August 9th marked the 30th anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s passing. The Grateful Dead were a band from 1965-1995, that’s thirty years. We are now at the point in time where Jerry has been gone longer than the band he founded was in existence. My tenure as an active Deadhead lasted for twenty one of those thirty years. On August 6, 1974, the bus came by and I got on, that was the night of my first Dead show. To say that the Grateful Dead have had a profound and lasting effect on my life would be a gross understatement. A series of random events that  happened to me around the Dead scene back then seemed insignificant at the time, but like a seed that’s planted have grown into an orchard of glorious trees that continue to bear fruit.

At a show in Colorado in 1985 I took a random photograph of a smiling hippie girl. This woman is one of my oldest and most cherished friends, our roots have grow deep together, branches reaching towards the sky. Through her I met several other fellow travelers whom I cannot imagine my life without, brothers and sisters in every sense of the word. At a show in Oakland in the early 90s a chance encounter with yet another smiling, swirling hippie girl led several years later to a blind date with Carol, the love of my life and mother of our children, we have built a beautiful life together.

Just a small sample of the 200+ Dead shows I’ve seen.

Experiences like mine are not unique. Just ask any Deadhead and you’ll hear wild tales of serendipitous meetings and strange occurrences at Dead shows that have forever altered and enriched their lives. The Dead scene was a tasty stew; a big, bubbling pot of gumbo that we all feasted on and Jerry Garcia was the master chef. His death at the age of 53 was a seismic event, the shock waves of which continue to reverberate to this day. Like Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination or the senseless murder of John  Lennon, people remember where they were when they heard the news about Jerry. 

The burgeoning  jam band scene took off when the Grateful Dead ended. With Dead disciples Phish leading the way, bands like String Cheese Incident, Leftover Salmon and Widespread Panic have since become the standard bearers of improvisational music and a “freak freely” traveling show not unlike that of the Dead. And those Grateful Dead tribute bands? They’re too numerous to count. People are still itching to dance to Dead music and these bands deliver by faithfully recreating the music note-for-note. Some, like Dark Star Orchestra are so good that if you close your eyes… Of course since Jerry’s passing, spin-off bands with actual surviving members of the Grateful Dead have continued to play. There’s been The Other Ones, Further, Phil Lesh and Friends, Ratdog and The Wolf Brothers to name a few. And god bless old Bobby Weir, looking like a later day Methuselah he’s currently front and center with the juggernaut known as Dead and Company, talk-singing/croaking  out the words to all of our favorite songs. I’m not a DeadCo fan, the way they’ve repackaged the Dead scene into a Disney-esque “experience” is not something that I choose to support. However, the fact that Bobby and his band continue to turn a whole new generation on to the music and the ethos that is the Grateful Dead is a good thing and he deserves great credit for that. In these dark and desperate times of Trump II, we could all use a healthy dose (pun intended) of the Grateful Dead.

So Jerry, thank you for all that you’ve given us. Each year when August rolls around we celebrate the day of your birth on the 1st and the moment of your passing on the 9th. The music and the mindset that you’ve left us with will continue to enrich our lives and to spawn new generations of Deadheads for hopefully a very long time. Rest easy Captain Trips.