Ex-Bassist for the Grateful Dead Strikes a Deal
Phil Lesh has logged countless miles on the road as the bassist of the Grateful Dead and, since the late 1990s, in various post-Dead ensembles. But at 73, he is looking for a change. “I’m done with one-nighters,” he said before a Phil Lesh and Friends show on Friday at the Capitol Theater here. “I’ve been on the road now for 46 years, and I’ve gotten go to a point where I’m jealous of all the time that I waste on buses and sitting around waiting to go on.”
Grayed and wiry, and still visibly in love with music, Mr. Lesh said he had been searching for a way to play regular concerts yet avoid the grinding tedium of the road. He has found it with an unusual deal to work exclusively with one promoter for 2014, putting on 45 shows in just a handful of venues.
The plan — an indie-scale version of the megadeals that stars like Jay Z and Madonna have made with Live Nation Entertainment — will pair Mr. Lesh with Peter Shapiro, a big Grateful Dead fan who owns the Capitol and runs the Brooklyn Bowl, the combination bowling alley-rock club in Williamsburg that is setting up branches next year in Las Vegas and London.
After a kickoff show in Williamsburg on Nov. 14, the series will start in earnest in early April with the first of at least 30 concerts through the year at the Capitol. A 1920s movie palace with room for about 2,000 people, the Capitol is hallowed by Grateful Dead fans for 18 shows the band played there in 1970 and 1971.
“Some venues are an active impediment to good shows, but some just feel like a collaborator in the magic,” said Gary Lambert, a host on Sirius XM Radio’s Grateful Dead channel. “For whatever reason, the Cap felt that way for the Dead.”
Mr. Shapiro, 41, reopened the theater a year ago and has spent well over $2 million to turn it into a Deadhead paradise, with clear sound and 10 high-definition projectors that make the walls a never-ending swirl of psychedelic lights.
Aside from the Capitol shows, Mr. Lesh will play the Las Vegas outpost of the Brooklyn Bowl on April 20, as well as Mr. Shapiro’s Lockn’ festival in Arrington, Va., in September; the only shows he will play not connected with Mr. Shapiro are those at Mr. Lesh’s own club, Terrapin Crossroads, in San Rafael, Calif.
The arrangement gives Mr. Shapiro control of the ticket sales, merchandising and recorded music rights from the concerts, in exchange for guaranteed payments to Mr. Lesh. (Exact terms were not disclosed.) Some special fan offerings are in the works, like “bowling with Phil” V.I.P. packages and posters each night that add up in a comic-strip-like sequence.
In his dressing room at the Capitol — where he kept a mattress on the floor, to rest up before shows during the four-night run — Mr. Lesh praised the work Mr. Shapiro has done renovating the theater and said the deal would give him the freedom to tinker with lineups and make each night interesting.
“I’m not retiring, and I’m not slowing down,” Mr. Lesh said, sitting with his wife, Jill, who also acts as his manager. “I’m pretty sure I want to make music till I can’t breathe anymore. I just want to do it within the most focused possible way. The future looks really exciting.”
Since the Capitol reopened last fall, Mr. Lesh has already played there 19 times, and for almost any other act, another 30 within a year would be overkill. On Friday night, however, the sold-out theater was a kaleidoscope of tie-dyed, ponytailed fans dancing their way through Grateful Dead classics like “Truckin’ ” and “Shakedown Street.”
Mr. Shapiro said he expected the exclusivity of the deal to bring out fans from every corner of the country.
“I understand the thinking of a Deadhead out there,” he said. “I don’t think they can get enough of it.”
Source: NY Times
