This picture was taken nine years ago, at Sundance. Facebook just popped it up in my memories from Jan 24, 2017. My old buddy, Chris from Nomadic State of Mind, snuck us into the press room at the premier of Long Strange Trip. He pretended to be my agent, and introduced me to Billy, Mickey and Bobby. One of them was rude, one of them was polite but couldn’t hear anything I said, and the third one was kind and introduced me to his daughter, Monet, who wasn’t yet known on social media.
An agent of what, Chris was never clear about, but it didn’t matter. I felt a little sheepish about the sneak-in, but these were pranksters after all, so why not be one too?
Chris and I met in the early 2000’s and traveled and vended and built our businesses alongside each other for years at many festivals and in many parking lots. I wouldn’t know him if music hadn’t brought us together, and there’s about a gazillion other people about whom I could say the same thing.
Bob Weir was a big part of that early 2000’s music scene. The music festival industry was exploding, still years away from its peak, providing plenty of opportunities for all the various post-Jerry Garcia Grateful Dead iterations and other emerging bands to play. It is, in fact, due in large part to Garcia’s passing, that music festivals became what they did when they did. It’s hard to imagine that if the Grateful Dead had remained on tour, anyone interested in this music would have chosen to attend festivals instead of following the band.
In the years that followed, fans still wanted somewhere to gather, but there were no bands big enough to bring everyone together, so we built a world where it was strength in numbers, and lots of little businesses like mine were given the opportunity to flourish in this setting. You couldn’t go to a festival back then without hearing Grateful Dead music. It seemed like every other band was a Grateful Dead spin off or cover band, and even the bands that weren’t all had at least one Dead song in their setlist. I never questioned whether there would be anyone at a festival looking for Grateful Dead kid’s shirts. Festivals offered a family friendly environment, so they were always there, often with their kids (who are all now grown), asking me for more.
It was an era that was easy to romanticize even then, before GPS, cell phones cameras and fentanyl, when we were all still young enough to have energy for outings on our days off in between shows and festivals. We lived in our old Chevy and Dodge vans (pre Sprinter/Transit/Promaster), and we camped everywhere we went. None of us had RV’s and no one had said “glamping” yet. We knew we were living an experience that was special, and we always knew it wouldn’t last. Chris had a bumper sticker he sold everywhere we went that said, “These are the good old days,” and it was true.
When the news of Bob Weir’s passing broke, my first thoughts lamented the loss of Dead & Company. As the days went by, my memories dug deeper, landing me back at the beginning of the century when Rat Dog was my gateway into this music and these experiences. I lived six blocks from the Beacon Theater in NYC for thirteen years starting with turn of millennia. It was easy then to walk up the street, stick my finger in the air, and catch one of his shows there. I traveled all over to see Rat Dog for years, and I want to share my favorite of those experiences. It was a night I’ll never forget. A rite of passage.
I was just a few weeks into my career as a Grateful Dead licensee, and I had traveled to Las Vegas to attend a trade show called MAGIC, where Tom Stack from Grateful Dead Productions had organized a booth representing a large of assortment of the licensees he managed as their VP of Licensing & Merchandising.
To support the booth, he had also organized a private Rat Dog show at Bally’s Jubilee Theater, where, along with his friend, Bill Walton dressed as Uncle Sam, and some of the show girls in their beautiful feather and sequin Bob Mackie costumes, Tom danced on stage in a custom made Captain Hook costume. The background of the stage was unusually elegant for the music, lit dark blue with warm lights piercing it as if they were stars. The booths in the front row were reserved for licensees, and I felt about as special as a twenty five year old could sitting there.
Unexpectedly, I ended up working in the trade show booth that week, and the night before the Jubilee show the team from the GDP office invited me out to dinner with them, where they surprised me with a slice of birthday cake and the happy birthday song. I was so confused when the cake was placed in front of me, and they explained that this was a tradition, something done whenever someone was new. I don’t remember everyone who was at that table, but I know I felt like a kid. Turns out, I was a kid in a candy shop, and there would be delights to come for the rest of my life.