Hold on to your hat, we’re coming in strong with one from the Windy City that’ll have you movin’ and shakin’ from start to finish. DAVE’S PICKS VOLUME 31: UPTOWN THEATRE, CHICAGO, IL 12/3/79 signals a true rebirth of the Grateful Dead, reimagining classics and foreshadowing their 80s sound. This is as much in part due to freshly-minted member Brent Mydland bringing the organ back in as it is to Jerry finding new vivacity with his custom Wolf guitar. New guy, new guitar – it all makes for a heck of a good time!

Dead & Company wrapped up the final show of their 2019 Summer Tour this past Saturday at CU Boulder’s iconic Folsom Field. A venue frequented by the Grateful Dead throughout the 1970s, the Grateful Dead first touched down at the University of Colorado Boulder in the spring of 1969, and while the Dead wrapped up their final performance at Folsom in June of 1980, the spirit of the band has lived on throughout the city.

The Garcia Project will do an eight night run on the east coast in from August 1 through 10 - Celebrating the life of Jerry Garcia, The tour kicks off at Garcia’s on August 1, celebrating what would have been Jerry’s 77th birthday. The Garcia Project performs full, classic Jerry Garcia Band set lists from 1976 - 1995 and have been called the DSO of JGB.

With 3000 shows in sight (currently at 2904 shows performed), Dark Star Orchestra today announces the plans for the first leg of Fall Tour 2019 launching September 27 in Chicago followed in quick order by returns to Milwaukee, Madison, and Minneapolis.

Dead & Company announces the third annual Playing in the Sand, an all-inclusive Caribbean concert vacation in partnership with CID Presents. The event – January 16-19, 2020 - features three nights of Dead & Company - Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, John Mayer, and Bob Weir, with Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti - playing on an intimate, white sandy beach in Mexico, just feet away from the Caribbean Sea.

It really wasn’t just “One More Saturday Night” even though it was.  Yes, the show was on a Saturday night, and I was really happy about that. Having been to at least one and sometimes two shows since the band began touring together in 2015. Most of those shows had been in NY, one in South Florida and now, one in Atlanta. I knew this one would be special and it was a new adventure; my first show in Atlanta.

Despite their emergence in the mid-sixties at the height of the counterculture era, the Grateful Dead were never considered an overtly political act. While no friend to the corporate establishment or a cog in the government machine, the band left the protest songs to musicians such as Bob Dylan. That’s not to say that their lyrics don’t touch on the thematic landscape of America’s political woes, but like poetry (and beauty), interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.

“Tennessee Jed” was a raucous riot, as it indubitably should be. The instrumental breaks showcased JRAD’s proclivity for shaking fresh ideas out of well-worn material. Benevento dropped a stanky, Dr. John crossed with Dave Brubeck piano piece. Metzger and Dreiwitz slipped into a parallel, Bizarro “Jed.” The entire unit tilted and started to spin ecstatically. It was like putting a Ferris wheel on top of a roller coaster. JRAD increasingly infused the Dead’s material with their own creative energy. They weren’t out to simply play these cherished songs; they sought to possess them and make them their own.

The San Francisco-based Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Band arguably played some of their most prolific shows on the East Coast, as strange is it may seem. Those spectacular primal billings at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East entering the 1970s, “the best show that almost didn’t happen” in May of 1977 at Boston Garden, Clarence Clements ethereal sit-in with Jerry Garcia Band at Great Woods, Massachusetts in fall of 1989.