The Grateful Dead were known for many facets: Musical innovation. Ecstatic, freewheeling performances. A legion of loyal, nomadic fans.
Rehearsal, however, was never high on that list. But in preparations for the four core band members’ first tour since 2004, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, along with Warren Haynes and Jeff Chimenti, practiced. A lot.
Adding new sounds and sections, revisiting long-forgotten tunes and discovering new twists and turns over 12 weeks of rehearsal had the band, now simply The Dead, which will perform April 22 at Wachovia Arena, raring to go.
During a recent phone conversation with Kreutzmann, the affable drummer was told that his interviewer attended The Dead’s reunion show/Barack Obama benefit last October at Penn State University’s Bryce Jordan Center.
“Cool! How did you like it?” he asked from his home in Kauai, Hawaii. “How did it sound for a bunch of old men?”
He was assured that the show was just fine and that there was a sense of newness to the old band that autumn night.
Kreutzmann agreed, noting that The Dead had been pushing itself in the marathon rehearsal sessions.
“The suggestion was made, let’s go deeper into our old book and get those [songs] down,” he said. “We played nine nights in a row at Madison Square Garden [in 1991] and only repeated one song, once. That’s not bad. That’s our goal this time, to go out and do as little repeating as possible.
“I’m itching to play the hardest ones, because they’re the most challenging to play, and one of them is ‘King Solomon’s Marbles.’ I mean that’s a motherf---er,” he added, laughing. “I’m glad this isn’t live radio. It’s a really tricky tune. Then all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘What was so hard about that?’ It’s like some part of your brain remembers it and says ‘Yeah, that’s how it goes.’”
‘We play the songs better’
Kreutzmann, fellow Grateful Dead alums Hart (drums, percussion), Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals) and Lesh (bass, vocals), and pianist Chimenti from RatDog and guitarist/vocalist Haynes from Gov’t Mule and the Allman Brothers Band began their spring tour April 12 in Greensboro, N.C.
On March 30, The Dead played three free club shows in New York City after performing and chatting on ABC’s “The View.” On April 23, the band will perform on the “Late Show with David Letterman.”
There is some hype surrounding the tour, it being five years since the band previously toured. The Dead have not called this a “farewell tour,” but an ad that aired locally during “The View” touted the April 22 show as the “last area appearance.” The Dead’s publicist told the Weekender the band is not promoting this tour as its last and said she was not familiar with the ad.
Ticket scalpers have been trying to take advantage of Dead fans, jacking tickets up to more than $1,000. As a result, The Dead is auctioning off some of its best seats at charityfolks.com. Proceeds will benefit Dead-supported organizations like its own Rex Foundation as well as the Unbroken Chain Foundation and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
“I feel the worst about scalping,” Kreutzmann said. “It’s my pet peeve, it’s something I dislike the most. … A ticket scalper out there is making it $900 or some horrible price. It really offends me.”
When bandleader Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the remaining members vowed to never perform as the Grateful Dead, and they’ve kept their word. In 1998, a lineup featuring Weir, Lesh and Hart — but not Kreutzmann — toured as The Other Ones. In 2000, Kreutzmann, but not Lesh, joined up for a tour. Another Other Ones tour followed in 2002, before the band changed its name to The Dead for a 2004 tour.
“Well, we couldn’t use Grateful Dead, because that would be Jerry,” Kreutzmann said. “So they went to The Other Ones. I had no choice in that and thought ‘Gee, that’s not very inventive.’ And then we went to The Dead because the fans, the Deadheads, they say ‘We’re going to hear The Dead tonight.’ And that’s where that came from. We aren’t the Grateful Dead anymore, really. We’re a new band. We play the songs better.”
They love each other
Previous post-Garcia lineups have featured up to eight musicians. The first Other Ones’ tours had both Steve Kimock and Mark Karan on lead guitar, and another lineup featured both Haynes and Jimmy Herring playing lead. Another group had two keyboardists, some boasted a saxophone player, and both Susan Tedeschi and Joan Osborne have been featured vocalists.
It was suggested to Kreutzmann during the interview that some of those bands seemed to be a bit musically cluttered.
“Yeah, but I really don’t want to be critical of that because I love all the people that were in the lineup,” he said. “I think there were too many, and I’ll leave it at that.”
After the 2004 summer tour, The Dead members went their separate ways, amid rumors of unrest.
“People needed to go out on their own and find other bands to play in,” Kreutzmann said. “Phil and Friends played with many, many different musicians, Mickey has done world music gigs with different players, and I too in this last year have come out and put a tremendous trio together, the BK3 Trio. And it just is really healthy to go out and be with other musicians and then come back. I hadn’t done that that much.
“There were some problems that I don’t even want to talk about on the last Dead tour. … When we started playing again, everything got better. We just played 12 straight rehearsals, and some of them were damn long.”
The four former Grateful Dead members, who have been playing together for more than 40 years, are getting along fine now, Kreutzmann assured. Better than ever, in fact.
“Well, it starts out that we really care for each other,” he said. “We really love each other. We don’t play from our egos, we don’t play from our minds, and we complement each other. It’s a conversation. I’ll play an idea, Mickey’ll play an idea, and I’ll answer it. Him and I in the past few years have been getting along better than we ever, ever did, [better] than [in] the early Grateful Dead.”
‘You can’t keep a beat’
In sixth grade, Kreutzmann was kicked out of band class in his Palo Alto, Calif., school. His teacher told him, “Billy, you can’t keep a beat.” Undeterred, the young musician rode his bike downtown and found a music shop advertising $3 drum lessons. He studied at his teacher’s home, and next-door neighbor and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” author Ken Kesey would sometimes stop by.
In 1964, at the time in a band called The Legends, Kreutzmann met Garcia at Dana Morgan’s music store. He subsequently joined Garcia, Weir, Lesh and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan to form The Warlocks, which changed their name to Grateful Dead.
After the momentous 30-year run of the Grateful Dead, Weir pushed on with RatDog, Hart put together projects like Planet Drum and Lesh and Kreutzmann effectively retired.
Kreutzmann and Garcia — who fostered a love for visual art in the drummer when he taught him how to use Photoshop — had made a pact to move to Hawaii in the event of the band coming to an end.
“We were on the back of a boat, and we both got certified at the same time as divers, and we both made this promise if the Grateful Dead broke up, we would move to Hawaii,” recalled Kreutzmann, 62. “And unfortunately I was the only one that was able to keep the agreement.”
Kreutzmann often hosts jam sessions in his garage, and he keeps the door open. Strangers that hear the music swing by and dance in his driveway, he said.
Laidback but busy, Kreutzmann’s engineer was set to visit after the interview to work on some new sounds for The Dead’s nightly “drums” segment. He also hoped to get in some surfing before the sun set.
It all sounds like a peaceful island life for Kreutzmann, who grows orchids and puakenikeni (which are made into leis) and runs a farm stand that sells grapefruits and other consumables.
Book of the Dead
With the 22-date road hitch running from April 12 through May 16 and only a handful of off days, there won’t be time for The Dead to do much besides travel, sound check and perform. Kreutzmann will be accompanied by his girlfriend, known as Jackie Roe to her listeners on community radio station KCCR.
“What downtime?” Kreutzmann said incredulously. “Where did you find downtime? You did better than me. If I have any downtime either I’m asleep or I’m working on a part, and I’m also working on my autobiography.
“I’m getting all the chapters written, doing it chronologically, starting from when I started playing drums, to now, to this conversation. … I’m going to use the time on the bus, and my Jackie Roe, she’s going to ask questions. She’s really up on things. She knows more about us than I do.”
Kreutzmann became animated when asked if he’s read previous books about the Grateful Dead, including Rock Scully’s “Living with the Dead” and Steve Parish’s “Home Before Daylight.”
“I have, and some of them just disgusted me,” said Kreutzmann, whose book would be the second book by a Dead member after Lesh’s “Searching for the Sound.” “The Rock Scully book I found atrocious just because there were so many untruths in it. And the Steve Parish book I found even worse. I don’t know where they got this stuff from.
“My book is going to be completely different. My book is going to have a feeling that parents should support their kids’ passion, if it’s a healthy passion, of course. My mother had a masters degree from Stanford University, and she taught modern dance there, of all things, and physical education. And I would sit in the corner and play. And I still have that drum today.”
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The Dead, Wednesday, April 22, 7:30 p.m. at Wachovia Arena (255 Highland Park Blvd., Wilkes-Barre Twp.). Tickets: $69, $95, www.livenation.com. Info, including photos and video from rehearsal and tour: www.dead.net
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