{"id":880344,"date":"2026-10-13T02:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T02:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/880344\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T02:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T02:08:12","slug":"my-morning-jacket-meet-their-grateful-dead-moment-at-sf-residency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/880344\/","title":{"rendered":"My Morning Jacket Meet Their Grateful Dead Moment at SF Residency"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s a Sunday night in San Francisco, and My Morning Jacket<\/a>\u2019s Jim James<\/a> is taking it all in. \u201cI have been in a deep Grateful Dead<\/a> period of my life,\u201d he confesses to Rolling Stone. \u201cEver since Bobby [Weir] passed away, a portal opened and I stepped through, into the land of the Grateful Dead. It\u2019s such a beautiful place to be, and I spend quite a lot of time here!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed, that very evening marked the final of a seven-night run at the original Fillmore, and sharing the stage with the spirit of the band comes in multiple vessels. Sure, the Grateful Dead played there, but it was also about showcasing a generation of artists faithful to the sound and essence of the Dead.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe residency was revealed seven months ago, when My Morning Jacket used rainbow-themed artwork to unveil the dates scheduled for the nation\u2019s preeminent rock palace. The band only disclosed that the seven shows would be color-coded to correspond to each of the seven colors of the rainbow, and that back-to-back shows would be without repeats.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was implied that the residency would draw upon multiple bonds that the band has built with the venue, the city, and the surrounding Bay Area fanbase over the years. A message on MMJ\u2019s socials stated: \u201cWe look forward to laughing, dancing, and singing together while celebrating every color of the rainbow and all of the beauty, diversity, and magic in this wild, wonderful world!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSomewhere along the way, the Jacket decided to focus the run\u2019s narrative arc on a celebration of the Grateful Dead, connecting the Dead\u2019s dots between the bands, the venue, and the city in ways that ranged from subtle nods to overt testimony.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJim has been going through his \u2018Grateful Dead moment\u2019 recently, and feeling emotionally connected to the music,\u201d keyboardist Bo Koster explains to Rolling Stone. \u201cSo he picked a bunch of songs that we could do that he was connecting to. The idea was to do one per night to honor the city and its cultural legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThere were additional lines to be dotted, including a couple of covers from the late Bay Area legend Sly Stone (\u201cEveryday People,\u201d \u201cThank You\u201d), and Marvin Gaye\u2019s \u201cBaby Don\u2019t You Do It\u201d; the Band\u2019s famous live version of that song was recorded just down the street from the Fillmore, at the Winterland Ballroom, for inclusion in The Last Waltz. (The Who also released a live version \u2026 recorded in San Francisco.)<\/p>\n

\n\tMMJ even pulled a Grateful Dead-style prank when they debuted the Dead\u2019s \u201cScarlet Begonias\u201d on Green Night, and then played \u201cFire on the Mountain\u201d at the following show. That sequence, albeit spread out over two nights, represented the traditional segue that the Dead used to connect the two songs, always performing them together as a musical suite.<\/p>\n

\n\tThroughout the residency, covers new and old (which also included selections from Dolly Parton, Fleetwood Mac, the Beatles, and AC\/DC) were often paired with special guests who had their own connection to the Jacket, the Dead, the venue, the city, or all of the above. The special-guest list included Molly Tuttle, Tyler Ballgame, Karina Rykman, Mikaela Davis, Grace Cummings, and Grahame Lesh, respectively.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was guest bassist Karina Rykman\u2019s first time playing on the Fillmore stage, even though she had seen Los Lobos there a decade before. She flew in for one night, during a two-night break in her own tour, to play on MMJ\u2019s debut of \u201cFranklin\u2019s Tower\u201d (and on Radiohead\u2019s \u201cNational Anthem\u201d). \u201cThe history of the room is not lost on me,\u201d she texted Rolling Stone from somewhere back on the road with her own tour.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter all, the Fillmore was, in many ways, ground zero for the Grateful Dead. They performed 51 shows there between 1965 and 1969, and it\u2019s where drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart first met, during a Count Basie concert in 1967. My Morning Jacket has now earned their own history in the room, with a total of 18 shows played and slayed.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the fifth night of the rainbow residency, Blue Night, they ran through the entire track list of Okonokos (Disc One), their lauded live album which was recorded at the Fillmore 26 years ago, right there on the very same stage, in front of some of the very same fans.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the fans in attendance that night in 2005 was Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh\u2019s son, Grahame Lesh. \u201cIt was a truly epic experience to see that show,\u201d Lesh tells Rolling Stone. \u201cI still have the poster and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTo close their residency with a Grateful Dead appropriate bookmark, MMJ brought Lesh onstage to play his dad\u2019s bass on the Dead\u2019s \u201cSugar Magnolia\u201d (and George Harrison\u2019s \u201cIsn\u2019t It a Pity\u201d). Lesh returned for the encore to perform his dad\u2019s song \u201cBox of Rain,\u201d while James played the Martin acoustic guitar that Jerry Garcia used during the recording of American Beauty.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJim James plays Jerry Garcia\u2019s \u201cAlligator\u201d guitar.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNick Langlois*<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the residency\u2019s final two nights, James also got to bring out Garcia\u2019s \u201cAlligator\u201d and Weir\u2019s \u201cBlack Knife\u201d guitars \u2014 but it was the American Beauty instrument that had the biggest emotional impact.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was so mind-melting to \u2018Ripple\u2019 for everyone on that guitar,\u201d James says. \u201cTo hear all of us singing together, especially at the end of the song, and know it was that guitar that we hear every time we hear the studio recording was truly a transcendent moment for me, where I felt like I was just a vessel for the music to pass through.\u201c<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile MMJ might be slowly catching up to the Dead in terms of their Fillmore history, the run wasn\u2019t a passing of the torch so much as a hug and a handshake acknowledging the linear nature of music. It was an attempt to add seven more stories for the Fillmore walls to tell, should they ever talk.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdds James: \u201cThat\u2019s the beauty of the Grateful Dead. They carried the music in such an egoless, pure way, and that music carries us through life. And the music never stops or dies, so then we also carry the music forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a Sunday night in San Francisco, and My Morning Jacket\u2019s Jim James is taking it all in.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":880345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,40240,369905,216,369906],"class_list":["post-880344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-grateful-dead","tag-jim-james","tag-music","tag-my-morning-jacket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}