ABOVE: Phil Lesh, Bob Wier, Jerry Garcia and Bruce Hornsby perform in 1992. CENTER: A Steal Your Menorah design, a play on the band's

nee

Members of the

tribe share stories

of gatherings of the

tribe — the Grateful

Dead tribe.

Michael Steinberg runs the
Weir Here/Further Listening

Party Facebook page.

44 June 25 • 2015

I

Don Cohen
Contributing Writer

gathering of the tribe
is scheduled for July 4
weekend in Chicago,
when three sold-out concerts at
the 70,000-seat Soldier Field will
celebrate the 50th anniversary of
the Grateful Dead — and the final
time the remaining "core four" of
the band will play together.
The concerts will be held almost
20 years to the day, July 9, 1995, at
Soldier Field, when guitarist Bob
Weir, 67, bassist Phil Lesh, 75, and
drummers Bill Kreutzmann, 69,
and Mickey Hart, 71, played their
fmal concert with lead guitarist
and vocalist Jerry Garcia, who died
soon afterward, leading the band
to call it quits. Hart, the sole Jew
of the group, also is a musicologist
who has collected music from all
around the world.
Tickets for the Chicago concerts
sold out quickly. The first tickets
went on sale in March with fans
sending money orders in more
than 60,000 hand-decorated enve-

lopes. Most didn't
get tickets. When
Ticketmaster
later put tick-
ets online,
an all-time-
record half-
million peo-
ple flooded
the site.
The shows,
often lasting five
hours, also will be
offered as pay-per-view events,
and at select movie theaters around
the country.
Founded in 1965 in Palo Alto,
Calif, the Grateful Dead were
pioneers in San Francisco's psyche-
delic music scene and one of the
original jam bands. Their unique
sound melded rock, folk, bluegrass,
reggae, country and instrumental
jams. Dismissed by mainstream
music fans because of their impro-
visation, identification with drug
culture, diverse styles and off-put-
ting name, the Dead became one of
the top-grossing North American
tours from 1985-1995. Known for

Steal Your Face album.

v„

their live concerts
— first spread
on cassette
tapes, and
now digitized
and available
online —
recordings of
live shows are
often preferred
to their studio
albums.
During the final "Fare
Thee Well" concerts in Chicago,
as well as two in Santa Clara, Calif,
the band will be joined by Phish
singer/guitarist Trey Anastasio
taking the Garcia parts, as well as
singer/keyboardist Bruce Hornsby.
The gathering of the tribe will
certainly include members of the
tribe. Many Jewish fans connect
the Dead with their own Jewish
spiritual path, as evidenced by
a Jews for Jerry website and the
popularity among acolytes of musi-
cal and religious icon Ray Shlomo
Carlebach. Chabadniks used to
camp out to gather Jewish fans for
services, reflection and, of course,

music.
More recently, the St. Louis
Jewish Federation has funded
Unleavened Dead, a weekend
retreat billed as "celebrating and
exploring the connection between
Judaism, the Grateful Dead and
their legion of Jewish fans." Last
year, original band member Phil
Lesh, though not Jewish, participat-
ed in a Passover "Terrapin Nation
Sedet" There are Shabbat programs
named "Blues for Challah," and an
album of Dead songs performed in
Hebrew was released in April.
But beyond the music, the main
draw seems to be community. For
decades, the warm and welcoming
family of Deadheads provided a
connection.
Local fans (some reject the term
Deadhead as pejorative) are mak-
ing plans to mark the occasion of
the concerts with their friends.
Fred Weiss, 52, a digital pub-
lisher who lives in Ann Arbor, dis-
covered the Dead in 1981, during
his freshman year at the University
of Michigan.
"I was living in Mosher Jordan,