Phil Lesh and Friends
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Phil Lesh and Friends | ||
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 Trey Anastasio and Phil Lesh in 1999
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| Background information | ||
| Origin | San Francisco, CA | |
| Genre(s) | psychedelic rock rock music folk rock |
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| Years active | 1994 - present | |
| Label(s) | Columbia Records | |
| Website | http://www.phillesh.net | |
| Members | ||
| Phil Lesh Greg Osby Larry Campbell Joan Osborne Rob Barraco John Molo Barry Sless |
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| Former members | ||
| Warren Haynes Ryan Adams Chris Robinson Jimmy Herring John Scofield Trey Anastasio Page McConnell Jeff Mattson Mookie Siegel Jeff "Apt. Q-258" Sipe Steve Kimock Jeff Chimenti Jeff Pevar Robben Ford Paul Barrere Bill Payne Al Schnier Jerry Garcia Bob Weir Vince Welnick |
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Phil Lesh & Friends is an American rock band formed and led by Phil Lesh, bassist of the Grateful Dead. Phil & Friends is not a traditional group in that several different lineups of musicians have played under the name, including ones featuring members of Phish, Little Feat, and the Zen Tricksters. The most permanent of these lineups, known as the Phil Lesh Quintet (PLQ or just "the Q" for short) played on a mostly-regular basis from September of 2000 through December 2003. The members of this incarnation were Lesh, Warren Haynes (guitar & vocals; also of Gov't Mule and the Allman Brothers Band), Jimmy Herring (guitar; The Dead, Allman Brothers Band, Aquarium Rescue Unit, etc), Rob Barraco (keyboards; The Zen Tricksters) and John Molo (drums; Bruce Hornsby and the Range). This unit released an album, There and Back Again, on Columbia Records in 2002. It included several new songs from Lesh and Robert Hunter, longtime Grateful Dead lyricist, as well as one recent favorite from Jerry Garcia and Hunter, and several original contributions from Haynes, Barraco/Mattson and Herring.
The Phil & Friends concept takes the music of the Grateful Dead (and an ever-increasing number of other influences, including Bob Dylan, Traffic, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Warren Haynes' own Gov't Mule, the Allman Brothers, etc) and explores and interprets it in new ways. Through the Quintet years, a Phil & Friends show was often focused on harder, faster rock than that which the Grateful Dead played, thanks in large part to Haynes' and Herring's talents at the Southern rock style. Lesh was fond of calling it "Dixieland-style rock." However, all of the incarnations of Phil & Friends have followed a trend of "updating" the Grateful Dead's massive body of work, and all have been extremely adept at the long, exploratory jams that were a trademark of the Dead. Phil & Friends has been acclaimed for giving new life to the Grateful Dead's material, bringing in new styles and innovations, while at the same time remaining loyal to the original music and the original fans. It is this melding of musical influences that has given them extremely wide appeal not only among old Deadheads, but the modern-day fans of other jam bands as well.
The Summer 2006 formation of Phil & Friends, including Lesh, Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, fiddle); Joan Osborne (vocals); John Scofield (guitar)/Barry Sless (pedal steel guitar)/Trey Anastasio (guitar); Rob Barraco (keyboards), and John Molo (drums), debuted in June 2006 at the Bonnaroo music festival.
The latest band led by Phil consists of Lesh, Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, fiddle), Trey Anastasio (guitar and vocals), John Medeski (keyboards), John Molo (drums) and Christina Durfee (vocals). The formation recently played at 2006 Vegoose Festival in Las Vegas, and was billed as "Phil and Trey," so it's unknown whether this lineup will tour as Phil & Friends, or at all.
Phil & Friends has continued the Grateful Dead's tradition of allowing fans to record concerts, and trade these recordings freely. The Internet has been an invaluable source for these tapers to disseminate this music through various sources, including Archive.org, and the vast BitTorrent file-sharing network. Phil has also embraced the Internet by providing free soundboard recordings of many concerts through his website, even providing high-resolution CD covers for fans to print. For his Summer 2006 tour, Phil partnered with Instant Live, a company that was able to provide soundboard CD's of a concert immediately upon its finishing, as well as make these recordings available for fans to download online, though this service was not free.
Commercial releases from Phil and Friends have included Love Will See You Through (1999), There and Back Again (2002), mentioned above, and Live at the Warfield Theater (2006), which was actually a separately-sold 2-CD or a 2-DVD set sharing the same name.
[edit] External links
- Phil Lesh's Offical Website
- The Fans' Phil Lesh Website
- Archive.org (Full Length Phil & Friends Shows Available for Download)
- gdradio.net - Streaming Grateful Dead and more.
