There was no need for fingers in the air on Saturday outside Levitt Pavilion in Denver where Melvin Seals & JGB played a free concert. The tribute project led by Jerry Garcia‘s longtime organist Melvin Seals rewarded the diehard Denver Grateful Dead community with a single-set show that concluded with the group’s debut of the traditional “And We Bid You Goodnight”, per Setlist.fm.
In a pre-show interview with Denver’s KGNU, Seals alluded to the impending debut as something of a reward for the Denver faithful who waited an abnormally long five months for the band to return. On their previous trips to the Mile High City, Melvin and his band used to play at So Many Roads which closed in April following repeated liquor license violations and a flurry of felony charges against the owner. Starting fresh at Levitt Pavilion, Seals had some surprises in store.
“I’ll give you some great Jerry, some Grateful Dead. And here comes, ‘Whoa, he did that!’ I love those moments,” Seals told KGNU of the new additions to his setlist. “I’ve been sharing those moments in a few places I’ve been playing. So it’s time to share that in Denver. I don’t want to tell you what it is because I look at their faces when I start the song. They’ll either go, ‘Why is he doing that one?’ Or they go, ‘Oh!’ Everybody sings along because they know the lyrics, they sing along. It’s just the surprise of the song that gets them. It’s an oldie but goodie.”
After performing the works of Jerry Garcia for nearly half a century, Seals has a vested interest in keeping his shows exciting—a notion seconded by fans who have seen one Grateful Dead tribute after another for years. Melvin’s show on Saturday bridged the overlapping catalogs of the Jerry Garcia Band and the Grateful Dead, most notably with a pairing of “Cats Under the Stars” and “The Wheel” which flowed into a “Drums” and “Space” segment. Seals also honored Garcia’s lifetime love of soul and gospel music with favorites “I Second That Emotion”, “Tore Up Over You”, and “My Sisters and Brothers”.
“I don’t want anybody to know my program,” Seals said of keeping his shows fresh. “I think it’s so stale – okay, they did that, they’re going to do this. They may enjoy the music, but they know it. Not here, buddy. I keep throwing a monkey wrench in our situation. I’m throwing you off. What you thought you knew, you don’t no longer know. And I change up. I rearrange songs. I may change the ending of a song from how you knew it. ‘Oh, whoa, what are they doing?’ That’s the moment I like.”
When it seemed like the night might last forever, the closing notes of a climactic “Deal” gave way to the true show-closer, “And We Bid You Goodnight”. A staple closer of the Grateful Dead’s late ’60s and early ’70s concerts that re-emerged in 1989, this traditional funeral song lands squarely in the middle of the Garcia/Grateful Dead Venn diagram. Though a regular of early Dead shows, the gospel sound was a precursor for Jerry’s R&B-fueled side project that would take shape in the mid-1970s. An oldie but a goodie, as Seals himself said.
Check out a gallery of images from Melvin Seals & JGB in Denver courtesy of photographer Brad Niederman along with full-show audio via Jesse D. Scott. Up next for the band is a set at the Adirondack Independence Music Festival in Lake George, NY on Friday, August 30th followed by a headlining concert in Pawtucket, RI on Saturday. Find tickets and a full list of tour dates here.
Melvin Seals & JGB — Levitt Pavilion — Denver, CO — 8/24/24 — Full Audio
Setlist: Melvin Seals & JGB | Levitt Pavilion | Denver, CO | 8/24/24
Set: I Second That Emotion (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles), Stir It Up (Bob Marley and The Wailers), Tore Up Over You (The Midnighters), Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) (Bob Dylan) > Cats Down Under the Stars > The Wheel > Drums > Space > That Lucky Old Sun (Frankie Laine) > Dancing in the Streets (Martha Reeves and The Vandellas), My Sisters and Brothers (Charles Mingus) > Deal, And Bid You Goodnight (Traditional)
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