Tea Leaf Green with Elmwood
Where: 9:30, 815 V St. NW
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Info: $17; 9:30.com;
Call it the downside to hailing from San Francisco, but everywhere Tea Leaf Green tours, the band is invariably hailed as the second coming of the Grateful Dead.
Yet no matter how often Tea Leaf Green’s jam sound — which meshes country, classic rock, and a dash of folk — is held up to that standard it’s far from a given.
“I don’t really hear that,” vocalist/keyboard player Trevor Garrod said. “I guess coming from San Francisco you get the comparison. I’m old enough that I went to a few Dead concerts [when I was younger] but none of us were huge fans of the band until we already had a band.”
Tea Leaf Green always makes a conscious decision not to follow in any other musicians’ footsteps. Although guitar player Josh Clark has said the idea can be tempting — it is, after all, easy to follow a trend and satisfy some fans — Tea Leaf Green has always had a specific sound.
Toward the end of summer, fans will be able to have a fresh taste of that when the band releases a new album of songs they’ve played for years but never recorded. That will be followed by an album of new material which Tea Leaf Green is road testing during its current tour, said Garrod.
“We have always loved these songs but waited to record them,” he said. “Now we said ‘We need to get these down before we do anything else. …’ This will be a big year for the band.”
Despite the recording the band will maintain its road warrior status, changing set lists each night. Like many jam bands, Tea Leaf Green has fans that follow them from concert date to concert date.
“I admire the bands that can rehearse everything, get it down, and then stay with the same set list,” Garrod said. “That seems like it’d be a lot easier. We just feel like we’d be disappointing our fans to do that.”
Although Garrod doesn’t say it, it clearly takes a special confidence to continually troll the band’s immense catalog, playing in a deceptively laid-back style that belies its somewhat complex music.
Anyone who’s ever strummed a guitar can attest that jam band music — played well — is a lot simpler than it seems.
“Chaos can be our name,” Garrod said. “Just last night I forgot some of the [lyrics of a song]. I just couldn’t remember.”
His solution? Move into an instrumental jam.
“You just keep it moving,” he said.
