Danny Luehring Should Be Your New Favorite Drummer

Danny Luehring - photo by Gabriel David Barkin

For almost five years running, drummer Danny Luehring’s weekly Grateful Dead tribute Danny’s Live Dead (DLD) has been a mainstay of the Marin County music scene. On almost every Wednesday since late 2021, Luehring has assembled a unique collaboration of musicians to play two sets of music covering songs once played by the Dead and Jerry Garcia Band. That’s well over 200 shows – and still counting!

The Bay Area is awash with tons of A-list musicians contributing to the expansive Dead-centric milieu. And Luehring is hardly the only one who can brag about several shows accompanying Phil Lesh in the legendary Terrapin Crossroads bar. So even with that experience on his résumé, he’s flown too far under the radar for too long. It’s time to give Luehring his due as one of the premier performers in a field stacked with high-caliber talent.

Indeed, as a drummer whose playing style subsidizes core backbeats and rhythms with dynamic flourishes and jam’tastic improvisations, Luehring’s star is rising in the Bay Area and beyond. He’s been a participant in notable ensembles of late including several Terrapin Roadshow collectives and this year’s “Hard to Handle in the Panhandle” flatbed truck show in Golden Gate Park.

In addition to his weekly gigs in Fairfax, Luehring has two prominent bookings on his calendar for September. Don’t miss his gig with Grahame Lesh and Friends on Labor Day, another free show in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park (this time in Robin Williams Meadow, which sits just below Hippie Hill). Next, Luehring’s own DLD will headline this year’s venerable Haight Street Fair on Sunday, September 20.

Musicians love playing with Luehring. He drives the energy of the players up and down and thrives on the musical conversations of his cohorts. Garrett Deloian, guitarist and singer for Jerry’s Middle Finger and a frequent DLD participant, is just one of many cohorts among Luehring’s ardent fanbase. “Danny is a fantastic drummer to play with. He brings musicality and intensity to every performance.”

Jason Crosby, whose many keyboard and violin credits include appearances with Jackson Browne, Eric Clapton, and Dave Matthews, is another occasional DLD accomplice who appreciates his mate’s talent on the skins. “Danny is such a good player – and brother, and soul. He’s a great listener. He knows when to be forceful and when to be intimate.”

Luehring is not just one of the most interesting and dynamic interpreters of Grateful Dead music. He’s also one of the most fun to watch. That’s true especially in the midst of a long jam – during, say, “The Other One” or “Don’t Let Go” – when he leans back and closes his eyes, his head tilted skyward. Sometimes it’s like watching an ecstatic hallway dancer tethered to a drum kit.

So yeah, it’s time people learned more about this dude. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet your new favorite drummer, Danny Luehring.

Luehring’s musical career began with a literal spark of creativity. At five years old, his dad gave him an electric guitar, but the high E string broke the first time he played it. Feeling the instrument had shocked him, he asked for a pair of drumsticks instead. A drummer was born that day.

From there, he never looked back. Luehring grew up playing drums throughout his school years in Aurora, Colorado, playing in jazz and marching bands while learning how to pound heavy metal alongside friends in his garage. “I learned some stuff in school, but it was mostly on my own, in my bedroom, listening and playing along to whatever was on the radio.” A true “natural,” Luehring developed an instinctive and distinctive approach to rhythm that defines his playing even today.

The Grateful Dead were not part of Luehring’s formative drumming experience. Growing up in the late ’80s and early ’90s, his influences leaned toward rock, hip-hop, and grunge, with no exposure to Dead culture whatsoever. “Honestly, I didn’t know a single Deadhead, even through high school. Nobody ever mentioned the Grateful Dead in my circles.” It wasn’t until his mid-20s that he even encountered their music – and even then, only in passing. “I played in a band that was kind of like an original jam band, but they never leaned into the Dead. It was never something I saw myself playing.”

Luehring’s eventual immersion into Grateful Dead music came quite serendipitously after moving to Northern California. He found himself pulled into the orbit of Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads (TXR) in 2012, when the venue was still in its infancy. “I got subbed in on a gig with a band called Acacia. I had seen a few pictures of the place and thought it looked weird because the stage was near the stairs.” A few days later, Luehring’s band Tiny Television (now San Geronimo) was asked to play, and they ended up playing every Thursday for over two years.

And then the magic happened. “I played with Phil probably a dozen times. The first time was the day I became a Deadhead.”

“Alex Koford had been playing drums with Phil quite a bit. I had just finished a gig and asked Alex if Phil had ever given him a hard time. He said Phil wanted him to work on ‘Bird Song,’ to swing it more. I didn’t even know what ‘Bird Song’ was.

“So I went home and listened to a few versions and got a feel for it. A few days later, Koford’s car breaks down and he calls me to fill in for brunch. I show up and see Phil’s bass getting set up and realized what was happening. I had no idea Phil was going to play. I was just going in to cover brunch!

“And the guys in the band said, We’re playing Bird Song.

“It felt very serendipitous. I had just listened to it enough to get a feel, and then suddenly I’m playing it with Phil. That was the day I decided I needed to take it seriously.”

That fateful day marked the point where Luehring stopped skimming the surface and began a deep, years-long process of “assimilating” the Grateful Dead songbook, internalizing its structures and nuances. “I spent a lot of time listening. I don’t really use charts. I like to assimilate a song so I’m not guessing. I want to know exactly where the change is.” Luehring has now spent over a decade playing the music of the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Band, approaching his craft with discipline, reverence, and love.

Luehring played over a dozen times with Lesh at TXR, and drummed for dozens of other gigs at the seminal San Rafael venue before its closure during the COVID pandemic in 2021. The end of one era, though, opened another door for Luehring to create Danny’s Live Dead.

“I wanted to keep building chemistry with all the people I had been going to Grateful Dead college with at Terrapin.”

DLD was launched in December 2021. Each performance featured Luehring on drums accompanied by an ever-changing cast of world class musicians from in and around the TXR scene. For the first few years, Luehring hosted his weekly Wednesday night gig at the Papermill Creek Saloon, a bona fide dive bar in Marin County’s rural San Geronimo Valley. Later, when the Papermill closed for an indeterminate period, he relocated to Peri’s in nearby Fairfax. (The PA system in Peri’s was purchased from TXR when the latter closed, so there’s some direct lineage there, soundwise.)

“I wasn’t trying to be the next Terrapin. I just missed the spirit of that place and the way the community interacted and loved the music,” Luehring says. “My intention was to keep the same players and pull the community back together coming out of COVID.”

A number of local Deadheads, many of them indeed veterans of the TXR scene, began attending DLD gigs with devoted regularity. Something new and magical was in the air. Notably, longtime Grateful Dead roadie Kidd Candelario has been a frequent guest in the audience, adding yet more direct lineage and credibility to the DLD vibe.

Over the years, participants in that DLD magic have included dozens of musicians, including Grahame Lesh, Sam Grisman, Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz, Barry Sless, and many others who shared the stage at TXR and elsewhere with Phil Lesh. It’s a unique lineup almost every week – although Luehring now has a core group of compadres in the mix. “Certain lineups have more chemistry. I’ve fine-tuned it to have a solid lineup, what we call the A Team, while still rotating people in. There’s probably twenty people in the inner circle and another ten just outside that.”

Luehring himself certainly belongs in that inner circle, talent-wise. His timing, rhythms, and changes are distinctively pulsating and danceable. While watching Luehring drum when he’s playing the Dead – or anything else – it’s apparent he isn’t just counting the beats. He’s always in lockstep with his bandmates, both listening and leading, often swaying and (for lack of a better word) dancing on his stool. During the jams, he often rolls his eyes back and rides the musical wave in ecstasy just like everyone in his adoring audience. He may have come late to the party, but he’s one of us now.

Guitarist Deloian is a fan as well as a contributor. “What [Luehring] created with Danny’s Live Dead became more than a weekly show. It’s grown into its own community of musicians and music lovers alike. Wednesdays with Danny have been a mainstay in my life for years now and I hope it keeps going and growing.”

DLD is hardly alone in Grateful Dead tribute land. (Certainly, no band in history has had so many cover bands.) What keeps it fresh is the experimental ethos, the daring approach to reinventing not just the music but also the cast of musicians, like an award-winning play performed with different top-flight actors improvising different lines each night, week after week. “There are no inhibitions,” Luehring says. “People feel free to make mistakes and go for it. That’s how I learned from Phil.”

“I just want to keep it special.”

DANNY’S LIVE DEAD PARTICIPANTS

A partial list, 2021-2026

GUITAR: Alex Jordan, Alex Koford, Barry Sless, Bella Rayne, Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz, Dave Abear, Dave Zirbel, Garrett Deloian, Grahame Lesh, Greg Loiacono, Jay Wilcox, Joe Marcinek, Johnny Mojo, Jon Chi, Mark Karan, Matt Hartle, Nate LaPointe, Reed Mathis, Scott Law, Stephen Inglis, Zach Jones.

BASS: Angeline Saris, Brian Rashap, Burt Lewis, JP McLean, Kevin White, Murph Murphy, Pete Sears, Sam Grisman, Steve Adams, Tommy O’Mahony.

KEYBOARDS: Danny Eisenberg, Jason Crosby, Mike Emerson, Mookie Siegel, Rob Barraco, Scott Guberman.

VOCALS (in addition to above): Leslie Mendelson, Paige Clem, Teal Collins.