorial Day] weekend.  Jorma ended up doing three sets on the three days, besides sitting in for a few tunes with DSO.  We had seen DSO at the Wilbur in their first gig since the weekend on Wednesday, and this Thursday was the first gig for the 75-year old Jorma since then.  Again, I hope I recover as well when I'm 75!

I'd picked up Dave and Sarah at West Concord after work and we met F&P at the table there for a fine meal, conversation, and beer.  Now it was time to shut up and listen to Jorma!

He opened with Ain't In No Hurry from his last record, perhaps trying to set a mellow tone, but then started riling us up something serious with Death Don't Have No Mercy, a song he commands, and the first of several Reverend Gary Davis songs on the night.  He perhaps didn't play this with the same gravitas he had last time we saw him at the Bull Run, but it was still a highlight.  Then he chuckled at his cobwebs, launched right into Hesitation Blues, and he was off!  Here's the setlist:

• Ain’t In No Hurry
• Death Don’t Have No Mercy (Rev. Gary Davis)
• Hesitation Blues (trad.)
• Heart Temporary
• BBQ King
• I’ll Be Alright Some Day
• The Terrible Operation (Thomas Dorsey)
• How Long Blues (Leroy Carr)
• I See the Light
• Let Us Get Together (Rev. Gary Davis)
• Waiting For a Train (Jimmie Rodgers)
• Come Back Baby (Walter Davis)
• San Francisco Bay Blues (Jesse Fuller)
• In My Dreams
• Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning (trad.)
• Sea Child
• Good Shepherd
• Bar Room Crystal Ball
• Water Song
• Watch the North Wind Rise [Encore]

I had thought at the time that he'd played a lot of old covers, but looking at the list I realize his originals pre-dominated.  I guess I count songs like I'll Be Alright, Heart Temporary, and Sea Child as old blues songs.  Geez, Sea Child and Good Shepherd must be 50 years old!  And to mix them up with such a variety of classic songs (Jimmie Rodgers for Dog's sake!!) made for a presentation of a swath of American blues ... played by a master of the style ... that was just awesome.

Jorma started having a good time pretty quickly, and he was effusive when Dave shouted out, "How was the Jubilee?"

Jorma said immediately, in his Ohio patois, "Had a great time.  My GOD you should hear Steve Kimock do Stella Blue, amazing!"  He reflected a second and then said, "And I can't believe those guys [DSO] can remember all those songs, I have a hard enough time sounding like myself!"

Another great interlude was when Jorma told his Jack Casady story of the night, relating how Jack had recently had cataract surgery (Jorma hasn't yet).  The normal routine is to have it done on one eye first and so Jack wore glasses to a gig with one lens missing.  He tried to clean a smudge off that lens and ended up sticking his finger in his eye in the middle of a song.  He recommends that Jack keep wearing glasses, even after surgery.  As he says, who would recognize Jack Casady without glasses?

Yet another story, this one told to introduce Let Us Get Together.  Jorma and David Bromberg were hanging out.  David played a Rev. Gary song and hit a strange chord which Jorma inquired about.  "That's an A 9th chord," David said, "Reverend Gary always plays it that way."  They visited Rev. Gary the next day and David played the song.  "What's that chord?" Rev. Gary said.  Jorma figured the Reverend was playing with David's head.

Where was I?  This was the kind of intimate concert that sticks with you.  I was delighted to hear the country blues (listen to his Blue Country Heart record) from Jimmie Rodgers and the country-boy-in-the-city blues from Jesse Fuller early in the set.  The Terrible Operation is classic Jorma and an incredible Americana chestnut!  Come Back Baby (as probably mentioned in previous posts) is one of those milestone songs for me that get the memories flowing.  To hear him whip it off in the middle of the set in a concise, straight way, was very moving.

And that's not to mention the drumbeat between those great covers of  his own amazing songs, such as I'll Be Alright, I See the Light, In My Dreams (a world-class song), Sea Child, Good Shepherd, etc.  The set was winding down and he finally switched from his regular old guitar to the beautiful one with ringing steel strings and inlays around the sound hole, just as he had the last time we saw him.  He finished the set with the same two songs he had that time: Bar Room Crystal Ball from his last record (IMO as good as anything he's done), and Water Song.  I was reminded of when we saw him and Jack for two shows at the Bull Run and he apologized for encoring with Water Song in both sets, as if that's anything anyone would complain about!

Oh was this good stuff!!  Jorma stood behind his chair while the crowd jumped to its feet and went nuts.  Not long until he was back sitting down and he entertained us with one more song, the inspiring Watch the North Wind Rise.  What a musician.

The efficient waitress had slipped us our bills and given us back our credit cards.  Jorma was gone, wending through a phalanx of fans at the far staircase.  Time to go, and we said adieu to F&P (Dead & Company next month!) and slid off into the night ourselves.

DSO Tea Party!

Dark Star Orchestra was due to cycle back to the Northeast this late Spring after their annual Dark Star Jubilee in Ohio.  The first stop on the tour was scheduled for Boston’s Wilbur Theater on June 1, with subsequent stops in Providence, Hampton Beach, etc.  Should we go, in light of all the money we’ve been spending on Dead-related things recently and the fact that we saw Phil & Friends twice a couple of months ago and will be seeing Dead & Company thrice in a few weeks??  How could we not go?!?  DSO is never less than incredible fun, but we limited ourselves to just the Boston show.

And it was as much fun as ever if not more so.

Met Sarah and Dave to park at their building after a longer than expected drive through thick Boston traffic, then hustled over to Wirth’s for the customary German dinner and couple of beers.  Wirth’s was probably as empty as I’ve ever seen it, even though everything else in Boston was going at full tilt on a sunny but brisk-for-June Wednesday evening.

Got into line at the Wilbur (we were second!?!  we’re used to being first), exchanged our Internet receipts for real tickets, and waited with the growing crowd of fanatics.  DSO has developed their own crowd at this point, that greatly overlaps with the traditional Deadhead crowd but also includes those who find Phil/Bobby/etc. shows too expensive and/or prefer the good times spun by DSO to the sometimes new and challenging music the Phil/Bobby/etc. shows can feature.  A surprising number of these people had been at the Jubilee in Ohio and planned to continue on to Providence, Hampton Beach, etc. with the tour.  There was also a lot of talking and enjoying the moment rather than the music during the show.  DSO concerts are just such mellow fun, and that’s very appealing.  Maybe the band members aren’t “as good” as the originals or “as creative,” but that’s not a reason not to see them, or for classical fans to stop seeing Beethoven cover bands.

We debated hanging back at the soundboard, especially since we might have to get out of there early/quickly for Dave to catch the last T to Quincy.  But anticipation built and when the time came we grabbed a spot right up front, at the stage in front of RobE’s guitar and just a few feet from RobB’s organ.

And wait a minute … it *was* just a B3 with no extra keyboards!  RobE and Skip’s guitars were old large-bodied Gibsons, Jeff’s guitar was a vintage, small black thing, there was no setup for a female singer, and the only drum accoutrement was a huge gong.  We suspected that we were in for a late-60s show!!  The lineup was vintage too, with Jeff far left (looking at the stage), Skip center, then RobE (where we were standing), and RobB.

The guys came out (Dave had a quick exchange with RobB, complimenting him on the recent Q shows, which Rob thanked him for), and proceeded to rip our ears off with the 1969-12-30 show from the Boston Tea Party.  This was a great treat of a show and they played it incredibly well, though Jeff sometimes seemed to want to mellow out instead of giving it the late-60s Garcia head-on attack.  Maybe not enough acid was the (slight) problem, but whatever, this was simply incredible!

• Good Lovin'
• Drums
• Good Lovin'
• Mama Tried
• New Speedway Boogie
• Casey Jones
• Black Peter
• Me and My Uncle
• In the Midnight Hour
• Cumberland Blues
• Cryptical Envelopment
• Drums
• The Other One
• Cryptical Envelopment
• Cosmic Charlie

OK, maybe we weren’t actually seeing the Grateful Dead in a small club in Boston on the middle night of their New Year’s 1969 stand … but we had no problem pretending we were there and the band played the songs with a period flair.  These guys are great musicians and VERY experienced at what they do.

Good Lovin’ was an explosive start, and then they went right into the first drum solo of the night, with Dino (left) and RobK (right) thundering up a 60’s psychedelic beat.  The set was chock full of cowboy songs (some call this their “cosmic cowboy” period) and those were short, loud, and sweet.  RobE was fanning furiously right in front of us, a bolt of lightning running through Bobby’s incredible variety of chords and colors.

The “new” songs were done perfectly: Speedway, Casey Jones, Black Peter, and Cumberland were all in their infancy, raw and stunning.  Black Peter in particular fully realized the psychic, almost psychotic  fear of death and loneliness that it’s essentially about.

And they wouldn’t stop!  The setlist was awesome but Dave didn’t recognize it and we were beginning to think that maybe it was elective, especially since they were playing such a long first set that we began to think it would be the only one.  We thought Midnight Hour would be the end, but then they launched head over heels into Cumberland.  We thought that might be the end, but then they took a breath and Jeff started playing Cryptical!  Of course that led into a second drum solo of the night, then into a riveting, loud, 1969 TOO, and then back into Cryptical.  We thought that would be the end but then they started flying into the cosmos with Charlie!  OMG … they finally stopped and RobE announced a short break.

The crowd was pressing us in and we took turns going out for bathroom/beer/whatever breaks, while Dave did some quick research.  There it was, 1969-12-30, though Dave hid the bottom of the screen so he wouldn’t see the second set.

Before we knew it, the guys were gathering in the wings behind the organ again, yucking it up and strategizing a bit.  Then the lights went down and they came back out.  What could they do to top that first set?  How about this:

• Uncle John's Band
• Mason's Children
• China Cat Sunflower
• I Know You Rider
• Dark Star
• Alligator
• Drums
• The Eleven
• Alligator
• Feedback
• And We Bid You Goodnight

Radical!  More new songs: UJB (9th performance) and Mason’s, but introducing some mature songs that had reached their primal Dead peak.

A highlight for me was RobE going nuts on China Cat, which he led faster and faster down the hill into Rider.  And what a beautiful, cosmic Dark Star, which exploded into a song I’d called earlier in the set, Alligator (sung by RobB, one of his only vocals of the night).  Dino stood up and scratched the güiro on Dark Star while RobK was all over the gong, almost hugging it while hitting it with mallets in each hand, or standing behind it and hitting it with one mallet while moving the mike behind it up and down to get an even spacier sound.  For Alligator, RobK grabbed the güiro while Dino went nuts on his traps.  And then they both started pounding away in unison during the instrumental break in Alligator and steered us headlong into the third drum solo of the night.  As I say, incredible, mind-bending stuff!

And then suddenly we were in 11 time, the guitarists were flailing away madly, and then Jeff told us that there was no more time to tell how.  And he wasn’t taking questions.  The guys gave it the old-style harmony on the choruses, Skip filling in with some excellent bass (though this harmonizing was far from perfect, if you felt like being critical).  Back to finish up Alligator, a healthy dose of Feedback, and then some more heartfelt, baroque harmonies on Bid You Goodnight, with the entire Wilbur singing along of course.  Amazing!

The guys left the stage for a short bit, but then came back out and RobK told us what we already knew, that we’d just been at the Boston Tea Party in ’69.  DSO does not cheat their audience at all and still had some more for us!  They set up a mike for Lisa (though she didn’t use it, she just stood back between the three Robs and played the harp), and they filled out the night with another Workingman’s song, Easy Wind, and then a beautiful Brokedown Palace (without Lisa, being 1969).

Being at the front, we could not leave immediately, and it’s a good thing because RobK crumpled up his setlist and threw it at me, a perfect shot!  I gave it to Dave.  We got out of there soon after that though, crossed through the busy theater district, and climbed quickly up to Beacon Hill.  No problems getting home and I was in bed around 1:00.  Jorma tonight!

JKB at BMH

Going to the Brighton Music Hall to see a rock show in the middle of the week isn’t exactly a young person’s game.  But we were taking the next day off for the long weekend, and so went to see the John Kadlecik Band on Thursday, May 26th.

We’d seen John previously a good number of times in Furthur of course, and also in the Golden Gate Wingmen and with Phil & Friends.  He’s never fallen short of being a vastly entertaining, complete guitarist, and so we were very excited … and he surpassed our expectations!

Got into Brighton through incredibly thick Thursday traffic, got turned around a bit while trying to avoid the worst of it, and then miraculously found a “free” (but see below) parking spot in the same block as the Music Hall.  The three of us met at Deep Ellum (after a slow and crowded T ride for Sarah and Dave … Boston was going through the yearly upheaval of patterns that takes place in late May and we were in the midst of it) and had a nice dinner on their patio on a suddenly warm Spring day.  We’ve been having early Springs that seem to last forever before turning into what we think of as “Spring” lately … but I digress.

We walked over to the BMH (passing John in a nearby pizza shop having *his* dinner … I gave him a thumbs-up), and were barely first in a rapidly-extending line.  They let us in after not too much delay, we grabbed places in front of the stage (and some huge under-stage bass speakers and some mid-ranges at waist level), got a couple of beers, and didn’t have to wait that long as the place filled up.

I’d heard that John was touring with his “regular” band.  I’m not sure what that means in terms of stability or longevity (John has been performing with a band under his name for at least 15 years), but on that day he had Klyph Black on big Fender bass, Nathan Graham on drums, and Todd Stoops on keyboards.  Here’s the first set:

• Brown-Eyed Women
• Nobody Told Me
• They Love Each Other
• Tin Roof Shack
• Box of Rain
• Bird Song
• Seen Love
• Ripple

This was really good stuff!  John does BEW and TLEO very, very well from his practice with the masters.  And he adds his own signature to songs like Bird Song and Ripple (which he didn’t sing in French, to my disappointment).  Tin Roof Shack (Peter Rowan song) was a high point of the set itself and mixing in Nobody Told Me (the Lennon song, “Strange days indeed!”) and Hairball Willie's Seen Love made for a great set.

This was not like the democratic playing we usually like in a concert, but that can lead to some dead spots and noodling while everyone says, “Not me!”  The band arranged each song well, and there were keyboard leads and bass bombs thrown this way and that; but this was John’s band.  Every song led eventually to Klyph, Nathan, and Todd clustered in a triangle, keeping up a melodic beat, staring at John the leader.  He’d then twirl some dials and hit some switches (he had a lot of each, see the pictures of his guitar), and proceed to melt our minds with excellent solo after excellent solo.  This was fun!

Not over-long set break, while we got one more beer and the full crowd pressed us into the stage.  Then they were back out there for the second set:

• After Midnight>
• Your Mileage May Vary>
• Crazy Fingers>
• It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry
• Any Road>
• The Other One>
• American Spring>
• Throwing Stones>
• Touch of Grey

This was more very high-level  stuff!  Highlights of this set were a very spacey Crazy Fingers with some beyond-psychedelic electric guitar,  A Train To Cry done in a JGB style but with JKB spice, and of course TOO on which Klyph turned up his bass to 12 and blew our ears out, much to our delights.

More good stuff but before we knew it it was time for the encore and we realized we were pretty exhausted.  They did another Dylan cover, When I Paint My Masterpiece, and then were done.  Dave got the setlist from a roadie collecting cables, and we stumbled out into the well-lit Brighton night.

In time to see that there was a ticket on our windshield!  “What!?!” we said, almost in unison with the concert-attendee in front of us who found the same thing on his car.  We looked around and there was a small sign, way above our heads, that said that Friday mornings from 12:01 to 8:01 was street cleaning!  Well fuck us for $40.  The ticket was stamped 12:20 and it was then about 12:40, and of course there was no street cleaner in sight.  Grrr!

Oh well, quick trip home and to bed by 1:30 or so.

Nitty Gritty in Maine

Our friends have a house right near the Stone Mountain Arts Center, the performance space Carol Noonan has started up in Maine, and were nice enough to invite us up to see the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band this Friday (5/13).

As they do for many people, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band symbolizes a milestone in my appreciation of music due to their genius crossover project: 1972's May the Circle Be Unbroken.  This exposed me and others of my generation to a world of music that we wouldn't necessarily have heard otherwise.

They've been around for 50 years now themselves, and the concert in Maine was the actual 50th anniversary of their first playing together.  Their personnel has cycled a bit over the years, but the current iteration is drummer and harmonicist Jimmy Fadden, singer (and guitarist) Jeff Hanna, keyboardist and singer Bob Carpenter, and John McEuen (who played mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and lap steel last night).  Jimmy and John sang too, but it was mainly Jeff leading the vocals.

Drove up after work on Friday and had some time to yuck it up a bit with our friends before heading over to Brownfield.  The lobby/waiting area was already pretty full when we arrived, and McEuen was working the room like a politician, posing for pictures and kissing babies (well, he probably would have if the situation had come up ... mostly older people there you know).

Got ushered into the main dining/performance area in our time and had a great table and a fine meal.  Several drinks were imbibed, and some good food was eaten.  Then the Dirt Band came on and entertained the heck out of us.

Fadden was the star of the night to my ears.  His tone on harmonica was perfect and echoed with my memories of how that same tone had played around the vocals of Roy Acuff, the guitar of Doc Watson, the deep bass of Johnny Cash, the soprano of Alison Krauss, and the sublime fiddling of Vassar Clements on the Circle records (they did two sequels as well as the epic first).

They had an accompanist on guitar and bass as well as the core four, and they kept up a great pace all night, though McEuen showed signs of tiring at some points and Hanna sometimes failed to lead the band as consistently as one might want.  Oh well, the point is that they're the quintessential hippies and their music is a mixed bag.  Dig it or not.  And the full house basically really dug it!

Short ride back after that, stayed up a bit and talked, then to bed after a long day.

GDMUATM 2016!

Another year, another Grateful Dead Meet-Up At the Movies!  It’s amazing that there are still enough relatively un-seen films of the Grateful Dead throughout their career that they can come out with a new one every year.  After all, the Grateful Dead and their oeuvre don’t exactly fly under the radar … they receive a certain amount of scrutiny.

The film for 2016 is the entire concert from Foxboro Stadium (whilom Schaefer Stadium and Sullivan Stadium) on 1989-07-02, a fertile period for GD concert films as they had recently started filming them so they could be shown on large screens in the stadiums they played at the time.  And so high quality films were made routinely, though not always preserved.  This was the first date of their summer tour, a couple of weeks before last year’s GDMUATM (1989-07-19) and the date before the Truckin’ Up To Buffalo DVD, from 1989-07-04.  And it seemed that everyone we talked to about this film had been there at Foxboro in 1989!  Maybe we were too…

It was a bit harder than before to pick a theater, since we wanted one we could all get to with the least amount of hassle, and which would then enable us most easily to drop Dave off at home.  We settled on the Showcase Cinema de Lux Legacy Place in Dedham because a) it had the longest name and b) it seemed to be a good compromise geographically.  As it turns out, it’s a short walk away from the Dedham Corporate stop on the Franklin line and so it was easy for Dave and Sarah to get to, though a long rush-hour drive for me.

We met at Yardhouse in that massive, busy mall area, after work on Wednesday, May 11.  I think this cinema is near (and maybe a similar name?) to the one where Sarah and I saw the original “Tron” back in 1982, when it was a little movie theater stuck in behind the Fox News headquarters in the industrial wastelands off route 1 where it crosses 128 south of the city.  Since then the place has grown up to say the least, and is a mega-mall and mega-cinema of scary proportions.

After a few beers and dinner at Yardhouse we dropped off stuff in the car in the massive parking garage, and headed on over to the theater, along with a few other enthusiasts.  Not too many of us though … the theater was only a tenth full.

When we walked in they were playing a clip of Dead & Company, but this ended soon and the real feature(s) started.  First up was an infomercial for “July ‘78” (to be officially released tomorrow), kind of a super-seaside chat without the seaside for Dave Lemieux.  The cinematography almost succeeded in making him seem consistently scholarly, but he ended the film with a Lemieux metaphor of epic proportion (that I can’t remember), so it was worth it.

Then we were [back] in Foxboro in early summer ’89!  The stage was so enclosed by wildly printed draperies and sets of swirling color that the relatively small stage area was probably barely visible for people at the far ends of the stadium.  And the place was packed, as was revealed when the cameras panned around.

They were set up with Phil on the right (facing the audience), flanked by Bobby, Jerry, and then Brent, with Billy and Mickey commanding their drum empire, complete with thunder drums, an early version of The Beam, and large drum pads that they spent a lot of time on, simulating African drum sounds.  Jerry and Phil spent a lot of time on their MIDIs too, making some unusual sounds.

They broke into PITB and we were instantly deep into an excellent first set:

• Playing In The Band 
• Crazy Fingers 
• Wang Dang Doodle 
• We Can Run 
• Tennessee Jed 
• Queen Jane Approximately 
• To Lay Me Down 
• Cassidy 
• Don't Ease Me In

There were some egregious clams dealt by pretty much everyone (but mostly Jerry and Bobby) throughout the night, as well as flubbed lyrics, but a great deal of it was excellent musicianship showing great energy.  The ensemble vocals, when at their best, were particularly sublime.  And the recording was excellent.  There were a few times when Jerry or Bobby hit a ragged crescendo and the sound distorted a bit, but in all the levels were up high and the sound was crystal clear.

Of particular note in that first set was that after a stellar, tight PITB they fell apart when trying Crazy Fingers, but then got it back together a third of the way through the song and reached just as much of a peak by the end of it as they had in the opener.  Garcia singing Wang Dang Doodle was worth the price of admission itself, and they followed that with as good a We Can Run as you can expect (no one except Brent is/was crazy about that song, so this is faint praise), a spectacularly great Tennessee Jed, and a semi-good Queen Jane followed by a train wreck of a To Lay Me Down and then a spectacularly great Cassidy and a short and sweet Don’t Ease Me In.  Spotty to say the least, but in all highly entertaining.

No intermission in the theater, though some of the most elderly in the crowd just had to get in a piss break.  The guys came out on the now-dark stage and proceeded to weird out.  The second set wasn’t bad at all, but wasn’t classic.

Here’s the list:

• Friend Of The Devil 
• Truckin' 
• He's Gone 
• Eyes Of The World 
• Drums 
• Space 
• The Wheel 
• Dear Mr. Fantasy 
• Hey Jude 
• Sugar Magnolia

This was a weird setlist.  How many times has FOTD been a second set opener?  And why?  Lots of good stuff here, including a well-sung Truckin’ (which is weird itself), some incredible guitar work on Eyes, a very good extended Space section, and then a beautiful Wheel.  Brent was at the top of his game on most of Mr. Fantasy, and then they tried the weird segue into Hey Jude and it didn’t quite come off as hoped, though everyone was having a good time by that point, including the crowd.  People were dancing in the aisles and clapping along … no lack of enthusiasm at Legacy Place that night!

They then concluded with a very good Sugar Magnolia.  Bobby had hit a wrong chord while Jerry was singing earlier in the evening, almost throwing him off.  And so Jerry hit a wrong chord on purpose while Bobby was trying to emote on the Sunshine Daydream coda, and then leered devilishly at Bobby.  They were having a good time on stage and so how could we not?  The encore followed without a break, and it was as good a Quinn the Eskimo as I’ve heard, which is again not saying much.

Lots of people hurried out of the theater as they finished, but then a real highlight followed, as they re-rolled the snippet of Dead & Company that they had been playing when we entered: Slipknot! and Franklin’s Tower from 2015-12-28.  This was great stuff, and quite an interesting contrast with the Bobby, Billy, and Mickey we’d just been watching, let alone the contrasts made by the new musicians.

Had another great GDMUATM and then not too long a drive (though we started off going the wrong North) over to Quincy and then up to Woburn … in bed by 11 or so.

Kennedys in Winchester

The UU church in Winchester (known as the Winchester Unitarian Society) that we went to for a short time and that I've driven by half a million times announced that they would be hosting the Kennedys in their concert series.  So we had to go, being a mile or so from our house.  We hadn't seen them for a couple of years and were very glad to have the opportunity ... I've always enjoyed them.

Trundled over to the church after dinner on a Friday night (4/29) and got seats in the front row of pews, on the right.  There were already a bunch of us there 45 minutes before the show, and the organizers were a little taken aback, especially when I actually tried to buy some of the CDs they had displayed.  They hadn't figured on this level of enthusiasm.

The sanctuary of the Winchester UU church is really lovely, with lots of carved wooden trusses, a majestic pipe organ, and some huge stained glass windows advertising humanly virtues.  A couple of church guys came out to fuss with the lights and I asked them if this was the first "rock" act in their concert series, which had always featured jazz or classical shows before.  "No, we had Blondie 20 years ago," one of them deadpanned without blinking an eye ... excellent repartee!  The other didn't know what was more unintelligible, my question or the other guy's answer, so he just frowned and stammered something about "never excluding folk acts" before walking away.

Pete and Maura came out soon after that, Maura in a print dress and some red highlighting in her hair, and Pete in a weird felt hat ... no matching sneakers in church, and did a very mellow gentle folk rather than crunchy rock show.  We loved it.  Pete had a bit of a sore throat and wasn't able to do much to back up Maura on vocals, but she was singing excellently and Pete was playing as well as ever.

One of the great things about Kennedys shows is that they change so much ... they have a lot of material to choose from.  They opened with Half a Million Miles (after a long introduction, the whole first-date-Buddy-Holly story; the 3/4-full church was evenly divided between people who had seen them before and probably knew their music well, and people who'd never seen them before and probably wouldn't be able to spell "folk-rock" or "Lubbock" without a lot of help).  And then they did one of their greatest, early songs, River of Fallen Stars.  I don't think I'd ever seen them sing that live, though I'd seen them eight times before.

But then they did some deep diving into their latest record, West, and touched on some more obscure songs throughout their catalog.  I hadn't heard anything from West on the radio and I loved that new stuff; they did Bodhisattva Blues, (the Holly-channeling) Locket, Southern Jumbo, and encored with the rocker from the record, Travel Day Blues (complete with reference to the Grateful Dead, along with half a million other music/road references, including one to Merle Haggard).  It wasn't until that point that some of the straighter society members realized that they might have been duped into attending a rock concert.

They also did an excellent cover of Nancy Griffith's Trouble In the Fields, after reminiscing about being in the area touring with her a few years ago (a helpful audience member corrected Pete when he mentioned playing at Sanders Theater ... it was the Wilbur, as he  graciously conceded).  They then did Maura's wonderful I'll Come Over from their last record as well as a few from Maura's recent collaboration with poet B.D. Love.

They featured Pete on the Stratocaster (he switched from his acoustic after the first few songs) with The Mad Russian and then Williamsburg Bridge from his Heart of Gotham record, and then on solo ukelele doing Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue.  Pete stood up at the edge of the stage a few feet away from me for his extended Fender runs, which got great hands from the crowd.  They then picked it up with another Gotham song, Riot in Bushwick, sung by Maura in her excellent pop-rock style.

They'd done a lot of songs, but we knew the show wasn't going to go late.  They asked Meredith Thompson (from Chris and Meredith Thompson and also their Strangelings band) up on stage with her conga, and she and Maura did the Kennedys classic Bend In the River and then sang us out with Stand ... which I think they've done at every show I've been to.  Short break, and then they came back up for the  previously-mentioned Travel Day Blues encore.

Waited for the crowd to dissipate a bit and then thanked Pete and screwed out of there.  Short drive home and it was still only 10PM!

John Prine and Iris Dement at the Schubert

John Prine doesn't come to town very often, and there are a *lot* of serious Prine fans in the world.  When he announced a date at the Schubert in Boston's Theater District a few months ago, it sold out very quickly.  And then it was announced that Iris Dement would share the bill with him ... but tickets were already gone!  My friend tried to buy tickets a few weeks later and the best price he could get was $300 per,

Made a quick trip into the city, parked on Beacon Hill, and walked quickly down to a crowded Theater District on a chilly early-Spring Saturday (4/9/16).  We climbed and climbed up to the balcony, and then down and down to our second-row-center balcony seats.  We could see the stage fine, but I have a lot of gripes about the Schubert.

The seats were more uncomfortable than seats at Fenway Park, no lie!  When I sat and the seat folded down it was pushing against the back of my left calf, though my foot was crammed up against the seat in front of me.  There was 4 inches of leg room by my rough measurement!  My whole left abdomen was cramped by the end of the night.

The stairs must have been illegal!!  I did not see handicapped access up to the top of the balcony ... it was so small up there I don't know if there'd be room.  And there was a balcony bar up there but when I joined the long, long line we didn't move for a while.  And then I asked one of the people walking away from it with a Miller Lite tallboy and a frown if that was all they had there.  No, they had cheap North European lager as well, at an outrageous price.

And the sound in the balcony was not worth a high-price ticket, which we had paid.  We could hear each instrument (and learned that the best way to enjoy the concert was to concentrate on them in turn), but the mix was not homogeneous enough way up high in the balcony ... drifts of this and of that.  A bit more volume would have been welcome, but you often had to infer what sound they were aiming at.

Anyway, it was an awesome concert if you allowed for the Shubert's shortcomings.  Iris opened on a beautiful sounding (but poorly miked, in the balcony) grand piano with Chris Donahue on bass and Jon Graboff on guitar and pedal steel.

I've opined before that some of the songs that Iris released on her Sing the Delta record are some of the best ever, and I was thrilled that she opened with The Kingdom Has Already Come (one of the best of the best) and did Livin' On the Inside and Sing the Delta, bracketing three songs from her more challenging The Trackless Woods record.  She was chatty, the most relaxed I've ever seen her on stage, and introduced the songs from her project with Anna Akhmatova lyrics very well, though at length.

Donahue and Graboff were perfect with her, and though I had issues with the sound, her work on the grand piano was inspiring.  You think of a great pianist striding with the left hand and picking out a melody, but her right hand took the lead here and hammered out the soul of the songs.  I loved it.

I was a bit surprised that Iris was doing an "opening set."  I had thought that there'd be more interaction between the two performers, but she finished up her great set, and then they re-set the stage for John's band, without a mike for Iris.  When they finished arranging and tuning the instruments, they were set way back on the stage ... the monitors were placed 20 feet back from the edge.  Stations for 4 performers were spread across the width of the stage, and every station had 3-5 instruments set up at it.  And they played all of them!

John came out, strummed that guitar hard, and went right at it.  Here's the setlist:

Ramblin' Fever (Merle Haggard cover)
Speed of the Sound of Loneliness
Glory of True Love
Long Monday
Taking a Walk
Please Don't Bury Me
Six O'Clock News
Souvenirs
Far From Me
Grandpa Was a Carpenter
Hello in There
Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
Iron Ore Betty
Fish and Whistle
Angel From Montgomery
You Got Gold (John solo)
Illegal Smile (John solo)
Sam Stone
Milwaukee Here I Come (With Iris DeMent)
We Could (With Iris DeMent)
In Spite of Ourselves (With Iris DeMent)
Lake Marie

Paradise

John was accompanied by (left to right) Jason Wilber on guitars and mandolin, Pat McLaughlin on mandolin and guitars, and Dave Jacques on double-bass and two different electric basses.  They were all fantastic, and the arrangements of the classic Prine setlist were note-perfect.

John has always had a raspy voice, and it was also wavering on the first few songs.  But then he warmed up and the silver started to flow, and did not stop.  He was aggressive of course on the acoustic guitar, switching between four different ones, but his cadence and volume were the John Prine sound of your dreams.

I was delighted that he concentrated on his earlier work, and so happy to hear Far From Me, Souvenirs, Hello In There, Six O'Clock News, and Fish and Whistle, along with the incredible mega-hits (if you like John Prine) of Speed Of the Sound of Loneliness and Angel From Montgomery.  John dedicated that last one to Bonnie Raitt naturally, after sending the opener out to Merle Haggard, who had just passed away the day before.

The guys walked off stage and left John to do a couple of solo acoustic songs, including Illegal Smile, for which he let the crowd sing the choruses.  Nobody held back.  I was thinking that this could be the last time he'll be in Massachusetts when the particular smile he's talking of is illegal ... might have to update the lyrics.

And speaking of the crowd, they were totally psyched.  The balcony was packed (I assume the orchestra and mezzanine were too) and there were lots of people shouting out lyrics, song titles, cheering place-name references, and freaking out.  I think everyone there was a John Prine fanatic.

The guys came back out and he did Sam Stone, for which he didn't encourage a sing-along.  This was a serious rendition, straight from the heart of the songwriter to ours.  Then Iris came out and they whooped it up for a few duets.

He concluded his set with what had been shouted out a number of times, Lake Marie ... one of his best songs, and from the latter part of his career.  We all knew every bit of the song of course, and when he started the verse about the four sausages on the grill, there was a low hiss from the crowd, that turned louder and louder.  They was SIZZLIN'!

Short pause while we all went nuts after they walked off stage, and then they came back to play one of his signature songs, Paradise, which he introduced with the information that the Peabody Coal Mine is going bankrupt!  Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County?

Wow, that was a fantastic show, though I was afraid all through it that I wouldn't be able to stand on my crippled leg when it was time to leave, let alone walk down 4 long flights of stairs.

Well, we finally filed out and the Theater District was a madhouse!  It was so crowded with people that cars on the street were not able to move.  There were streams of people going out of or into every building in the area, including some fancy club-goers in nylon soccer shirts and short, glittery dresses on a evening in the 30s.  We thought about stopping somewhere for a drink, but just went home instead!

Steve Kimock at the Bull Run

Yikes!  We'd been up late and were exhausted from seeing Lake Street Dive at the HOB on Wednesday, and had another concert to go to on Thursday (3/24), Steve Kimock at the Bull Run!

He played with his son, John Kimock on drums, longtime collaborator Bobby Vega on bass, and Leslie Mendelson on piano and vocals (and rhythm guitar on one song).  They were apparently billed as "K I M O C K" formally, though he's a very informal guy.

We thought the Bull Run might not be sold out, but it was pretty full with mostly diehard Kimock fanatics, most of whom were also diehard Deadheads of course.  He started off with a slow jam on lap steel with just his bassist, but it quickly picked up tempo, the drummer and keyboardist came out, and we were treated to an amazing evening of fusion, blues, rock, and basically all kinds of psychedelic stuff that he wrung out of his lap steel, a beautiful National steel, a Stratocaster, and some other guitars he had on stage.  It was all originals I believe, though there may have been some covers I didn't recognize in there, except for Mendelson leading the band on George Harrison's Beware of Darkness.  At one point they got pretty close to breaking into The Other One, but stayed away.

His setup was miked like you wouldn't believe, it must have taken them hours to set it up.  One weird thing was that Mendelson had a nice baby grand on stage, but the sound guy would not turn it up!?!  She tried it a few times and shot him some nasty looks, but he just shook his head and she turned back to her electric, which sounded pretty good itself.  When she did Beware of Darkness though, she stuck to it and he had to turn the sound up ... guess he thinks he's what people are there for.

Great evening of music, and excellent sound ... but when it was over it was already 11:30!  Drove all the way into Alewife to drop off Dave and then made it home and to bed by about 1:00.  Back to work the next day.

Here are pictures!

Lake Street Dive at HOB

Lake Street Dive could sell out Gillette Stadium!  They've just come out with a new record (Side Pony) and are touring behind it, stopping at the House of Blues on March 23rd, the Beacon Theater in NYC the next night, and then going to conquer Europe.  We got tickets seconds after they went on sale and they were sold out soon after that.  I think the HOB Boston is an excellent venue and we were very eager to hear Rachael Price fill it with her blues-pop bellow ... as were lots of other people.

Drove in to the city after work and got a parking place on Van Ness street, then met Sarah and Dave for dinner at their restaurant.  There were already people on the sidewalk looking for tickets.  Joined the "bought entrees" line out on the sidewalk after we ate, where the March night was getting windier and chillier by the minute.  We were some of the first in the place and got our normal spot to stage left.  The HOB filled up fast and we were soon pressed into our corner by 2422 others (HOB capacity is 2425), who were almost as excited as we were.

The Suffers opened and blew us away!  They're a tight blues band from Houston (they call their sound "Gulf Coast Soul") with a rocking horn section and a very talented lead singer, Kam Franklin.  Franklin told the story of how they were a bunch of friends who got together and played on weekends, then got so much encouragement from fans that they took the leap and quit their day jobs, put out a crowd funded record, got picked to play on Letterman, and now are opening for Lake Street Dive.  You gotta hear these guys, their meteoric rise is deserved.  Here are some pictures.

Then they reconfigured the stage and Lake Street finally came out and the place went up like a rocket.  Here's what they played:

Godawful Things
I Don't Care About You
Side Pony
Stop Your Crying
Clear a Space
Better Than
Spectacular Failure (with The Suffers' horn section)
Saving All My Sinning
Hell Yeah
Close to Me
Walking on Broken Glass (Annie Lennox cover)
Mistakes
Don't Make Me Hold Your Hand
Elijah
So Long
You Go Down Smooth
Bad Self Portraits (with Kam Franklin)
Seventeen
Call Off Your Dogs

Encore:
What I'm Doing Here
Bohemian Rhapsody

It was fantastic!  Rachael Price (wearing glitter heels, a leather skirt, and a window shag) was bopping all over the stage and filling the HOB with her incredible voice.  Bridget Kearney was wearing out her bass, picking it faster and harder then I'd ever seen ... I could just listen to her, I think she's amazing.  Mike Calabrese's riser was set up to the right of the stage instead of the usual drummer's rear position, and he rocked us all night, even doing an excellent drum solo after Don't Make Me Hold Your Hand.  And Mike Olson, like Bridget, was playing better than I'd ever heard him on guitar, though his trumpet playing was a bit below average.  Olson has written some of the best songs on the new record IMO.

One small complaint: I felt the sound was a little off for the first two to three songs.  The PA seemed to be struggling a little bit, but then I guess they added more power and the sound was not only loud, it was crystal clear.

Besides that momentary glitch, the whole evening was incredible and it's hard to pick highlights, especially when they opened with one of my favorite new songs of their's (Godawful Things) and just went up from there.  They play such earworms, I'm going to be replaying their riffs in my head for weeks after seeing them.  We all were trying to dance but there was no room!

A couple of moments I feel were exceptional were Rachael belting out her bluesy, torchy new song, Mistakes, like she was opening up her soul to the crowd and riveting the packed house.  And Kam Franklin coming out to trade verses with Rachael on Bad Self Portraits.  And they finished the night with their full, excellent cover of Bohemian Rhapsody, which had the people who hadn't heard it smacking their foreheads in disbelief.

Dave loved it too, he'd never seen them live and never been in the HOB, both things you have to do!  Dropped him at the Charles stop after that and made it home ... another concert coming tomorrow.

Here are LSD pictures.

Phil's 76th, part 2

Back through downtown Stamford and onto busy route 95 again, then through the narrow streets of Byram and the busy streets of Port Chester to our normal parking lot.  The proprietor was on duty this time and we had a nice chat with him, then took a detour over to a crowded Shakedown Corner.  Someone across the street was playing 1972-vintage music (Grateful Dead that is, of course).  One guy in front of us suddenly stopped, entranced by something he'd seen and said, "Somebody hold my dog so I can pat this one!"  Dave obliged.

Up to Kiosko and had a nice chat with our customary waitress, who had had the day off yesterday.  She brought us out the red sauce of death, I had another nice burrito with rich pork and a couple of Negra Modelos, and we watched Deadheads try to figure out the parking kiosk out the window (hey, maybe that's why it's called ...).

Down to the Cap, got an even more thorough pat-down this time, and then headed way up to row I of the left balcony, almost in the upper corner of the Cap.  But even there the sound was fantastic and the sight lines were fine.  We again could see Barraco very clearly, and though we couldn't quite see the details of the guitar players' fingerings, the sound was great and that's really what matters!

A loud and wacked Friday night crowd filled the seats, and the band finally came out, a bit later than they had Thursday.  Dave had done some work on setlists before our excursion, but we were a little at a loss as to what to predict at that point.  They had played a lot of the songs you might expect from a Lesh and Friends band on Tuesday (Help/Slipknot! (but not Franklin's), Shakedown, Viola Lee, Eyes, Terrapin, Dew, and they threw in an Eric Clapton song).  And then on Thursday they'd done more, like China Cat (but not Rider), Cosmic Charlie, Passenger, Mason's, TOO, St. Stephen, etc.  So let me see, what was left.  Well, Dark Star...

They opened with Dark Star!  They did a long, meandering introduction, but soon enough we realized what song they were playing, and then everyone in the theater realized that this was that song about ... oh you know, nothing less than the nature of reality itself and our place in the cosmos and time and stuff.  Here's the first set:

Dark Star > (all)
Again & Again (WH, RB)
New Speedway Boogie (WH, PL)
Sunshine of Your Love > (WH)
Broken Arrow (PL, WH)
End Of The Line > (WH)
Dark Star > (all)
I Know You Rider (PL, WH)

• This was a deep space Dark Star, that threatened to fade away at times but then would blink back into existence, all the time dragging us faster and faster into it, until we could not even feel the speed with which we were rushing through space.  They did the modern vocal treatment, splitting the verses between the three vocalists.
• And then suddenly they were in Again & Again, one of several songs from the record that that ensemble had done back in 2002 (There and Back Again).
• And then of course Speedway; Phil loves playing this song, and Haynes' vocal was satisfyingly dark.
• And then the unexpected, another Clapton song, Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love.  They did a short introduction to this for once, and it was clear early what song it was.  They then proceeded to jam the hell out of it though, wandering far off the reservation several times before coming back to finish it off.
• And then another one we would not have predicted, Robbie Robertson's Broken Arrow, that Phil had recorded on his first solo record in 1999.  This is a one of those songs that I liked, but had never heard a great rendition of; but this cover was sure it, the song rocked!
• Mentioned this yesterday, but there was some excellent musicianship going on on that stage.  Herring was ear-popping, an amazing lead guitarist ... we said, "How come they didn't get this guy for Fare Thee Well?"  He was never not playing, like Garcia used to do, and he could wring magic, blues, and spaciness out of any song.
• But don't listen to just Herring, there were some other incredible players on the stage, don't you know.  To name one of them, Haynes seemed to take a bit to really warm up, but by the end of the night his guitar was on fire, especially when he was playing rhythm and Herring was twisting all around him.
• And Barraco was as excellent on piano as I've ever heard him.  And again as mentioned yesterday, his vocals were excellent and the way his voice paired with Haynes (and Lesh) was sublime.
• But enough of that.  Time for another Haynes song, End Of the Line, which he did when he was in the ABB.
• And of course back into Dark Star for the last verse.  And then a prediction of mine, they closed China Cat (from the night before) the traditional way, with a folkie rave-up of I Know You Rider.

Yay!  That was fantastic and we'd survived the guys talking behind us in the Presidential Booth.  We'd first thought that the upper corner of the balcony would be a calm vantage point above the craziness that a rock concert can bring, but there was a constant stream of people stumbling up and down the stairs, arguing over seats, and bursting out with trivial conversations that they just couldn't hold in.  There were characters there, including some interesting ones in the row in front of us.  Oh well.

Took a bathroom break and considered another beer, but I was getting pretty worn out by that point!  The first set had started late and then had gone on for quite a while; these were long, thorough versions of those great songs.  It was already late by then, and we just knew that the second set would require some serious attention.  I'll have to admit that even so I had to sit down for parts of it ... my feet were getting seriously sore.  I *did* get a chance to see the Cap's smoking yard, but just for a short time.

The break was long, but finally the band came back out.  We had no idea what they were going to play, and that's the way they wanted it!  Here's the second set:

Unbroken Chain > (PL)
The Wheel > (all)
Cumberland Blues (all)
Uncle John's Band > (PL, WH)
No More Do I (WH, RB)
The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys > (WH)
Franklin's Tower (PL, WH)

• Well that wasn't too hard to predict was it?  Of course they had to do Unbroken, and this was a drifting, ethereal cover with Phil barely whispering the lyrics at times.
• And The Wheel had definitely been on Dave's list.  He'd never seen this done by a Phil/Bobby band before and this was a good one.
• They'd teased Cumberland in the first set and I was very glad when they launched into it for good.  This is another song that Phil loves to play and as mentioned, to me it's one of the most vital Grateful Dead songs of them all.  As with Unbroken and Wheel though, they downplayed the lyrics a bit, almost forgetting the big finish ("Lot of poor man got the Cumberland Blues...").
• But right after that they sure concentrated on the lyrics, doing another sparkling UJB!
• No More Do I is another Lesh/Hunter song from the There and Back Again record, and as with Broken Arrow we found this one of the best versions we'd heard.  The guitar interplay between Haynes and Herring on this was jaw-dropping.
• Another Traffic cover after that, with the band trying to deconstruct The Low Spark Of  High Heeled Boys into its most basic elements, and succeeding.  We were deep in the laboratory with the guys; Lesh was booming, shaking the rafters, Molo was hammering his kit into the floor, Barraco was surfing on the organ, and Haynes and Herring were screaming.
• Time to end the set by winding up another little thing they'd left hanging.  They'd done Help/Slipknot! on Tuesday and closed Friday with a short but sweet Franklin's, with Phil singing the last few verses.

Again, yay!  We were totally exhausted, after pouring all of our energy into following every note from this amazing band.  I had to sit down again, but then Phil came back out and the crowd gave him an even louder and more extensive ovation than the day before.  He tried to start talking a few times but we were not going to be stopped and he just stood there beaming.  Phil finally got in an extended Donor Rap, and then the guys (with some delay) trickled back onto the stage.

They'd closed the prior two shows with ballads, and it was time for another one, Haynes soloing on yet another song from the 2002 record, Patchwork Quilt.  This was done very well too, but I think that even the band was feeling the fatigue at that point.  Last bows for all, then watched Phil slowly leave the stage ... hopefully not for the last time but you never know.  It's been a bad year already for musicians with long and illustrious careers.

OK, forced our way outside through the spaced-out crowd, and walked slowly back up the hill to the lot, where we shook the proprietor's hand a last time, and then made our way back to the Thruway and the (relatively) deserted streets of Stamford.  Not much trouble getting to sleep after that long day!

Phil's 76th, continued

Woke up Friday after a disturbed night's sleep.  There's a lot of sound here in Stamford, in a hotel, even on the 4th floor.  And I didn't like the bed.  Thruway, city traffic, sirens, heater, refrigerator, etc.  And the curtains did not quite close so the light outside shone in your eyes in bed.

And worse yet, their "hotel breakfast" was even leaner than the standard hotel breakfast: no eggs, no yogurt, few pastries ... but they had waffles (not even make-your-own, just frozen) and toast.  The juice was watery and the coffee was not tasty.  Upstairs, the shower never really drained and there wasn't a fan in the bathroom.

But the scene out the window is entertaining.  There are several HUGE office buildings near here, a gas station across the street, several things that used to be suburban houses but now are split up into small apartments, a Taco Bell right outside with a constant stream of customers, and several characters, like the Finocchio Brothers in a large garbage truck.

After some breakfast, some bad coffee, and lots of blogging and uploading, we went down to the car and out for an excursion!  The weather was still mostly sunny, though windy like you wouldn't believe, and so we picked up 95 East (by the sign that says, "Yes! We can wash that!!" and the day laborer market) and drove back up the coast a bit to Sherwood Island State Park in Westport.  Here's the email I sent my siblings about it:

Sarah and Dave and I are currently in a hotel in Stamford, down here to see a couple of concerts in Port Chester (NY).  For an excursion today we went to Sherwood Island State Park ... just got back.

As some of you may remember, Mom used to take us toddlers (me and Sally at least) to Compo Beach, the Westport town beach, a long time ago.  My biggest memories of there are the long boardwalks and that every blue moon we'd get a frozen Milky Way for a snack ... probably split it between us.

Once in a while, Mom would want to mix it up and would take us to a beach in Fairfield, or to Sherwood Island State Park.  We probably didn't go there often because they charged a fee, though this is conjecture.

There is no fee in March, and there were just a few other people, and acres of Canada geese.  We parked at the main pavilion and navigated acres of picnic tables in various states of repair, into the main, modern pavilion itself.  There we saw part of their 9/11 Memorial.

This is a sculpture made out of salvaged, steel bits of the World Trade Towers, running over and around a listing on a steel plaque of all the people from Connecticut who died in the attacks.  The people's names were all in separate squares, followed by what their location was when they died, and what Connecticut town they were from.  I read them all and found a few from Westport.  It was incredibly moving and the most moving for me was seeing the squares of a young father and his 2-year old daughter from Greenwich who had been in one of the planes.

From there we went out to the point, where it must have been blowing over 35.  A couple of trawlers were right offshore, maybe doing something scientific but probably dragging(?) for oysters.  Off to our right was the Western corner of Westport and right behind that, Compo Beach,  There were lots of people over there, though I doubt Mom, Sally, and I were among them.

We couldn't see around the corner from there, and could not see the "new" yacht club, let alone the old one.  What we could see very clearly was the factory in Norwalk that's the backdrop of many of my memories of sailing around there ... it's still standing though maybe not operational.  We could also see Cockenoe (pronounced Ka-kee-nee) and the islands beyond it very clearly.  The day was overcast as I say, but there were sudden periods of sunshine and times when the fierce wind stopped, pausing for breath.  We could see way down Long Island to the West, and I told Dave that it probably extended as far as we could see, *again* as far out to the West.  He was gobsmacked.

What we were looking for out on the point was the other part of the 9/11 Memorial, what they call a "living" memorial.  I guess this means it involves plants.  The plants weren't thriving in March, but we got the idea.  The idea is that from there you can see the lower part of Manhattan when the weather is clear.  It was clear enough today.  On that bright September day, people gathered there to watch smoke coming up from the island, far, far away.  I'm sure this was preferable to watching it on TV.

After that we took the short trail around their salt marsh (Thruway and incredibly expensive homes in the background), and then combed the beach.  The tide was very low and still going out.  Seagulls surfed on the wind and dropped oysters on the rocks, ducks were floating right at the tideline looking for food, and the Canada geese were scavenging.  We'd seen several different varieties of oaks in the woods, and then beaches and pines on the shore.

I kept saying, I used to think this was normal.  I realized that for much of my life I'd been puzzled by this "normal" being missing.  I was convinced that the thin, tall black oaks we had in our woods in Westport when I was young and the beeches at my school in Fairfield were the standard kinds of trees one sees.  And that the cockles and fingernail shells and black periwinkles and oysters and small clams and mica-covered rocks were what you'd see on the shore.  When I didn't see these in the woods and beaches in the parts of the world I've frequented since then, something puzzling was missing.  Sarah was amazed by many of the small things we saw; she had no idea that this was normal!

We walked around for an hour or two and that was fine.  Got back on the Thruway and back to Stamford, off tonight for Port Chester and another concert!

So that was fun.  Did some more hanging around the hotel room after that, and then off to Port Chester and Kiosko!

Here are pictures!

Phil's 76th, part 1

Though we had done a Capitol Theater excursion back in the Fall, when we saw The Q was playing there this Spring for Phil's 76th birthday, we figured it was time to do it again!

The Q is the most frequent assemblage of Phil Lesh and Friends.  They played together regularly from September 2000 through December 2003 and they get together once in a while since then.  It's Phil, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, John Molo, and Rob Barraco.  They announced a Birthday gig for the 17th and 18th of March (Thursday and Friday) in Port Chester, and later added another date on the 15th, which is Phil's actual birthday (Eric Krasno played instead of Herring), but which we didn't add ourselves!

Took Thursday and Friday off and after making a slew of sandwiches, loading up the car, and stuff, we drove down to Quincy to pick up Dave and headed South, through Rhode Island and along the Sound towards the Cap.  It was a very strange open-and-shut day with intervals of bright sunshine and hard rain, like a late-April day instead of mid-March.  The worst rain of course was when the traffic was at its most intense as we approached the maw of New York.

We made it to the [Grand] Amsterdam Hotel in Stamford by 3:30 or so, and took some time to set up computers, etc. in our nice room on the 4th floor, looking North.  We were trying another choice since the beds at the La Quinta in Armonk were small (though we had found it otherwise acceptable back in the Fall), but though the [Grand] Amsterdam has its charms, it has flaws too, like the shower, the breakfast, and the city noise.  Oh well.

Headed on up the turnpike, through the crowded streets in Byram, and across the river to Port Chester where we parked in the usual lot and had another great dinner at Kiosko.  Then it was down the street to the Theater, where some of us (like me) were patted down thoroughly, and then bought t-shirts.  Up to our seats in the left of the balcony, second row (not the loge), and settled down to wait for the crowd to fill in and the concert to begin!

They lined up with Herring (not sitting on a stool this time) far right, then Phil with his lighted bass and lots of displays and electronic matter spread all around him, Molo behind him, then Haynes and Barraco far, far left.  We actually had a great view of Rob's keys.  They tuned up and went into a spacey jam of course, though this one soon swelled, coalesced, started rocking, and then paused and burst into Dear Mr. Fantasy.  We were off again!

Here's the first set:
Jam >
Dear Mr. Fantasy > (WH)
China Cat Sunflower > (RB)
Let It Ride (PL)
Passenger > (WH & RB)
Cosmic Charlie (PL)
Cassidy (RB)
Spots Of Time (WH)

• We had never seen Herring live before and his performance was perhaps the most unexpected for me; he was ripping up that lead guitar all evening and providing some incendiary fills ... great stuff.
• We'd seen most of Tuesday's gig on the web, and one of my impressions from that came through even stronger, that Barraco was singing excellently ... not to mention his playing, which was just transcendental, especially when he was on piano.
• Never seen Molo either, and he was very strong and smooth, holding the ensemble in one piece ... as if they needed any help, you could tell these guys had been playing together for a long time.
• China Cat was flawless, with Herring shining on the Bobby part, and they strung it out to its utmost, then hinted at going into [I Know You] Rider, before dropping into another kind of jam, and coming out with Let It Ride (close!) ... moving like the fog on the Cumberland River.
• Passenger and Cosmic Charlie were expected of a Phil Lesh ensemble, and were routinely great, but then Cassidy was totally unexpected, and great as well.
• And the vocals on Cassidy, especially for the first few verses!!  I list it as "RB" but Rob and Warren dueted for the first verses and that was one of the highlights of the show.  Let Bobby and John top that this summer (I'm sure they will)!
• They closed with Haynes doing Spots Of Time, which we could not place until we looked it up; Haynes and Lesh co-wrote it and last performed it in 2008.

Great first set!  The guy to my left was big (though not dancing, standing un-moving like a rock), so I was a little cramped, but had just enough room to dance a bit myself.  We sat down and talked some, then I did a bathroom > beer run.  Though the Capitol has rarely given me a chance to complain (even the thorough pat-down had been done with a smile!), this bartender was not efficient and ended up giving me something else when I ordered Lagunitas, which I didn't realize until back at the seats.

Oh well ... besides that the Cap was in fine form again.  For this stand they had a stage backdrop of subtly glittering vertical stripes, and had a beautiful blue, faintly reminiscent of Canton china, pattern on the non-alcove parts of the stadium ceiling.  The alcoves themselves sported a more traditional, tie-dyed look, and the two worked together, casting echos of color over the huge brass medallion in the center of the ceiling.  They were also projecting pictures from Phil's life, including him with his violin as a child, and plenty more recent pictures of him as a laughing old guy.  The interesting thing is that they weren't in a loop, they were selected randomly and the projection on the right wall and the one on the left wall were different random sequences.  The Cap does things well.

And then they were back, after a shorter-than-usual break.  They tuned up and I called it (the guys behind me heard me and passed it back up the balcony quickly): Mason's!  Here's the second set:

Mason's Children > (all)
Mountain Jam >
Mountains of the Moon >  (PL)
Night Of a Thousand Stars > (WH)
Mountains of the Moon > (PL)
The Other One > (RB)
Cryptical Envelopment (Reprise) (PL)
St. Stephen > (all)
In the Midnight Hour (WH)

• I had figured they'd do an Allman Brothers song, and they did (though Mountain Jam is more than an Allmans song of course), this was the traditional ABB arrangement of it with a lot of "jam."
• Then another excellent Mountains (though not sung by Teresa Williams), and they continued on the space/mountain/sky theme with Night Of a Thousand Stars (written by Lesh, Haynes, and Hunter and released on There and Back Again), then back into Mountains for the last couple of verses.
• Then the dragon was released for good, Phil started booming, Herring started shredding, Molo started having convulsions, and before you knew it, everyone in the theater was in the thrall of TOO as it rolled through the building and our consciousnesses.
• And then another twist ... they suddenly quieted way down and Phil tripped into the end of Cryptical like of course we'd been waiting for it since they did the beginning of Cryptical, back in ???.
• Then a pause, and then St. Stephen.  I love that Live Dead stuff!
• And they finished the set with an excellent, funky, jazzy, bluesy, Midnight Hour ... it had been a long night but this was perhaps the most well done song of a professional performance with very few flubs or slow spots.

Phil came back out shortly and we started applauding ... and this lasted for a while.  It's probable everybody else was feeling what I was feeling: that we'd been blessed with Phil's musicianship and spirit for years and years, and now he was approaching "very old" and who knew how much longer he'd be able to do this?  We wanted to thank him and wish him many happy returns, and it took a while for us to calm down.

Phil finally launched into his donor rap and we finally quieted enough to hear it, though most of us could probably recite it for him.  "We've got another for you," he concluded, and the guys came back out.  This time Dave called it from the tuning, Days Between, and this was passed back up the balcony.  Can't say I'm a huge fan of this song, though I have to admit that it's an excellent writing job and can be done very well ... they did it well of course.

OK, sat down for a minute as we were in the middle of a row and the others had to leave first, but it wasn't long before we were out of there and walking back up the hill toward our car.  Twisted back over the river into Connecticut, picked up 95, and were back to Stanford with its maze of construction and the [Grand] Amsterdam Hotel soon after that.

Time for a sandwich and beer break and to check if the MP3s were up (no!) ... then soon to bed.

Pictures here!