NPR Music - What's next for the Grateful Dead's legacy?

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

Death never stopped the Grateful Dead before.Since Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, a sprawling collection of musicians and fans across generations have kept the band’s legacy alive in different ways. But without members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, Deadheads are experiencing their first summer where there’s no clear inheritor of the Grateful Dead’s mantle.Where does the music, and the dedicated community that has grown up around it, go from here? NPR Music's resident Deadheads Felix Contreras and Isabella Gomez Sarmiento took a cue from the Dead itself: They hit the road, interviewing musicians, fans and archivists to learn how the band and its fans built a legacy that has spanned generations, and to find out what's next.For more podcast episodes and stories about the future of the Grateful Dead, check out our series Dead After Death.This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. It was edited by Jacob Ganz and Hazel Cills. The executive producer of NPR Music is Suraya Mohamed. Our executive director is Sonali Mehta.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From NPR music, I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Isabella Gomez-Ramiento. Issa, you know what day it is? Of course I do, because I look forward to it all year. It's Jerry Garcia's birthday today. August 1st, and it kicks off a week that's known as Days Between. Between August 1st and August 9th, the day that Jerry Garcia died in 1995. And it's become more of a celebration than anything else, specifically the celebration of Jerry Garcia's life,

but also a celebration of everything Grateful Dead. Yeah, it's like unofficial Grateful Dead Week. I feel like it's the most fun week of the summer, because there's always a bunch of different events and gatherings and people get together to talk about why they love the Grateful Dead. And it's kind of cosmic that it happens in August because the summer tours were such a big part of Grateful Deadline for the band and for the fans.

Do you remember, Felix, when you first identified as a deadhead? Yeah, it was my first show. I'd been listening and just exploring. And then when I went to the first show, and that first note, when everybody started dancing and I didn't expect it, And I'm like, what is this? And then I felt like, okay, I found my people.

Do you remember the date? It's 5491. Wow. In Sacramento at Cal Expo. Did you get up and dance? I did not dance. I'm dance challenge, but that's another story for another time. I find that kind of hard to believe.

It's completely true. What about you? When did you first know that you were a deadhead? You know, I think it was also my first show. I had really gotten into them towards the end of high school, 2015. And then I went to see Dead and Company at that first fall tour.

And we got there kind of late, and we walked in, and they were playing Feel Like a Stranger. And we were really close. It was easier to get pit tickets at the beginning of those tours, you know? Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, then I got on the bus. Then I started going to all the shows.

It's curious that both you and I had a sensation of finding like-minded people because that's such a part of the Grateful Dead experience, being part of that community, being part of the tribe, being part of the family, being part of deadheads. Yeah, and it's kind of how we found each other at NPR too. I remember the very first time I asked you to get coffee with me,

you noticed my lightning bolt tattoo. It stood out. Definitely stood out. From someone of your generation, because you were my first exposure to folks who were coming in long after Garcia died and absorbing the dead-in-company experience. Yeah, it's not the original thing. It's not what you saw. It's not Jerry Garcia, you know, playing.

in the evenings at Shoreline Amphitheater, as you love to tell me. I know. I know that. I recognize that. But there was still a magic. There was still this sense of going to these giant shows and handing out with people of all ages. And yeah, and feeling like you were a part of something much, much bigger than yourself and much, much bigger than this moment in time. And it's interesting to me that that ThruLine has existed, even as the music and the people who are playing the music on stage has had to sort of reinvent itself, right? or regenerate a new iteration, a new kind of way to get together and play the songs. The people have kept following,

and new people have joined, new people like me, have gotten on the bus and sort of joined the giant traveling circus of the Grateful Dead over the years. And this summer, it feels like we're reaching another moment where people are kind of, are looking around and getting a sense of where the scene is right now.

With Bob Weir's passing in January of this year, Phil Lesh and Donna Godgson the last couple of years, and with drummers Billy Crichtsman and Mickey Hart laying low, it definitely feels like a point of transition. But what happens next? Where do we go from here? What happens with the fans? What happens with the music?

And what happens to people who still love to play the music? You and I talked a lot about it, and we wanted to go out and find some answers. So to do that, we went on our own summer tour. We talked to people all over the country to try to get to the answer of what happens next. We went to California, New York, Maryland. We had some calls with people who live, even in other countries.

We talked to someone who lives in Canada. And the result is a series that we're calling Dead After Death. A series of reports on our website, audio reports, a podcast, lots of social media, taking a look at where this long, strange trip goes next. And there was only one place we could start, because it's where this entire story starts. And that's San Francisco. I can Mike Os, Felix, and you, Mike Dennis?

Okay, cool. We went to see a grateful dead historian by the name of Dennis McNally. He was a biographer for the band. He was their publicist for a very long time. And he very graciously welcomed us into his home, which was full of dead memorabilia. Felix and I were freaking out. Oh, my God. And during the conversation with Dennis, you know, he reminded us that in order to understand the band,

you have to really understand the band's musical DNA. There are two truly unique things about The Grateful Dead. One is that in the world of rock and roll, at least, they weren't a rock band. They were a jazz band that happened to use rock instruments and rock songs and rock forms. But their commitment to improvisation made them different from all other bands. Felix, I mean, I know you're going to bring up Dark Star, but is there a song that for you really demonstrates what Dennis is saying, that the Dead were actually a jazz band, not, you know, a psychedelic rock band? The band's jazz influence has always been sprinkled throughout all of their music. But for me, that trilogy that you like so much, help on the way, Slipknot, Franklin's Tower,

that particular stretch of music, no matter when they play it, always brings to mind what I feel like are the jazz bona fide. And then also the fact that during that time, they were using a lot of Fender Rose Electric Piano, which a lot of jazz musicians were using at the time, Chick-Korea and Herbie Hancock in particular. So the timbre of the piano as well as the musical direction, that in particular really nails the jazz influence for me. I also really like this way of thinking about the Dead because so many people think of them as a jam band. And I think jam band, as we've learned from talking to our colleagues,

like the great Robin Hilton, I think the term jam band can really turn people off to the Dead's music. And I think if you reframe it as they're coming at, it from this improvisation that is more rooted in the spirit of jazz, even though you know you have these like bluegrass elements from Jerry, you have Phil with the classical training, Bobby as the sort of kid with the rock and roll elements. I think understanding that what they were doing was closer to maybe like Miles Davis than necessarily fish, I think it helps to sort of understand what they were aiming for and what those long sort of like musical interludes in the set lists

represent, you know? And another really important part of the band's musical DNA, according to Dennis, is their very, very early shows at the acid test parties that the author Ken Kesey would throw in the bay. This was, you know, when LSD was still legal. And basically, you know, everybody walked in, everybody paid a couple dollars, everybody took LSD. And Dennis says that those shows and the way that the dead interacted with the people there really came to define how they would treat their audience. They had this experience for three months of not being the show. Everybody in the room was the show. They were the soundtrack if they chose to play and they didn't always. And they only got stronger as the audiences started to grow. The Grateful Dead, even when

they were playing to 50,000 people, down deep, certainly Jerry, had the notion that the audience was in fact their peers on a quest, a quest for cosmic, you know, you start describing that quest and immediately go, you know, woo, woo, oh, Lord. But it was close to that. Everybody in the room was in the band. And I think that's what gets us to this point where you have people traveling across the country, traveling at some point as far as the pyramids in Egypt, to see this band. You have people develop this attachment to the band and to this experience of being one with the musicians, being one with everybody else in the crowd, even if it was thousands and thousands of people. The deadheads decided that it wasn't the band, per se,

the people, that was their linchpin. It was the music. It didn't matter who, it was a matter of taste who you wanted to have play it. You don't have to just take Dennis's word for it. We talked to Mark Pearl in Monte Rio, California at a nice little festival in the Redwoods. He's a longtime deadhead who describes himself as an old hippie. To me, the people are more important than the music. We're here for the people.

And you know, it's interesting because I also heard of that from people who had never been to a dead show before. I talked to Eunice Kang in New York City. She was at this tribute show in Brooklyn. It was her first time at any sort of dead gathering. So, of course, I asked her what her favorite part was.

I don't know. Honestly, well, the music first. And then second, I just have to say the people. I feel like, you know, I'm meeting and seeing people from so many different paths of lives. And it's just really beautiful to see everyone come together and, you know, be in one thing. And now people are going to be going to dead cover bands to get their fix. And there are a lot of different bands all over the place. It seems like every neighborhood in the country possibly has a dead cover band.

Yeah, I mean, when we were at Dennis' house in San Francisco, he said that there is a website that catalogs all of the different Grateful Dead bands across the country. He said there's like more than 800. And, you know, that includes big ones like Grateful Shred, Dark Star Orchestra, Joe Russo's almost dead, but also just little local ones. And it shows that what people really want to do is listen to this music with other fans, regardless of who necessarily is on stage. It's become a phenomenon. And it's your way of getting your fix of the community. It's not just the music, but it's the community. You go in, you see people you know, or you see, or you make new friends.

It's an incredibly benign and sweet phenomenon. And here's one of those cover bands, Joe Russo's Almost Dead, doing their take on Eyes of the World. Don't worry, we still have a couple more stops on this road trip, but we're going to take a quick break. We're back. So we wanted to go talk to people at the shows, people who were looking for a way to get together this summer. But before we did that, there was one place that contains a lot of history and really helps explain how the Grateful Dead built that community. So we had to make a stop at the official Grateful Dead archive. The Grateful Dead were a product of a very specific time and place.

In San Francisco in the mid-1960s, when the so-called Summer of Love happened. And like every other community that it pops up, infrastructure started. started to develop, like helping people find shelter, food, medical assistance, and communication, right? There were newsletters about helping people navigate the city. And the band also started using these methods of communication. They had a newsletter. You could write to them, and they would send you a newsletter about what's going on with the band, upcoming performances, album previews, and stuff like that. The band collected all that stuff. And in 2008, the band donated a bunch of their stuff

to the University of California at Santa Cruz to the library that holds special collections. And that's where we went. Beautiful campus nestled in the redwoods, just a stone throw from the picturesque, beautiful Central California coast. And we talked to the woman who is in charge of managing that archive.

So we're in Dead Central, which is the exhibition space that is devoted to displaying materials from the Grateful Dead archival collections. That's Sam Riegel. She is the Instruction and Exhibitions Librarian and Special Collections and Archives at UC Santa Cruz. And she gave me a Felix a very special tour

of the exhibit collection. So the current exhibition is called All the Pages Are My Days, print and visual culture of the Grateful Dead in context. So it was this like big yellow room in the university library and there was just Grateful Dead stuff everywhere. There were like giant dancing bear stuffed animals. there were posters from the Dead's earliest shows. There were zines.

They were all these underground political pamphlets and newsletters. And Sam said a lot of this has to do with how printing became so accessible during this time and how leaflets, underground newspapers, underground posters. This all became a big part of the Grateful Dead's footprint in their community and they hate Ashbury and eventually further beyond California. They're really the kind of originators of the psychedelic art movement. movement, as we understand it, at least in the context of the states. Felix, was there something in that dead central room that stood out to you or that you were

really psyched to see? Well, besides the life-size marionettes that were used in the touch of gray video that were right there on exhibit. I think that the story of the Grateful Dead is in the minutia of all the printed stuff that we saw, the things that we're developing. People tend to forget that you're coming out of the 1950s, and then all of a sudden there's this giant movement of counterculture and expressed in the way.

Just look at the pictures, the way people dressed, the tight eyes, the colors, the swirls. Even in what some of the magazines were talking about back then, in the mid-1960s and the late 60s, the politics, the civil rights, the anti-Vietnam War, there was a lot of stuff. It was electric. There was a lot of stuff popping. And people were thinking of different ways to, express that. And it was spread out on this massive table that was actually the table that was used

in the Grateful Dead headquarters in San Rafael, California, where a lot of these decisions were made. That table was donated to the archive. It's got a glass enclosure on top, and then a lot of this stuff underneath. That was pretty cool just to see the table and see all this stuff. Yeah, I think it was also cool just to see all of the different aspects of dead iconography in one place, you know, like the tie-dye, the dancing bears, but also the steel, the steel, the skeletons and roses, all of these sort of characters that have become ubiquitous with the Grateful Dead. And I think it's things, you know, I was getting off the subway this morning. I saw a guy with a Grateful Dead shirt.

We were standing outside of the library at the UC Santa Cruz campus. And there was a kid doing a college tour with his parents and he was wearing a Grateful Dead shirt. And he told us he had no idea who they were. He didn't listen to music. He didn't know anything about the band. He just thought the shirt looked cool. And I think that that aspect of the Dead's visual identity and how distinct it and the care that people have put into preserving those materials

and preserving that visual style. It was really, really cool to see it and to understand it firsthand from someone like Sam who specializes in recording this part of the band's history. And what's really kind of amazing, even the visual iconography that we appreciate it right now was like so much else of the Grateful Dead. It's sort of a cosmic accident because, you know,

the steely that we all love, the skull with the, lightning boat through the middle. That was designed by somebody in the Grateful Dead camp to stamp on their road gear so that they could easily identify which was their stuff. At festivals, at concerts, venues and stuff. I just said, somebody came up with this, let's stick it on the thing.

And then it became something that people were getting tattoos with. You know, it became so ubiquitous. It's like easily identifiable. One look, and you know you're a member of the family. if you're wearing it. Yeah, I think that also, like that, that aspect of how the steely was created, how these different aspects of the band's culture was created, I think it speaks to how much everybody in their crew and their orbit had some kind of role or played some kind of job in keeping this whole train running. You know, like I think it's really cool that we were there and we got to go up to not just the, you know, there was the exhibit in the main library floor, but we got to go up to the reading room. and Sam started wheeling out different archival documents that were, you know, being stored in the climate-controlled facilities at the university.

And she had a document that was pretty legendary. I recorded you going through some of the boxes. It was so much fun, man. Deadhead newsletter, number one, January in 1972. Oh, italic font. At the top, it says deadheads unite. Oh, it's a listing, it's announcement of Europe 72. It has a list of all the shows that they were recorded that were released on the album.

Oh, my gosh. And at the very bottom, at the end of all the copy, it says, take care, have fun, and stay high, the Grateful Dead. Words to Live by, Sam was saying. But it was really cool to see this piece of paper. I mean, you know, I had heard of Eileen Losh. She was one of the people who worked in their office, who helped coordinate these newsletters that went out to fans that turned into a ticketing hotline that was like on the East Coast and West Coast people could call the band and buy tickets directly from them. But there was something so cool about seeing it firsthand and understanding how there were all of these people who were working to maintain this community, not just when the band was on the road, but also, you know, letting them feel like they were a part of something.

They were in the loop. They were like, you know, getting this letter directly from the band, letting them know what was going on. And it's crazy that it was Europe 72, which went on to be some of the most legendary shows and albums that the band recorded. I think that that's the thing that we're looking back, and I was really grateful, pardoning the expression, and rediscovering in this project that we did, just the respect for how they tried to control as much as they could. It's a business side of things strictly for the benefit of the fans, not to make money. They were cutting out the middleman on the ticketing services. They were designing their own sound systems.

They were designing their own recording equipment. They were doing a lot of different things. And all these different people within the dead orbit were experimenting and creating, doing these things. And again, it goes back to strictly to make a wonderful consumer customer experience, as we would say now. It's funny to think of deadheads as consumers or customers, but you're absolutely right. That is, you know, that is what they were doing. And we got to talk to one of the people who was at the forefront of some of that innovation. I think we were both really geeking out on this call when we were getting to ask her about her experience.

And that is the producer and engineer Betty Cantor Jackson. We wanted to capture performances because that's where the energy was. That's where they really excelled. They never played it twice the same. They ever had a set list. So, Betty, you know, like Eileen, Betty was one of the women working behind the scenes to innovate, to break new ground for the Grateful Dead. She was mixing and recording hundreds and hundreds of hours of shows. You know, she told us that it wasn't always easy being a woman in that environment

and that very male-dominated macho environment and that she kind of just stayed out of everybody's way and got her work done. But her work is legendary. I mean, the shows that she recorded are now known as Betty Boards and they're beloved by fans around the world. We had to develop a split to make sure we had three ways to go. so I had my own feed because I didn't record out in the audience. That wasn't what I did. I didn't do the room sound. That wasn't going to be what I wanted. I wanted to do my own mix.

And to make it clear and to make the space more real, like you're either in the front row or you're on the stage. Betty Board tapes were so important to the culture and to the movement and that point in time that her recording of the iconic Cornell 5877, and it was included by the Library of Congress in their massive collection of significant sound recordings that reflect the culture of the United States.

Here's a little bit of that show. Let's hear the whole show. So, let's just sit back. Yeah, let's just put on the whole show. Yeah, you know, not to get too corny, but I think you could say Betty made sure the Grateful Dead songs did not fade away. And all of those tapes are not stored

at the University of California and Santa Cruz, but they are in a separate climate-controlled facility in Southern California that is known as the vault. I mean, the grateful that are unique in a thousand ways. But one of the most unique ways about it is that there is this vault, that they played 2,300 shows. And there are millions of fans that would love to hear all 2,300 of those shows. He rounded that off as 2,318, okay, just for the record. You know more than Mark Pinkis on this subject, obviously. He was rounding that off.

Sure. That's Mark Pink, because he's the president of Rhino Entertainment. They entered into an exclusive contract with the Grateful Dead to manage this massive tape archive that the dead had accumulated over the years. And they have been responsible for so many of these beautiful box sets that come out once a year. They manage the Dick's Pick series, the Road Trip series, and now Dave's Picks, which comes out quarterly in a limited number of releases that come out every year. I can honestly say that after 36 Dick's picks and 17 road trips and now 59 Dave's picks and countless box sets and on and on, I honestly feel like we're just getting started. And that's The Grateful Dead's Archivist and Legacy Manager, Dave Lemieux. That's where the Dave's picks name comes from. I think what's interesting about the vault and about the work of someone like Dave and, you know, Ann Mark and the folks at Rhino Records is how much the vault is still a really core part of the experience for deadheads across. generations, you know, whether it's someone like you, Felix, who got to see the band live

in the original lineup, or someone like me who never saw Jerry, never interacted with the Grateful Dead. I wasn't even born when the Grateful Dead actually existed. But those recordings hold such a special place in the Dead's footprint and in their history. Deadheads are all archivists. We all love to collect these things. Guilty is charged. I have every ticket stuff of every show I've ever went to. And, you know, even though, of course, we've been talking about the Vault and these official recordings that exist and, you know, the 2,300-plus shows that are still being rolled out. But one step beyond that, the fans were a real part of those shows in that experience because they were allowed to record the shows, because they had

their own entire ecosystem of trading tapes, of cataloging their own recordings. There are still tapers out there. It's not as common as it used to be, but we were at a show in Monterio, California. There were hundreds of people there, and there was a single guy standing in the crowd with his taping equipment held up. Felix freaked out and ran a talk to. him. His name is John Chandler. He's been going to Dead Show since the 80s. And he had thoughts about being the only one out there with his recording equipment. It is. And, you know, I think that's the thing that I've been realizing. There's a lot of people that are not taping anymore, which is unfortunate. But this stuff right now that we're getting, it's you can't let it slip away.

I mean, and if you got to preserve it, capture it, and share it, and we're very lucky. That's all I can say. And again, it's like, you know, those tapes, those archival shows, this fan experience of listening to a performance that you weren't necessarily there for. It's still how people find the dead and connect to the dead today. I talked to 27-year-old Julius Miller at a show in Brooklyn. Here's how he became a deadhead. I had a friend in high school who was into it, and I remember we just listened to one show in his Prius one night, a 77 show,

and it was great, and I was kind of into it. I'm kind of a historian, and I like numbers and history, so that was an alluring aspect of it. You know, from there, I think, you know, David Lemieux, told us it was the same thing for him. He was listening to the shows. He was collecting the tapes. And then Julius told me he actually went out. He started seeing Dead and Company a bunch of times. And he was at those very last performances for the Grateful Dead 60th in Golden Gate Park last year. It was Bob Weir's last ever performances.

And I really like Old Bob. Like I love, I mean, I like you. I love Young Bob. I love Jeans Bob. But Old Bob is really cool. And I like to hear his old voice and his weathered voice. And I just don't really feel like he's left. So. The idea of like an old Bob and a young Bob. You know, this is a real thing. I used to joke with my friends that we couldn't call him Bobby. He was Mr. Weir to us. Like he was the kid and the original Grateful Dead.

But like I think for my generation, Bobby is like the old guy with the beard that wears the capris and the ponchos and the cowboy hats. He's like a mythical figure. For years, he was the young energetic one, the one that would do the power cord gestures and get the crowd going. and such an expressive voice, probably the most expressive voice in the band. No dis to Jerry. It was an adjustment to hear it weathered, to hear it slowed down.

Even when my career highlight, I think so far, it has been bringing the Wolf Brothers, his trio with Don Was and Jay Lane, to the tiny desk, and to be in the room with the voice and hear it, like this guy said, slow and weathered, it was a different thing.

It was really, it hit me in a very different way. That my words did flow With a gold of sunshine And my tins Were a play Oh, my heart voice Come through the mute Would you hold as it were young?

That tiny dusk is so beautiful And it breaks my heart every single time Because it was recorded like a week before I started at NPR And I didn't get a chance to be there. If only I knew you were coming. I know. I should have tapped into it earlier. Let you know. And that was Bob Weir and Wolf Brothers featuring the drummer Jay Lane and bassist Donwise. And we're going to hear from Don Woods after we take a quick break.

And we're back. We've been talking about the Grateful Dead's history, you know, their long legacy, the vault, the archives, and how the band got to this point as part of our series called Dead After Death. And now, you know, we've gotten up to this moment. Bob Weir died earlier this year. And a lot of people, Felix, you and I have been asking this to ourselves. We've been asking this to deadheads. A lot of people are thinking about what happens now.

Who carries these songs forward? Who keeps playing this music? And you had a great idea for someone that we should talk to. Don was this guy who was not only just an amazing bass player, but he's a music industry veteran. He's played with all kinds of people. He's an Grammy Award-winning producer, multiple Grammys, Bonnie Raid, bunch of people. An extensive background, he's the president of Blue Note Records, the distinguished jazz label.

He's got all his background, and he got recruited. Bob Weir says that he had a dream that he wanted to start a trio, and he wanted Don was in the trio. And so he was part of Wolf Brothers, and he told us that playing the Dead Songbook was a very, very different experience from any other that he's ever had. It's unlike any other audience that I've... I've certainly ever played for. They're super locked in and focused on what you're doing.

They respond to every move. And I know that it's different lines, different strokes for different folks, right? Different lines mean something to everybody. Everybody's different. Everyone's got their own unique inner emotional life, and there's something in those songs. There's something in there that really speaks to people and helps them, I think, deal with the craziness of life,

the unpredictability of life, the chaos of life. That's Bob Weir and the Wolf Brothers doing their beautiful rendition of Broke Down Palace, about transitions, about endings and beginnings, And you know, it was really interesting to me that Don Was played bass with Bob because the bass was always such a particular instrument in the contained chaos of the Grateful Dead. Phil didn't know how to play bass when he joined the band. People often say he played it more like a low guitar than a traditional bass. So we wanted to ask Don if he felt some pressure playing those parts every night on stage. At first, I felt that people were expecting to hear Phil's approach to these songs, which, by the way, is different every single night.

There's no, you don't learn the bass part to the song because there is no base part. The base part is whatever he felt like playing that night. I felt like people were expecting to hear that and I was trying to imitate it, but I couldn't get it right. And after a couple shows at the very beginning, Bobby said, you know, the most grateful deadlike thing you can do is just be yourself. I love that. So Zen, right? Just be yourself, man. And Don was, is taking that to heart.

After Bobby died, we brought him in with his own band, the Pan Detroit Ensemble, where they played their music, but also they did a dead cover. They played the music never stops. It was a different interpretation of a song that we're all very familiar with. And, in fact, his band has been known to cover entire albums like Blues for Allah. And I think they're doing that in the fall this year. Yeah, it's the 50th anniversary of Blues for Alla. And Don told us that they were already planning to do those trips. shows before Bobby passed.

And then, you know, we asked him if now without Bobby, if he felt like he still wanted to keep playing those songs, if he wanted to keep playing that music. And he said, that's what Bobby would have wanted him to do. Bobby used to say that he wanted the songs to last 300 years. And what he meant was he felt that this was music that transcended fashion or a particular moment in time in San Francisco, that the themes. of the song were relevant to the human condition. And he wanted people to continue to play these songs and relate to them.

You could say the music never stopped. Right. And that is still happening. You know, even without a formal, Grateful Dead iteration this summer, people are playing the music all over the country. People are getting together. They're wearing their tie-dye. They're dancing.

That's why we went to, at the end of May, a little clearing surrounded by redwood trees, about two hours north of San Francisco in Monte Rio, California. It's off a road called, this is not a joke, the Bohemian Highway. You know, I grew up in Northern California, and I remember driving through there when I was younger. And it's pretty rural now, and it was even more rural back then. It hadn't become a destination for people from the Bay Area or from Northern California. But even now, it's still very rural, very secluded.

But it has that whole area around Marin County where the band eventually settled, had their offices, had their homes. That's still very dead country. And we were there because it was the first stop for the Tarup and Road Show this summer, which is a celebration of the Grateful Dead's music organized by the family of the late bassist Phil Lesh. It was a small little gathering in this little clearing and like almost a makeshift amphitheater amongst the Redwood, It's a small little town. I think there was a country store and a restaurant. And what surprised me was the multi-generational aspect of the crowd,

the people that we talked to in the audience. Yeah, there were a lot of families there. A lot of little kids in cute, tie-dye, Grateful Dead shirts running around. But it wasn't just the audience that was multi-generational. It was also the people performing on stage. Everyone was here to see Phil Lesh's son, Graham Lesh, perform the Grateful Dead songbook. And, you know, I was born in December of 86, so not long after.

After that, in the dark came out, touch of gray came out, and they, like, blew up. So that's all I remember is the, like, stadium dead. But that means, you know, it meant they had the kind of the resources to, for, you know, my dad to bring his whole family on tour. So I basically just grew up with it. All the other members were, like, my uncles. And, yeah, it was just, like, what my dad did. I'm just shaking my head. For people who can't see us because we're listening to audio, it's just to grow up in that environment.

where that sets your musical bar with that kind of music, that kind of improvisation, that kind of musical statement sets your musical bar. It's bound to impact you. And even after the Grateful Dead ended in 95,

Phil took some breaks. I mean, he was a very active dad. But he also toured and played with a bunch of different people, a group they put together called Further, they put together the Dead, Phil Lesh and friends. And then there was the massive

50th anniversary shows in 2015, Fair The Well. which were really the last official Grateful Dead shows. I don't really realize the extent of the Grateful Dead's thing until the 50th in 2015. That was sort of when everyone came out of the woodwork that I knew that I didn't know were deadheads and we're like, I'm a deadhead.

You know, like my high school friends who were like little skater kids and like didn't like hippies and stuff like that, they're all at the 50th, like knowing every lyric. You know, it was like, oh, this is deeper than we sort of thought. That's so funny because I talked to Pete Shapiro, who was the producer for those Fairly Well shows,

and, you know, he talked about conceptualizing those performances and how they were really billed as, you know, the title says it, Fairly Well, the very last shows. It was supposed to be an ending. And it ended up to be a new beginning. Really, you know, Fairly Well was supposed to be an end, but then everyone was like turned on. And that back to scale, back to outdoor, back to summer.

That's very Grateful Dead, that the end becomes a new beginning. You know, that's when Dead and Company was formed. That's when all these young people like me got into the band. You have the big stadium shows, kind of picking up right where the original Grateful Dead left off. And then simultaneously, Phil Lesh was doing his own thing in the Northern Bay. He, you know, the family opened and operated this venue and restaurant called Terrap and Crossroads. And when we were at this show in Moni Rio, it was really cool to see how so many of the people who were there to see Grand Perform used to go to this They were just really connected to like this pocket of dead country.

And Graham is the only child of a Grateful Dead member that's currently touring the music, performing the music. But he told us he doesn't really see himself as the soulkeeper of this massive legacy. My sense in terms of like the music continuing is someone is going to be playing it. So like I don't necessarily feel any added pressure because of who my dad was or anything like that. I truly believe that whether I do it or not, it's going to live on. What we can do is sort of bring all these other musicians in and provide a place for them to be in the band and to take the music and then maybe go out

and spread the good word to their fans and the people they play with. On the day that we were there, Les was performing with his band and the Wolf Pack, which was the string and horn ensemble that often played with Bob Ware and Don was and Jay Lane with the Wolf Brothers. And I got to say, we're sitting back in the shade after collecting interviews for most of the afternoon

and just digging the groove, taking in the vibe. And, you know, it felt like a seamless transition. Honestly, it was my first post-Bobby show. And they weren't trying to replicate. It just felt like the groove, it was a nice continuation of what attracts me to the music in the first place. It was my first post-Bobby show, too, and it was really cool looking around

because there were so many kids there, right? And it's like it was so symbolic of what the Grateful Dead has managed to do for so many years, where you had these, like, grandparents and their adult kids and little kids running around, and you see how this is,

the Grateful Dead's music is like an inheritance that people keep passing down, and passing down and passing down. You know, one of the people I talked to there was this kid, C.J. Smith. He's 23 years old. He and his friends drove 10 hours down. They live in Eugene, Oregon.

They drove down just to see the show because he told me that his parents met on Dead Tour. And he feels like he owes it to his parents. He owes it to the band to keep this thing going. Being young, I kind of like owe it to them to try to keep that going and keep bringing out people. I always, every show I always go to, I always try to get more of my friends to come out,

try to get more people on the scene. And I feel like once they come out once, they just want to keep coming back. So I just try to keep that going. And in the context of a multi-generational, there are people like Susan Justice who went to her first Grateful Dead show in 1976, though she saw the Jerry Garcia band,

his solo project before that. We like to hear the people play the dead material with their own personalities. And it's nice to hear other people playing their own, It's sort of their own style with the music as opposed to just trying to imitate. You know, what Bob told Don, the most grateful dead thing you can do is be yourself. Exactly. And, you know, from where he's standing, Gramlash told us that he doesn't see the dead's long, strange trip ending anytime soon.

I'm all in on Bob's 300-year thing. Like, my folks called it, they described the Grateful Dead as a big old oak tree. And it's like the roots were like the jazz and the blues and cherry was a big, you know, banjo player and my dad's classical roots. The trunk is the band members and the branches and the leaves are everyone inspired by them. You know, that's what I am, all of us, you know. And it'll grow and grow and, you know, not every tree lives forever, but outlives all of us, you know. philosophical about it. Totally.

Doing this project, it was the first time that I really had to intellectualize what it is that attracts me to the music because we are supposed to be able to transmit that and try to get other people to do that. And it was, like I said, the first time I had to really think about something that I've only had an emotional reaction to for decades. I think you'd agree that taking on this project was the labor of love. I mean, we got to immerse ourselves in the history and the music. but it was also important to do

because again, that this is the first summer in 61 years without any member of the band touring. It's real, you know, like Jerry, Phil, and now Bobby are no longer here. Neither is Donna. I'm going to shout out Donna, who was only woman ever in the Grateful Dead and one of my favorite voices in the ensemble.

But, you know, after talking to people this summer, I keep coming back to that thing Pete Shapiro said. Like, the ending is a new beginning, you know? Like, maybe Bobby was onto something with this 300 years thing. At least 300. At least. What do you? What do you? What you see?

Thank you for taking this trip with us. And it doesn't stop here. You can go to npr.org slash dead after death to see so much more of our reporting, including a couple of additional podcasts. We did an episode of All Songs Concordered with Robin Hilton, where Felix and I try to convince a non-believer to try the Grateful Dead. And I also got to sit in with Anne Powers and Daewu Tyler Amin on their NPR Music Plus podcast, talking about the monumental Grateful Dead song, Touch of Grey. And also keep an eye out for other goodies on Instagram and TikTok. We are at NPR Music. Thank you to all the deadheads who spoke with us, the fans, the musicians, the archivist,

every single one of you, we appreciate you so much. And thank you to our editors on this project, Hazel Sills and Jacob Gans. Special thanks to the NPR visuals team for the amazing photography and videography. And thank you to our audio editor, Noah Caldwell. Nicole Wurbeck is director of NPR Visual. Soraya Mohamed is executive producer for NPR music, and Sonali META is executive director of NPR music. I'm Felix Contreras.

And I'm Isabella Gomez-Ramanto. Thank you for listening. And keep on trucking.