Grateful Dead fans who gathered near West Palm Beach to see the Furthur Festival, the variegated road show that succeeded the Dead after bandleader Jerry Garcia’s demise, said it time and again on Friday: Yes, we’re sad that Garcia’s gone; we miss him playing live; we’re here without him, anyway, because music was only part of the Grateful Dead’s appeal.
A touring festival launched last year by two of Garcia’s old mates, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, Furthur kicked off its second season and made its South Florida debut on Friday with all the flourishes of a typical Grateful Dead show: tie-dye vendors, tailgate parties, folks wearing hemp, other folks smoking the stuff, Garcia’s voice and guitar burbling from the cassette decks of dozens of parked cars.
But it was music, ultimately, that made the trip to Coral Sky Amphitheatre so rewarding.
A rotating troupe of performers representing four decades of rock ‘n’ roll played ten sets in a seven-hour day that seemed to breeze by – without the labored, clock-watching slog of the usual summer-music marathon.
Not simply a showcase – with separate acts connected only by the particular date and venue – Furthur held together like a latter-day Vaudeville show, exhuding a familial sense of continuity.
It was a polyglot crew, from the electrifying live presence of newcomer Sherri Jackson to the genial hippie hucksterism of emcee-performer Arlo Guthrie, from the West Coast rock ‘n’ soul revue of Weir’s band, Ratdog, to the blues-crunching ferocity of the Black Crowes. But every act spoke similar musical language.
The band moe. opened the seven-hour program with a set reminscent of the Grateful Dead. The group tethered rock, country, funk and blues into a rolling, tumbleweedy half-hour jaunt. The Sherri Jackson trio followed with a set that marked the Colorado-based performer as one to watch.
Her funky first single, Maple Tree, had the exultant melody of a Dionne Farris or Toni Childs song, but primed with more punch and corner-turning surprises than either of those singers. Jackson’s closing tune, Rice and Beans, was a genre all its own: cajun thrash.
Next came Planet Drum, the six-piece ensemble led by former Grateful Dead percussionist Hart. Using bass, keyboards, chanting vocals and a variety of familiar and exotic drums, Hart and Co. served up the organic equivalent of techno, weaving supple, trance-like sound that was both primal and futuristic in its feel.
Hot Tuna founder Jorma Kaukonen, joined by guitarist Michael Falzarano, brought the proceedings back to earth. The duo’s acoustic blues revival was one of the highlights of the day. The five-song set included Robert Johnson’s hardscrabble classic, Walking Blues, and an ethereal reading of the Rev. Gary Davis’ Pure Religion.
Ratdog, the six-piece band led by Weir, kept the crowd engaged with a hard-knocking set of soul-styled tunes. Ratdog opened with one of Weir’s devil-may-care Dead songs, Hell in a Bucket (“But at least I’m enjoying the ride”), and Willie Dixon’s Wang Dang Doodle.
In a one-hour set, he more than managed the balancing act between his baggage-freighted past and his current aspirations toward r&b.; Guthrie, pop pianist Bruce Hornsby and a Hornsby-Weir cocktail-hour duet led into the evening’s headliner, the Black Crowes. The Atlanta rock band tailored its set to Deadhead specifications, laying off its hit parade – with exceptions for the Rolling Stones-Tumbling Dice rewrite, Jealous, and the baleful Good Friday – for songs that allowed the group to wind out the jams.
Chris Robinson, the Crowes’ caterwauling town crier, was in better form than his bandmates, who sometimes bogged down in arrangements that cluttered up the midrange frequences which Robinson vaulted easily.
The Crowes were then joined onstage by Weir, Hornsby and several of the day’s performers for a three-song finale. Robinson and Weir traded vocal tales on the old Dixie Cups’ hit Iko Iko. A closing version of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower lost something in the transition from folk parable to ten-piece jamming platform.
But the point of the exercise was fellowship, not fluency. Besides, it was opening night; no doubt the Furthur Festival all stars will get their chops to converge a little further down the road.
