Stormy Mondays: Phil Lesh Quintet Year Three – There and Back Again
HT’s Dan Alford continues his look back at the Phil Lesh Quintet in which the Grateful Dead bassist was joined by John Molo, Rob Barraco, Warren Haynes and Jimmy Herring. Part One looked at the unit’s start in 2000, Part Two looked at the group’s rise in 2001 bringing us to 2002…
By 2002, The Q had become a mainstay of jamnation, reliable like no other band for night after night of marathon sets and mind-bending improvisation. The chemistry was profound: Warren Haynes’s effect-laden guitar serving up wicked, fiery leads and funky rhythm (not to mention his growling, soulful voice); Jimmy Herring’s lightning fast barrages of a thousand notes at a time, or slower, searing solos (his solo on the new outro jam to Unbroken Chain could knock you to your knees); Rob Barraco’s absolutely fearless piano (few keyboard plays could plunge into such a thick stew with such expressive voice and effect); John Molo’s insane elasticity, equal parts slick subtlety and propulsive fervor; and of course Phil himself, the grand conductor, with his bouncy, shifting bass lines and playful shuffle step that started every show.
Each element alone was worth the price of a ticket, but put them together and something truly otherly happened. Thrilling, jaw dropping performances drawn for the best possible songbook. And just as the performances matured from 2000 to 2001 so did they again in 2002, becoming more stylish, the jamlets even more distinct, the ideas pushed to more extreme ends; the drama of some shows, even single songs, was almost overwhelming (Check out the I Am the Walrus > Millennium Jam from Charlie Miller’s recording of 3/30/02, only the second date of the year. Whew!)
The year began with a series of West Coast dates, The Warfield followed by a run in the Rockies, with the band continuing a trend it had begun in 2001, unveiling new, original material, material that would become There and Back Again, a strong album, if a little unbalanced. Warren’s material is certainly the strongest, whether written alone (The Real Thing, Welcome to the Underground) or in collaboration (Night of a Thousand Stars), but everything has merit. Columbia Records, however, didn’t get behind the promotion in the same way it did for Jorma Kaukonen’s (admittedly entirely stunning) Blue Country Heart released at the same time, and the album, whose title is a reference to Tolkien’s The Hobbit, fell from consciousness. The songs stayed around however, growing and blossoming like everything else the band played, so that by the summer, they were staples buried deep in the heart of jams or closing sets in uproarious fashion.
READ ON for more on the Phil Lesh Quintet in 2002…
