Fans of Grateful Dead music have much reason to celebrate of late. With the affectionately (and, from a marketing perspective, cleverly) dubbed “GD50” celebration – 2015 marking what would have been the band’s 50th anniversary – there has been an abundance of artists taking advantage of the reignited interest in the extensive songbook of Grateful Dead music. For some, it is novelty; for others it is merely a continuation of the ongoing exploration of one of the deepest wells of modern American music. Steve Kimock lands squarely in the latter camp.
On his recent tour of the Northeast, dubbed “A Tribute to Jerry Garcia,” Kimock has assembled an excellent band of musical compatriots in celebration not exclusively of the music of the Grateful Dead, but delving into the R&B, rock ‘n roll and pop tunes that Garcia and keyboardist Merl Saunders tackled with their various bands in the early 1970s. With longtime colleague Bobby Vega spearheading a lineup that includes Bill Vitt of the famous Garcia / Saunders Keystone tapes on drums, frequent post-Grateful Dead alumnus Jeff Chimenti on organ and electric piano, Dan Lebowitz on vocals and guitar, and John Morgan Kimock rounding out the rhythm section, the result has been a vehicle for exquisite instrumentations, funky rave-ups and lengthy improvisatory explorations.
The show at Met Café in Pawtucket, Rhode Island delivered the spirit of Kimock’s mission in spades. Right from “go,” the band was committed to the ideals of those early Garcia lineups – loose, jam-oriented affectations of popular songs, dedicated – warts and all – to delivering the essence of those songs. The band opened with a grooved-out “Tore Up Over You” before moving into a truly psychotropic version of Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie On Reggae Woman” in which each instrumentalist took their time to construct some carefully crafted, group-driven rhythms.
Perhaps the most indicative moment of the evening came with the cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” Kimock’s guitar parts, at times, were reminiscent of the most steel-stylized guitar playing of the evening (even after he took to the lap steel during the second set!) in its country-inflected bending and sliding. Although singer/guitarist Dan Lebowitz was clearly not completely familiar with the lyrical content of the tune, it was a moment that truly indicated the nature of the gig: a band that was not playing rehearsed, carbon copies of its source material, but was committed to the execution of that material in the most authentic way possible.
The second set of the evening simultaneously engaged the audience and had the band stretching within itself to create a pastiche of unique improvisational moments. Opening with the crowd-pleasing “How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved By You)”, the musicians quickly moved into some of the most exploratory moments of the night with a medley of J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight” into The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and, after some truly atmospheric moments that heard very obvious Hendrix teases of “Purple Haze”, segued right back into “After Midnight.”
The audience was completely receptive to the improvisatory nature of the band, which ventured into “Dead” territory with a semi-instrumental version of “Scarlet Begonias” and a cowboy-funk version of the blues standard “That’s Alright, Mama” that sent the audience alight to wrap up the evening in an incendiary dance-fest.
This year will see a plethora of music dedicated to the spirit of the fiftieth anniversary of Grateful Dead music, but few players will celebrate that spirit as tastefully as Steve Kimock did in the fine company of players on his NortheasttTour. By singularly focusing on the music of Jerry Garcia’s early R&B rave-ups, the band cultivated a driven, idiosyncratic scene and shed light on music that very few artists will be exploring in this golden anniversary of Grateful Dead music.
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