Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead's Long Strang Trip

If given just a few bars of the most frequently played Phish songs, I can usually guess what that song is. After being with Jeff for more than 13 years, this is just one of my super powers. "Bathtub Gin," "Possum" or "Tweezer" I can get within mere seconds. However, that is for Phish songs, because the Grateful Dead is a whole other story. When Jeff and his friends were busy following the Grateful Dead in the 1980s and 1990s, I was still listening to Carly Simon, James Taylor and Jackson Brown. So, when I came across this audio book at my library, I decided to take a deep dive into the Grateful Dead. To be clear, this book opens with the death of the band's legendary front man, Jerry Garcia. The narrative follows what happened to the band after Jerry died, and how the band morphed into one band and then several different bands. The cast of characters is now quite familiar to me: There is Phil Lesh and his wife Jill, and their two sons Grahame and Brian in one camp. Then in the other camp is Bob Weir, his wife Natascha Munter and their daughters Shala and Chloe. Representing Garcia is a whole cast of colorful characters including his second wife, known as "Mountain Girl," and then and daughters Heather, Theresa, Annabelle and Keelin, and widow, Deborah Koons Garcia. This book is about music, touring, family, exhaustion and grief. At the time of Garcia's death, the group was not only a band but also a business that made millions of dollars in merchandising alone. The pressure to keep performing weighed heavily on all of them, but soon became too much. They had to find a way to continue performing separately, and that is eventually what they did when Lesh started promoting his "Phil and Friends" shows and Weir created "Dead & Co." I found the book fascinating, especially their final shows together on the "Fare The Well" tour. If you like music,or enjoy a behind the scenes glimpse into one of the most famous rock and roll bands of all time, this is the book for you. To buy this book on Amazon click here.