The Buffalo News
February 18, 2010
by Jeff Miers
Furthur.
It was the name emblazoned on the destination plate atop the bus Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters piloted toward the heart of the sun more than 40 years ago. With Neal Cassady— the inspiration for the character of Dean in Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” no less — behind the wheel, the Pranksters’ merry mobile was far more than a party bus.
Right around that time, Bob Weir (with a little help from his bandmates in the Grateful Dead) wrote his first great song, “The Other One,” and placed within its folds these lines: “Escaping through the lily fields, I came across an empty space/It trembled and exploded, left a bus stop in its place/The bus came by and I got on, that’s when it all began/There was cowboy Neal at the wheel/Of a bus to never-ever land.”
Wednesday, that bus parked outside of a sold-out Shea’s Performing Arts Center, the interior of which looked an awful lot like how one imagines “never-ever land” might appear.
Surviving Dead members Weir and Phil Lesh — joined in Furthur by Dark Star Orchestra guitarist John Kadlecik, Ratdog drummer Jay Lane on percussion and vocals, Ratdog keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, Benevento/ Russo drummer Joe Russo, and backing vocalists Sunshine Becker and Zoe Ellis — set out through a lengthy twin-set performance to take the Dead’s notion of eclectic, exploratory improvisation “furthur” down the line.
Kadlecik, as guitarist and resident “Jerry” of Dead repertory ensemble Dark Star Orchestra, is quite likely the most popular picker of the post-Garcia lot. He lived up to the buzz about him right out of the gate, as the band tore into “The Music Never Stopped,” moved without much pause into a visceral and well-received “Alligator” and hit the evening’s first emotional crescendo with a Weir-led take on Bob Dylan’s “Queen Jane Approximately.”
The new rhythm section teaming bassist Lesh and the drums/percussion duo of Lane and Russo pushed everything forward with a precision momentum that was indeed different than the Grateful Dead’s gloriously roughshod approach. But that was a good thing; Lesh appeared to have been moved to new heights.
Chimenti has grown into this music ably; his first-set solos were rousing, particularly during the second Dylan cover of the night, the long-neglected “Hurricane.” A positively New Orleans-like “Corrina” brought Mardi Gras to town, and later, Weir would acknowledge Ash Wednesday by sneaking “Throwing Stones” — with its chorus of “Ashes, ashes, all fall down” — into the set.
Kadlecik is a welcome addition to the post-Garcia Grateful Dead world and he has helped pen the prelude to a new book of the Dead. Wednesday’s show as a winner. It might’ve been nice to hear Lesh sing more, but that aside, this was pretty much flawless.