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A Grateful Reunion
By Rusty Larsen, Collinsville and Rex Cooley, Southington
The Friday evening drive from Collinsville to downtown Hartford stretched across two decades. The Other Ones were playing the Civic Center. Bobby Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, surviving members of the Grateful Dead, had finally come together for some musical harmony and a tour. For old friends, the Other Ones' tour provided an opportunity to get together and reconnect with the Dead community.
The journey began twenty years earlier in high school with the Dead's annual spring shows in Hartford. It continued via the United States mail during college, with set lists and community updates from the Dead's annual run of shows at Colorado's Red Rocks being swapped with set lists and updates from the Northeast Corridor. Now older, greyer, and a touch heftier, we headed past the parking lots full with throngs of young Dead fans under the amassed gaze of the Hartford Police to Coach's for a bite and a pint before the show.
While noshing we reconnected with and were introduced to friends, both old and new, in a pre-show ritual akin to an old school reunion. We swapped news and information, sending messages to be conveyed through degrees of separation, reconnecting via a tradition of oral communication as old as mankind.
Just as the Other Ones' tour provided many older Deadheads an opportunity to reconnect with friends and acquaintances, so too has the tour provided the surviving members of the Dead a chance to reconnect and invigorate the legacy of the Grateful Dead. Though the band opened with "Feel Like a Stranger," it was evident the Other Ones were playing like old friends. Augmented by vocalist Susan Tedeschi, Phil and Friends' keyboardist Rob Barraco and guitarist Jimmy Herring, and Ratdog keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, the Other Ones seamlessly weaved their way through "Only the Strange Remain," "Black Throated Wind," "Eyes of the World," "New Speedway Boogie" and "Mason's Children" to finish their first set.
Long-time Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter attempted to entertain the crowd during intermission with solo renditions of "Terrapin Station," "Box of Rain" and "Ripple." Though Hunter gave a spirited performance, the cavernous scale of the coliseum made it difficult for Hunter to connect with fans in the upper bowl. The Other Ones had no such problems as they returned to the stage for their second set.
The band restarted their show with a jam that morphed into "Unbroken Chain." Jimmy Herring's flawlessly fluid guitar style ably filled the gaping hole left by Jerry Garcia's death. Herring did not try to duplicate Garcia's style; rather he worked his own jazz-influenced style, meshing it with the rest of the Other Ones to create a dynamic new interpretation of an old classic. Susan Tedeschi returned to the stage to take the lead vocal on "Big Boss Man." Tedeschi's vocals gave a pleasant counterpoint to Bob Weir's on "Casey Jones." Throughout the second set, Kreutzmann, Hart and Lesh provided a rock-solid rhythm section while working their way through the various time changes after "Drums/ Space," as the band moved from Dylan's "Knockin’ on Heaven's Door" to "Hard to Handle" and "Slipknot" before concluding the second set with a superb version of "Franklin's Tower."
The Other Ones returned to the stage for an encore of "Truckin'." The beloved Grateful Dead anthem to life on the road was an appropriate conclusion to a marvelous musical evening as the Other Ones continue on a journey begun years ago. For long-time fans of the band, the Other Ones show provided an opportunity to reconnect with a musical legacy and old friends.
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