Mill Valley’s Sweetwater Music Hall is one of Marin County, California’s select venues that is keeping the classic bay area jam-rock community connected. Many recall that Marin County was where every member of Grateful Dead had migrated to by the early 1970s for much needed solitude and separation from their iconized significance as the rock titans of Haight/Ashbury.

Chris Porterfield is the guy you bring home to Mom. Earnest, heartfelt, and yes, a little tortured – but not irreparably so.  He’s also the front man and lead singer of the band Field Report, who played the Hi-Dive to a mellow but appreciative crowd on November 11th. It was the coldest day in my memory of Denver, so credit is due to the intrepid fans who ventured out.

The marquee reads “Poor Man’s Whiskey: A Tribute to the Allman Brothers Band,” and the assumption that they’re no more than a cover band is understandable. Helping fuel the fire is their history of playing The Fox Theater with their renditions of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and the music of Old and In The Way. What the casual passerby doesn’t understand, however, is that there’s much more to this band than rehashing their favorite artists and albums on stage.

As we feel the weather changing around us, and we realize that Thanksgiving is in the air, we also must celebrate a few other traditions, like revisiting the Last Waltz, or listening to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving Day. In Colorado, we now have another tradition around this time of year, invented by the minds of J2G Productions. In the spirit of the Last Waltz, we have our own all-star jam called the Dance Party Time Machine. This machine, escorts the audience through a timeless tale of dance music through a sixty year period.

For the uninitiated, The Wild Feathers may be the purest, most energetic descendants of the musical legacy of The Band that are out on the club circuit today. Their eponymous debut album came out a little over a year ago, and they have been touring relentlessly since that time. Their live shows are, simply put, whiskey-soaked, rafter-rattling good times.

The world’s truly finest jam band resides in the Bay Area and generally plays exclusively there only. For years I have wanted to see a David Nelson Band show.

This has been an amazing few months of music for me, but once again, I cannot avoid writing about how music has literally spread its wings to reach out as far as possible with different mixtures of sounds and influences to combine into a genreless gumbo. Elephant Revival’s Facebook pages states, “Where words fail…music speaks,” and as a writer, I could not agree more. I often ask my muse, where do I get the words to describe some of the music that I have been seeing lately? Needless to say, it is difficult.

Last weekend Elephant Revival returned home for a sold-out two night run at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado. The set of shows was called “Birds of a Feather Autumnal Ball”. The band Horse Feathers from Portland, Oregon kicked things off on Friday and opened for Elephant Revival.

I am not very religious, but I do consider myself very spiritual, and if I were to attend a church, it would be something that included the music of these guys. I do not mean to sound overly dramatic, but I was nearly moved to tears several times by the power that I felt coming from this stage. There were four men, two Malian (Muslim) and two Israeli (Jewish), and the music that they make together is as piano player and singer Idan Raichel calls religious on certain songs especially. It was one of my favorite musical experiences that I have ever had.

They say time heals all wounds.  I believe that music also plays an important role in the process.