Phil Lesh & Friends, Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, NY- 7/14
Steve Urban
2008-08-13
A Wave Upon The Sand Located within the Jones Beach State Park, the Jones Beach Amphitheater is a beachfront open-air arena has a rich musical history. The venue sits inside one of the most beautiful and popular beaches on the East Coach. It’s estimated that 8 million people visit the beach every year. The park was commissioned by Robert Moses and opened in 1929, although the Jones Beach Theatre wasn’t added until 1952. The theatre originally held 8,200 seats and featured a moat between the stage and audience, which was used for many elaborate productions. Today the venue sits close to 15,000 people with an orchestra section over the long-since filled in, moat. Growing up on Long Island, NY, I saw all my first shows at Jones Beach. During Phil Lesh’s 2000 Summer Tour he played his first show at Jones Beach where an amazing “Terrapin Station” > “Scarlet Begonias” blew me away. Phil came back almost every summer after that performing with his band and also The Dead, a total of 16 full sets. On this Sunday in July, the weather is perfect. The small beach next to the Amphitheatre is packed with people cooling off in the water or just hanging out. As I’m walking into the show, shortly after Levon Helm Band ended their opening set with The Band’s classic “The Weight” and there are a few kids with their fingers in the air hoping Jerry will send them down a couple miracles. In the distance outside the parking lot exit the enormous Jones Beach Water Tower catches my eye. The 231 foot high, 315,000-gallon tower was modeled after the St. Marks Cathedral, bell tower in Venice. It draws 1000-year-old water from wells 1100 feet deep and supplies all of the water used at the park. The Art Deco & Italianate-style water tower along with the other buildings and facilities were made from Ohio Sandstone and Barbizon Brick. Robert Moses ordered the construction of the water tower himself. He wanted it to be the central feature of the park greeting the visitors as they arrived. It still sits prominently in a traffic roundabout right outside the Jones Beach Amphitheatre Parking Lot. We’re inside the venue and the band is coming out onto the stage. The 27-year-old Jackie Greene is all in black with a red guitar strap. John Molo sits down at the drums wearing a white button down shirt. Larry Campbell, Bob Dylan’s longtime guitarist and Steve Molitz, keyboardist form the band Particle; take their positions as well. Phil is wearing a forest green polo shirt and jeans, smiling at the crowd, putting in his earplugs behind his amp. The band’s all there. Everyone’s thinking, “What’s it going to be? What are they going to open with?” The Weir/Hart/Hunter tune “Playing in the Band” is a powerful opener in the Key of D Major. The arpeggio introduction bursts into the lyrics, which Jackie sings, “Some Folks Trust in Reason, Others Trust in Might! I Don’t Trust in Nothing, but I Know it Comes Out Right.” The audience joins in for the chorus. A bit later, after the 2nd Chorus, the band goes into an instrumental section and Molo blasts them back into another verse: “Standing on a Tower, World at my Command. You Just Keep Turning while I’m Playing in the Band And if No Man Among You, Got No Sin Upon his Hand Let him Cast a Stone at me for Playing in the Band.” There’s the Jones Beach Water Tower seemingly popping up in the lyrics to “Playing.” Its north wall can easily be seen from Phil’s spot on stage and he offers Long Islanders a new way to see what’s been in front of us our whole lives. “As a bandleader,” writes Phil Lesh in his Autobiography Searching for the Sound, “I like nothing better than to plan shows in which I can string songs and improvisations together thematically, like a garland of pearls, and then encourage the musicians to step outside their standard way of thinking and playing – completely in the context of the moment.” The band moves out of the songs structured parts and drops into the jam. Larry begins soloing in a D Mixolydian scale; Steve is improvising on the keys moving up and down the scales. Jackie is strumming chords behind them, as Phil holds it all together. Molo is crashing on symbols, banging on the toms ferociously as the jam settles while Molo keeps firing away on the ride. The jam then mellows out an eventually lands in “Bird Song,” Hunter/Garcia’s tribute to Janis Joplin. Although the first verse has a female bird inspired by Janis, Phil sings the second verse about a male bird and has done so since Jerry’s passing: “All I know is something like a bird within HIM sang. All I know HE sang a little while and then flew on.” The band ends “Bird Song” and Jackie leads them into one of his originals on the acoustic guitar while blowing in a harmonica. The song is called “When Your Walking Away” and it is a slower ballad- like love song about heartache. After this piece the band sounds like they are going to play John Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” but instead they bring out the melodies of Hunter/Garcia’s “The Wheel.” The outtro jam in this song is monstrous, as the band is taking Hunter’s lyrics to heart: “Wouldn’t you try just a little bit harder? Wouldn’t you try just a little bit more?” Both Jackie and Larry are trading off licks now. It’s incredible to hear how tight these two guys have become within only a year of playing together. Molo’s pounding on his drum kit and Lesh is playing with the energy of a young man. If you closed your eyes you’d probably think you were listening to a bass player in his 20’s. Then Larry changes instruments and puts on his bouzouki, a member of the mandolin family. Molitz is also changing his sound over to a synth. The texture is much more eerie and dissonant. It’s “Mountains of the Moon,” another Hunter/Garcia tune: “Cold Mountain Water, The Jade Merchants Daughter High How The Carrion Crow, Fol De Rol De Riddle High How The Carrion Crow, Bow and Bend to Me” It is fitting that Larry is playing a bouzouki since the song is filled with characters and imagery from Classical Greece. When the “Mountains of the Moon” ends the band picks up the tempo and adding some Latin flair to a fast “Uncle John’s Band” intro. This song is still one of the Dead’s most popular and becomes a crowd sing along. Phil & Friends then close the set with a “Sugar Magnolia” that keeps the audience up and dancing. “She’s my summer love…in the summer night moonlight…” That’s the first set. I walk out into the lobby and help the HeadCount volunteers registering voters. I find it humorous that someone is walking around with chocolates and snacks yelling “Candyman.” He’s embodying a Garcia/Hunter tune, but having trouble selling candy. The set break goes by quickly and I return to the mezzanine. It’s completely dark now, and the band is back onstage. Molo counts them off and they’re rocking a funky jam. Green Lights in the background, a Bluesy Jam in G is reminiscent of “Viola Lee Blues.” However, they don’t go into “Viola”but instead they start “China Cat Sunflower.” “China Cat” features some of the earliest lyrics Hunter sent to Garcia and The Grateful Dead. The structure and lyrics were quite revolutionary, as the song doesn’t feature a chorus. There’s only the melody, groove, verses and instrumental section. Rather than its typical pairing with “I Know You Rider,” the jam at the end leads elsewhere, grooving into “Fire on the Mountain” with Teresa Williams joining them on vocals. Even though “China Cat”>”Fire” is a killer combo, and performed super tight, I feel like I’ve heard and seen better standalone versions of the songs. Still, Phil’s vocals during the verses are full of wisdom, emotion and power. He yells the last line, “The more that you give the more it will take, which is a thin line beyond which you really can’t fake!” The band climbs higher and higher up the mountain in their jam. Reaching the peak, the two-chord A – B groove resolves into the B riff of “Sugaree.” This version is different then The Grateful Dead’s or Jerry Garcia Band’s it is much more like a R&B, Soul tune. Jackie sounds like a blues/soul singer invoking the spirit of Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the Dead’s original keyboardist and front man. After the chorus he yells, “AHH! Steve!” Molitz begins his organ solo and Jackie yells again “AHHH! Show 'em your SOUL son!” During Larry Campbell’s guitar solo Jackie keeps growling, grunting and yelling “YEAH! Come on!” As Larry is ripping up the guitar, the whole band nails these two impromptu hits with Molo, at the end of the chord progression. Jackie does a fantastic job during this song on the vocals. His soulfulness and bravado adds flavor and confidence to the band’s playing. Jackie is nailing the ending and jumping up and down, “Oh! You gotta Shake it! Shake it! Yeeeeaaaaah Sugaree!” We are deep into the 2nd set now, where Phil brings out the heavy hitters and long time fan favorites. He is making no exemption tonight at Jones Beach. With a mere 2 notes, the band begins the “St. Stephen” intro and the crowd goes wild! The song’s imagery also fits in perfectly with the show’s Jones Beach theme. Wishing well, and a golden bell Bucket hanging clear to Hell Hell half way twixt now and then Stephen fill it up and lower it down again Saint Stephen will remain All he’s lost he shall regain Seashore washed by the suds and the foam Been there so long he’s got to calling it home The jam between the verses customarily starts with the guitars banging out E chords, then changes from quadruple time to a circular moving duple time jam, but tonight the outtro jam is entirely different with Molitz soloing on the synthesizer. He’s using a sound similar to the synth on Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein,”as the band riffs while Molitz turns knobs and modulates the wave frequency of his notes. This jam transitions into “The Eleven,” a song penned by Hunter with music by Lesh. The odd meter of 11 beats per bar drives the piece and this song goes on for almost 11 minutes of psychedelic insanity. When Phil sings “The Eleven’s” last line, “sink beneath the waters to the coral sands below,” we get one more cool reference to Jones Beach. The four chord progression A-D-E-D fades into “Unbroken Chain” and then to the two chord A to G chill groove of “Dark Star.” In Phil’s book he writes that Dark Star “ is a tone poem reflecting the possibility that the collapse of a star into a singularity in our universe could be the birth of another complete universe.” Music can create a parallel universe, as well, and one senses that this is Phil’s intent as the first “Dark Star” jam segues into “Born Cross Eyed” and back into “Dark Star.” The second set closes with a smokin’ “I Know You Rider” enclosing the whole movement in a massive “China” > “Rider.” During the “Rider” Teresa Williams jumps up and down dancing a Cajun rhythm. Larry and Jackie walk to the middle of the stage in front of Phil. Pushing their guitars in front of each other in an essential rock & roll antic. These days as Phil grows older this song chokes me up. I see all the people at the concert singing these lyrics back to him at the top of their lungs, with so much heart, so much love. The band retreats backstage for a couple minutes. The audience applauding two amazing sets, hollering and whistling for more. Phil comes out first, thanking us for helping him make the music and says, “New York is always as you well know, a special place for us!” He also urges the crowd to become organ donors, because he would not be here today playing music if he were not the recipient of an organ donor. Then band introductions are made: Jackie Greene, John “The God” Molo, Miss Teresa Williams on Vocals, Larry Campbell “The Master” and Steve Molitz on keys and strangeness. Larry is the only one playing as the band sings the complex vocal harmonies for “The Attics of My Life.” At the end of “Attics,” Molitz joins in on Keys and Molo on drums. Larry begins to solo as they improvise over the song’s introduction, jamming over “Attics” which then transitions into something else. Phil starts a “Playing in the Band” jam on the bass and they being things full circle with a “Playing Reprise.” The keys and guitars are repeating the melody, as Molo slams down on the drums and Phil improvises over it all. They triumphantly return to “Playing’s” instrumental section that takes them into the Chorus: “Plaaaaying Like a Wave upon the Sand! Daaaaybreak! Daybreak on the Land! Plaaaying like a Wave upon the Sand.” The ideal ending for a Jones Beach Phil & Friends show.
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