Grateful Dead Music on a Flatbed Truck in Golden Gate Park’s Panhandle

Golden Gate Park | March 8, 2026 | San Francisco, CA | photos by Gabriel David Barkin

For the first time in almost 60 years, the music of the Grateful Dead was played live atop a flatbed truck in the Panhandle of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Sunday afternoon. The smell of eucalyptus and kind weed filled the park during the four-hour extravaganza, which featured three sets of classic Dead tunes performed by two eminently worthy Bay Area bands.

Those eucalyptus trees might have been several feet shorter in 1967, and the mayor and “the establishment” at that time certainly less welcoming of the hippie invasion. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. (Well, the weed is probably stronger.) Deadheads in colorful garb, dogs both on and off leashes, and an assortment of bubbles, banners, and jugglers filled the park in the Haight-Ashbury district on a warm, sunny afternoon this weekend. The vibe was beautiful, baby.

This magical, and some might say historic, event was billed as “Hard to Handle in the Panhandle.” The headlining ensemble was a version of “Danny’s Live Dead” assembled by drummer Danny Luehring, featuring both Grahame Lesh and Garrett Deloian on guitars and vocals, Danny Eisenberg on keys, and Brian Rashap on bass. Alex Koford sat in on vocals for a few tunes, as did Connor Kennedy on guitar. (“Danny’s Live Dead” is an ongoing project curated by Luehring with a rotating cast of A-list musicians from the Terrapin Crossroads scene and beyond.)

Santa Cruz’s China Cats opened the show, following a welcoming DJ set by DJ Gregorio. China Cats are Matt Hartle (lead guitar), Scott Cooper (rhythm guitar), Steve Sofranko (keys), Roger Sideman (bass), and Mike Owens (drums).

Official estimates* pegged the attendance at about 5,000 people. (* Full disclosure: I declared myself an “official” for this estimate. Other results may vary.) Roughly three-fourths of the crowd looked like they came specifically for the Dead thing, and the rest of the audience may have just stumbled by when they heard the music and saw the crowd, perhaps while taking their kids to the nearby playground or shopping for hippie couture two blocks away on Haight Street.

The strong turnout was a pleasant surprise for the event’s producers, which include drummer Luehring along with Adam Bergeron and Joby Pritzker. This was the first time anyone has rolled a flatbed truck into the Panhandle to put on a show in decades – and the first time the city actually issued a permit for that sort of thing in this location. “There’s lessons everywhere,” Luehring said when asked about the crowd size. For one thing, he noted, “We could have used more outhouses.” (And yes, the lines were long, but the smiles remained wide.)

The last time the Grateful Dead plugged in on the flatbed of a truck in the Panhandle was in the spring of 1967. In fact, all five Grateful Dead appearances in this stretch of the park between Oak and Fell Streets were within an eight-month period that started with the “Love Pageant Rally” on October 6, 1966. That event was produced by the creators of the San Francisco Oracle, an underground counterculture newspaper, to mark the day LSD became illegal in California.

Sad side note: Another performer who played in the Panhandle during that same era was Country Joe McDonald. McDonald died of complications from Parkinson’s disease at his Berkeley, California home just a day before the “Hard to Handle” event.

Grahame Lesh, whose father Phil was of course, one of the musicians who played in the Panhandle all those years ago, was proud to be part of the extended legacy of free Grateful Dead music in the park. Backstage on Sunday, he waxed nostalgic when asked if the elder Lesh ever told his son stories about those legendary free performances. “Not specifically about those shows on the flatbed, but [Phil & Friends, with Grahame in the band] did the Stern Grove Festival just a few years ago, and he was like, ‘Hell yeah! Outside, for free, we love it!’”

During their two sets, “Danny’s Live Dead” (some people were calling it “Grahame Lesh & Friends” since the poster unfortunately omitted the name of the band) stuck mostly to songs from relatively early in the Dead’s history. Other than the opening segue of “Scarlet Begonias” into “Fire on the Mountain,” every song they played was part of the Dead’s live repertoire by 1971. (“Fire,” by the way, included a fun stretch filled by the familiar double-guitar jam from the Allman Brothers’ “Blue Sky.”)

China Cats stayed in a similar lane, with only two songs released by the Dead after 1971 (“Terrapin Station” and “The Music Never Stopped”). Perhaps to underscore the connection to those earlier Panhandle shows, The Cats opened their set with “The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion),” the first track from the Dead’s 1967 debut album.

Three songs from the “Danny’s Live Dead” set list merit annotation here:

• For “Alligator,” Deloian donned a red clown nose (Wavy Gravy was in the house in spirit), and both he and Rashap played the familiar melody on kazoos. Meanwhile, volunteers handed out clown noses and kazoos in the audience. Your humble reporter here may have been spotted sticking his head up behind Luehring on the flatbed to take some pictures while sporting one of those noses.
   
• It occurred to me, a Deadhead who came of age in the 1980s, that Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle” was released (posthumously) in 1968. The Grateful Dead first played it in spring of 1969. That’s sort of akin to a band today playing a cover of a brand-new hit from late 2025. Imagine Goose covering Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther.” Just sayin’…
   
• During the last verse of “Wharf Rat” in the second set, the generator powering the amplifiers ran out of gas. Another generator powering the PA system was still running, so the audience could only hear Luehring’s drums and Deloian’s vocals for a few minutes. The Deadheads sang along to fill the void. No beats were missed.

The only question after it was all over was, “When can we do this again?”

When asked a bit earlier how his day was going, Deloian said that it was “just like any other day. The sun’s going up, and the sun’s going down.” (Hmmm…where have we heard that before?) It’s not hard to imagine many of the people in the Panhandle on Sunday felt the same vibe, even if for just a few hours. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

SET LISTS

DANNY’S LIVE DEAD
Set List 1
Scarlet Begonias >
Fire on the Mountain
Me and My Uncle >
Big River
Cumberland Blues
Alligator >
Hard to Handle
Franklin’s Tower

Set List 2
Truckin’ >
Bird Song >
The Other One >
Wharf Rat >
Jack Straw
Sugar Magnolia
Morning Dew

CHINA CATS
Set List

The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)
China Cat Sunflower
I Know You Rider
Playing in the Band
Till the Morning Comes
Terrapin Station
Brown-Eyed Women
The Music Never Stopped