Dust off those tie-dyed T-shirts, crank up the old VW camper and break out your day-glow paints: The Dead is back on tour.
For the first time in five years, the surviving members of The Grateful Dead, the band that defined the 1960s psychedelic rock movement, are once again truckin’.
After what’s bound to be a long, strange trip across the country, the band’s final stop is planned for a sold-out show at The Gorge on May 16.
Since Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the surviving band members have toured with a variety of people filling in the gaping hole left by their lead guitarist and singer.
A few years ago, they decided to retire the “Grateful” in Garcia’s memory and renamed themselves simply “The Dead.”
Then, during Barack Obama’s campaign, the surviving band members reunited and joined up with Allman Brothers’ guitarist and singer Warren Haynes and Jeff Chimenti, a keyboardist who has toured with Dead guitarist Bob Weir’s solo band. The Dead’s participation in a fundraising gig for the presidential candidate inspired the band to return to touring.
“This is the best it’s been,” drummer Bill Kreutzmann told The Herald during a phone interview as he recovered from the April 12 tour-opening concert. “I like to play live, that’s my favorite thing.”
At 62, Kreutzmann said he’s excited to be back on the road.
“We’re playing more free, like we used to in the ’70s,” he said. The band was formed in the mid-1960s in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. They’ve made dozens of albums and recordings of many of their live concerts are widely circulated.
Kreutzmann said the band has reached into its vast bag of songs for this tour. They plan to play many that haven’t been heard in concert for decades.
Classic favorites including “Uncle John’s Band” and “Fire on the Mountain” will be mixed in with more obscure songs such as “Cosmic Charlie” and “Cream Puff War.”
They’ll mix up their traditional two-set concerts, change who sings lead on songs and apply their characteristic improvisational style throughout the shows.
So far, that’s meant longer jams and concerts that have received rave reviews.
“The thing we most did not want to do was to be a nostalgia band,” Kretutzmann said.
Despite the renewed energy and fresh setlists, the band’s vocals can sound a bit stale. Only Garcia stand-in Haynes really can carry a tune. When Weir and Phil Lesh sing, their pitch can be narrow and the vocals can fall short.
Not that singing has ever mattered much to Deadheads. Many people argue Garcia’s voice gave out a couple of decades before his death.
And don’t expect Kreutzmann to step up to the microphone.
“If I felt confident singing, I would,” he said. “I have such a good time playing the drums, that’s my way of singing.”
Still, a Dead show encompasses far more than the music.
A bright energy comes from multiple generations of fans singing along, dancing rhythmically and the effervescence created by hundreds of people who likely took to the pipe. It is a 1960s band, after all.
Kreutzmann says that groove is palpable on stage, and reminds him of Garcia.
“What it’s like to play without Jerry, it’s playing without Jerry,” he said.
It’s different.
“My own heart believes that wherever his energy is now, he’s happy with what we’re doing.”
