Founding Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir reunite with their band Furthur at the Taj Saturday
Furthur members Phil Lesh (far left) and Bob Weir (center) perform in Orlando, Florida on Feb. 6 .
“One More Saturday Night” is a Grateful Dead song whose title will certainly understate the case Feb. 27 in the eyes of the faithful fans of the American jam band out of 1960s San Francisco. This night — starting 8pm at the Taj Mahal’s Mark G. Etess Arena — will most definitely be special.
Since 1998 founding band members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir have collaborated at various times following the 1995 death of iconic frontman and lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. Both have appeared in Atlantic City with their respective solo bands — Lesh with Phil and Friends and Weir with Ratdog — but the two performing together in A.C. is probably unprecedented, and definitely the reason tickets to Saturday night’s Furthur show at the Taj sold out almost immediately.
Lesh, the Dead’s original bass player, and Weir, its rhythm guitarist, will be joined by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and drummer Jay Lane of Ratdog, former Dark Star Orchestra (the Dead’s most renowned tribute band) lead guitarist John Kadlecik and drummer Joe Russo in a band called Furthur.
“That part of the world is just a hotbed of Deadheads,” says the band’s San Francisco-based media relations manager J.C. Juanis. “And it’s not just kids but guys in their 50s and people of all ages. These guys are like Teflon and just defy those kinds of [age related] issues.”
Furthur’s set lists on tour stops heading into the A.C. show span the gamut of the Grateful Dead’s 30-year history (1965-’95), and the tour stops themselves (like the Utica Auditorium on Feb. 20; the University of Delaware’s Bob Carpenter Center on Feb. 22) represent historic milestones in past Grateful Dead history.
Following Saturday’s show at the Taj, there will be an after party presented by 103.7 The Shark starting at 10pm at the Hard Rock Café (located on the Boardwalk side of the Taj), featuring a Jerry Garcia Art Show and Sale and live music from the Dead tribute band Steal Your Face. Admission to the after party is free to the public.
“The people who are into that concert genre, they’re just not done when the concert’s over, especially in this situation where it's on a Saturday night at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City,” says Garry Engel, guitarist for Steal Your Face and exhibition coordinator for the art show. “And the after party’s at a great venue just walking distance away. I know a lot of people are planning to stay over, and are looking forward to a lot of fun after the concert.”
The Garcia art exhibit includes over 50 framed pieces including original works by Garcia, and prints created in limited numbers and never reproduced. See imagemakersart.com.
Atlantic City’s proximity to two of the biggest East Coast hotbeds for Deadheads, New York City and Philadelphia, is primarily why smallish casino concert venues can draw sizable crowds with relatively little publicity when bands like Bob Weir’s Ratdog or Phil Lesh’s Phil and Friends visit the resort. But when the two Grateful Dead legends teamed up to form Furthur in 2009, surrounding themselves with other virtuoso musicians and quickly honing a tight-knit sound, tickets got gobbled up at a breakneck pace. Finding a Furthur ticket on the day of last February’s show at the Taj Mahal’s roughly 5,000-seat Mark G. Etess Arena was as tough...
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