As attendees began to make their way from the parking lot into Red Rocks Amphitheatre for the night, there was an excelled energy running throughout the air. Loyal fans and newcomers were highly anticipating the night full of instrumental jams and pure funk.

Dead & Company wrapped up the final show of their 2019 Summer Tour this past Saturday at CU Boulder’s iconic Folsom Field. A venue frequented by the Grateful Dead throughout the 1970s, the Grateful Dead first touched down at the University of Colorado Boulder in the spring of 1969, and while the Dead wrapped up their final performance at Folsom in June of 1980, the spirit of the band has lived on throughout the city.

Dead & Company brought their Summer Tour 2019 to the Dos Equis Pavilion in Dallas on Tuesday, July 2nd for a lone stop in the Lone Star State.

The Tedeschi Trucks Band rolled into the Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton, Florida on Saturday, June 29th as the headliner for their own “Wheels of Soul” tour. The Boca Raton show was the second stop of the tour after opening Friday night in their hometown of Jacksonville, FL.

It really wasn’t just “One More Saturday Night” even though it was.  Yes, the show was on a Saturday night, and I was really happy about that. Having been to at least one and sometimes two shows since the band began touring together in 2015. Most of those shows had been in NY, one in South Florida and now, one in Atlanta. I knew this one would be special and it was a new adventure; my first show in Atlanta.

We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

- David Bowie

Carlos Santana, to paraphrase a funky expression, “tore the roof off that sucker,” on June 27 at a cool and comfortable evening outing near Sacramento, California. He and the band blasted out of the gate, following a big-screen montage of old Santana Woodstock-era footage, with an exhilarating version of “Soul Sacrifice,” the epic instrumental that made the country sit up and take notice 50 years ago, both on the band’s eponymous first record, as well as the forever indelible version performed at Woodstock.

Despite their emergence in the mid-sixties at the height of the counterculture era, the Grateful Dead were never considered an overtly political act. While no friend to the corporate establishment or a cog in the government machine, the band left the protest songs to musicians such as Bob Dylan. That’s not to say that their lyrics don’t touch on the thematic landscape of America’s political woes, but like poetry (and beauty), interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.

“Tennessee Jed” was a raucous riot, as it indubitably should be. The instrumental breaks showcased JRAD’s proclivity for shaking fresh ideas out of well-worn material. Benevento dropped a stanky, Dr. John crossed with Dave Brubeck piano piece. Metzger and Dreiwitz slipped into a parallel, Bizarro “Jed.” The entire unit tilted and started to spin ecstatically. It was like putting a Ferris wheel on top of a roller coaster. JRAD increasingly infused the Dead’s material with their own creative energy. They weren’t out to simply play these cherished songs; they sought to possess them and make them their own.

The San Francisco-based Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Band arguably played some of their most prolific shows on the East Coast, as strange is it may seem. Those spectacular primal billings at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East entering the 1970s, “the best show that almost didn’t happen” in May of 1977 at Boston Garden, Clarence Clements ethereal sit-in with Jerry Garcia Band at Great Woods, Massachusetts in fall of 1989.