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April 30-May 6, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
• The Dead have risen
The Grateful Dead find harmony once again
by Alan Sculley
• Rough in the diamond
Aussie pop singer Lenka went from the bush to the Billboards
by Dave Kirby
 The Dead have risen
The Grateful Dead find harmony once again
by Alan Sculley
Mickey Hart, drummer for the Dead, said he was sensing from rehearsals for the group’s spring/summer tour that the band was ready to create the kind of musical magic that was common when the band was the Grateful Dead and its frontman, Jerry Garcia, was alive.
A pair of small-venue warm-up shows in New York City April 6 only confirmed Hart’s expectations.
“The first of the sets was cool. It was good,” Hart said. “The second one took off. That [show] actually sounded like us awakening. The beast is awakening. It’s starting to pump new blood into its body, and it’s awakened. It’s alive and it breathes and it lives and it’s capable of making magic. Our second show proved that to me.”
That sort of magic wasn’t happening the last time Hart and his fellow surviving members of the Grateful Dead, guitarist/singer Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, last joined together as the Dead for a tour.
In fact, that 2004 run of dates was marked by a good deal of tension as the four long-time musical cohorts saw a variety of business issues get in the way of the kind of joyful musical communication that had been hallmarks of the best Grateful Dead concerts.
“The big issue was everybody having their own management team,” Hart said. “And their guy was their priority, as it should be, you know. But the politics of all of that interfered with the music. We didn’t really know it. We knew it was happening, but we thought it was happening for legitimate reasons. When we really looked carefully at it, we realized it was getting in the way. [The managers] are all good people, but they were getting in the way. And so we had to dismember that part of our scene… So we all agreed on one person that we all trusted, a center, a neutral center.”
Another big issue that had caused problems in the band was how to release the 2,000-plus Grateful Dead concert recordings and other unreleased material that had been recorded and preserved since the group came out of the San Francisco Bay area in 1965.
This situation was resolved when the band teamed up with Warner Bros./Rhino Records to handle its catalog of studio albums and
live recordings.
“These guys who run this Warner Bros./Rhino thing, they’re fans, even though they run this major corporation,” Hart said. “So we felt very secure in our legacy. Of course, we oversee the whole thing. We have to approve everything. But no more long business meetings, no more board meetings, and, oh, that is a pleasure.”
Since the 2004 tour, the four former bandmates — in addition to working to resolve the issues that had created conflicts — pursued a variety of other musical projects.
Weir toured with his band, Ratdog, while Lesh toured with a variety of musicians under his group name, Phil Lesh & Friends. Hart continued his extensive study of drumming and percussion in various cultures around the world, while putting together several different groups. One of these bands, the Rhythm Devils, features Kreutzmann. Most recently he teamed up with Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain to form the Global Drum Project, which won a Grammy in February for best world music album.
Kreutzmann, who had been keeping a low profile in Hawaii, meanwhile, formed a trio, the BK3, with guitarist Scott Murawski and Allman Brothers bassist Oteil Burbridge.
Then seeds for the current Dead tour were sewn last year, first when Hart, Weir and Lesh got together as the Dead to play a benefit for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama in February 2008 in San Francisco.
A second benefit show was organized for this past fall at Penn State University, with all four former Dead bandmates performing together. This show paved the way for the current tour.
“I think that was the catalyst because there really wasn’t any talk of touring before,” Hart said. “It was just trying to renew our friendships and our love for each other and our musical and our personal relationships, because without a personal relationship, you can’t play great music.”
The band, joined by guitarist Warren Haynes (of the Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule) and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, has put in extensive time in rehearsals for the Dead tour.
“This is the best version that we’ve had without Jerry,” Hart said. “It is up to a good Grateful Dead standard.”
Both Hart and Kreutzmann (in a separate phone interview) weren’t offering many hints about what songs the Dead will play this spring, although Hart noted the group rehearsed some 150 songs.
Like Hart, though, Kreutzmann said he’s excited to be back playing in the Dead.
“I think this will be the best [tour] yet, because we’ve talked a whole lot, and we’re really getting along,” Kreutzmann said. “We have communication way more than we used to.”
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On the Bill
The Dead performs at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 7, at the Pepsi Center, 1000 Chopper Cir., Denver,
303-405-1100.
 Rough in the diamond
Aussie pop singer Lenka went from the bush to the Billboards
by Dave Kirby
Belying the image of the girlish, bruised innocent who purrs through her pop songs with resigned naiveté, Lenka Kripac also deals in an elemental toughness and shrewdness as well, someone as likely to show you her callouses as her bling, and someone for whom wisdom is earned, not downloaded.
The 30-year-old Aussie-born daughter of artsy hippie parents (her father Czech, her mother Australian), Lenka first came to prominence Down Under as the swooning, disembodied female voice behind the alt-soundtrack/ambient-rock group Decoder Ring back in the mid ’00s. After a few trips to the U.S. with the band, including a pivotal networking visit to the 2006 South by Southwest conference, Lenka took her package of pop songs, theater training (including early-age instruction with Cate Blanchett) and a duffelful of ambition, and moved to L.A. to have a go as a solo artist.
The resulting album, Lenka, (featuring the mind-enslaving leadoff single “The Show”) was one of last year’s big surprises, a beguiling blend of high-fructose tunesmithing piled atop toy-piano melodies, like candy corns cushioned on a vanilla float… but, simultaneously, smartly crafted reflections on real ambivalence, loss, mortality, the mercilessness of time. Almost subversive in their costumed heft, the songs landed her on all the late-night TV shows, as well as a nicely timed placement on a Gap commercial that something like 30 million people saw during last summer’s Olympics.
And, of course, on the road. When we caught up to her in January, she expressed a little reticence at making her way across the frozen expanse of the U.S., her first full-length tour, in the depths of a winter that a native Aussie usually only sees on TV.
“Yeah, we survived the winter OK,” she said last week. “We did have a couple of close calls in the van. We had a lot of fun, but it was quite a lot of hard work, just because it was so long. But I feel lucky, and I just want to get out there and do it again.”
But that’s the thing about touring the States, especially at the club and small-theater level. There are so many places to play.
Coloring in the map means working an album for months at a time, and we wondered how she was doing playing essentially the same set list for months on end.
“We can mix it up a little bit, but really only about a third of the set list we can change around. The rest of the songs — the songs that people know and that my fans want to hear — we still have to play them.
“But I kind of understand that. It can get a little bit boring, playing the same songs every night, but the best way to combat that is to put new energy into the songs. We just had a rehearsal with the band, and we’re doing some new songs and some new covers. Just kick yourself a little, keep yourself inspired, because it’s supposed to be fun playing music. If it becomes boring, you’re doing something wrong.”
We couldn’t help but notice how visual an artist the woman is, as well. Maybe it’s part of the oeuvre these days, but even a visit to her website features a picture of her face lined up on a photo shoot (pictures of pictures being taken), above a YouTube interview for some music magazine. All of it seamless, elegant.
So, we thought, does the acting training come in handy for the poise and poses and the whole visual piece of Lenka The Artist?
Because, at least as the pop musician she is these days (and may not be in a year or two), this is what you do. You sing, OK, but you’re a visual commodity, a YouTubie, a bewitcher of pixels.
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, it is performing. Even when you’re doing media and stuff like that, there is some sense of needing to be aware of that… Some sense of: This is the project I’m doing, this is the character I’m portraying, and I want it all to go in a big package.
“But I think the acting skills come into… really, everything in life. I learned early on how to get in front of a camera, and not to get stage fright, not to be awkward in front of cameras.”
Some people are born into “poise.”
“Yeah, I think some people are born into it, but I wasn’t. I’m a bush kid. I had to be taught how to stand up straight.
“And you know, if I were doing, say, just straight singer/songwriter stuff, folk music, I think all the glitz and glamour and cameras would take away from the music. But for my music, what I’m doing now, it supports it. I’m OK with it.”
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On the Bill
Lenka performs with Greg Laswell and Jessica Sonner at 9 p.m. on Saturday, May 2, at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-3399.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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