Legendary Grateful Dead Band FURTHUR Plays Redmond, WA

First of three installments
In an attempt to give you context for this amazing event, I’ll be covering three areas over the next few days: The Music; The Band; The Experience

Furthur at Marymoor Park, September 18, 6 p.m.

FURTHUR, THE MUSIC
Furthur is the next evolution of the Grateful Dead, who toured 1965 – 1995—thirty years. To be able to hear this music again, live, with the original bass and rhythm guitar players…!

If you’re a Deadhead, you’re intimately familiar with the grandeur of the lyrics written by Robert Hunter, the foremost poet-collaborator in the GD world. You can thank him for scribing masterpieces like Ripple, St. Stephen, Wharf Rat, Dark Star, and hundreds of others. Hundreds. The sheer magnitude of his contribution is staggering. What may not be commonly known is that Bob Weir also wrote a significant number of well-known songs, the best of which were co-penned by Hunter (Sugar Magnolia) and John Perry Barlow (Cassidy, Looks Like Rain, and Let It Grow).

Deep in our lexicon we’re haunted by lines like “must’ve been the roses” and “let there be songs to fill the air…” Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir put the words in a magic music cauldron and out wafted some of the finest, most soulful musicianship and improvisation in history.

The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics site based at UC Santa Cruz, provides an accurate historical archive of GD’s original song lyrics. You may also have seen my piece about archive.org where you can get high quality live concert recordings for free (last I counted, the Grateful Dead had 7,300 concerts listed there!) In the past few weeks of the Furthur tour, they’ve been including these classics in their set lists, so if you’re going to the show, get ready for some amazing live music moments:
Cassidy
Loser
The Other One
Terrapin Station
Unbroken Chain
Help on the Way/Slipknot
Wharf Rat

It's a miracle that you can still get tickets to the show. You can also purchase live concert recordings from the Furthur tour via digital download. Or order the live shows on CD.

Here's an excerpt from the song “Broke-down Palace”:
River gonna take me
Sing me sweet and sleepy
Sing me sweet and sleepy
all the way back home

It's a far gone lullaby
sung many years ago
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come
since I first left home

Goin home, goin home
by the waterside I will rest my bones
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
to rock my soul

Stay tuned for the next installment: FURTHUR, THE BAND