Live Music in SF’s Panhandle March 8: “It’s Free Because It’s Yours”

Free Grateful Dead music played live on a flatbed truck in San Francisco’s Panhandle. What’s not to like?!

“Hard to Handle: Live Music in the Panhandle” will pay tribute to the mid-1960s free shows by the Dead in the Haight-Ashbury with a performance by two all-star Bay Area lineups on the afternoon of Sunday, March 8, 2026. This free show will no doubt rekindle memories among the older Deadheads in the Bay Area who were on the scene in the way-back days, and excite the young’un fans whose parents weren’t even born yet when Jerry Garcia first plucked strings in the park.

The top of the bill will feature guitarists Grahame Lesh (Midnight North, Terrapin All-Stars) and Garrett Deloian (Jerry’s Middle Finger), drummer Danny Luehring (Danny’s Live Dead, San Geronimo), Brian Rashap on bass (among his many credits, Rashap was Phil Lesh’s bass tech for several years), and Danny Eisenberg on keys (Mother Hips, Phil & Friends). The China Cats, from Santa Cruz, will open the show

The first Grateful Dead show in the Panhandle was at the “Love Pageant Rally” on October 6, 1966. This event was produced by the creators of the San Francisco Oracle, an underground counterculture newspaper, to mark the day LSD became illegal in California. (It’s no stretch to imagine that law was violated in the Panhandle that day.) A poster for the gathering asked attendees to “Bring the color gold… Bring photos of personal saints and gurus and heroes of the underground… Bring children… Flowers… Flutes… Drums… Feathers… Bands… Beads… Banners, flags, incense, chimes, gongs, cymbals, symbols, costumes, joy.”

The same request may be assumed for the March 8 event.

That being said, “Hard to Handle” reflects an era in which all things Dead are no longer “countercultural” in the Bay Area. Luehring, who is one of the event’s producers, notes that this is a permitted event. “We have security. We have park rangers on site. We’re doing it legit.” (Lest the neighborhood homeowners have concerns about the crowd, he adds that, “We’re gonna bring in porta potties.”)

The city’s embrace of the Grateful Dead was evident last year during the “Dead 60” shows in Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field (which sadly turned out to be Bob Weir’s last live performance). Dennis McNally, the Dead’s publicist for many years, observed at the time that, “it’s come full circle. The mayor in 1967 was concerned about thousands of hippies coming to Haight. Now this mayor, Daniel Lurie, he’s embracing it.”

Luehring says the March 8 won’t be a recreation of one of the original Panhandle appearances. I asked him if there was any thought as yet to the setlist, and he said, “I’ll lean into Grahame a little bit because his finger’s more on the pulse of what the Dead was doing when and where. I think we’re just going to celebrate the Dead. I’d like to play some tunes they wrote after [the 1967 Panhandle shows] as well.”

That also makes sense for many reasons – among them that the Grateful Dead’s Panhandle setlists are not well documented and some of the shows were not that long. For the record, there also seems to be some confusion on the intertubes about  how many shows the band actually played in the Panhandle, a thin strip of park eight blocks long and two streets away from Haight Street. There is, for instance, some reference to a June 1 and/or 2 show in 1968 that seems more likely to have been on June 8 a few miles west in another part of Golden Gate Park.

These seem to be confirmed as the Dead’s only appearances in the Panhandle, but I welcome evidence to the contrary:

• October 6, 1966, “Love Pageant Rally”
   
• October 16, 1966, “Artists Liberation Front Fair” (with Quicksilver Messenger Service and Country Joe & the Fish)
   
• January 1, 1967, “New Year’s Day Wail” (with Big Brother & The Holding Company)
  Organized by the Hells Angels as a thank-you party for the Diggers, or something like that.
   
• April 9, 1967
  This was apparently part of an event promoted by the Diggers.
   
• May 28, 1967
  Not fully verified: one report says the Dead were scheduled to play the Avalon Ballroom the weekend of May 26-28 but were replaced by other bands for reasons unknown.

(Some other dates may be apocryphal. For instance, I found references to a late-June 1967 show, but that seems to coincide with a documented Jimi Hendrix show in the Haight rather than a Dead show. I also found a reference to a November 30, 1967, Panhandle show but that would be a rather cold day to play in the park; it is, however, the day Linda Eastman took the iconic photo of the band sitting on the front steps of 710 Ashbury.)

However you slice it, the music lives on. In a Facebook post announcing the event today, Luehring says, “We’re taking it back to 1960s! In the spirit of the Grateful Dead’s legendary free shows in Golden Gate Park, we’re keeping the music rolling!”

He also says, “Join us where it all began. Same place, familiar faces, and still free – because it’s yours!”