Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties

Grateful Dead tribute band draws fervent audience

By P.J. GLISSON

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Ironwood - High-velocity nostalgia filled the Historic Ironwood Theatre on Saturday night as a Grateful Dead tribute band performed to the delight of the audience.

Another One, a 6-member Milwaukee band, offered more than 3 hours of some of the band's greatest hits.

Patrick Van Bibber and Isaac Young led the pack as singers and guitarists, and drummers Matt Liban and Jack Reed formed the rhythm section.

Keyboardist Dan Buda and bass player Jordan Kroeger also contributed singing, along with their instrumental twists. Kroeger's "Standing on the Moon" stood out among moody melodies, as did Young's facility with strings.

Favorite songs of the audience included "Truckin," "Standing on the Moon," "Fire on the Mountain," "One More Saturday Night" and the poppy "Touch of Grey," but mainly, the crowd just enjoyed the show.

Some Grateful Dead fans were so ardent as to be known as Deadheads, and local fans followed suit. Under large screens of flowing, psychedelic art, there was a good sprinkling of long beards, longer dresses, tie-dyed shirts and kerchief-wrapped heads.

The highly appreciative audience included a wide range of ages including husbands and wives, kids and kids, parents and grandparents, some of whom danced with the music.

"We love the Yoopers," shouted Van Bibber, amid the nonstop energy that led to 2 encores.

According to dead.net, the Grateful Dead began as the Warlocks in 1965. Writer Jesse Jarnow said that the band name is based on a folktale "in which the protagonist resolves the debt of a deceased stranger, and later receives karmic repayment from their spirit incarnate: the Grateful Dead."

Jarnow credited the band "with avant-garde, visual, and literary traditions" and with "virtually inventing a new way to play music" as "one of the most popular, enduring, and influential bands in American history."

In 1995, after the death of band leader Jerry Garcia - who was iconic enough to have inspired Cherry Garcia ice cream - the band disbanded just 4 months later after three decades of touring. Some of the members toured afterward as The Other Ones.