Photo by Danny ClinchIf you are reading this magazine [Relix, Feb/March ’09] then you already know Phil Lesh and the delivery system he uses to translate his thoughts into sound waves. For over 40 years Deadheads have fought to get into the “Phil Zone” at concerts, lamented the relative inability of recording devices to fully capture the feeling and intangible qualities of the notes Lesh chooses, and argued tirelessly over the definition of “bassist” as it applies to him.

And if you have read this far you may remember the classic bootleg bumper sticker that read “Lesh Philling, Sounds Great.” That may be true, but as far as bassists go, perhaps it would have been more appropriate if it had proclaimed, "Phil Lesh: The Un-Bassist.

In the traditional rock and roll sense the bass guitar is the glue that melds the melodic elements to the rhythmic elements. With that in mind, I’m not even sure if Lesh is a bass player at all. Sure, the electric bass is his instrument of choice and by definition of that choice he spends some of his time working in the lower register of the instrument. However, the classically trained and harmonically advanced Lesh skirts the tradition of rock and roll bass playing in the way only a charter member of the Grateful Dead is able: His bass guitar speaks in a unique voice that derives its context and meaning from the other musical voices sharing that fleeting moment onstage.

The Grateful Dead were experts in the performance of classic song forms such as folk, bluegrass, blues and even jazz. But each night at some point in the performance they collectively sought a jumping-off point: a place where these templates and constraints could be shrugged off in favor of an ensemble improvisation they claimed as their own. Both inimitable and instantly recognizable, that leap of faith (often labeled on tapes as “Jam>” or “Space>” ) was the ultimate expression of being in the moment: a place where musicians checked their individual egos at the door and “the music played the band;” a place of infinite possibility.

This was a formidable experiment and also one that transcended the boundaries of mere music making: This ongoing experiment defined the very core of what the Grateful Dead were and still are. It is this “searching for the sound,” along with their genre-defying and vast catalog of memorable lyrics and melodies that keeps them and Deadheads young at heart and coming back for more.

Now, as the four remaining members regroup for a tour in 2009, one wonders if The Dead can recapture the magic they so effortlessly wrangled night after night for over 30 years. What are their hopes and dreams in this era of “change” promised by a new president? I had a few moments to talk with “Un-Bassist” Phil Lesh and to get a read on what he thinks the future may hold as The Dead prepare to get on the bus once again. And if evolution is indeed the ultimate goal we may just find that things are “coming round… in a circle.”

How did this idea for another Dead Tour come about?

It’s one of those things where I like to live improvisationally in terms of all that and the cosmos sort of rotated around so everything was in sync so this could happen. Everybody’s doing their own thing and developing in their own way and it just seems like it’s the right time to reconnect and see what everybody’s been doing and what kind of musical development has been going on with everybody. So it’s kind of a cool, exciting thing that we’re all in the same space wanting to do that.

Do you feel like the Obama benefit at State College kick-started this?

Yeah, in a way, because that was a good excuse to get together and see how it would flow. It was very successful, I thought. Then we started talking about anything we wanted to do with this new feeling, with this new knowledge.

While it may require several weeks of rehearsal to get the songs together academically, do you find the x-factor is always waiting onstage for the house lights to go down?

Yes, in a word. That’s always been our attitude and our mental preparation is always for that. In other words, you walk out on the stage and everything is possible. Everything is brand new and everything is possible. Nothing that’s gone before has any relevance at all. It’s what can happen now. When we hit that first note, that narrows down the possibilities somewhat, but it’s still virtually infinite, and that’s what I love about the way we make music.

So there’s only so much that can be done to technically prepare for that moment.

Absolutely. Mickey said it very well at one point: you can’t train for this.

Right. It can’t be corralled and you can’t control it. It’s just the right circumstances.

What you can do is prepare yourself to be open; open for the pipeline to open and the magic to flow down through us.

It means leaving yourself behind. It’s not a question of, Oh God, don’t let me fuck up, or anything like that. It’s a question of, “Here I am. Work me, Lord.”

Was there every truly a bandleader with the Grateful Dead?

Well, yes and no. The major factor with the Grateful Dead doing what they did and what we’re trying to do still is the Group Mind. Where nobody’s really there, there’s only the music. It’s not as if we’re playing the music… the music is playing us. And that requires a certain amount of ego loss for everyone, so that, onstage, in the moment and in the music, there’s no leader. There aren’t even any musicians, ideally.

Do you apply this to your Phil Lesh groups?

Absolutely. That’s the way I make music.

So if the other guys come back after having been out with RatDog and Mickey’s project, is it able to get back into that mind or are there frustrating moments?

All of those guys have experienced the same thing with the Grateful Dead, so it’s not like flipping a switch. That state of mind is latent in everybody who’s experienced this so it’s a question of opening yourself up to that and letting your expectations, your ego, your desires… you can’t be attached to anything. You have to be open in the moment.
In the wake of having performed so many concerts in your career, is it okay to let go of the ones that maybe haven’t been so great?

They’re gone as soon as they’re over. Like Jerry used to say about the tapers, after we play it, we’re done with it.

It’s ironic that we can be done with it but they’re going to live it over and over again every time they pop that tape in.

Well, that’s great. Let them do that ‘cause in a way that’s their function as an audience. They’re gonna absorb that and feed the energy back to us the next time we’re all together.

As far as togetherness goes, I know, from personal experience, that a Dead show was a uniquely individual experience for the listener. But for the band it depended on a symbiosis with the audience to truly take it into magical heights. Do you find that the modern day version of the Dead is able to achieve similar results?

It depends on the moment. Nothing’s for certain, it can always go wrong. That’s a quote, by the way, from a Garcia song.

So no good deed goes unpunished!

Yeah, exactly. You let go of it all – even the good ones. You can’t dwell on the good ones and say, Wow that was great! Let’s stay there forever." It’s like Faust saying, This moment stay / this moment you are so fair, but that’s the moment when Mephistopheles takes his soul. You can’t do that if you value your soul [laughs] and your spiritual development.

It’s amazing that with a philosophy that’s so anti-entertainment in comparison to the mainstream, that there was such an amazing amount of success and loyalty.

Well it’s kind of the last great American adventure, you know what I mean? Human beings need a little danger, a little uncertainty, a little adventure in their lives and our society frowns upon that. And so this music, no matter who makes it, this kind of music really speaks to some deep need in human beings.

It is something that people may not necessarily know they need in their life. A little revelation, getting a little closer to the source.

Right. A little community, getting outside of yourself. And that’s the model the band provides for the audience. Here are these five or six people up onstage, ostensibly they’re individual human beings in their own right, and yet when they collaborate on that level, it’s like a lesson: This is what you can do if you let yourself go and collaborate freely with other human beings in a context where no one’s worried about who gets the money or the credit or the solo. My paradigm for that is a symposium, like in Plato, where everyone is contributing ideas and the ideas are developed by the group rather than by an individual.

That’s the best way to develop something new. And I think it’s amazing that the spirit with which Grateful Dead created onstage for so long has spread out into other bands to a certain degree.

I think that’s the most gratifying aspect of the whole picture of the whole Grateful Dead, not only were we able to do it, it could have been something that was absolutely unique and when the Grateful Dead ceased to exist, that thing ceased to exists as well, but it didn’t happen that way, again because I think not just the experience but the model of it struck a deep chord with other musicians and human beings in general.

What you were able to create sound-wise was so much more, to me, when I got it. I can’t think of the right word to describe it but it just blew me away more so than like watching The Who destroy their instruments or listening to an incredibly bombastic rock show with a big light show. It was six guys onstage barely moving….

A bunch of ugly guys too!

Yeah a bunch of guys who looked like us! It’s a reflection of what is possible. But it was the sound coming out of the PA that knocked me off my feet. You achieved as a group something that was fleeting, and danced across my vision and through my ears and it was more profound than anything I had seen up until that point, I was probably 15 or 16 years old, but that’s like when someone gets cracked open and they see a little something that’s usually not in their field of vision, it’s a possibility, something to work for, and like you say, you can’t reach out and grab it and put it in a scrapbook, all you really have is a memory and sort of a two-dimensional representation on a tape, if you’re lucky.

But that tape can trigger the experience in a new way.

Absolutely. So you guys go around and you’re like Johnny Appleseed in a way, planting the seeds of possibility and it’s not just through music…

That’s part of my point. It’s not just the music. I mean, look what Obama did. It’s a seed of a community of various types.

Well, that’s what’s beautiful about a coalition of rivals as it were, and that’s the only way you’re gonna get something done. If everyone agrees, it’s a flat line, it’s kind of boring. This country was founded on a compromise.

Yeah, and a consensus. And that’s been lost, it really has, with all this ideological culture war bullshit.

Yeah it’s divisive and…

And that’s why I always say there’s nothing more American than The Grateful Dead.

Well, it’s an American form, which brings up some of these personal questions that probably won’t make the interview, but you were an American band, and it seems you were fond of performing covers of songs that influenced you as developing musicians, traditionals like “I Know You Rider” or songs by your ‘60s contemporaries like “Morning Dew” or Bob Dylan songs. You never did a Clash song or anything like that, but you, however, have taken a liking to some of the songwriters of the present era like Ryan Adams and Jackie Greene. What led to this discovery?

Well, I’m one of these guys who’s always open. See, music is infinite. There’s an infinite number of ways to do it, an infinite number of melodies that can go with a one-four-five progression, it’s absolutely infinite, no floors, no ceiling.

I discovered Jackie when I was listening to the radio. I never listen to the radio, right? So, okay, I’m picking up my son at his girlfriend’s house at one in the morning and I’m just sitting there waiting for him to come out, and mindlessly turn on the radio, and Jackie Greene’s song “I’m So Gone” comes leaping out the speakers and I’m like “Whoa! What’s this?!” It was the same thing with Ryan.

I was invited to host The Jammys and one of their models is they have people jam together or play together that wouldn’t ordinarily have that opportunity. So at that show I got to play with Buddy Guy and John Mayer, and then I sat in with Ryan Adams. Who knew he was a Deadhead? I sort of investigated, I downloaded some of Ryan’s music, his latest stuff, and it was just wonderful. Wow, how come I haven’t heard about this guy? Of course I had, I’d seen photographs and reviews of albums and album covers, but I never heard any of the music and it was absolutely stunning and when we played together I realized he was a king improviser. I mean, he brings the crazy. He brings the crazy to the music and in fact his whole life, which is kind of my ideal as well. So for me it’s like the universe almost reaches out to me and says “Hey, check this out” and I have to do it because I know, history has taught me, that it’s always valuable.

Absolutely, when something jumps out and grabs you, you do have to pay attention. Do you think that the material you’ll be playing on The Dead tour coming up, is it possible that maybe one of Ryan’s or Jackie’s songs could make its way into the catalogue?

You never know. I’m not ruling anything out. We haven’t even started to talk about that yet.

[Widespread Panic guitarist] Jimmy Herring once mentioned to me how when he expressed concern over whether the version of your solo group that he was in was really gonna function as an ensemble in the way you wanted it to, you told him that you were more interested in the potential of that group, which I think is a great thing – it’s understanding that the people who bring the crazy might take a little while to work together the right way, which shows a want to continually evolve.

Exactly, but that’s the nature of music, it’s the nature of art. It never stands still, not only is it infinite but it’s constantly moving, flowing… Sometimes you have to just put your expectations aside, like you do when you walk out onstage.

Having been at some shows where there was some trickery involved, such as pranking you guys in one particular New Year’s show in Oakland, starting the “Not Fade Away” chant before the first set, in order for you to open the show with it rather than end with it…

That’s delightful. I don’t remember what we did.

You actually pranked the audience back – it was classic. You didn’t finish the song, and then at the end of the second set you did the reprieve. It was a classic prank upon a prank. To me, what you achieved with your audience – that kind of connection – was invaluable.

And that’s the whole point. I used to say – not facetiously – that every place we play is church. And what is church, really? It’s a place where people come together to get outside themselves and deal with something bigger. In our case, it’s not us that they’re dealing with that’s bigger than them, it’s the totality of the combination of us and them – that community, that actual spiritual oneness in the moment.

There’s no value that can be given to that. It’s priceless. I think its amazing to be a part of it and to have taken a little bit of the seeds that you guys planted in my mind as a teenager and spread that around, whether it’s through music, or just a way of living. It’s hard to do, but it’s great.

It is. It’s really a way of life.

As a bass player, you recently switched from the Modulus to whatever the heck that thing is. Can you tell me more about it?

It’s a truly amazing instrument. It’s a Ritter. It’s made by Jens Ritter in a little town in Germany and I just happened to find it on the internet and if you go to ritter-basseses.com you can see his whole range of instruments. I don’t even remember how I discovered his name – I saw this instrument and I said, I want that! Just looking at it, it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

So I went to see him at the NAMM show last January and I ordered the instrument and got it the first of July and I haven’t been able to put it down. It’s an amazing instrument – it makes me play completely differently in terms of touch and the way I use my hands, but he makes everything from the strings out. He makes the strings, the pickups, the electronics, the body and the neck, he makes the tuning pegs for chrissake. It’s all an integrated concept and the instruments have variable tension on the strings so the amount of energy needed to play a note at a certain volume is the same all the way up and down the instrument, the weight of tone is consistent all the way up and down the instrument, and the variety of touch on this instrument is infinite, it’s just the most amazing thing. Not only that, but it’s the coolest looking thing you ever saw and it sounds like the hammers of hell!