Phil Lesh and Friends!

Phil Lesh (March 15, 1940) is a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career. Phil Lesh was born in Berkeley, California, United States, and started out as a violin player. he enrolled at Berkeley High School, switched to trumpet and participated in all of the school's music-related extracurricular activities. While volunteering for radio station KPFA as a recording engineer, he met bluegrass banjo player Jerry Garcia. Despite seemingly opposite musical interests, they formed a friendship and Garcia talked Lesh into becoming the bassist for Garcia's new rock group, then known as The Warlocks, in the fall of 1964. This was a peculiar turn of events, as Lesh had never played bass before. Shortly thereafter, the band changed their name to Grateful Dead after discovering another band had recorded under the name Warlocks. Lesh played with Grateful Dead until Garcia's death in 1995.

Since Lesh had never played bass, it meant that to a great extent he learned "on the job," yet it also meant he had no preconceived attitudes about the instrument's traditional rhythm section role. In his autobiography, he credits Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane) as a confirming influence on the direction his instincts were leading him into. While he has said that his playing style was influenced more by Bach counterpoint than by contemporaneous rock and soul bass players, one can also hear the fluidity and power of a jazz bassist such as Charles Mingus and Jimmy Garrison in Lesh's work, along with stylistic allusions to Casady. Lesh has also cited Jack Bruce of Cream as an influence.

After the Grateful Dead disbanded following the death of Jerry Garcia, Lesh continued to play with its offshoots The Other Ones and The Dead, as well as performing with his own band, Phil Lesh and Friends. In 1999, he co-headlined a tour with Bob Dylan 

Phil Lesh and Friends pays homage to the Dead's music by playing the Dead's originals, common covers, and songs composed by the members of his band.[1]

Phil's Friends for today's show in Bridgeport Connecticut are:

• Warren Haynes - guitar (Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule)
• John Scofield- guitar (Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny)
• John Medeski - keyboards (Medeski Martin & Wood, John Zorn, Cibo Mato) 
• John Molo - drums (Mike Watt, Bruce Hornsby)

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Post-concert edit: 

Set 1: Althea Mississippi Half-Step She Said She Said Atlantic City Bertha Black Muddy River Sugaree

Set 2: Shakedown Street Low Spark of High Heeled Boys St. Stephen Unbroken Chain Help on the Way > Slipknot > Franklin's Tower

Encore: Midnight Hour

Here are Phil Lesh & Friends second set jamming on the outro to Shakedown Street straight into Low Spark:

[1] NB: most of the information for this Phil Lesh bio came from various related Wikipedia pages, whose authors had in turn essentially recycled information from the dead.net and the Grateful Dead Fandom Wiki...