Seventeen years ago in September, the iconic American rock band the Grateful Dead announced a well-thought but difficult decision. Without their fallen band mate Jerry Garcia, who had passed that August, they would not be able to continue touring as the band Grateful Dead. It was a tough choice to make as certain band members were divided about what should become of their future tours or even the possibility of continuing without Jerry.

The whole Indie phenomenon is what really keeps me generally detached from mainstream popular music. Something never cliqued with me about bands like Radiohead or Arcade Fire. And not that those particular acts would self-apply their music as “indie”, as it usually seems that its listeners that apply the label. Maybe it's the very concept of straying from what was previously donned as hip becoming the new hip.

The Colorado Jazz scene has always been active, but never really definitive. Denver and Boulder have few actual jazz venues (thank god for Dazzle Jazz) and most of the renowned artists that tour through choose mid-sized theatres, performing arts centers, or even laid back dives as their outlet. Since our music culture is so welcoming and lets face it, who wouldn’t want to tour through our beautiful state, we get some of the hottest names in Jazz touring through and giving their all to Rocky Mountain audiences.

It’s plainly obvious to see how hardworking Colorado acoustic quartet Head for the Hills has been this past year. They played their first main stage appearance at the 39^th Telluride Bluegrass Festival, released their first official live album “Head for the Hills Live” and are hard at work assembling their third studio album.

The legend of the Delta Blues is a somber story. Its grandfather died at the age of twenty-seven under debated circumstances. The legacy that Robert Leroy Johnson left Mississippi was a new style of guitar playing and singing that would eventually become the predominant defining form of American roots music. Nearly every style of American-born music can be structurally traced back to blues. Jazz and Rock ‘n’ Roll is blues music, and wouldn’t have been birthed without that foundational backbone.

Grateful Web recently had the opportunity to speak to legendary bandleader, composer and jazz guitarist, John McLaughlin.  John discussed his ongoing and diverse collaborations through the years, his newest album, Now Here This, and some of the guitarists who continue to push the envelope.

One of the more humorous developing attitudes of newer bluegrass acts is that they don’t like applying the label “bluegrass”. Though their instrumentation, song selection, and style all point to an existing form. The trend seems to be that up-and-comings feel marginalized by being cornered into accepting the label. In certain ways I understand this fear. Donning the title of a “bluegrass” band makes its musicians pressured into accepting a certain catalogue of songs and a limiting context in which they can expand and improvise their instrumentals.

Bluegrass has become more obscured than ever. Is there even such a thing as “pure” bluegrass? Some would argue that the music of Bill Monroe and his alumni are as accurate of a way to directly describe the genre. In truth, there is no such thing as “pure” bluegrass since it’s inherently a hybridized form. Sure there’s context and history, but bluegrass is actually an amalgamation of blues, folk, country, and spiritual music, none of which can be encompassed by one definitive style or form.

The only detractor to using the word jazz to describe a genre of music that is too many different progressions have made it useless as an adjective. What does it mean when something is “jazzy”? Many would here a walking bass line accompanied by swinging guitar licks and a brass section leading a melody. Others might think of Flamenco, Indian sitar styling, or Bluegrass. Many fans prefer the Modal or Cool sound and the artists of that classic period.

How many Grateful Dead tribute bands does the scene need? The answer could be endlessly debated each way forever. I suppose it’s fair to say that since Dead music is a rolling snowball of endless genres, sporting both originals and reinvented covers with thirty years of varying performances where supposedly “no show was ever the same twice,” that room for countless cover acts isn’t unfound. After all, people still want to listen to their music, obsessively, even though they haven’t been around for seventeen years.