photo: Josh Skolnik

***

It was quite an intense few weeks for Grahame Lesh.

On March 14-17, he performed four shows at Port Chester, N.Y.’s Capitol Theater to commemorate what would have been his father’s 85th birthday. Grahame served as band leader for Unbroken Chain: A Celebration of the Life and Music of Phil Lesh, which took place less than five months after Phil’s passing. Over the course of those evenings, Grahame worked with three separate lineups of musicians who sought to honor the late bass player, including Rick Mitarotonda, Eric Krasno, Oteil Burbridge, Jason Crosby and John Molo on nights one and two, Jackie Greene, Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Steve Molitz and Molo on night three and finally, the Phil Lesh Quintet, aka The Q (Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Rob Barraco and Molo). Grahame even picked up a bass for a portion of the third show, as well as the concluding set the next evening.

From Port Chester it was off to the Midwest, where he opened the new Garcia’s Chicago from March 21-23, with his regular Grahame Lesh & Friends roster, augmented by Daniel Donato and Nicki Bluhm.

Three days after the final Garcia’s gig, Lesh was in Pembroke, Mass., to kick off Midnight North’s East Coast tour. The ensuing six dates marked the band’s first time on the road together since Elliott Peck was forced to step away from the group in February 2024 to receive treatment for an abdominal tumor.

“I came off the Cap and then the Garcia’s shows, which had all this kind of heavy emotional stuff,” Lesh acknowledges. “Then I went right into Midnight North tour, which was also emotional but in such a joyful way. It was really great having Elliott back out there with us doing what we all love to do.”

***

You had quite a remarkable few weeks from mid-March into early April. Working backward, starting with the Midnight North run, it had been some time since you’d been out there together. How long did it take for all of you to get your sea legs once again?

We’d played the occasional show since Elliott got sick in February of 2024, but she didn’t really want to travel while she was dealing with all of that. Being able to go out on the road and see these places as a band was really kind of amazing. Even though we had done a couple shows, that’s different than touring. It was just cool proving to ourselves that we could keep doing it and it felt really good right away.

Of course, we made it relatively easy on ourselves—no back to backs. We had some routing ground rules and made sure that everyone had a good time once we got onto the stage. It was really magical.

Is there a night that stood out for you?

It’s always the Barn. We went to Levon Helm Studios and played a great show there. We had Amy [Helm] sitting in, which was special, and her son Lavon Collins, whose band opened the show.

One of the first shows that we had scheduled right after Elliott got sick was at the Barn in March of ‘24. We ended up playing that one without her. So for Elliott, just being able to make it back there was really special. The music matched the moment in a way that I remember.

No matter how great one feels on a given night, the music doesn’t always match the moment. Have you become more comfortable with that over time?

I just sort of let it happen. I grew up hearing the mantra that the Grateful Dead always blew the big ones. I am not sure I agree, but it definitely takes some pressure off us. It’s like, “Well, they were the Grateful Dead, and they didn’t play up to their standards at the big ones. So it’s all going to be OK if something’s not quite perfect.” I think that helps our generation, or at least me personally, not to worry so much.

I also feel that with Midnight North, the more pressure that’s on us, the better we play. Not every band’s like that, and that’s not even a rule necessarily for Midnight North, just a feeling I have.

Now that Midnight North is back out there, do you have any imminent plans to record another studio album?

I think both Elliott and I have a little bit of material and a lot of things in our lives that we could write about from the last year or so. So we’ll be back in the studio at some point soon. But what I’d like to do is a Midnight North record that’s almost entirely co written by everyone. We haven’t really done that thing where we’re all in a room together coming up with stuff. So maybe that’ll happen, but if not, we’ll be back in the studio soon.

On the other hand, even with these most recent shows, we’ve only barely toured on the last record. So we’ll probably take a little time to keep playing the songs from Diamonds in the Zodiac [a November 2023 release] in front of people and kind of go from there.

These days, does everything you write become a Midnight North song or are there some ideas you’ll pursue that might not quite fit the group?

I’ve been playing a lot more with a band we’re calling Grahame Lesh & Friends. Not the version that played the Cap—this one is little smaller scale and we call it GLAF for short.

I’ve put music out under that name but, at this point, it’s been physical media only—mostly covers of super obscure Lesh family related stuff. I definitely have plans to record my own music under the Grahame Lesh & Friends name, too.

So while most of what I write goes to Midnight North, I feel that Midnight North is a specific sound. If something doesn’t fit that, then I’ll find another place for it to fit.

Let’s talk about GLAF and the Garcia’s Chicago shows. You performed there just a few days after the Cap run. How did you approach the music in that setting?

There’s some music that GLAF plays that I didn’t do at the Cap, stuff like “The Mountain Song,” which my dad was heavily involved in and is basically a David Crosby song that my brother Brian finished for Furthur back in 2010. That’s a song we play with GLAF all the time, but I wasn’t going to bring it to the shows at the Cap without more rehearsal. It also felt good to keep that one back for the band in Chicago.

Similarly, Daniel [Donato] and Nicki [Bluhm] weren’t able to be at the Cap, so I was really happy that, schedule-wise, they were able to play with me at Garcia’s. It felt a little bit like an extension of the Cap in that way. So I wanted to start the Garcia’s shows by thinking of what songs Daniel and Nicki felt best for. It was that plus our GLAF catalog.

I think GLAF is to Phil & Friends, what Phil & Friends was to the Grateful Dead. We’re taking the kind of obscure Phil & Friends, Phil-related or Lesh family-related stuff and bringing that to the fore. It’s kind of like how Phil & Friends played songs like “St. Stephen” and “Viola Lee Blues” that maybe hadn’t been played by the Dead in a while.

We’ll also play some of the weirder songs my dad wrote that the Dead didn’t really play, like “Equinox,” which my dad wrote in the ‘70s for Garcia to sing. There are two rehearsal recordings of it, but they never played it live. So we recorded it and we play it live, along with other things like that.

My friend Adam Minkoff, who plays bass in GLAF, is Graham Nash’s drummer in addition to being an amazing musician in all kinds of other bands. But given that connection with Nash and my dad’s great friendship with David Crosby, we play stuff like “The Wall Song”—my dad played on that recording [1972’s Graham Nash David Crosby]. At some point, we’ll play “I Used to Be a King” from Nash’s album Songs for Beginners. We just pull out what we think is fun.

In GLAF, we play “No More Do I,” which is on the Quintet record From There and Back Again. So it was about taking that catalog and mixing it with the stuff that Nicki and Daniel sing from the Dead catalog. That gave us a pretty good start to the setlists.

How did the room itself feel to you?

I think we sounded great. We were a big, loud band for that room—two drums for part of it and three guitars for all of it. It was able to handle us being pretty loud, which was cool.

We had a lot of fun and everyone there was so stoked that it exists. There were some people sitting and enjoying, while others were up and dancing the whole time. It’s really special when you have a venue that can be a great, quiet listening room but also somewhere you can get loud and rock out.

You also played “No More Do I” with the Quintet at the Cap, which makes sense since, as you mentioned, they originally recorded it. Can you talk about the process of crafting setlists across those four nights?

I went through it a couple different ways. The vision for the shows kept evolving based on how many nights there were going to be. When it was just going to be two nights, that was going to be a different thing where I wanted everyone in the core band to have their moment. All the people who ended up on nights three and four were maybe going to be guests during those two shows.

So it opened things up when we were able to do four. I’m so thankful that Peter [Shapiro] was able to make that happen and that there was the appetite for four nights to let every single musician really have a moment. I think there were 30 other musicians, all of whom had played with my dad.

For the first two nights, there were certain songs that kind of stick in my head when I think of each person playing in Phil & Friends. Those shows were mostly folks that had played with my dad more recently. We f irst played with Rick in 2022, and we met Kraz a little over 10 years ago. That was opposed to the third and fourth nights, which were actual Phil & Friends lineups from 15-20 years ago.

So I just started by saying, “What songs do I think of when Rick leads them and which songs do I think of for Kraz?” I love it when Oteil sings the Jerry ballads that are on his record [Lovely View of Heaven]. I talked to him a little bit and he also really wanted to play “New Potato Caboose,” so I threw that one on the list for one of the nights that Oteil was there. It just sort of went like that.

My mom was the setlist guru for Phil & Friends since right after Jerry died, so I ran everything by her. She had a few ideas, like “Roll-n-Roll Blues,” which Hunter wrote with my dad—she really loves that one. That song sort of described my dad: “I come to whistle and to strum my guitar/ Sing for my supper and to drive my car.” It felt good to do that one with the Q [which they recorded on There and Back Again]. We both had the idea to do “Box of Rain” to open the whole thing, and then I wanted to do it to close as well. When I think of a Q show, there are also certain songs that comes to mind, like “Viola Lee Blues,” “Mason’s Children” and “St. Stephen.” There was a character to those setlists that was different than the setlists with Jackie, Larry and Teresa. They have a whole different feel, and I tried to honor that.

In terms of your dad’s music, I recently interviewed a number of folks, including Oteil, Dave Schools and Mike Gordon, all of whom suggested that the compositions are more complex and challenging than people might realize. They said it’s important to be on one’s toes from verse to verse because there’s a lot going on. As someone who’s played that material so many times over the years, what are your thoughts on that?

I’ve found that with everything my dad had a direct hand in composing, it’s all melody first. You’re not going to let the rhythm or what would be the normal chord progression get in the way of what is the correct melody. That’s the main thing— the melody and the harmony. I think it’s drawing from primal musical ideas, really old classical harmony ideas and mixing that with bluegrass, soul music and gospel.

The Grateful Dead, as a band, drew inspiration from all of that stuff. If you listen to a song like “Dire Wolf,” each verse is a little different than the other ones because that’s how the melody goes. Jerry was writing the melody to match the lyrics, and the lyrics can’t be changed because they’re saying exactly what they should be saying. If you change the lyrics, it might change the meaning and that’s what the song is. The song is telling you something.

So once you have that in your head, you’re not like, “Why is there a bar of two here that shouldn’t be here?” Instead, you’re like, “It has to be here because these two lyrics need to get out.” They had a way to make it musical and they were geniuses at that.

Keeping that in your head keeps you on your toes. I also think, for me, it’s given me a way to make myself useful, especially when I was getting my chops. At the very least, I knew all the songs and I knew all the nuances in them. So when I was getting started, I could sort of help band lead even if I wasn’t going to be lead guitar.

The main thing about the Grateful Dead music is that it’s complicated, but it is always for a purpose and usually the purpose is the lyrics and the melody.

How long did it take you to feel comfortable being in the role you described where you could help articulate those concepts to other musicians?

I was there in person for a ton of my dad’s rehearsals over the years when I was a kid, so I kind of knew how he would talk about music. Then, from the Terrapin [Crossroads] days, he would teach us things. So in the later Phil & Friends years, I wouldn’t call myself musical director—I would be the Phil translator. I kind of knew what my dad was saying, and I would translate it. That was my role, especially in the last few years when he wouldn’t be able to do the full rehearsal that was longer than the show later that day.

There would be a very long rehearsal to get everything dialed during soundcheck. That would be every show, but when you’re 81, 82, 83, 84, you’re not going to bother with that. That was where I came in to help get everyone on the same page. It’s also something I learned at Terrapin playing with so many different people—getting everyone on the same page is pretty necessary to make the show happen.

Can you talk a little more about the role that Terrapin Crossroads played in preparing you for those situations?

Terrapin Crossroads was this music venue first, but it was also a giant restaurant that my folks needed to fill in order to keep it running. That meant that pretty early on, we started to put on free music in the bar and restaurant area almost every day. I didn’t live too far away, so I would often be there. Sometimes it would also be my dad and Jackie Greene. Sometimes it would be Ross James, me and Elliot Peck from Midnight North. Sometimes it would be my brother, Ross and their band.

It just kept growing. Most of us had a relatively limited repertoire, so we combined them and got up to speed on all the Dead stuff. I think the willingness to be open to that sort of throw-and-go style became a hallmark of the Terrapin bar scene especially.

It was like a speed run or accelerator for so many of us— not just me, not just Midnight North, but Ross James and even people who had super established careers before, like Scott Law, Tim and Nicki Bluhm and Lebo. We met all these people, and we all got a chance to play more often in different configurations than we ever would have otherwise.

It’s impossible for me to think about what my musical life would be like without Terrapin because it was such a crazy fork in the road and such an amazing opportunity that so many other players and myself were lucky to have.

Had you always anticipated that you’d become a professional musician?

I really just liked playing music and then I had the opportunity. I always had bands in high school and college. Then, not long after I graduated from college, we went to Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble with my dad and my brother, and we performed there and my folks got the idea for Terrapin Crossroads.

Meanwhile, I still had my bands. They were kind of forming separately. Midnight North was meeting and forming at the same time that Terrapin Crossroads was starting. So performing in front of people gradually became more and more a part of my life. It just sort of kept growing from there, and it became my full-time gig. But there was no single moment when I thought, “I’m going to do this now.” I was always going to do it in some form, whether in front of people or not. That might have meant my college band would have ended up playing once a week or once a month in our garages.

However, Terrapin also meant being able to play with my dad and my brother. That was something we loved doing and strove to do more. Terrapin gave us the opportunity to do it a lot. Obviously, playing with my dad was a big accelerator too.

Can you describe some of the ideas that you would convey in your role as Phil translator?

It was different for each band, especially if there was someone totally new to the scene. But a lot of it was getting everyone on the same page about how we were going to play each song because there are infinite ways of playing them. Some of it is who’s singing what part, just real nuts-and bolts arrangement stuff.

But also, my dad would talk about the weave. He didn’t like it when everyone was just going around and soloing—“Now you solo. OK, now you solo.” Instead, we were trying to have a conversation where everyone had something to say. So we’d weave all of that together into something and not just say, “It’s your turn to solo.” Obviously, there are exceptions to that rule, but that’s the mindset he wanted from everyone when they’d go into it. So that’s something that I would try to clarify to new people if my dad didn’t have a sit-down conversation with everyone before a show.

You appeared on bass at times during the final two nights at the Cap. What was that experience like for you and at what point in the process did you initially consider it?

One of the first things I thought of was having the Quintet there in some form. I didn’t know if it was going to be for a song with me on bass or a set or what, but I knew I wanted to have the Q there and I wanted to play a little bit of bass with them. That was always part of my dream for how the weekend would go. There were some other people who could have played but weren’t able to make it, including Oteil, who had to go to the Sphere by that time.

I also thought it was really special to have Brian Rashap play. He’s an amazing bass player himself, who started working for my dad about five or six years ago as a bass tech. It seemed like especially in the last 10 years or so, my dad started hiring all these other bass players to be part of the production team for Phil & Friends, which I think was really cool and worked out. I wanted Brian to get a moment to show off his main skill. He’s an awesome bass player. So being able to do both was always part of the plan for me.

By nights three and four, I had caught a cold and lost my voice. So being able to focus on that instrument not only was pretty special, but it also helped get me through playing with those guys. What struck me musically, was that the Quintet is the same band and always will be. My dad not being there was obviously a huge deal, but those four other guys were able to welcome me musically into that role. I’ve also listened to them so many times that I felt like I would able to be a part of that band, at least for a set. It went as well as I could have hoped.

For the third night, we had Brian and we also had Adam Minkoff, who plays bass in GLAF. But that was a setlist thing for me because there was a sequence with “Pride of Cucamonga,” “Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)” and “Truckin’.” I wanted to play bass on “Pride of Cucamonga” and then I started thinking about the songs Jackie had done that would be super cool and unique for night three. “Caution” came to mind and I kind of wanted to be the one to play that bassline. It sort of went from there.

As I remember it, “Truckin’” was originally going to be on night four, but Barraco wanted to play “New Speedway Boogie,” which I initially had on night three. So I moved it to night four and then I had to move something around from somewhere else, which was “Truckin’.” It was another one of those setlist construction things.

Those weeks in March and April demonstrated that there are so many different things you can do in various incarnations. Can you talk about how you strike the balance with carving out time for existing projects and new opportunities like the Hudson River Music Festival [where a version of Grahame Lesh & Friends will feature Rick Mitarotonda, Oteil Burbridge, Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith, Rob Barraco and Jennifer Hartswick]?

Obviously, 2024 was pretty tough. Right after my dad passed, my wife and I had a long think about what comes next. I’m definitely lucky for all of these opportunities to come my way and I just take them one at a time. I don’t think Midnight North is going to be touring 100 dates a year. This year, we were sort of testing the waters. So that does leave a lot of time to both be home and really enjoy life, but also make sure I keep playing music and keep playing the music that’s such a foundational part of my family. My brother, my wife and I will keep the Terrapin thing going with these little festivals we do. So we’re going to have some of those this summer.

With Hudson River, I said yes right away. The lineup was there for me and it’s all friends and people I’m honored to play with. As these opportunities come, I’m definitely going to take advantage of them, but I’m not seeking them out. Everyone’s busy, so if Rick, Oteil, Jen and all these people want to spend some of their time making music with me, I think that’s really cool. I want to take advantage of that and put on a good show when we get those opportunities.

But I’m probably not going to be touring with that sort of band. Those are special one-off events. I think people will be excited about them in the same way that I’m excited about them. However, I’m just as likely to say yes to that as I am to my buddy’s Wednesday night Grateful Dead jam down the street. I’m just here to make some music and I’m thrilled and honored whenever people want to listen to me do that.