I like this place. And willingly could waste my time in it.
1974 part two: The Sphere, Terrapin Crossroads, and imperiled local venues
We’ve been talking at our house about Nick Paumgarten’s recent New Yorker article on the Dead & Co Sphere shows that so many of our friends sent us the link to, sort of like the condolences we received after the 2015 Harbin Hot Springs fire. (Thank you, friends, for always thinking of us.) Reading it affirmed our decision to steer clear of the Sphere, a “ripe manifestation of risk capital, a giant mushroom sprouting out of the fungal network of the attention economy.” Oof. The piece hits all the low points: the “twerpiness” of John Mayer; the demographics and behaviors of a crowd that can afford exorbitant ticket prices and travel costs; the show’s retrospective quality; the excess of both official merch and people talking through the music.
Neither of us had ever heard the latter called “chomping.” Maybe this is because, if TDU_Charlie’s comment on reddit is true, it’s a crossover term from Phish. We, too, are more familiar with the more straightforward designation “talkers.” At Stafford Lake last August someone referred to this type as “peripherals,” a touch unfriendly for our taste although we have certainly gotten into it with people who would not STFU. In our experience it’s not a generational divide. We were happy to be shushed last summer by committed young Deadheads dressed in velvet and rags, the sort of figure who is rare but not impossible to encounter at Dead & Co shows.
This is not to say we haven’t spent time with the Dead this year, all of it in locations Paumgarten doesn’t discuss. He notes Phil’s exit following the 50th anniversary Fare Thee Well tour in 2015 and the formation shortly thereafter of Dead & Co, “the one that went big,” but the sprawling ecosystem of Dead shows and audiences that exist outside Las Vegas are not really the point of the article. Dead & Co is coextensive with that ecosystem. We appreciate that by not saying much about it, Paumgarten effectively pulls his coat around the rest of the scene, hiding it from view and potential overconsumption (now that we think about it, “chomping” may be a very accurate term.)
It’s hard not to compare the four shows produced by Terrapin Crossroads this summer with Dead & Co’s version of Dead Forever, aka “a civil war reenactment with a few Vicksburg veterans thrown in for authenticity.” (Our favorite line from that article, we confess.) Outside the Sphere’s air conditioned VR, the world of Terrapin Crossroads feels very much alive, even as its offerings are greatly reduced from the programming in their permanent space, operated by Jill and Phil Lesh from 2012-2021. We still really miss that location which was nothing if not porous and probably a headache for members of the yacht club it abutted. People without tickets often spread their blankets on boulders lining the road near the entrance to the club and listened for free, although we also witnessed plenty of boats named Stella Blue or Bertha anchored in the creek during shows. You can see the Terrapin sign from 580, a flagpole with a boat on top inherited from the previous owners of a fish restaurant. Apparently the building remains empty and is for sale. There is probably something longer to be written here about the “& Co” of Dead & Co versus the “& Friends” of Phil Lesh & Friends.
There are obvious differences: the cost for starters, around $100 for a ticket to a Terrapin show as we write this. Not cheap but not impossible either, especially for an all day affair. There are the handmade hats and bikini tops for sale. There’s the generational continuity, with kids getting their faces painted and jumping in a bounce house at the McNears Beach Park show a few weeks ago. Our blanket formed the edge of an informal track where toddlers ran a wide loop through the crowd and then passed out in the shade. People in their 20s and 30s wearing patchwork pants and vests jumped ecstatically in the grass which gets as muddy as you might expect by the end of the day. Like the old Terrapin location, the Beach Park is also porous, with kids swimming in a public pool just behind the fence separating the show from the parking lot and families fishing and picnicking beyond that. You could probably hear the music there, although the sound wouldn’t be great. Like the old location the stage is set up right in front of the water and at one point the speakers were blowing around in wind gusting off the bay. The Taylor St. production crew kept a close eye on the situation, confident in their setup. Classic Grateful Dead roadies. (One came over to stop our neighbor from hanging a hammock in a nearby tree, a potential hazard which Clive, off work for the day, was assisting with and roundly teased for: “I said to myself, that can’t be Clive, can it?!?")
Terrapin’s commitment to carrying on and extending the weave of musical traditions from which the Dead emerged has been very much on display this summer. Lesh originally modeled the project on Helm Family Midnight Ramble, and that impulse has defined the first three 2024 shows. Volumes 1 and 2 at the Bruns Ampitheater / Cal Shakes kicked off with the nerdy “Psychedelic Saturday” and “Western Sunday.” On Saturday, Sunshine (Garcia) Becker (no relation to Jerry, it’s confusing) sang vocals on “Hard to Handle” and “Somebody to Love” along with “Eyes of the World” and “Birdsong.” Someone complained to Clive about the lack of Dead songs on the set list, which was mysterious since the band was actually playing “Saint Stephen” right then, but it was true that if you wandered out and back in you might find yourself listening to Jefferson Airplane or the Beatles. This was kind of the point: the Grateful Dead’s catalog has always included dozens of songs by other bands and musicians.
Both days featured musicians from an ever shifting group (Stu Allen, John Molo, Steven Adams, Elliot Peck, Jason Crosby) who are carrying the music forward in the Bay Area and nationally. As always, the band included special guests including at least one we had never encountered before, Bay Area violinist Briana di Mara. Peter Rowan headlined on Sunday, sitting in on “Cumberland Blues,” “Big River” and “Mama Tried” along with a number of his own songs. Stephanie had never heard “From My Mountain (Calling You)” and it’s been on repeat since.
Volume 3 of Terrapin Crossroads on July 21 offered another kind of anniversary, an homage to the Grateful Dead’s 1974 Hollywood Bowl performance that same day fifty years earlier. This was not exactly the Dark Star Orchestra model, in which entire shows from the past are recreated. Instead, each band played some songs from the 1974 show but not everything was performed (we are still hoping for “Ship of Fools,” maybe at Volume 4 on August 18?) We can’t remember if Greg Loiacono & Stingray picked up part of the Hollywood Bowl setlist, but Stu Allen & Mars Hotel nabbed “China Cat Sunflower,” “I Know You Rider,” “Big River,” “Row Jimmy,” and “Around and Around” while dropping in “Brokedown Palace” and “Terrapin Station” (neither of which the band played on that day in 1974; we remain curious about other connections these songs may have with the Hollywood Bowl show or not.) Phil Lesh & Friends took “Jack Straw,” “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “Sugaree,” “Playing in the Band,” “Wharf Rat,” and “Truckin',” ending with an epic “Sugar Magnolia” during which we properly lost our minds after crying through “Wharf Rat,” two years now since Clive’s brother died. Stephanie’s body unexpectedly remembered where the propulsive energy of spinning comes from, the wheel into which one’s hip turns again and again.
Because Stanley Jordan was playing we got “Over the Rainbow” too, transcendent even without Mikaela Davis on harp. Her flight got canceled in the midst of that tech meltdown, the same day Biden pulled out of the US presidential race. At the DSO show a few weeks earlier, a benefit for the Rex Foundation, we learned that Trump got shot at that afternoon. Someone wandered around shouting “Hotel Pennsylvania.” We were standing by the railing at the very edge of the lawn and every time we turned our heads someone else had sauntered up to take a photograph, a seemingly endless line of men with cameras. One of them was the same person who complained at Terrapin Crossroads Volume 1 about the lack of Dead songs. The complainer didn’t recognize Clive and started a conversation about the Sphere. He told us that “John Mayer brings it—if you get high enough.”
After Melvin Seals & Jerry Garcia Band opened, DSO performed a show from July 13, 1984. Donna Godchaux wasn’t in the band that year which left DSO vocalist Lisa Mackey with nothing to sing, so they covered “Piece of My Heart” during the encore (wow.) As far as we know—and we would love to be wrong about this—Dead Forever at the Sphere has not featured any women musicians or vocalists. Clive reminded us while writing this that you do indeed just have to poke around, and it turns out that Maggie Rogers sat in with Dead & Co at Madison Square in 2019. We are also pretty sure that Mikaela Davis first started playing with Dead bands after a Tiny Desk concert with Weir whose side project, The Wolf Brothers, often features younger musicians including the amazing Brittany Spencer. Still, if we restrict this paragraph to just summer 2024, we’ve heard Elliot Peck, Sunshine (Garcia) Becker, Briana di Mara, Holly Bowling, and Vicki Randle at Terrapin shows so far, a list that would have included Mikaela Davis had she made it. Earlier this spring we saw Nicki Bluhm sing with Phil Lesh & Friends at the Warfield.
It’s hard not to consider Lesh and Weir as aging statesmen themselves, with nearly a decade between them (Phil is 84 and Bobby is 76.) In recent years, Phil has appeared to us in the purple light of the Fillmore as a benevolent apparition from the future, the wires connected to his bass evoking a cyborgian plug-in. Bobby regularly posts videos of himself on IG doing TRX and yoga on the road, meditating and running. On the jumbotron his billowing white hair, moustache, and bandanas lend Weir a cowboy vibe, a patriarch leading the family ranch through changing times. Visually, the Clubhouse Sessions could not be more different. They appear to be filmed in the actual basement or garage of someone’s Marin house.
The wood paneled space of the Clubhouse videos also sort of evokes the Grate Room at the old Terrapin Crossroads location that closed in 2021. We don’t know the full details of what happened there although one can guess. Along with pandemic closures and lost revenue, it had something to do with the expiration of the lease for a small public park adjacent to the restaurant and club which Phil and Jill Lesh put $200k into developing and which cost $15,000 annually to rent from the city (in addition to whatever it cost to lease the buildings.) Every conversation on this subject that we have had while standing in line at local shows ends with a grim financial picture, one that did not prove easily solved by the Leshes, who presumably wanted to retire from the challenges of maintaining the space. Nor would it seem that the location was something their sons could easily take on. Much is being carried forward by the next generation of Leshes, but instead of running a venue, Brian and Graham produce the roving shows we’ve been loving so much. Clive was able to partner with them and with Paper Moon Productions this summer to host the Volume 1 & 2 shows, Psychedelic Saturday and Western Sunday, at The Bruns Ampitheater—a dream, and the sort of cooperation that may be one way forward for local performing arts spaces having a harder and harder time staying alive.
Friends reading this will know that Clive just came through an epic emergency fundraising campaign without which Cal Shakes would not have been able to produce their upcoming 50th anniversary production. We have been thinking about As You Like It all summer and quoting this line from the play back and forth to each other. I like this place. And willingly could waste my time in it. We’ve said it while walking up the hill at The Bruns, or picking up trash in the parking lot, a space where people relentlessly pull off the freeway to dump their broken appliances and burger wrappers. We’ve said it while laying on the grass at McNears Beach Park waiting for the music to begin. I like this place. And willingly could waste my time in it. The scale of what it takes to maintain an outdoor, off grid venue like The Bruns is daunting, let alone producing plays that cost over half a million dollars while the donor class that once supported cultural institutions like Cal Shakes declines or takes their funding elsewhere.
It would be silly to conflate the economies of something like the Sphere with that of local music and theater venues. Nor do we want to confuse the challenges faced by small local arts nonprofits like The Bruns / Cal Shakes with for profit models like Terrapin Crossroads. Still, as organizations like Freight and Salvage or the Rex Foundation demonstrate, keeping local and non commercial scenes alive often requires subsidization. It’s difficult to imagine anyone making a profit from the Terrapin shows beyond their wages at the end of the day. We can’t help but wonder how much Dead & Co is making, a question that led us to a very sad misspelling of “Estimated Prophet.” This person provides an estimate. Basically, it’s a lot.
We have said it before and we will say it again, a Deadhead could do far worse than to live in the Bay Area. We love our local through and through, and are so grateful to be here.
A handful of upcoming dates to keep in mind:
Peter Rowan with Sam Grisman Project, August 17
Sunday Daydream volume 4, August 18
Melvin Seals & JGB, September 27 & 28
Melvin Seals & JGB, October 11
And, of course, As You Like It! Running from September 12 - 29.
xoxo
Stephanie & Clive
p.s. here’s Nicki Bluhm singing Sugar Mag at the Fillmore with Phil & Friends this spring: