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I woke up pretty early on June 16th, 2004 (especially for a guy who had sat soaking in the hotel’s hot tub until 4am the night before after seeing his first Dead show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre); at 9:15am to be exact. And though 9:15 is plenty early to be sure, it was just a moment or two too late for me to catch the full, free breakfast that came with our stay at the Marriott in the outskirts of Denver.
As sleepy (and lazy) as I was, I was very, very pleased to see that it was raining out. I found myself bunked down with a crew of golfers, and they were so convinced that I was going to enjoy spending the afternoon with them on the links that they absolutely insisted I join them. Saved by the lousy weather outside, I kept my activity to a minimum: I joined an away-team to acquire styrofoam coolers and plenty of beers and ice to fill them and that was the extent of my day.
One of our crew agreed to designated drive so we hit the lots early in anticipation of The Dead at Red Rocks Amphitheatre (The Dead being the remaining members of The Grateful Dead – namely drummers Bill and Mickey, guitarist Bobby, and bass player extraordinaire Phil – along with three notorious sidemen, and Red Rocks being one of the most picturesque and downright spectacular outdoor concert venues in North America). The band was settled in for a five-night run but we weren’t; this was our last night of just two.
We had partied pretty hard the night before but we still dug into our coolers undaunted. Soon we realized that our eyes were much bigger than our livers and there was just no way we were going to drink anywhere close to the amount of ice cold beers we had brought to the parking lot with us. So we decided to sell free beers to passersby. It was often a surprisingly hard sell, but we had a good time and we still had a healthy supply to keep us going until well after the concert.
We made it inside in time for Warren Haynes’ opening set this time – we had missed it the previous night – and I’m glad we did. One man singing to thousands, and you could hear a hippie drop in there. He really held the crowd completely captive, and it was a really impressive set all around.
Warren was also one of the aforementioned sidemen on the gig (keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and guitarist Jimmy Herring were the others) and it was a great night of music with lots and lots of peak moments. Bob Weir started off All Along the Watchtower by forgetting the second line and in a feeble effort to cover up his mistake he decided to skip every second line of the song. It landed somewhere between funny and lame but that’s fine; I forgive.
They opened the second set with a Neil Young’s Cortez The Killer (which was indeed killer) and eventually got to playing their funky little hit Fire On The Mountain, which seems like a must-play at Red Rocks. I mean, Mother Nature carved the venue out of the top of a mountain of antiquity that overlooks the modern, sparkling lights of Denver off in the inky distance – it’s really quite an astounding sight to behold – and yeah, when The Dead are playing there it seems to me like they gotta play Fire On the Mountain. The drums/space that followed was shorter and less fascinating than the night before (when it stood as the highlight of the concert), but I always like it anyway and I did again on this night.
A couple of covers closed the set: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (following a Beatles trend that spilled over from the night before) and Midnight Hour (harkening back to the first set’s After Midnight). The encore was pretty special too, Feeling Bad into a folky, lovey And We Bid You Good Night, which I had never heard before. It was all quite breathtaking, and it made me wish I could have seen more than just the two concerts.
We made it back to the lot after the show and had a picnic with all the food we had brought while we tried to drink as many beers as possible before being asked to pack it up, a demand that was made all too soon. A younger guy named Matthew was walking around our end of the lot asking if anybody was going his way, turned out we were so we gave him a ride, which effectively saved his butt. He was travelling alone from Boston, staying by himself in a hotel right near ours. He thought we had done him a pretty big solid with the ride, but he hadn’t seen nothin’ yet. The five of us were getting on a smattering of airplanes the next day so we dropped the kid off at his hotel’s front door and loaded him down with treats, not the least of which was a styrofoam cooler overflowing with frosty beers and a bunch of left over junk food. We even threw in a Canada flag pin that someone had in their pocket for just such an occasion. When we pulled away he was just standing there with his arms full of tasty shwag staring at us with his jaw agape, shaking his head in the face of his positive karmic turn. That was fun.
Back at our rooms the five of us managed a final drink or two together before the other guys all went down for the night. I repeated my solo late-night hot tub performance from the previous night and soaked for an hour or so before getting to bed at 4am for the second night running. I did, however, manage to rouse myself at the earlier hour of 8:45am, just in time (this time) to catch that free breakfast, which was well worth it. It gave me such a positive start on the day that Chris, Evil and I squeezed in a drive through the mountains for a few hours while the other two guys napped, and we still managed to get back in time to check out and get to the airport by 1pm.
In all, it was excessively good times out there and Red Rocks Amphitheatre instantly became hands-down my favourite outdoor venue. It’s hard to believe that I’ve not been back since.
Todd Man Out 