The West Marin Grateful Dead Appreciation Society does not see itself as a cover band so much as a fractal outgrowth of a movement that formed in the mid-‘60s and never ended.
The Dead are often considered a cultural shooting star, a once-in-a-lifetime event that needed to be experienced firsthand to fully understand. That shooting star cast its astral remnants across the world, and in the fertile homeland of Jerry Garcia lies a culture still tied to its Dead-inspired roots.
The band spent time in West Marin’s coastal hamlets, from Stinson Beach to Point Reyes Station and the San Geronimo Valley, where Garcia was born and died. The lore of their time here, passed from patrons of defunct bars to acoustic backyard jam sessions and misremembered drug-induced escapades, can seldom be confirmed as fact or fiction.
In 1970, Bob Weir was living at Rucka Rucka Ranch—what he later called a “self-imposed dustbowl of a ranch”—in Nicasio, filled with drunks from Oregon. Less than a year later, Garcia moved into the then-highest house in Stinson Beach with Mountain Girl and their three kids. In the solitude, he refined his banjo and pedal steel skills, the latter of which he employed for the Dead and other Bay Area acts like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and New Riders of the Purple Sage. He played the banjo in his Stinson Beach-based bluegrass group, Old & In the Way, formed with David Grisman and other locals.
“We’d get together and play at Jerry’s house in Stinson Beach, or my house in Forest Knolls, and then we started playing some real gigs informally, like at [The Red Whale] in Stinson Beach,” John Kahn, a bassist for the group and later the Jerry Garcia Band, said in “Garcia: An American Life.” “It was this tiny place and the audience was louder than the band. It was all these big hippies dancing with these big hiking boots and the big flaps bouncing up and down. They’d start clapping and you couldn’t hear us at all. Even we couldn’t hear us.”
Rumor has it that the only time Garcia met John Lennon was during this period. In 1970, the Dead are said to have practiced at least once in the former Red Barn in Point Reyes Station.
Half a century later, a group of nostalgic West Marin millennials hopes to harness the culture of the era without the bedlam and dosed punch bowls.
“I like to think of us the way kids think of Santa Claus and his elves,” said Alex Bleeker, a Bolinas rhythm guitarist. “We’re just Jerry’s little helpers, a part of a much bigger movement.”
The origin of the West Marin Grateful Dead Appreciation Society can be traced to 2016 and the Bolinas Community Center, where Pam Springer was organizing Dead nights. The evenings were fundraisers to help pay for medical bills but evolved into a tradition of their own. A screening of a cherished Dead show on the big screen would follow food and an open mic.
Mr. Bleeker teamed up with Jeff Manson and Charlie Callahan, and the three began jamming as a trio. Slowly the cast of characters grew and they were soon the house band for the Dead nights.
One Labor Day, the group was set to follow Bolinas singer-songwriter Kelly McFarling. According to Mr. Bleeker, Andrew Brennan, her guitarist husband, announced that he would be sitting in, whether the band liked it or not.
“Whenever you play Dead music, there’s always some Deadhead that’s like ‘Let me sit in, bro!’ and I’ve had to learn to be kind of firm about that. But Andrew was driven,” Mr. Bleeker said. “He absolutely crushed it and passed the test.”
The band now has seven members, most of whom are playing their second instrument in the band. Many of the members play with each other in other bands. “The chemistry is there,” band member Danny Vitali said.
Mr. Bleeker, usually a bassist for the indie-rock band Real Estate, plays rhythm guitar (and occasionally arrhythmic guitar, when the band descends into more obscure improv moments) and sings; Mr. Vitali, also a bassist by trade, shares “Jerry duty” with Mr. Brennan; Dylan Squires, who trained in jazz guitar, plays drums; Mr. Manson plays the keyboard; Nick Aives plays bass; and Carolann Kreuger sings background vocals.
“I would say that the Dead is how many of us ended up in Marin,” said Ms. Kreuger, who plays in three Dead cover bands across the country. “I was hoping I’d find more musicians and Dead lovers out in West Marin. It’s not that populated, but there’s no shortage of those kinds of people.”
Mr. Vitali and Mr. Brennan’s shared Jerry duty consists of splitting the icon’s discography in two: While Mr. Vitali covers Garcia’s early days of blues-inspired, distorted solos that more or less phased out after the tour of Europe in 1972, Mr. Brennan models his playing after the reverberated, headier, patterned playing often associated with the mid- to late-‘70s until Garcia’s death. Both sheepishly confess that their significant others are not as into the Grateful Dead as they are.
“It’s divisive,” Mr. Bleeker said. “Nobody just kind of casually likes the Grateful Dead. You’re all the way in, or all the way out. This makes you develop a deep love for that music culture and lifestyle that they represent.”
Mr. Manson has a radio show on KWMR that features a blend of folk-rock and psychedelic music that draws from what he calls the big river of music inspired by the Dead. To him, the Dead are amorphous, always changing with improvisation, capturing a feeling and a movement. They were a cultural dark star that was both experimental and progressive while paying homage to the foundations of American Western music.
“The music really played the band, and I think we try to do that too,” Mr. Manson said. “It’s an amazing cultural tradition that goes beyond the band themselves and it’s ripe for fans to get in on it because it’s so devotional.”
Mr. Bleeker said in the world of indie rock, the Dead is sometimes sighed at for being passé. But he was always a supporter of the group’s standards and improvisational playing style.
Last month, at the Gospel Flat Farm Stand, the group put on a show for all ages. Kids did their best impressions of the dancing bears and older residents looked as though they were reliving their glory days at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Susan Tacherra’s collection of concert posters from Bill Graham’s Civic Center shows in the ’60s decorated the farm stand’s gallery.
Just a month earlier, the group packed the Old Western Saloon with like-minded millennials wind-dancing to extended Americana rock.
As the band moves into the New Year, each member expressed frustration with their desire to learn more and play more and the limitations presented by their other bands, jobs and personal lives. But that doesn’t stop them from taking on new challenges. “I’ve been really trying to get the band to learn ‘Help on the Way,’” Mr. Brennan said. “It’s one of my favorite Dead songs and it’s probably the hardest.”