Phil Lesh Quietly Rebuilt the Grateful Dead. Nobody Noticed.
The Grateful Dead’s most important post-Jerry reunion happened at the Warfield Theatre in April 1999 — Phil Lesh, Trey Anastasio, Donna Godchaux, Steve Kimock — and almost nobody called it a reunion.
Four months out from a liver transplant that nearly killed him, Phil Lesh booked three nights at the Warfield in San Francisco and did not try to put the Grateful Dead back together. In Searching for the Sound he called what he wanted a “pool” of musicians, not a band — flexibility, love for the songs, and the improvisatory freedom that was the hallmark of the Dead at its best. So instead of reviving the Other Ones, he pulled Trey Anastasio and Page McConnell out of Phish, kept Steve Kimock on guitar and John Molo on drums, and invited Donna Jean Godchaux to sit in.
What walked onto that stage was every era of the band at once. Donna, back on a Grateful Dead stage for the first time since February 1979. Kimock holding the “Garcia chair” that Bobby Weir had once turned him away from for playing “too close to Garcia’s.” Trey and Page quietly breaking Phish’s own “no more Dead” rule, singing “Help on the Way” and “Tennessee Jed” and taking a verse of “Dark Star” — sixteen years before Trey would stand in that same role at Fare Thee Well.
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