Grateful Dead Tribute Music & Crafts Festival returns to Rockland

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“They’re a band beyond description

Like Jehovah’s favorite choir

People joining hand in hand while

The music played the band

Lord they’re setting us on fire”

— “The Music Never Stopped,” from The Grateful Dead’s 1975 album, “Blues for Allah”

More than a half-century after its founding and nearly three decades after the death of guitarist Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead are bigger than ever.

Dead & Company led by surviving band members are playing to sold-out stadiums this summer. The group’s Steal Your Face logo has become as recognizable as many of America’s best-known brands.

And hundreds of tribute bands — some fronted by musicians who weren’t yet born when Garcia died in 1995  — will be reprising the San Francisco jam-band’s music this summer at festivals across the country.

If you’re among the legion of fans hooked on the mix of trippy mysticism, hard-luck gamblers, outlaws and outsiders that runs through The Dead’s music, you won’t have far to go this summer.

The Grateful Dead Tribute Music & Crafts Festival returns to the Great Lawn at Harmony Hall in Sloatsburg on July 30, featuring three bands, food and craft vendors, and the historic homestead’s tie-dyed “Peace, Love and Harmony Hall” T-shirts.

On the program this year are Touch of Grey, Reflections Band and Uncle Shoehorn’s Funky Dance Party.

A multigenerational phenomenon

The traditional music genres and individualism embedded in their music are what has propelled The Dead into a multigenerational phenomenon, Uncle Shoehorn’s lead singer and guitarist Tony Vee said.

“It’s all American roots, bluegrass, jazz … It rolls up all the musical heritage of America into one big melange of great sound,” said Vee, 52, who grew up in Pompton Plains, N.J., and now lives in Warwick, N.Y.

Rave Tesar, a keyboardist and composer who plays with Uncle Shoehorn, said The Dead’s sound has a sophistication that stretches across the musical spectrum.

”Their music draws on so many different musical traditions and elements in a way that is not going to turn any listener away,” said Tesar, 67, a former Ridgewood, N.J., resident now living in Warwick.

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Tesar added: “Folk music is a bedrock of their sound, and that is a music that speaks on some level to everyone, whether you are a fan of folk music or not.”

Then there’s the communal aspect of The Grateful Dead experience.

“When we’re up there doing it, our conscious minds get to switch off and become one with the audience, and we’re not playing the music at that point, the music is playing us,” Vee said.

Bruce Wheeler, general manager of The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, a favorite haunt of The Dead, their offshoots and their fans since the 1970s, knows all about the music’s enduring popularity.

“First of all, it’s great music,” Wheeler said. “But it’s so much more than that. The word I’d use is community. The band, in one form or another for almost 60 years, emanates a communal energy that still reaches beyond the music.”

‘A sea of color’

Last year’s inaugural festival drew about 1,000 people to the site of Jacob Sloat’s Greek Revival mansion, with proceeds going toward the nonprofit Friends of Harmony Hall’s efforts to restore the 19th century home’s grand staircase.

This year’s festival, which is supported by an Arts Alive grant from Arts Westchester, will continue the all-volunteer Friends’ preservation work on the Sloat House.

“Last year’s event was quite magical,” event coordinator Kathy Goldman said. “It was colorful, a sea of color from people wearing their tie-dye shirts.”

Goldman was joined at the festival by her husband, Steve, who’s been a Dead fan since the 1980s, their daughter, Jayne, who’s in her 20s, and their son Bill, a guitarist whose band, Waistcoat Ruckus, covers The Dead.

“I played The Dead in the house when the kids were right out of the womb to this day,” Steve Goldman said. “So there’s certainly a familiarity and kind of like a generational transfer. It’s a cultural thing in the house. Not all my kids like it, but a couple of them do, so they have joined us at concerts. It’s a nice way to share a positive experience with the family.”

If you go

• What: Grateful Dead Tribute Music & Crafts Festival
• When: 1-6 p.m. Sunday, July 30
• Where: Harmony Hall-Jacob Sloat House, 15 Liberty Rock Road, Sloatsburg
• Tickets: $15 for adults (18 years+) in advance; $20 for adults, $5 for ages 6-17 day of the event. Free 5 & under. Visit friendsofharmonyhall.org for details.
• Help wanted: Volunteers get free admission for handling various tasks the day before, day of, and cleanup afterward. Send email to events@friendsofharmonyhall.org for details.
• Good to know: Festival is rain or shine; no pets allowed except service animals
• Tours of the mansion will be given each hour
• Parking and more info: visit friendsofharmonyhall.org

Robert Brum is a freelance journalist who writes about the Hudson Valley. Contact him and read his work at robertbrum.com.