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What a day July 18th, 2000 was! Phil Lesh and his rotating entourage of Dead-playing musicians were performing in Toronto at the Molson Amphitheatre with the great Bob Dylan. Of course I drove down for it, as did pretty much everyone I knew in Ottawa at the time.
I tell you, there’s really something to be said about the local(ish) communities that develop around this Grateful Dead thing. It’s just such a loving, happy crowd of generally pleasant-or-better people and on show day you see everyone at their best. Hugs from old friends, hugs from new friends, hugs from utter strangers, it’s a thousand-armed mass of tie-dyed warm & fuzzy.
And familiar faces just pop up everywhere. Every beer line, every bathroom run, every romp across the lawn presents another round of hugs and how-ya-doing’s, and all of it punctuated with beautiful music.
Which is, of course, what brings together the community in the first place.
Dylan was great as always (contrary to what everyone will tell you), delivering a mostly obscure set that ended with an encore that was a mini-set of the greatest hits of his catalogue, also known as: some of the finest, most elegant and timeless songs ever written (Things Have Changed, Like a Rolling Stone, Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, Highway 61 Revisited, Blowin’ in the Wind).
Because of the double-bill nature of the day Phil & Friends only played one set but it was a lot of fun. The guitarists on hand for the day’s activities were the dude from Little Feat and Jimmy Herring, with whom I was at the time quite smitten. He’s an old hippie with devastating chops, effortlessly squeezing sinewy Steve Vai-like lines into spots that anyone else would have been forced to leave empty.
I was so taken with Jimmy Herring that I almost paid attention to him, but fortunately I was able to tune him out and focus in on the most creative, inventive bass player in the history of recorded rock music. Phil Lesh (1940-2024) was just an endless stream of melodic ideas – the guy was like Paul McCartney let loose – and I can’t bring myself to not love him forever. Even when he sang, though to be honest that’s when I would generally zoom in on that Herring fellow.
And so we all danced into the night – or at least to the end of the one-song encore – before retreating to a thousand afterparties. Or maybe there was just one big afterparty at the Comfort Zone or something…I won’t pretend to try to remember.
Todd Man Out 