By Mark Brown, Sidewalk The Grateful Dead has always been a band for the people, and Phil Lesh has always held a special place in Deadheads' hearts. He never did side projects, focused only on the band, tended to the band's archives and always had time to talk music with anyone who wanted to talk to him the workingman's Dead, if you will. Instead, he's taking to the road with String Cheese Incident, Galactic, Gov't Mule, moe and other jam bands for a short, strange trip. Everything's moving smoothly, flowing perfectly well, yes. As a matter of fact, I was planning on being up to it.
Some people go back to work in six weeks.
I took four months. It's not unusual at all. I just wanted to wait and see what the best situation could be. So far it's been mostly kinda jam-band family members, as it were. That's one of the reasons I'm joining the summer sessions tour.