Secret time: Comedian Bert Kreischer loves the Grateful Dead, Wilco, and Widespread Panic.
In episode #547 of his Bertcast podcast, Kreischer sits down with fellow comic Phil Hanley for a two-hour conversation touching on watches, living with dyslexia, and much more. The chat doesn’t get far before Bert points out some heady tendencies in Hanley’s wardrobe. After Phil takes off his Grateful Dead sweatshirt to reveal a Grateful Dead t-shirt underneath, Bert interjects, “You are a straight-up Deadhead. That’s two Dead things.”
“God, I love the Grateful Dead,” Phil admits. Bert echoes Phil’s sentiments: “I love the Grateful Dead,” he agrees.
As Phil continues, “It’s funny that you love the Grateful Dead ’cause I was thinking of you today and I was thinking, ‘Bert would be the best Deadhead.’ Just your enthusiasm!”
Bert responds, “I was really into the Dead, really into Phish, really into that whole scene, Widespread Panic. … That was my whole scene, that was the music where, when I went to college and I decided I didn’t need to be the person I was in high school—’cause I was a little bit of a meathead in high school—and I remember I bought a Ziggy Marley tape … I bought a Fishbone album, and I got introduced to Widespread Panic.”
He continues, “Widespread Panic, out of all the ones that I pulled out, was the one where I gravitated, and I was like, ‘Oh f—.’ And then, from Widespread Panic… the Dead, to me, was almost like The Rolling Stones is to my daughter’s friends. Like, they don’t know The Rolling Stones but they have their t-shirts? So, like, the Dead, when you went to college you see posters of the Dead, you’d see the dancing bears on the back of trucks, you’d see the skeletons holding hands, but no one was really listening to the Dead. And then, I discovered the Dead and it was like the Beastie Boys—it took me a second to get them, and then, once I get them, I’m done.”
As the conversation moves through topics like coping with dyslexia and the early years of Hanley’s career in Vancouver, Bert asks Phil if he was into cult-favorite Canadian rock outfit The Tragically Hip. A smiling Hanley responds, “Once I discovered the Dead when I was a kid, I was, like, really just into the Dead. I like other music, but… I admired The Tragically Hip… They had such a strong following in Canada. … Their last show, our prime minister [Justin Trudeau] was in the crowd. He was, like, rocking out.”
Hanley also speaks about his foray into modeling in Europe, an experience that inspired him to seriously pursue comedy. “In my head the whole time I was like, the people that I look up to would not do this. Jerry [Garcia] was not gonna strut down the runway.”
Later in the episode, Kreischer digs deeper into the world of jam bands. “What other bands have you found adjacent to the Dead?” he asks. “Like, what bands do you like now. I feel like the bands that they want you to like that are based on the Dead aren’t [actually that similar], but I feel like what the Dead did was teach us a list of things that we can appreciate in music. Like, everybody wants me to love G. Love & Special Sauce, or The Spaghetti Incident [Note: We’re pretty sure he means The String Cheese Incident], and I’ve never [been able to turn the corner on them].”
“It’s so bad and it’s so painful for the people that I date,” Hanley responds, “My favorite band is the Grateful Dead, and my second-favorite band is the Jerry Garcia Band … [and] all his bluegrass stuff… And now, [Grateful Dead guitarist/vocalist] Bob Weir, my favorite dyslexic, is playing with, like, an orchestra, and it’s amazing. He’s playing Dead tunes with a horn section, and a pedal steel, and it’s incredible!”
Hanley continues, “Partly because he was dyslexic, but always as a kid, I would love… Bob Weir was such a badass in that he’s playing to all these hippies in cut-off shorts, a Madonna t-shirt, and a pink guitar. So there’s all the crusty Deadheads and … Bobby just does his own thing, man. He’s such an original dude. God, I love Bob Weir.”
Bert adds, “It’s interesting because I would say I’m a casual Deadhead, but I listen to it way more than… It’s one of my go-tos. I have three go-tos… The Dead, Wilco, and Widespread Panic. Those are my three go-tos. Every now and then The Doors, but they don’t really deliver the [same way].”
Hanley interjects, “You would like PHILCO, Phil Lesh of the Dead played with Wilco this summer. They played a bunch of shows [Note: It was just the one show], so I’m sure there’s bootleg recordings online. So, they played some Wilco songs and some Dead tunes.”
At Bert’s behest, the two go on to critique a ranking of the top 10 Grateful Dead songs. To his Head credit, Kreischer is quick to dismiss the “top 10” they find on Google as “pedestrian, songs that everyone knows.” He points out a few favorites as they expand the list, including “St. Stephen”, “Fire On The Mountain”, “China Cat Sunflower”, and “Brokedown Palace”. Hanley zeroes in on “Standing On The Moon”, calling it “the greatest love song” and promising to send Bert “the right version.”
“I love ‘Ripple’,” Bert adds as they continue down the list. “‘Sugar Magnolia’ is beautiful. … I feel like I’ve earned everything I’ve ever worked for when I drive in my Mercedes listening to ‘Touch of Grey’. I feel like that’s the vibe I’ve been looking for my whole life.”
“To me,” Hanley offers to the famously hard-partying Kreischer, “It seems like ‘Shakedown Street’ should be your tune. I could see you busting a move to ‘Shakedown Street’.”
Bert goes on to explain that he truly started to “get all of it” when he would blast Grateful Dead albums in his truck while working at Doak Campbell Stadium during his Van Wilder-inspiring time at Florida State University. “That’s when I turned the corner with the Dead, where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m starting to get all of it.’ I’m starting to play an album from beginning to end and get all of it. … There’s no better feeling than when you get all of a band.”
Related: Grateful Dead Studio Albums Ranked Worst To Best
Hanley, clearly the more seasoned Deadhead in this duo, adds, “There’s just so [much]. I mean, they played over 2,000 shows. I wouldn’t listen to an album, but I’d listen to a live show, so I’d have my favorite performance of a certain tune.”
Phil goes on to explain that when he first started screenwriting, particularly on 2006 Air Bud sequel Air Buddies, he would work while listening to live Dead shows. “If you watch the first Air Buddies, there’s so many Dead references in that movie because I was just listening to shows. I had this encyclopedia of all the Dead shows, and I would put on a show, I would put on, like, a show from ’78, and I would go through the encyclopedia and they would talk about each tune.”
“So, then, what’s the best Dead show, in your opinion?” Bert asks. After a brief pause and a sigh that seems to encapsulate the Sophie’s Choice nature of that question, Hanley rattles off a few favorites including Red Rocks ’78 (“The ‘Eyes of the World’ solo, Jerry is just f—ing wild”) and the 1989 Hampton Coliseum shows that were eventually released as Formerly The Warlocks. “Both those shows,” he says, “you get goosebumps the whole time. And then, anything spring ’77 is… considered to be their best kind of period.”
After Hanley explains how distraught he was when Garcia died in 1995, Bert asks a simple yet heavy question: Why the Grateful Dead? What is it about them?
“I think it’s, like, a perfect storm,” Hanley offers. In addition to learning about them in Canada, without the cultural weight they hold for fans in the U.S., Phil relates to the band’s process of coming into its own. “The way they started, they were just a band, and then they got hired to do the Acid Tests, so they were just taking tons of LSD and just figuring it out, the same way a comic would just go up and just dick around, dick around, dick around, and all of a sudden they just became… something. So, they started ’65, and then there was all these great bands at the time and they just kept going. People would pass and they kept going. That, and I think Garcia was just a really, really, like, one-in-a-lifetime gifted musician.”
“I think he really, genuinely was,” a reverent Bert Kreischer responds.
Watch the Grateful Dead-focused segment from Bertcast #547 and the full episode featuring Phil Hanley below.
Phil Hanley’s new special, Ooh La La, is now available to stream on YouTube. For more from Bert Kreischer, head to his website.
Bert Kreisher & Phil Hanley Rank Grateful Dead Songs – Bertcast
Bertcast #547 – Phil Hanley
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