Arrington, Va.
Back in 1989, when the Grateful Dead released their final studio album, its title served as a fair reminder of the band’s improbable survival and enduring relevance: Built to Last.
As it happens, last year, the Grateful Dead once again found themselves among the top worldwide musical acts. Over five dates in mid-summer 2015, they put on a series of concerts in Santa Clara and Chicago collectively billed as Fare Thee Well. Promoted as their 50th-anniversary celebration, and the final performances together of its “core four”—bassist Phil Lesh, guitarist Bob Weir, and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart—the five shows sold upwards of 360,000 tickets and grossed more than $52 million, garnering an additional 400,000 pay-per-view subscriptions.
Yet the concerts proved more than just an enormous commercial success. The music was good—great, even. The percussion was precise, the bass, guitars, and keyboards were expressive, and the vocals were rustic but true to form. Neither the songs nor the musicians seemed to show signs of age, and following the final encore, it seemed hard to imagine the band members were ready to hang up their instruments and mosey on down the golden road.
And of course, they didn’t. With a slightly varied lineup, they continued touring throughout the fall and following summer as Dead & Company. As for the fans, they’re still out there, as well, and there may have been no bigger convergence of Deadhead culture than the recent Lockn’ Festival, held the final weekend of this past August on Oak Ridge Farm in Nelson County, Virginia, about 150 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.
Now in its fourth year, Lockn’ brands itself as the primary music festival for jam bands—groups whose concert performances often feature long-form improvisation. These bands are known for following the Grateful Dead ethos: ceaseless tours, different set lists each night, and free-access taping policies. Although jam bands generally fall under the broader category of rock, it’s common for musicians to incorporate elements of blues, funk, bluegrass, or electronica. And the key elements are those jams, the instrumental variations that stretch a song beyond its original structure.
Fans find these jams exciting, immersive, and ethereal. Critics, however, find them aimless and indulgent. If a studio track is perfectly edited and engineered, why make it longer live? Although it’s hard to account for musical tastes, the continued popularity of jam bands attests to the value of live music in the digital age: When everything else seems neatly packaged and tightly choreographed, live music still compels fans with its promise of variety, risk, and surprise.
When Lockn’ organizers announced that more than 30,000 people attended this year’s festival, it meant the population of Nelson County had effectively tripled for those four days in August. With such an influx of transient music fans—and fans of a genre that, whether fairly or not, is often associated with recreational drug use—one might think the local citizens would be wary of Lockn’s impact on the region, economic boost aside.
“There was some concern in the community for the first festival, because it was an unknown,” says Bonnie Holliday, development director of the North Branch School in Afton, about 25 miles west of Charlottesville. “With that many new people coming in, I think there’s some apprehension.” But now, in the fourth year of Lockn’, has the community accepted the festival? “Not only accepted,” Holliday says. “Most of the community now embraces it.”
Holliday was attending Lockn’ not as a concertgoer but as a community representative: North Branch School is an independent, project-based learning academy serving about 125 students from pre-school through eighth grade. At Lockn’, Holliday and her North Branch colleagues were among the groups on Participation Row, a line of booths at one edge of the main concert field representing nearly 20 social-action and nonprofit organizations, most of them local.
This sense of community consciousness ruled at Lockn’, where local breweries and food vendors were given prime real estate on the show field, not far from a family-friendly zone and collaborative art space. Elsewhere, there were yoga sessions, guided bike rides, and river tubing excursions. Camping accommodations were available for people with disabilities; a nearby Episcopal church offered meditation space and welcomed attendees to its Sunday-morning services. The festival even had its own daily newspaper, the Lockn’ Times, edited by staff from Relix magazine and Jambands.com.
For the most part, many of the counterculture and hippie fashions held true: tie-dyed T-shirts, Chaco and Teva sandals, sun-faded tattoos. Occasionally you would spot a hula-hoop dancer or stick twirler. The oddest thing I saw might have been one fan near the main stage dressed in a ghillie suit—the type of camouflage outfit used by hunters and nature photographers that replicates dense foliage—so that when he/she danced it appeared as if a six-foot-tall garden shrub had come to life with the music. The merchandise vendors catered to this crowd as well, selling patches and stickers, hat pins, dashikis and batik-print dresses, crystals, geodes, and gemstones.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most attendees were white and middle-aged—myself included—since most jam bands have been composed strictly of white male musicians. It may be worth noting, then, that this year’s musical lineup featured a fair amount of diversity.
In the end, however, there was no escaping the shadow (and the melodies) of the Grateful Dead. At one point, you could hear the song “Shakedown Street” three different times within a 24-hour period—first during a late-night set by the percussion-led tribute band Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, the next morning by the bluegrass musicians Keller William’s Grateful Grass, and later that night by original Dead bassist Phil Lesh & Friends.
Grateful Dead iconography pervaded as well, especially the “Steal Your Face” logo—the red-and-blue image of a skull intersected by a bolt of lightning. The most topical bootleg T-shirt stated: “Make America Grateful Again.” One food vendor offered Philafel with Hummus—its sign featuring an eighties-era Phil Lesh playing bass on a background of tie-dye—and even the merchandise vendors referred to Deadhead themes and lyrics: Bear Necessities, Loose Lucy’s, Uncle John’s Outpost, Pop-Pop’s Terrapin Station.
Only Phish, the Vermont quartet that recently celebrated 30 years together, approached the Grateful Dead in fan devotion. Phish headlined two of the four nights and, as such, had more stage space to work with, room for more gear, as well as the support of their vivid and intricate visual backdrop. Without argument, Phish is the largest draw in the jam band scene. Both their shows at this year’s Lockn’ filled the concert field hundreds of yards deep with fans, nearly all of them dancing instinctively to the beat and knowing just when to sing along, launching glow sticks in unison.
Late one night, I spoke with an ophthalmologist from Atlanta, an amateur guitar player who told me his musical tastes aligned more with classic rock: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, and, of course, the Grateful Dead. He praised Phish’s musicianship—”I couldn’t tell where all those sounds were coming from”—but lamented that Phish doesn’t have a lyricist on the order of the Grateful Dead’s Robert Hunter or John Perry Barlow.
It’s a valid point: Phish had just concluded their final set with a 20-minute performance of “You Enjoy Myself,” a song over which fans debate not what the lyrics mean but what the lyrics actually are. In some Phish songs, the vocals serve as another instrument, and sometimes the vocals simply get out of the way as early as possible, allowing space for the band members—bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell, drummer Jon Fishman, guitarist Trey Anastasio—to jam.
That ophthalmologist’s comment about lyrics got me comparing Phish and the Grateful Dead. In terms of legacy, the Grateful Dead’s accomplishment was in writing songs that could be adapted and reshaped as tributes by newer artists. Their Day of the Dead, a 59-track album compilation of cover songs released this past May, would seem to bear this out: The Grateful Dead songbook has been absorbed into the Great American Songbook.
By contrast, Phish’s accomplishment might be in creating songs that cannot be replicated. They create music more idiosyncratic, playful—and willfully obscure. Much of Phish’s output is conceived in the moment. I’d wager Phish won’t spawn nearly so many offshoots and tributes in the years to come. They seem entirely inimitable.
The last night at Lockn’, Phish concluded their encore and closed out the festival with a faithful rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Loving Cup.” The fans dispersed to the sfood vendors, the parking lots, or the sprawling tent villages, leaving behind a concert field piled with glow sticks and smashed plastic cups, cigarette butts, the occasional pair of shattered sunglasses or collapsed camping chair.
It was no enviable job to clean up. Two staff members in yellow jackets stood near the stage, each shaking open an industrial-sized garbage sack.
Did you enjoy the music? I asked them. “Oh, sure,” they replied in unison. Anyone in particular? “This last band, Phish, lot of sounds going on,” said one staffer. “And Gary Clark Jr., I liked his band,” added the other. How about the Grateful Dead? I asked. Are you guys fans of the Grateful Dead? “They weren’t here, were they?” No, I guess they weren’t. But in spirit, undoubtedly.
Joseph Holt teaches in the department of writing studies at the University of Minnesota.
