In their forth outstanding gig at San Rafael’s Terrapin Crossroads this year, The Rock Collection brought an evening of originals, and beloved covers dissimilar to anything fans had seen of them yet. Any act under the jam band umbrella has to keep their shows diverse night to night, but what makes The Rock Collection standalone is the sheer combination of talent and background that allows the music to take off different directions on any given night.

American rock prodigy Steve Kimock took over Denver’s Cervantes’ Other Side for two nights of funk, rock, and blues this past weekend, playing an exotic orchestration featuring jam-fueled originals and traditional covers alike.

A grand celebratory sendoff to the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s psychedelic music scene of 1967 took place at one of its once and forever epicenters, The Fillmore, on December 9. Featuring about 30 prominent Bay Area performers of today and yesterday, the commemorative event righteously celebrated that important stretch of time through which poetry, rock ‘n’ roll, cross-cultural awareness, and an anti-establishment penchant to question authority challenged traditional America’s consciousness.

One of the most anticipated jazz events of 2017 was The Meeting of The Spirits tour, a co-billing of celebrated fusion icon John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension with the astoundingly diverse Jimmy Herring and The Invisible Whip. Though the two guitarists/bandleaders spawned from different generations and backgrounds, their affinity for bringing exploratory styles including Indian Classical Music, Spanish guitar, funk, and blues, are an ever-bonding force.

Did I say one? Better make it two. While Dead & Company trounced Dallas this past Friday with a meaty rocker of a show, Saturday night in Austin received a more deliberate performance befitting the band’s early era of improvised exploration. Which was better? Well, that depends on the opinion of the most opinionated fans in music. But we can all agree that for one weekend there was a seventh flag flying over Texas: the Freak Flag.

It was a spare crowd that greeted the band when they took the stage to play “Shakedown Street” but it grew pretty quickly. It seemed to me that a hundred people even on the last day of November was a fairly low turnout. Ashland is invariably a “slow show” crowd and soon afterward there was at least a couple hundred. They were treated to a show that was also a slow burner.

While the multi-talented Karl Denson has been known to structure his Tiny Universe performances as an opportunity to pay homage to an impressively diverse array of artists, nothing prepared his devoted fans for the announcement of an Allman Brothers Band tribute. When the boisterous bandleader isn’t on the road with the Rolling Stones as their full-time saxophonist, or continually collaborating with Phil Lesh & Friends, he’s primarily focused on his accomplished solo-career.

The tenth date into their fall tour, Dead and Company played to a full house in Detroit at the newly opened Little Caesars Arena. The audiences were both longtime deadheads, and interestingly new fans that have come as a result of being John Mayer fans. Or simply new fans getting tuned in to the Dead only recently.

Jam Veteran Melvin Seals is generally acknowledged as the keeper of the flame for continuing the music of Jerry Garcia Band. The organist/keyboardist met Garcia thru his friend Merl Saunders in the early 1980s. Garcia was struck not only by Seals sheer talent and soul but that he was separate from the whole Grateful Dead world. In fact, as a man of the church, he was only marginally familiar with the Dead and Garcia.

All in the name of Music Heals International’s core mission to expand residents’ ability to make music in Haiti, Lukas Nelson headlined a humdinger of a benefit inside the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, California on November 21.