The Grateful Dead’s own biographer opens their official four-hour documentary by admitting it’s really hard to love this band if you’re not already a fan — which is a bold marketing strategy, like a restaurant with a sign reading “you probably won’t like the food.” Naturally, Mandy took the dare. Her spirit guide through the patchouli: Jeffrey Nicholas Brown — actor, Blue Man, drummer in numerous Dead cover bands, and a man who followed this band across the country in a van that smelled exactly how you think it smelled.
What follows is a genuine attempt to explain the unexplainable: why a drummer would claim he can’t keep time, why a sober fellowship called the Wharf Rats holds meetings at set break, why the peace-and-love band was secretly a heavily armed pirate crew, and why one backup singer splits the fandom like a papal schism. Also, Jeffrey invents a word so good Mandy may never recover, and a roadie explains that a skull with a lightning bolt means “bang.” Press play.
Guest Spotlight
Jeffrey Nicholas Brown is an actor, drummer, and Blue Man Group performer you’ve seen as Jake Hart on Nickelodeon’s Henry Danger, Corbett Stackhouse on True Blood, and heard as Bronty on Disney’s Doc McStuffins. An Evanston, Illinois kid who came up through Steppenwolf, the Piven Theatre Workshop, and The Second City (where a teacher first put him on the bus), he saw the Grateful Dead 27 times with Jerry Garcia and still plays their music in multiple cover bands. Catch him next in the Green Day comedy Nimrods, in theaters August 14.
Reference Links
Watch
- Long Strange Trip — the official Grateful Dead documentary, streaming on Amazon Prime Video
- Miss Americana
- Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
- Freaks and Geeks
- Playboy After Dark
- Grahame Lesh points out Phil Lesh’s Real Housewives cameo on Watch What Happens Live
The Band and the Scene
- Grateful Dead
- Jerry Garcia
- Bob Weir
- Donna Jean Godchaux
- Ron “Pigpen” McKernan
- Robert Hunter
- Dead & Company
- The Wharf Rats — the sober Deadhead fellowship
- The Acid Tests
- Wavy Gravy
- Camp Winnarainbow
Listen
- Friend of the Devil
- Scarlet Begonias
- Fire on the Mountain
- Bird Song
- Uncle John’s Band
- Touch of Grey
- Dark Star
- New Speedway Boogie
- Wharf Rat
- Teach Your Children — CSNY, featuring Jerry Garcia
- Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty
More Make Me A Nerd
Follow Mandy on Instagram at @Mandy_Kaplan_Klavens and on TikTok at @MandyMiscast.
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