Furthur adventures of the Grateful Dead family

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Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s Furthur project is getting on down the road on its first U.S. tour.

The new band is warming up with an eight-night stand in Mill Valley, California. The shows are called “Live Rehearsal Sessions” and, no, you can’t get a ticket. The band even asks that the ticketless stay away from the town and the two venues.

The Furthur winter tour officially begins Feb. 5 in Miami and is scheduled to end March 8 in Portland, Oregon.

The band consists of Weir (guitar, vocals), Lesh (bass), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards), John Kadlecik (guitar), Jay Lane (percussion), and Joe Russo (drums). The musicians have ties to the family of Grateful Dead-related acts such as Dark Star Orchestra and RatDog.

Furthur debuted in September with a three-night stand in Oakland, Calif. They played New Year’s shows in San Francisco, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

The set list looks familiar to Deadheads, of course. Songs so far include “Touch of Grey,” “Eyes of the World,” “Here Comes Sunshine,” “Brokedown Palace,” “Ship of Fools,” “Truckin’” and “Turn on Your Lovelight.”

Here’s a swatch of the Furthur New Year’s Eve show review by Garrin Benfield on JamBase:

This is a living, breathing band capable of rocking, spacing, and generating some serious psychedelic boogie. … The first half of the first set on New Year’s Eve felt like an old school Dead show, when songs were not all necessarily connected by long segues. … (The next set) was, with just a few exceptions, a gorgeously drippy psychedelic excursion through “Cassidy,” “The Wheel,” “Dark Star” and perhaps most notably, Pink Floyd’s “Time” from Dark Side of the Moon.”

Digital downloads and CDs of the tour already are available via the Furthur band’s website.

Mill Valley was selected, apparently, so the band could stay home, rehearse during the day, play the shows at night and sleep in their own beds. The small town, however, is having issues with the inevitable Deadhead hangers-on. The Marin Independent Journal reports: “Some see this as an economic windfall, bringing glamour and excitement to Mill Valley. Others complain that unsavory Deadheads without tickets have been trashing their downtown.” Weir and Lesh had asked fans without tickets not to show up, saying they wanted to continue to be able to play similar shows in small venues.

Furthur is named for the 1939 school bus owned by Ken Kesey and used in the ’60s as psychedelic transport for the trippy writer and his extended family, the Merry Pranksters. At one point, the Beat era heavyweight Neal Cassady was the bus driver. The story was well told in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”

Here is the Furthur tour schedule:

February 2010
5th: Miami — Bayfront Park Amphitheatre
6th: Orlando — Hard Rock Live
8th: Atlanta — The Tabernacle
9th: Asheville, N.C. — Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
10th: Charlotte, N.C. — Bojangles Coliseum
12th: Hampton, Va. — Hampton Coliseum
13th: Fairfax, Va. — Patriot Center
14th: Ithaca, N.Y. — Barton Hall
15th: Bethlehem, Pa. — Stabler Arena
17th: Buffalo, N.Y. — Shea Performing Arts Center
18th: Manchester, N.H. –Verizon Wireless Arena
19th: Amherst, Mass. — Mullins Center
20th: Utica, N.Y. — Utica Auditorium
22nd: Newark, Del. — Bob Carpenter Center
23rd, 24th: New York — Radio City Music Hall
26th: Uncasville, Ct. — Mohegan Sun Arena
27th: Atlantic City, N.J. — Trump Taj Mahal

March
2nd, 3rd: Chicago — Auditorium Theatre
8th: Portland, Oregon –Portland Memorial Coliseum

RatDog and the Dark Star Orchestra also have booked shows for the first half of the year.

More Grateful Dead content:

• Jerry Garcia biopic brewing in Hollywood
• Grateful Dead’s history a Society affair
• Furthur live on satellite radio; concert cancelled

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