by Robert Makin

Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh has taken his rotating allstar outfit, Phil Lesh & Friends, on a national tour for the first time. The supergroup is sharing the stage with Bob Dylan, a longtime Dead buddy.

The tour has featured frequent Friends guitarist Steve Kimock of Zero, KVHW and The Other Ones before he declared "I ain't going to work on Maggie's Farm no more" and left the tour; Gov't Mule guitarist Warren Haynes, Allman Brothers Band guitarist Derek Trucks, Little Feat's Paul Barrere and Billy Payne and Hot Tuna legend Jorma Kaukonen.

Kimock and Kaukonen also are part of the lineup on "And Love Will See You Through," a double-CD comprised of live material recorded at a Phil Lesh & Friends show just after the bassist's 1997 liver transplant. The album contains mostly Dead material, including the rare "New Potato Caboose" and a delicious version of "Dupree's Diamond Blues" sung by Kaukonen.

Lesh also has been busy supervising the archival committee that put together "So Many Roads (1965-1995), the Dead's first box set. The just-released five-CD retrospective spans the group's entire career from folk-adelic nuggets by The Warlocks, the group name that preceded Grateful Dead, to the haunting closing track, one of the last tunes the late Jerry Garcia wrote with Robert Hunter.

When not busy attending their two sons' Little League games, Lesh and his wife, Jill, run a charity organization called the Unbroken Chain Foundation, which helps fund San Francisco Bay Area arts and educational programs. Unbroken Chain is a smaller version of the Rex Foundation, the Dead's in-limbo charity arm.

Just prior to the Phil and Friends tour I spoke with Lesh about his health, his Friends, the box of Dead, his charity work and the many jam bands he's inspired as one of the granddaddies of improvisational rock. He says he couldn't be more delighted about the vast and colorful scene.

In the wake of hepatitis C and a liver transplant, how are you feeling?

I'm feeling really excellent. I feel 20 years younger. When you go through something like this, you find out how many important functions and not only that, but how many little, tiny bullshit things have been bugging you for years that you have to be paid attention to.

Has clean living made you stronger?

It did in that it prepared me better for the operation. I made a change in my lifestyle nine years ago.

Did your recuperation inspire any music?

It inspired me to live, but it didn't inspire any music.

Now, there's Phil Lesh & Friends' 'And Love Will See You Through' with Jorma and Kimock. Are you guys going to make a studio album?

No.

Will you continue making live CDs?

Yeah, I'd say that was a pretty good bet at this point.

Comment on how the Friends always have a rotating lineup.

It's always a rotating series of guys. The first gig that I played under that name, I don't even remember who was on that gig. I've done about 20 shows with different lineups. The idea is to take Grateful Dead music and other music that I like and other material that the other musicians like and bring it into this context and treat like it was repertoire and try to interpret it from their perspective.

So that the fact that it's always different musicians gives it a fresh perspective?

Always. It's always in flux. The idea is at this point is to have one band for the first part of the tour and one band for the second part of the tour.

Phil Lesh & Friends have never played in the Northeast until now, so folks are really excited to get to see it in that area. Now that you're fully recuperated, will you be coming East more often?

That's really up in the air. The idea is to play with musicians that I like, that inspire me, challenge me and spur me on to different interpretations of the material. And the idea is to play places that I enjoy playing. I was lucky enough to play a couple of my favorite places this summer, like Red Rocks (in Colorado). They're places that the Grateful Dead couldn't go anymore, because they were too big. So what I'm hoping to do is keep at the level where I'm playing the neat places, so that it's neat for the audience to be there as well. So wherever those places are, that's where I'll go.

So it's very informal. You can do it how, when and wherever you want.

Well, for instance, I won't be touring in the spring outside the Bay Area, because my boys are in Little League. I'm a real Little League dad.

Do you coach?

Oh no. I don't know that much about the game.

But you like to watch.

Yeah. To me, it's more exciting than any big league ball game I've ever been to.

Are old are your sons?

Grahame's going on 13 and Brian's 10.

You're touring with Dylan. Comment on the influence the Dead has had on Dylan. He used to tour sporadically, but since he played with you guys in '95, he's been on this never-ending tour.

It seems to me that he's found a groove, what he wants to do. I don't think he likes to sit at home and just go in the studio every so often. I don't know if being on the road inspires him, but it certainly gives him grist for his mill. He can make things up from the experiences that he has on the road.

Since '95, he's really strived to tap into the Dead's audience, particularly the young fans by playing colleges.

He really connected with Jerry when we played together in '87 and again when we toured together in '95. And he really misses Jerry even though they probably didn't spend a lot of time together. I notice in his set list, he's doing Jerry's songs. He does practically one every show. There's a couple that they wrote with Hunter. 'Silvio' is one of them. I think that he has a certain kind of rapport or empathy with what we were doing. He connected a little better with it later on.

My personal feeling is that those kinds of things come from within one. External circumstances are only valuable in that they stimulate some sort of inner growth. That's probably what happened to Bob.

You're touring at the same time that Bob Weir is out with Ratdog and Mickey Hart is on a book tour. Is it coincidental that three-fifths of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead are out on the road at the same time?

Entirely. There's no master plan and guiding hand that is laying all this stuff out. I'm totally independent of Bob and Mickey and they're totally independent of me.

Well, it sure is great that all this stuff is going on at once, especially since there was no Further this year. In a way, it's better, because we get to check out three different events instead of one. Any chance that you guys will jam together soon?

I'm on a pretty tight schedule, and I know that they are too, but there's always that possibility.

Any plans for The Other Ones or another Further Festival?

No.

So that might be the end of it?

It could well be, yeah.

You were executive producer of "So Many Roads (1965-1995)," the Grateful Dead's first box set. Tell me about it.

It's going all the way back to the first Warlocks stuff and all the way up to the last year, the last batch of material. It's rehearsal versions of material that we took into the studio but never got to put out. There was a committee of folks involved, like Steve Silberman, Blair Jackson, Dick Latvala (also David Gans). I had the final say, but I approved everything. There was stuff that came up and we all agreed, 'Woops, maybe that one's not right.' It was generally a pretty good consensus.

There was an awful lot of stuff. We were talking about a 30-disc set. But this is a better way to do it, because it's within reason for people.

It seems like a no-brainer to have a box of Dead. What took so long?

Inertia. Everybody doing different things. The record company has been asking us for it for years. We're just lazy and slow.

And busy. You were the only member of the band that was that involved?

It was pretty much by default.

Dick Latvala, the Dead's archivist, died nearly four years to the day that Jerry passed. Comment on his contribution to the band, particularly the Dick's Picks series of live recordings.

I miss Dick. Talk about the right man in the right place. He was the guy.

The Dick's Picks have turned so people on who never got to see the band, particularly those who were just too young. Compounded with that, this whole jam band scene has exploded with hundreds of new bands. How does that feel, to have been in an act that's had such an enormous impact on young musicians and music fans?

To me, it's really astounding and wonderful that there's so many musicians out there who have picked up on what we were doing. It's not on a superstar level. It's right at the grassroots, which is where real music comes from. It's really a wonderful phenomenon to see all these different bands. A lot of them start out playing Grateful Dead material and then they branch off and grow into doing their own stuff. Yet, it all seems to have that approach built into it, that open-ended, let's-let-it-happen approach that we had so much fun with. It's really delightful, and I couldn't be more pleased.

There's a couple of jam bands that you're particularly close to. For instance, The String Cheese Incident. I wonder if you could comment on them.

Those guys are fine players and they really added a whole different perspective to the shows that we did together. Kyle Hollingsworth is a fantastic keyboard player. And Mike Kang is brilliant. I call him Kong. I really got off playing with them.

Another jam band that you've had some dealings with is Joe Gallant & Illuminati, whom you often played on your former radio show and commissioned to reproduce the Blues for Allah album for its 25th anniversary. They've since treated Terrapin Station in similar big band fusion of chamber music, rock, jazz, funk and urban soundscapes. Comment on what they've done as both an original act and their reworking of Dead material.

I just got Joe's latest CD. I have to say that Joe has a unique perspective. I demand that these musicians take our material and do anything that they want with it. (Bay Area saxophonist) David Murray did the same thing. He did a whole disc of Grateful Dead material.

The 'Dark Star' tribute. Now he's doing Coltrane, so he's come full circle.

I hear he has an African band now with some African drummers. They're playing at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, but I'm going to be out of town. I can't say enough about how I dig all of that stuff. To me, there's no right way or wrong way to interpret this material. There's only a multiplicity of ways. There's as many ways to interpret it as there are interpreters. And they're all valid and wonderful and beautiful.

Are there any other young jam bands you're who make you proud?

I'm really not that familiar with any particular band. I sort of discover them as I go along.

Are you happy with the Dead's place in musical history? Do you feel the Dead has gotten enough credit?

I don't think anyone living really can pass judgment on that. That happens later. I think our perspective is too close. I think there has to be some distance between the phenomenon and who ever's looking at it. If you're too close, I don't think you can see the whole picture.

So the jury isn't in yet?

It isn't even out yet, but the evidence is out there.

What do you like most and least about Deadheads?

What I like most is the sense of community that they have, the love that they manifest for each other and for us. I don't know if there is anything I like least about them. Maybe I don't know them well enough.

How much did you enjoy the last few years of the Dead as a stadium act?

I didn't enjoy playing stadiums. The first few times we did it, it was really a thrill, an incredible experience. But after a while, it gets to be like playing in infinite space. There's no feedback, no bounce back. In a stadium, the band is putting out energy from the stage and the audience is trying to get energy back to the stage, but instead of going towards the stage, it's just going straight up, out the roof.

In what ways do you prefer what you're doing now, like Phil & Friends?

I like the ability to structure the sets and open up the music in ways that we can allow little doors to open in the music and then when they do open, you go through them and explore what's on the other side. The Grateful Dead hardly ever did that at the end. It was one directional. We always knew where it was going to go and we just wanted to go ahead and get there without exploring any of the bi-ways that opened up. Because of that, there weren't many bi-ways that were suggested or even showed up on the map. There were in the old days, but it got really uni-directional. So the way that music develops now is like a garden of forking paths.

So between that and Little League, you're pretty psyched.

Yeah (laughs), that brackets my consciousness.

What's up with the Rex Foundation, the charity group of the Grateful Dead that preceded your Unbroken Chain Foundation?

It's sort of in limbo. After Jerry's death, there was a lot of divided opinion about what to do with the Rex Foundation. In fact, there were so many different ideas that nothing got done. So I just went away and started with my wife, our own foundation. Unbroken Chain operates on a much smaller scale. We do local charity work, some stuff in the arts and education. It's a lot smaller scale, because we don't have the resources.

What other music have you been working on besides Phil & Friends?

I'm working on a piece now that is like a Fantasia on Grateful Dead song themes. I'm using material from about 30 Grateful Dead songs and it's all going to be strung together in a 45-minute piece for orchestra. I've been working on that for a couple of years.

Will your performance of John Cage's 'Apartment House 1776' with the San Francisco Symphony ever CD the light of day?

The San Francisco Symphony may produce that themselves.

So it could be out on RCA?

Could be.

What's up with Terrapin Station, the proposed cultural center in San Francisco dedicated to the band and its fans?

That's still in negotiation and we're trying to figure out what to do with it. There's still several sites that we're looking at.

What do you think of the jambands.com website?

I like that site. I think it's a cool site.