Pretending on a Stage

On Trey Anastasio, the Grateful Dead, and Imitating One’s Heroes

Fare Thee Well. Anyone who cares about this stuff has to be incredibly excited. And at least a little nervous.

The event is framed as the Grateful Dead’s last stand. Which is technically true, as far as it can be true when they are down one Jerry Garcia, but there are other variables in the equation.

We of course have the Grateful Dead, the ineffable headwaters of so much of the music we know and love, saying definitively that this is the last time they will play together. And we can’t help but believe them; this isn’t Coventry. The surviving original members of the Dead, a band who got their start 50 years ago (!), need to be believed when they say they’re calling it done after this short run — if only because they have fewer days ahead of them than behind them. For Deadheads, an incredibly sentimental and nostalgic bunch on the whole, this lends an inevitable solemnity to the affair, given this statement of finality.

But also entering the equation is Trey Anastasio, by now so much more than heir apparent to the improv rock throne that Jerry Garcia once occupied. For most of his professional career, Trey has tried to steer himself and Phish away from the Garcia/Dead comparison. But it’s all too clear that there’s a strong tie. The lineup for Fare Thee Well confirms what so many have suspected, dreamed about, and pushed for: a cross pollenation of two of the most revered, iconic, and musically potent improvisational rock bands of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Grateful Dead. Trey Anastasio. Anyone who cares about this stuff has to be genuinely excited. And at least a little nervous.

It Wouldn't Twist Around That Way

If you’re like me, you’re thinking to yourself: will this equation balance? There have emerged three ways to answer that question.

The Purist Deadheads

The village elders and protectors of the hallowed history of it all want nothing to do with it. What’s old is gone, they say. Jerry Garcia was absolutely unique, and there’s no use in trying to rekindle the Grateful Dead without him.

To them I say: you’re absolutely right. Please stay home and listen to the primary source weath of history on Archive.org, basking in techicolor memories of the good old days. In some ways I am jealous of you for being able to make the separation between what is and what you would dream it to be, for tempering your expectations and not seeking more than could possibly be achieved, and for having such an accessible and affordable path to your bliss.

Aside: And while there are some who don’t want the Grateful Dead sullied by such outsiders, who can fault Trey for saying yes to such an invitation? Trey was at one point one of us in the crowd, the shaggy-haired kid on the rail hanging on every note. Who among us would turn down the opportunity to step into one of our hero’s shoes for a weekend or two?

The Dead-Leaning

Those who place the Dead above Phish in their own rankings of the heart and ear want the final hurrah to be a nostalgia act: they would rather have a Garcia understudy copy the Fat Man’s licks as closely as possible, and invoke the familiar Garcia sonic tone of the original thing. They would have been overjoyed at a faithful recreation of the original, and would have gladly given the nod to John Kadlecik/Jeff Mattson/Stu Allen in order to enable them to close their eyes and convince themselves that Jerry was still here.

To them I say: this already exists, and has for some time. It’s called a tribute band, and it just so happens that the Grateful Dead has spawned some incredibly adept tribute bands in its wake. There is probably a Dead band playing weekly in every major city in the US. These Grateful Dead tribute bands give the music a near constant live showing, making a faithful recreation to mark the 50th that much less significant. Dark Star Orchestra tours heavily and can be counted upon to gig near you once or twice every year. They are uncanny in their ability to recreate the sound of the Grateful Dead, eerily so sometimes, and so much so that the musicians they are impersonating have willingly and gladly cross-pollinated with them.

The four remaining members of the Grateful Dead have themselves dabbled with such witchcraft since Garcia’s passing and have definitely blurred the lines between the original form and its shadow, but for all their prowess, the Kadleciks and Mattsons of the world remain actors. Impersonators. And at the end of the day, Lesh, Weir, Hart, and Kreutzmann are not impersonators. They are the real McCoy, the Ur source of the music, and they are the ones calling the shots for Fare Thee Well. Because of that, it’s probably not as interesting to them to become their own tribute band.

The Phish-Leaning

Or, at the very least, those whose ears would be thrilled to accept this music as its own unique creation, something that lies just outside the borders of the Grateful Dead’s domain. These folks (of which I am one) have probably first latched onto Phish (or another band), not the Dead, and tend to see this as an opportunity to make something new more than an opportunity to say goodbye to something old.

To them I say: get ready. This is going to be something worth remembering. It’s also going to be something that probably will not meet your incredibly lofty Phishhead expectations. If you let go of what you want and let it be what it is, you’re in for an incredible treat.

Throwing Loaded Dice

As things have played out, it’s increasingly apparent that those who are leaning away from the purist Grateful Dead position are going to turn out to be the big winners. Here’s why: The surviving four members of the Dead, the people who are actually goung to play the music, the people who spent a good 30 years in close contact with Garcia and knew him like family, do not want to impersonate a younger version of themselves. They have a clear idea as to what they want for their own send-off. They knew Garcia in a way none of us have, knew him in all his imperfect, fallible humanity, and because of this are not interested in making music with someone who is doing their best to imitate Jerry, their bandmate of 30 years, their friend. If they were, Furthur would still be together, or at least, their choice of guitarist for the event would be different.

No, the remaining four are not interested in becoming a living tribute to their former selves. They are still musicians with creative urges; they want a chance to engage in some sort of authentic music making, and they want to do it with a musician they, the music community, (and yes, the execs, promoters, and other bean counters behind the curtain) hold in highest regard: Our Man Trey.

Aside: The sub-debates in this camp about other potential fits fly around, but aren't very interesting to me. Trey Anastasio clearly stands out as the most capable. Steve Kimock has the psychedelic sparkle and soft touch required of Garcia’s ballads, but isn't as handy with the American Songbook of folk influenced tunes, and does not sing, which immediately takes him out of the running. Warren Haynes, a frequent collaborator, had already found his niche with the Allman Brothers, a much more Southern whiskey-and-cigarettes sort of endeavor, one that catered to a certain swagger and ego in soloing that Garcia never had. And while Trey definitely has an ego and often solos like it, he has also spent his professional career trying to get out of his own way for the sake of the music. Something he no doubt learned on the rail staring up at Jerry.

Would You Hear My Voice Come Through the Music?

One of the things that is still hard for me to reconcile, though, is just how Trey is going to mix with the Grateful Dead. To outsiders’ ears, there’s little discernible difference between these two psychedelic hippie rock titans. But to those of us on the inside, the differences are immediate and glaring:

Singing voice and Personality. Garcia had an introspective, shy, quivering quality to his vocal delivery. He sang vulnerable and heartbroken (Stella Blue, Wharf Rat); he sang of the outlaw frontier (Loser, Loose Lucy), and his muses were traditional folk songsters who spent their nights sleeping under the stars of the American West. By contrast, Anastasio is a product of the suburbs of New Jersey and the shine of Rock and Roll in the 1970's and 1980's. His lyrics are word salad (Stash), TV commercials (Harry Hood), inside jokes with childhood friends (McGrupp), and abstract splashes of imagery (Theme from the Bottom). As of late Trey has pushed towards more heartfelt moments of tenderness in his singing (Summer of ‘89, Show of Life), but it has generally come across as ineffective.

Paintbrush. The Grateful Dead, by and large, are impressionists: their music represents and resembles versions of the world we live in most of the time, and when we listen to them play, in our mind’s eye, we can picture human beings playing guitars and drums and such. Phish, on the other hand, is decidedly postmodern. Their music rarely adheres to modern popular music conventions (how many Phish songs have a verse-chorus-bridge structure? Sample in a Jar? what else?), a much wider pallete of tones and timbres are employed, and when we listen to them play, in our mind’s eye, sometimes all we see is the mothership about to take off into strange and wonderful parallel galaxies that look nothing like the Earth we know.

Mythology. Compare the imagined worlds that the Grateful Dead and Phish have created. One one hand we have Terrapin Station, a place of mythic quality that channels the Greek muses from its first line and embraces the epic poems and stories of the Western canon. It has celestial bodies, the wonders of nature, and timeless riddles of existence. On the other hand, we have Gamehendge, a cartoonish sort of land with characters like lizards (who are people?), multibeasts, and mockingbirds. We have hastily sketched heroes and villians, who exploits are less shrouded in myth and more simply incompletely told. Terrapin Station basks in eternal golden twilight; Gamehendge is held together by glue and rubber bands.

Tone and Playing Style. Garcia’s choice of gear and approach to playing guitar is markedly different from Anastasio’s. Garcia was a student of acoustic music first, and set up his electic rig to accommodate an acoustic picker’s technique. His guitar’s tone is thinner, and (perhaps because he had Weir by his side) his soloing is almost exclusively comprised of single note runs. While he uses passing tones and leading notes heavily, Garcia generally stays “inside,” that is, within the scale tones that the key of the song calls for. Anastasio, by contrast, is simultaneously a child of arena rock and a student of the avant garde. He employs a high gain amplifier, stacked overdrive pedals, and an incredible amount of compression to fatten up his tone to more Led Zeppelin or Frank Zappa type specs. And becasue he is the only guitarist in his main band, his technique includes a lot more chorded melodies. He harmonizes with himself in his solos, and in his compositions — think about those big release notes at the peak of Guyute. And Trey is definitely not afraid to reach into some more angular harmonies (moreso in the early 90's than now) — his ears welcome a bit more dissonance and tension than Jerry’s.

Leadership. Bands, internally, are a very interesting case study in group organizational behavior. Some bands need strong, out in front leadership. Other bands operate more democratically. This is true of both the music that is made, and how other band decisions get done. Here too is where Phish and the Dead differ. The Grateful Dead, for all their anarchist and counterculture disdain of authority, followed one person. Jerry was the Pied Piper, leading everyone along with his water-like runs up and down the guitar. You can hear it in the soloing — the improvised music went where Jerry wanted it to go. Weir didn’t have that sort of gravity, nor Lesh, nor any of the keyboardists. This is less so with Phish, a band who has consciously practiced a shared or rotating leadership structure. Anastasio has the ability and ego to grab the wheel at any moment, and many Phish moments are due to this, but again, he is also very conscious of getting out of his own way for the sake of the music. As of late, it’s often Mike or Page that takes the reins and leads Phish off the edge of the musical cliff and into uncharted territory.

The Music Plays the Band

How, then, shall the two mix? One does not need to completely imagine: thankfully, we have April 15, 16, and 17, 1999 to give us some clues. This storied three night run is chock full of the stuff of Jamband fantasy: a Phish/Grateful Dead crossover was always something that people wanted to see (and having Page on board didn't hurt things either).

I have listened to these recordings many times, and am listening to them now as I write. The one thing I keep coming back to is that they sound decidedly Phishy. Maybe it’s because the members of Phish outnumber the members of the Grateful Dead. Maybe it’s becasue they play songs like Wolfman’s Brother, Prince Caspian, and Down with Disease (and oh, Phil, as much as I love you, please don’t play that song live ever again). But I think it has much more to do with how Trey decides to take the musical lead, like he imagined Jerry might. The difference is that his tone and style are so distinctly Trey, and as a result, there is less about it that resembles the Grateful Dead.

But letting go of whether it’s more Dead or more Phish…the music. Taken out of a context we could never totally do away with, the music is phenomenal.

He Opens Up My Mouth when it’s Time for Me to Talk

Even though I lean away from the purist position, my singular hope for the upcoming Fare Thee Well shows is that Trey doesn’t. I hope he decides that he falls in the Dead-leaning camp and attempts to pay direct tribute to Garcia by imitating him as close as he can. In the same way an American actor affects a British accent for a role, I hope that Trey tries to affect Jerry’s “accent” when he plays and sings at the Fare Thee Well shows.

This is the utilitarian choice. It will ultimately make the most number of people happy. I think that we can count on the fact that no matter how hard he tries, Trey will still sound like Trey, so I hope and encourage him to try to sound as much like Jerry as he possibly can I hope Trey doesn’t just get the melodies under his fingers, but he studies Jerry’s technique and signature soloing traits: his cascading pull off technique, his use of sixteenth note triplets in solos, his leading and passing tones.

I can see Trey Anastasio himself wanting the same thing. It’s sort of a strange thing to say, especially after I’ve earlier advocated for original and new music, but let’s remember a couple things:

1. Again, Trey was once on the other side of the rail, looking up at the stage, at Jerry’s feet. No doubt he spent time in his teenager years learning Jerry licks in his bedroom, playing along to Wake of the Flood and Mars Hotel.
2. Trey, and Phish, have frequently engaged in this sort of exercise— their Halloween “musical costumes” have been an incredible undertaking to approach making music as another band they respect would see it. Trey has tried on George Harrison, Keith Richards, and Pete Townsend. He surprised everyone by trying on David Gilmour on a whim that one time. He covers Jimmy Page, Frank Zappa, and Jimi Hendrix. Why not do the same for Garcia? It’s quite literally how Phish started, after all…
3. In interviews, Trey has already said he’s been digging deep into the Dead’s catalog, spending many hours a day studying Garcia’s licks and passages.

Kadlecik, Mattson, and Allen have studied this and can produce a convincing replication of Jerry’s accent; I think it would be great to see a musician as accomplished as Trey to attempt it. I bet that if he asks nicely, Trey could even borrow Jerry’s old rig.

This Twitter post was a big step in the right direction: Trey rewired one of his Languedocs to be a little bit more Jerry. And it’s not just one of his Languedocs, if we’re looking for hidden meanings. It’s his first Languedoc, the one he played in the 80's when Jerry was alive, when the Dead were a thing.

And he’s already put it to use:

Results on Trey affecting the Jerry accent are mixed here. He is definitely more deliberate with his phrasing, tentative even, but when he digs his heels in to steer the jam, his lines and his tone are nothing but himself.