Photo by Bradley Tucker
Last night Grahame Lesh & Friends officially opened Chicago’s newest venue, Garcia’s. A sister location to the Garcia’s attached to Port Chester, NY’s Capitol Theatre, the 300-person club and restaurant is located in the Windy City’s West Loop neighborhood. Concert promoter Peter Shapiro–who serves as Relix‘s publisher–and his Dayglo company built the new performance space in partnership with the Garcia family. 

For yesterday’s concert, Grahame fronted a version of his Friends featuring regular collaborators Justin Mazer, Damian Calcagne, Adam Minkoff, Nathan Graham and Brian Rashap. Special guests and Phil & Friends alums Daniel Donato and Nicki Bluhm also augmented the combo throughout the night. (Guitarist Marcus King, another Phil Lesh collaborator, was also on band greeting fans as they entered the venue.)  

Shapiro started the proceedings by introducing Grahame Lesh & Friends and explaining the concept behind Garcia’s. He also connected the opening night to the Unbroken Chain tributes he hosted at The Cap just a few days earlier in honor of what would have been Phil Lesh’s 85 birthday, admitting that it is often hard to forecast exactly when a new venue will be ready to open and that it was kismet when he realized Grahame Lesh & Friends could serve as the band that would christen the space just days after the elder Lesh’s milestone celebration. He also described Grahame and Donato, as well as their collaborators, as the future of this scene. 

Fittingly, GLAF kicked off their show with a short jam that quickly became “Help on the Way.” That set up a run that moved into “Slipknot!” and then “Loser,” before returning to the former tune. The musicians then nodded to another iconic imrpov act, The Allman Brothers Band, with the instrumental “Jessica” and Mickey Newbury with the roots favorite “Why You Been Gone So Long.” (Donato, in particular, is quite familiar with the Allmans catalog thanks to his time in Trouble No More.) Dead staples “Dire Wolf” and “Black Muddy River” came next, before the group wrapped up their opening sequence with “Franklin’s Tower.”

Grahame and his Friends kicked off their second with “The Mountain Song,” a collaboration between Jerry Garcia, Paul Kantner and David Crosby, and the Dead-adopted Merle Haggard tune “Sing Me Back Home.” From there, they launched into a segue from “St. Stephen” into the Crosby & Nash original “The Wall Song,” “The Other One” and the Dead’s rendition of Bonnie Dobson’s “Morning Dew.” “Sugaree” and Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” closed out the set, before the band returned for the sing-along “Ripple.”

Grahame Lesh & Friends will return to Garcia’s this evening.