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New life for the Dead

JOSEPH HUDAK For The Times Leader

Like a Space Shuttle mission, conditions have to be favorable to properly launch a reunion tour. And by Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart’s account, they were far from that when the band reformed as The Dead in 2004 and hit the (rather bumpy) road.

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A new and improved, though still Garcia-less, Grateful Dead will stir up old musical feelings at the arena on Wednesday.

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“That tour was flawed by intertribal fighting,” Hart says with a chuckle, recalling the three-month “Wave that Flag” trek. “It wasn’t the time for it to happen. We weren’t committed, and we weren’t really rehearsed.”

It’s a stark contrast to the resurrected Dead set to play the Wachovia Arena in Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday, a group that’s done nothing but rehearse, practicing a reported 150 songs.

“We played 13 days in a row. This band is hungry and ready to run,” Hart enthuses. “It has serious potential to really exceed anybody’s expectations.”

But, he cautioned during a phone call last month, it’s a work in progress. “Remember, it’s a new band. Just calling it the Dead doesn’t make it the Dead unless you earn that name.”

Fittingly, it’s the man working to unify the country who indirectly unified the iconic jam band: President Barack Obama. In October, the Dead’s surviving principal members — singer-guitarist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, drummer Bill Kreutzmann and Hart — reconvened for the first time in four years to play an Obama campaign benefit in State College.

“The Obama event was a major catalyst. It was worth getting together for and putting aside trivial issues. But it also coincided with healing our personal relationships, which took a long time to work out after Jerry passed on,” Hart says, recalling the Grateful Dead’s beloved leader Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.

Asked if he thought Garcia would still be touring nonstop today, like Bob Dylan or BB King, Hart doesn’t hesitate.

“Sure. We’re road dogs,” he says. “In order to bring your music to the people, you’ve got to go to the people. You can’t play in the same place all the time, unless you want to stay at Caesar’s Palace for three years.”

For the 22-show tour, which kicked off April 12 in North Carolina, Allman Brothers guitarist Warren Haynes is handling some of Garcia’s guitar parts and vocals. During a New York City warm-up gig last month, Haynes sang Garcia’s lines in the snaking “Althea.” Keyboardist Jeff Chimenti rounds out the Dead 2009 lineup.

The younger blood, both of whom were on board for the 2004 tour, allows for more spontaneity within the band, Hart says. “Weaving Warren and Jeff into the mix is a wondrous thing,” he says. “It makes it interesting for us old dogs, watching how these guys are interpreting (the music) and giving it back to us. It’s kind of like a conversation. And that makes for good Grateful Dead music.”

That musical back-and-forth is part of what has kept the band and its legacy relevant, some four decades after its formation in San Francisco. Even more amazingly, the Dead continue to gain new fans, many of whom weren’t alive when the group was recording such classic records as 1970’s “American Beauty” or even 1987’s “In the Dark.” It’s a phenomenon Hart considers “magical.”

“I think it’s partly the ideals that the Grateful Dead stands for in each of their minds, or what they think it stands for,” he explains. “For many reasons, it held the test of time. That’s what makes good music eternal.”

It also makes for some eternal memories, tales straight out of rock ’n’ roll history — like a particularly dirty outdoor concert the band played in the late ’60s.

“We called them the ‘mud people,’ ” Hart says, wistfully recounting an Oregon gig that degenerated into a mud bath for the audience. “It was really hot and humid, and it was the first time they ever used water trucks to spray off the kids. The kids would spray off, get in the mud and then pull 12 more into the mud. … It became like a ritual that could have happened 30,000 years ago.”

For many Deadheads and classic-rock fans, seeing the group perform Wednesday will be their own ritual, a chance to cross paths with old friends, revisit sacred memories and share in a communal experience that, Hart hopes, will leave audiences feeling empowered.

“I want them to take away a good feeling of hope and personal power. It’s an uplifting of spirit. That’s what this band is about,” he says.

And what does Hart himself want to take away?

“I want to come off the road elated and feeling really great—and maybe even wanting to do it again. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.”