Some Thoughts On Playing with Phil Lesh
A post from Griff! With a little bedroom cover of Eyes of the World from Taylor.
A few months ago Taylor and I were invited to go to San Rafael to play yet another gig with Phil Lesh and friends. Phil ended up contracting covid a few days before the show and the incredible Sam Grisman filled in for him. The show was so incredibly fun as always. But the experience got me thinking a bit more about what is so unique about playing with Phil.
As a drummer I can safely say there’s nothing quite like it. The jams go very outside the box. Often into uncomfortable territory in which I find myself wondering if I even sound decent anymore. He has supreme confidence. By taking us so far out, whether that’s by having everyone solo at the same time, or asking me to never play a straight back beat, he forces me to question which conventional ideas in music we take for granted. For instance, playing a Grateful Dead song with no backbeat is hard to do. Almost all the music I play in Dawes or with other artists has a backbeat. Not only that, but it would be very strange to refuse to play one in most studio contexts. Or another example would be the fact that solo sections never have a predetermined length. That in itself is certainly not unheard of but Phil doesn’t seem happy to move on to the next section unless we’ve complete dissolved and find ourselves semi confused as to where things are headed.
The way I think about it is if you were to graph the quality of most any band’s live show it would be for the most part a pretty consistent line. Let’s take Dawes. I like to think we’re riding slightly above average with inevitable peaks and valleys. But those peaks and valleys aren’t huge deviations from the through line of the show. Whereas with Phil the lows are low and the highs are very high. And there is something in that space that is welcoming to all listeners. Grateful Dead has a very peculiar and incredibly eclectic fan base. It’s the only music I can think of that simultaneously brings in free loving hippie adjacent folks that aren’t afraid to perhaps drop a hit of acid now and then, as well as die hard jazz nerds. I like to think of myself as somewhere in the middle of the two.
Anyway that’s all I have. It has been truly one of the greatest honors of my life to play this music with Phil and Grahame and everyone else associated. I am forever Grateful.
-Griffin Goldsmith
And a few thoughts from Taylor about this acoustic cover:
I loooooove this song so much. Not only as a 20 minute jammer that lights up a crowd and gives everyone on stage ample space to wild out between scales, but just simply as a song. I love how the first verse isn’t a typical double verse but has its own unique chord structure that doesn’t repeat elsewhere. I love how the third line feels like a conversational embellishment of the first. I love the key change between verse and chorus. And the chorus!!! It feels good enough to sing to your kids as a lullaby. And that’s as high of a compliment as I can muster. Here it is for all you sweet paid subscribers…