A cavalcade of accomplished, like-minded musicians with connections to Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and/or Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads nightclub appeared in San Francisco on July 31 for The Heart of Town, a four-hour, all-killer-no-filler tribute to Garcia, “GD60,” and the spirit of San Francisco. Presented in cooperation with the San Francisco Giants inside of the massive Pier 48, which is situated on the San Francisco Bay and just a stone’s throw from The Giants’ Oracle Park, the massive venue was transformed into a giant psychedelic, phantasmagoric warehouse.
The event took place at the Pier’s Shed A, which has a 5,800 capacity, according to Giants Enterprises, and was easily the second-largest GD60 event in magnitude, after the weekend’s Dead & Company shows taking place crosstown in the Golden Gate Park Polo Field. The Heart of Town began at approximately 8 p.m. on the 31st, the night attended by the Grateful Web, but then continued with 11 p.m. starts on Aug. 1 and 2 (with a different cast of characters), in order to accommodate those coming over from the Dead & Company shows.
Right off the bat, the excitement was palpable when, in the middle of the opening tune, “Uncle John’s Band,” Stephen Stills appeared onstage to play in the band. Stills’ joined the Grateful Dead to play his song “Black Queen” twice; once on December 10, 1969 at the Fillmore East, and again on April 16, 1983, at the Brenden Byrne Arena in East, Rutherford, N.J. Here, Stills joined with Grahame Lesh, the late Phil Lesh’s son; Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith (of Dawes); Holly Bowling; Samson Grisman; John Molo; Nicki Bluhm; and Elliott Peck. Grahame Lesh was the event’s music director and was onstage throughout, while the two dozen or so other players came and went. Each piece of music was exciting, delivered with pace and power.
Following “Uncle John’s Band,” Stills took the mic for a crowd-pleasing version of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Teach Your Children.” Lesh assumed vocal harmonies on “Althea” before Stills wowed the audience with a protest tune he wrote for Buffalo Springfield in the mid-1960s, “For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound)”. Stills, whose guitar work and voice were both impressive, then departed with arm waves to the appreciative crown and hugs from the musicians.
Eric Krasno (Lettuce, Tedeschi-Trucks Band, Robert Randolph, and Grammy Award-winning songwriter/producer), who often played at Terrapin Crossroads, joined the group to sing and play lead guitar on a sizzling version of “The Music Never Stopped,” during which Bluhm presented an impassioned take on the “There’s a band out the highway…” lyric.
Pete Sears, presently of The David Nelson Band and Moonalice, and formerly of the Jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna, Rod Stewart’s band, and many more, joined the band on bass as Grisman departed temporarily. Sears’ thundering, rapid bass passages, along with Bowling’s intricate, precise keyboard passages, and dueling lead guitar sequences helped define a blistering jam between “China Cat Sunflower” – vocalized by Krasno – and “I Know You Rider, which contained a short jam of the Allman Brothers Band’s “Blue Sky.”
Next, Lesh and the crowd welcomed Maggie Rose and Garrett Deloian (from Jerry’s Middle Finger) to the spectacle, while Sears departed and Grisman returned. The Nashville-based Rose, a country, blues, R&B, and rock singer/songwriter, sang a wonderfully soulful version of “Row Jimmy.” Subsequently, guitarist Al Schnier (moe.) came onstage to share vocal duties with Rose, as he, Deloian, Krasno, and Lesh weaved pleasing jams during “Sugaree.” Rose introduced herself to many Grateful Dead fans when she and her band performed along with the headlining “Bob Weir, Steve Kimock & Friends” at the Sweetwater in the Sun in Marin County in September 2018. And in January 2025 Rose performed “One More Saturday Night” with My Morning Jacket at the MusiCares Celebration of Grateful Dead.
After that, Roger McNamee, the venture capitalist and oh, yes, leader of bohemian, Bay Area-based improvisational band, Moonalice, appeared onstage. He pronounced to the crowd, before leading a reverential version of “Direwolf,” “I just want to say one thing. Grahame and his team put together this wonderful thing. But there is a spirit running through this show. A spirit that comes from Grahame’s father, Phil Lesh. And I just want to send this next song out to the whole Lesh family with great thoughts about Phil.” It did not go unnoticed that three Moonalice personnel were together at stage-left: McNamee, Sears, and Molo.
With Alex Koford on drums, Deloian returned to lead a mighty “Alligator,” and then blues-rocker and unabashed badass Andy Frasco appeared center stage to vocally belt out “Turn on Your Lovelight,” helping deliver a song combo that ended the first set with a decidedly kaleidoscopic, 1960s Grateful Dead flavor. Bowling, certainly one of the Most Valuable Players of the night, also had her 4-year-old son join onstage for “Lovelight.”
The intermission allowed people to temporarily move away from the packed-in area near the stage to the back areas of the massive pier building. Immersed in the warehouse’s Trips Festival-Merry Prankster-reminiscent vibe, the audience was welcome to roam about an artisan “vendor village” that included Zane Kesey/Key-Z Productions and the Rex Foundation, all amongst several giant screens offering Justin Kreutzmann-curated liquid light shows.
After the break, Peter Rowan (Old & In the Way, The Rowan Brothers, Seatrain, Earth Opera) and Bill Nershi (The String Cheese Incident) joined the band. Rowan, now 83 and the eldest performer of the evening (Stills is only 80), led “Midnight Moonlight” and “Panama Red,” two Rowan-penned songs from the “Old & In the Way,” which, with Jerry Garcia, Vassar Clements, David Nelson, and John Kahn, raised the national awareness of the bluegrass genre in the mid-’70s.
Nershi then sang a twangy “Friend of the Devil,” with Rowan (and Lesh) in a supporting guitar role, and also led an epic “Cold Rain & Snow.” Nathan Graham, from Lesh’s/Peck’s Midnight North band, manned one of the drumkits.
Following all that, Melvin Seals & JGB (John Kadlecik, John-Paul McClean, and Jeremy Hoenig) appeared, along with Lesh and others, for songs from the Jerry Garcia Band, which Seals joined back in 1981. With Seals delivering his classic, swirling Hammond B3 keyboard passages and jams, and Kadlecik (and McClean) on vocals, they gave the audience stretched out performances of “Cats Under the Stars” and “Mission in the Rain,” with its beloved hometown lyric, “There’s some satisfaction in the San Francisco rain / No matter what comes down the Mission always looks the same.”
The set then carried on with keyboardist/vocalist Ivan Neville and bassist Tony Hall, both from Dumpstaphunk, leading “Broken Arrow,” a Robbie Robertson song that Phil Lesh adapted for the Grateful Dead in 1993. Finally, a three-song, 35-minute sequence of “Scarlet Begonias,” “Fire on the Mountain,” and “Shakedown Street” with its lyric, “Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart” took us to the end of the “Heart of Town” second set.
Encores, following Lesh’s thank you’s and organ donor request, carrying on the tradition from Phil Lesh, a liver-transplant survivor for 26 years, consisted of a rocking “Midnight Hour” and an upbeat, Lesh-sung, electric version of “Ripple.”
Note: keyboard players were situated onstage in such a way that it was difficult so see them unless they stood or poked their heads up.
Note: The Heart of Town was produced by Terrapin Station Entertainment Relix, and Dayglo Presents, with Jonathan Shank and Peter Shapiro leading the team as Executive Producers alongside Producer Molly Billmyre and Musical Director Grahame Lesh.
The city of San Francisco was immersed all weekend in celebrations of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. On Thursday, for instance, before the Heart of Town event, Jordan Feinstein, a talented local keyboardist who is a Bay Area musical mainstay appeared downtown for A Grateful Gathering at Yerba Buena Lane, an outdoor street happy hour event inspired by the music and culture of the Grateful Dead. Feinstein & Friends included other prominent Bay Area musicians: Anna Elva (drumkit), Jeanette Ferber (vocals/tambourine), Byron Rynes (guitar) and Mike Meagher (bass).
Their first set included “Franklin’s Tower,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “Fire on the Mountain,” “Tore Up Over You,” and “West LA Fadeaway”; Jordan Feinstein & Friends’ second set included “Me & Bobby McGee,” “Shakedown Street” > “Bathtub Gin” > “Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001 Space Odyssey)” > “Shakedown Street,” “My Sisters and Brothers,” and “The Weight.”
