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As those of you on the golden road (to unlimited devotion) already know, today would have been Jerry Garcia’s 70th birthday. And while the beloved Grateful Dead frontman is no longer sitting on top of the world, he’s still got plenty of friends truckin’ on his behalf, seventeen years after his death at age 53 of a heart attack.
Dead guitarist Bob Weir has announced that his TRI Studios will be live-streaming a Jerry Garcia tribute concert this Friday for the occasion. The high-definition webcast will be emceed by actor Luke Wilson and viewable at both TRI’s site and at Yahoo! Music starting at 6:30 pm PST, and feature a range of fans and friends.
So far, the announced roster includes indie-rock favorites like Hold Steady members Craig Finn and Tad Kubler, Vampire Weekend-er Chris Tomson, and California songwriter Cass McCombs, as well as folk-slash-jam artists like Phish vet Mike Gordon, psych dude Jonathan Wilson, and Willie Nelson and Paul Simon offspring Lukas Nelson and Harper Simon — all of whom will be headed by Weir.
Rachael Ray’s second annual day party (sponsored, everyone should know, by Rose’s Mojitos) was set to kick off at noon on Saturday, and half an hour before the doors were scheduled to open, the line stretched literally around the block. I was about to write “inexplicably stretched literally around the block,” but it’s not hard to figure out how this event has become a SXSW powerhouse. You can start with the free food and drink — this year, chilaquiles shared stomach space with those infamous mini burgers — but then go ahead and throw in a consistently excellent lineup of bands that make it hard to dislike the lifestyle maven, despite her blatantly transparent agenda. I mean, her husband does front a rock band. And if you had the ability to let your husband’s rock band open for, say, New York Dolls and The Hold Steady, would you not use it?
