The raging cynic in me, the one I’ve spent most of my adult life first stoking and then trying to mellow, previously looked upon this short stretch of August as a Deadhead Hallmark Holiday. Nine short days to sell merch and music, to blandly market a feeling. Luckily, this year for me, it’s all the feels for these Days Between.

For non-Deadheads, the Days Between marks a short week and a half of honouring the music and life (in that order) of Jerry Garcia, born on the first of August in 1942 in the Excelsior District of San Francisco, named after Jerome Kerns, the composer of early 20th-century classics such as Ol’ Man River, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and The Way You Look Tonight, to name but a few. Was his given name the seed that grew a different set of later 20th-century classics?
Obviously.

A mere 53 years and 8 days later, Garcia passed on to the nothingness and everythingness that follows, the full circle of his life threading across almost the entire world despite only an approximate 40 miles between the loci of his earthly entrance and exit.

These 9 days we fill with his music primarily but leave plenty of space for storytelling. Not all Deadheads had the chance to see Jerry live and really, that doesn’t matter much. For most of us, his physical place in our lives was closest while he stood onstage. The emotional place where he stood was in these same pair of New Balances. This is the place that matters most and it’s the place we’ll never lose.

Perhaps the difference this year, apart from my reawakened Deadheadedness increasing in power year over year, is that with the passing of what seems like the last ‘Dead’ tour, we’re left with a question. As I wrote on social media near the end of Dead and Company’s final tour “A week shy of 33 yrs ago, the last show of the 1990 summer tour, leaving Tinley Park, someone wrote on the dirty window of a station wagon NOW WHAT? At the time, after a tour, it felt like that meant aimlessness, apathy. Tonight that question asks what mystery will next unfold.”
That is the spirit I want to carry as we wait to see what is to come. But over these next 8 days, it’ll be about those magical notes that made me want to and then become a better musician. It’ll be about realizing just how hard it is to lose yourself in music and fleetingly tap into that all-important flow. And inevitably, there will be those moments of sadness and loss for whatever our own visions of Jerry Garcia look like.

I started the day with The Grateful Dead Channel playing one of my all-time favourite Garcia performances. Most of you have probably heard it. This was my first introduction to the Jerry Garcia Band and I’ve been searching for something that tops it ever since. Luckily and happily, I don’t care if that journey never finds me a better one.