The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh: The Patron Saint of the Low Register (RIP)

Phil Lesh might have been part of the so-called “Other Ones” in the Grateful Dead behind Jerry Garcia. But for many bass players, Phil Lesh was the only one. Lesh was one of the first true lead bass players in popular American music beyond the jazz discipline. With guys like Jack Bruce and Jack Casady, and before Geddy Lee and Les Claypool, Phil Lesh helped pioneer the bass as more than just a rhythm instrument in rock n’ roll. Phil Lesh was far from a backline character of a famous band. He was his own autonomous musical institution.

If nothing else, Phil Lesh was the reason Jerry Garcia never felt comfortable being characterized as the leader or frontman of the Grateful Dead. He knew just what a marvel Lesh was, and so did the true fans and students of Grateful Dead music. Lesh’s gifts and accomplishments could never be subordinated to anyone. Phil was just as much the Grateful Dead as any other player.

What were Phil Lesh’s contributions to country and roots music, if any? Unlike Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir who had a history with country and bluegrass when they formed what was first called The Warlocks in 1964, Lesh was a jazz guy and a trumpet player, and didn’t even know how to play bass at the time. It was an odd proposition when banjo player Jerry Garcia asked Lesh to play bass in his new rock ‘n roll project. But it would go on to become transformational to music.

Perhaps Phil’s uninitiated approach to the instrument is what ultimately made him such an intriguing and innovative player. He was already a musical savant when he picked up the bass. He had no predispositions about what a bass player should be. So he wrote his own rules, or abolished the entire idea of having rules. When the psychedelic era called for an unconventional approach and improvisation, it was already second nature to Lesh.

But as Phil Lesh settled into his role in the Grateful Dead and gained confidence in himself as a singer and a songwriter, his contributions to the Grateful Dead took on a decidedly country aspect. The first song Lesh ever played with the band was the old roots music standard “I Know You Rider.” The band’s landmark album and country rock masterpiece American Beauty from 1970 was led off with Phil Lesh’s song “Box of Rain” about the death of his father.

For whatever reason, it was Phil’s compositions where the twang of Jerry Garcia’s guitar really expressed itself. The song “Pride of Cucamonga” from the band’s From The Mars Hotel (1974) written and sung by Lesh might be the most country song of the entire Dead repertoire. And let’s not overlook that Lesh was a co-writer of the band’s signature song, “Truckin’,” which the Library of Congress has declared a National Treasure.

Phil Lesh was not a country artist. He was an improvisational jam band marvel. Yet though this untethered and fearless explorations into music’s moody lower register, he became instrumental in how the fusion between bluegrass and improvisational rock would manifest through bands like The String Cheese Incident and Leftover Salmon, all the way to today with the band of Billy Strings and bass player Royal Massat.

Nobody batted an eye when Phil Lesh took the stage at the 2022 Telluride Bluegrass Festival as a headliner. He felt right at home. One of the reasons an argument can be made for the Grateful Dead as the most important American band of all time is because they could be all things to all people, and so seamlessly. The were country, they were blues, they were rock, they were psychedelia, and they were improvisational jazz.

It was the wherewithal of Phil Lesh that gave the band the latitude to chase the muse wherever it took them. Some in the fusion jazz world of the ’70s considered the Grateful Dead’s 2-chord jams a little lightweight. That’s when they released 1975’s Blues for Allah, with Lesh’s animated bass lines bolstering the jazz country effort. Perhaps the Grateful Dead’s most ambitious song on the album, and of their entire catalog is the jazz song “King Solomon’s Marbles.” It was composed by Lesh himself.

Music would most certainly be a less interesting, colorful, aspiring, and riveting thing without the bass of Phil Lesh influencing musicians from a wide array of disciplines, including country. His passing after many years of ailments, and an entire career keeping the Grateful Dead’s music and memory alive after the passing of Jerry Garcia, isn’t just notable and important, it is monumental.

Phil Lesh was a patriarch of the bass. And now upon his passing on October 25th at the age of 84, Lesh is becomes the Patron Saint of the Low Register.