On May 5, 1965, a group of musicians performed at Magoo’s Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park, California calling themselves The Warlocks for the first time. The Magoo’s gig was a weekly engagement and by the end of the month a local musician named Phil Lesh, who had gone to see the band play at the pizza joint, would be asked to join them on bass — an instrument he at the time did not know how to play.
Lesh accepted the offer to become a member of The Warlocks, replacing Dana Morgan whose father’s music store in nearby Palo Alto was where Warlocks guitarist Jerry Garcia taught lessons. By year’s end, the band, which also featured guitarist Bob Weir, keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, would change their name to the Grateful Dead and go on to carve out an exceptional 30-year career bolstered by an adoring fanbase of Deadheads.
Following Garcia’s untimely death in August 1995 and the Grateful Dead’s subsequent disbandment, Lesh has gone on to pursue a number of different projects both with and without his former GD bandmates. The bassist’s primary pursuit has been Phil Lesh & Friends, his group of endlessly changing bandmates that continues to evolve while exploring the music of the Grateful Dead and beyond.
A recent episode of The JamBase Podcast explored one of the noteworthy Phil & Friends lineups over the years, his April 1999 run with Phish members Trey Anastasio and Page McConnell. Rounding out that Phil Lesh & Phriends lineup was guitarist Steve Kimock and drummer John Molo.
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‘The JamBase Podcast’ Revisits April 1999 Phil Lesh & Phriends Run With Phish’s Trey Anastasio & Page McConnell
‘The JamBase Podcast’ debuts a new format by taking a look back at the landmark April 1999 Phil Lesh & Phriends shows with Phish’s Trey Anastasio and Page McConnell.
A little over a year after the run with the members of Phish, Lesh debuted another noteworthy Phil & Friends lineup which would become known as The Quintet or more colloquially “The Q.” Active from their 2000 Fall Tour through Phil’s joining his former band mates in The Dead in 2003, “The Q” was completed by guitarists Warren Haynes and Jimmy Herring, keyboardist Rob Barraco and Molo on drums.
During the primary run of “The Q” era, Lesh and his “Friends” (save for an absent Haynes) made an appearance on the television program starring Don Johnson, Nash Bridges. Lesh & Co. were guests on the penultimate episode of the series that ran for six seasons on CBS through a final episode on May 4, 2001.
Set in San Francisco, Nash Bridges also starred Cheech Marin, of the comedy-music duo Cheech & Chong, as a member of the SF Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit. Marin and Lesh both performed in May 1972 at the Bickershaw festival in England, though Cheech & Chong and the Grateful Dead (on their infamous Europe ‘72 Tour) appeared on different days. The 1981 Cheech & Chong film Nice Dreams also featured a notorious scene of a woman mistaking Tommy Chong for Jerry Garcia.
The Grateful Dead/Nash Bridges tie-ins do not end with Cheech. One of the cop show’s characters is an officer named Harvey Leek (portrayed by Jeff Perry) who is a big-time Grateful Dead fan. In the episode with Lesh, the Deadhead cop (which kind of sounds like a NARC) professes his love for the band, and in the scene with the bassist reveals that saw the Dead over 200 times.
Another character on Nash Bridges, seemingly a Dead-related coincidence, is the daughter of the titular lead named Cassidy Bridges.
The Nash Bridges scene with Phil & Friends, which features the group performing the Dead classic “Bertha” with Barraco singing lead, is said to be taking place at The Fillmore but appears in reality to be another San Francisco venue, Great American Music Hall. Later in the episode, Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke makes an appearance portraying record producer Dickie Lerner.
Watch the clip from the Cat Fight episode of Nash Bridges featuring Phil Lesh & Friends below:
