After many three hour gigs on Thursday night for Jay and his So Many Roads Brewery, we were finally asked to play a Friday night. This wasn’t any ole Friday either. The popular Dead cover band, Shakedown Street, was starting the show off with a couple of sets during a benefit at the venue. Shakedown has a true Dead feel to them. Each member of the band, does a fine job and I need to see them more, learn more about these guys. the rhythm guitar sounds just like Bobby Weir – not the Dead and Co. Bobby, but the vintage 80s Grateful Dead Bobby. The whole band is quite tight. Little did we know, rather than play from 9-12, we were surprised (or not) with a livestream of the Dead and Co show in San Fransisco. It was the first of three nights and the official ‘farewell’ tour. Again.
Shakedown ended up playing before the livestream and during Dead and Co.’s set break. I am curious if they knew that was going to happen, as I bet they didn’t wanna play what was right there on the screen. I don’t know if I could go on after the band I’m covering is rocking to the people waiting for us to play. Shakedown did it though, and with class. It didn’t shake them and I think that takes balls.
Late start again! Two shows now, and we’re getting used to the mayhem. It’s a shame for our friends and fans that come out when they see a time, but once again they all hung out and had a ton of fun.
After a killer knocking on heaven’s door on the live stream, we were jonesing to get on stage before we lost another crowd to Father Time. Because of Shakedown Street’s two sets, we go into this show knowing we aren’t going to play any Dead. Instead we open with Lemon Song and keep the beat up swapping with our LSH originals, Phish, and Ween songs. We made the set up as we went, played two full sets and quit at 2:30am.
We had a killer time. Seeing people groove and stay out all night to our music is awesome. Multiply that feeling when half of those songs were written and produced by us. I can’t pinpoint a musical highlight. Tonight the highlight was the audience and their response to the music. I am starting to understand why all the bands go into thanking each crowd every night. There’s not many feelings that compare to having that lively group of humans feeling what you feel when you play your instrument.
The following was the intended setlist but we diverted quite a bit mixing this up to balance what the fried was feeling. I suppose the song highlight may have been going from Phish’s ‘Bug’ straight into ‘Loving Cup.’ We hit a great rendition of Loving Cup that night.
Set I:
Old Home Place
Lemon Song->
Gotta Jiboo
Gam Gam
Bananas and Blow
Wolfmans
Roses
Pinky Doodle
Possum
Set II:
Halley’s
Boogie On
Troubadour
Sand
Baboon Caboose
Gumbo
Bug->
Lovin Cup
E: Funky Bitch
Extras
Midnight Moonlight
Dirt
Golden Eel
Good Hearted Woman
You Were the Fool
Bummer