Grateful Dead Music Brings 'Sunday Gospel' to Bonnaroo

Posted on Jun 18th 2008 5:00PM by Benjy Eisen
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Performing what they described from the stage as, in some ways, a "Sunday gospel" set, an acoustic collective featuring Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, session singer Teresa Williams, rising Americana star Jackie Greene, and multi-instrumentalist/multi-band member (from Levon Helm's, Bob Dylan's and Lesh's bands) Larry Campbell, sat on stage in chairs and took it easy in the shade of 'This Tent' for the final afternoon of Bonnaroo. Playing unplugged and understated, the specially-assembled group performed a number of specially-arranged Grateful Dead tunes, including 'Friend of the Devil' and 'Deal.' They also ran through some traditionals ('Deep Elum Blues') and traditional gospels ('I've Drifted Too Far From fhe Shore.')

Minutes before the set, Jackie Greene admitted to Spinner that he "was never really a Deadhead." When Lesh first started collaborating with him last year, after he heard one of Greene's songs on the radio, he gave him a "waste-high stack of stuff and said, 'Pick a bunch of them,'" Greene recalled. "Well, I did, and it turns out I ended up falling in love with a lot of the tunes."

A staple of the festival circuit and, now, a favorite with Deadheads even though he's not one himself, Greene says that "Bonnaroo is one of those festivals that you can come to with very high expectations and not be let down. There's Kanye West and there's Phil Lesh. There's all different kinds of music that you can go see and there's strange Russian groups from wherever. Maybe it used to just be this jam festival but it's not anymore -- and that's one of the things that's great about it. There's something for everybody."

Coachella: take note.