| Phil Lesh and Friends | |
|---|---|
| Origin | San Francisco, CA |
| Genres | psychedelic rock, rock, folk rock, jam |
| Years active | 1999–2008, 2012 |
| Labels | Columbia Records |
| Associated acts | Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers Band, Phish, Widespread Panic, RatDog, Furthur, moe., The Black Crowes, The String Cheese Incident, The Dead |
| Website | http://www.phillesh.net |
| Members | |
| Phil Lesh John Molo Larry Campbell Jackie Greene Steve Molitz |
|
| Past members | |
|
Jerry Garcia Steve Kimock Merle Saunders Donna Jean Godchaux Prairie Prince Jorma Kaukonen Pete Sears Zoe Ellis Cailan Cornwell Bill Kreutzmann David Nelson Barry Sless Mookie Siegel Kyle Hollingsworth Michael Kang Bill Nershi Al Schnier Bobby Strickland Jeff Mattson Rob Barraco Bill Payne Paul Barrere Derek Trucks Robben Ford Jeff Pevar Jimmy Herring Joan Osborne John Scofield Chris Robinson Ryan Adams Jeff Sipe Jeff Chimenti Teresa Williams |
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Phil Lesh and Friends is an American rock band formed and led by Phil Lesh, former 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 groups featuring members of Phish, Little Feat, and the Zen Tricksters.
Contents |
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' Gov't Mule, the Allman Brothers, etc.) and explores and interprets it in new ways. Through the period known as the Quintet years (see below), 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.
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 CDs 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.
The first use of the Phil Lesh and Friends banner was on September 24, 1994 at the Berkeley Community Theater. The band was an unplugged version of the Grateful Dead and featured members Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Vince Welnick. Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart were not part of the band. After this gig the band name was put to rest until Phil formed a new band in 1999.
From April 1999 to September 2000, Phil toured with a regularly rotating lineup of musicians that included Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Jorma Kaukonen, Jimmy Herring, Robben Ford, and members of Phish, Little Feat, The String Cheese Incident and Moe.
The opening concerts on April 15, 16, and 17, 1999 featured Phil along with John Molo on drums, Steve Kimock on guitar, and two members of Phish - Trey Anastasio on guitar and Page McConnell on keys.
After these opening concerts and until October 1999, Phil kept the same "core" of himself and Kimock, and generally Molo as well, while regularly rotating in new musicians on guitar and keys (and sometimes additional instruments). Over this period, the lineups included:
Steve Kimock left the tour on October 29, 1999, and Derek Trucks joined a few days later.
From November 1999 onwards, the "core" of the group was Phil, John Molo, and Rob Barraco on keys (except where noted)
For the summer 2000 tour, the lineup primarily consistent of Robben Ford and members of Little Feat
The most permanent of the Phil Lesh and Friends lineups, known as the Phil Lesh Quintet (PLQ or just "the Q" for short) played on a mostly-regular basis from September 2000 through December 2003. The members of this incarnation were Lesh, Warren Haynes (guitar & vocals; also of Gov't Mule and Allman Brothers Band), Jimmy Herring (guitar; The Dead, Allman Brothers Band, Aquarium Rescue Unit, and most recently Widespread Panic), Rob Barraco (keyboards; the Zen Tricksters, Dark Star Orchestra) and John Molo (drums; Bruce Hornsby and the Range, The Other Ones, Modereko, Keller Williams, David Nelson Band, Jemimah Puddleduck, and John Fogerty). 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.
Many consider this incarnation not only to be the best Phil Lesh and Friends lineupwho?, but also the best post Grateful Dead project by any of the members. While Furthur, the current touring Grateful Dead project that contains Bob Weir and Phil Lesh is considered to sound the "most" like the Grateful Dead of any band or incarnation since the Grateful Dead; the "PLQ" when compared to any post Grateful Dead project was far more virtuosic, tighter, utilized some different arrangements, differing tempos for many songs, interesting covers and unique improvisation. This band played far larger venues than any other Phil Lesh and Friends incarnations, Rat Dog and any of the two Grateful Dead drummer's projects.
During 2006, Phil Lesh and Friends consisted of a core of musicians including Lesh, Larry Campbell (guitar, violin, slide guitar, mandolin, and vocals), Joan Osborne (vocals), Rob Barraco (keyboards and vocals), and John Molo (drums). On the first half of the summer tour, they were joined by John Scofield (guitar), and on the second half, by Barry Sless (pedal steel) and, during the third quarter of the tour and generally for the second set, by Trey Anastasio. Saxophonist Greg Orsby joined the group for various concerts, particularly toward the end of the tour, and guest artists including Page McConnell and Dickey Betts sat in for individual sets.
Concerts with Scofield had a jazzy, astringent quality. Anastasio contributed a strong rock lead guitar to the sets he played in, while Sless brought a softer, more lyrical quality. The relative lack of comment about these lineups compared to the earlier "Quintet" and later 2007-8 configuration suggests that they were not as popular with Lesh's core fan base, but they gave unique and varied interpretations to some of the Grateful Dead's classics along with numerous other songs. Furthermore, the fact that the entire tour was distributed online and later via Instant Live CDs, and a live DVD was made of an early concert at the Warfield (with Scofield and Orsby), meant that the various configurations of the year's lineup left a larger body of recorded work than many groups that worked together for years.
The latest formation of Phil & Friends, including Lesh, Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, fiddle), Jackie Greene (vocals and guitar), Steve Molitz (keyboards), and John Molo (drums), debuted in September 2007 in Santa Barbara, California.
On February 4, 2008, Phil and Friends joined Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Mickey Hart, along with Barry Sless and Ratdog guitarist Mark Karan, for a concert called "Deadheads for Obama", in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The show was the first time that Weir, Hart, and Lesh had played together since 2004. Even more recently, the band performed the final shows at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco, California. Bob Weir sat in for a run of five nights that included sets of the Grateful Dead's first few albums.
In the fall of 2008, Phil Lesh and Friends toured the Eastern United States, including a run of 14 shows in 19 days, known as "Philathon", at the Nokia Theatre Times Square in New York City. The final Phil Lesh and Friends performance to date was on New Year's Eve 2008-2009. Since then Phil has been touring with The Dead and Furthur.
On Phil Lesh's website, 3 dates at the 1st Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, On Februrary 16, 17, and 18. the poster is here: