After graduating from Stanford University in 2010 with a master’s degree in music, Grahame Lesh, 33-year-old scion of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, wasn’t sure if he wanted to follow in his famous father’s footsteps, trying to make a career for himself as a professional rock musician.
“When I was in college, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “I assumed I’d always be playing music, but I figured it could be a hobby.”
But in 2012, when his parents opened Terrapin Crossroads — a bar, restaurant and live music venue in San Rafael — the stage was set for him to enter the family business. Terrapin features free bands in the bar every night, and before he knew it, Grahame was serving his apprenticeship as a working musician, playing guitar and singing with his dad and younger brother, Brian, 30, in the Terrapin Family Band.
“When this place opened up, they needed local musicians to fill time in the bar,” he says. “We’ve had this opportunity at Terrapin to really hone our skills.”
Since then, he’s been recording and touring with his own band, Midnight North, a rootsy quartet that kicks off the new year with a show Jan. 18 in Terrapin’s Grate Room concert hall. In its review of 2018’s Peach Music Festival in Pennsylvania, Rolling Stone voted Midnight North “best new act,” saying the group “takes the best parts of roots music and weaves them into a tapestry of rock and Americana.”
During the same week as the Terrapin concert, Midnight North will be in Allegiant Records studio in San Anselmo with producer David Simon-Baker, recording its fourth studio album, the follow-up to 2017’s “Under the Lights.”
Photo by John Margaretten
Midnight North performs at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in 2017.
“We’ll probably try out some of the new tunes from the album at the show,” Lesh says, sitting on a stool at a high table in the Grate Room, which is empty and quiet on an off night. “That’s the secret to this place. You can try things and the audience is willing to go on that journey with you.”
On this evening, he’s wearing a Midnight North T-shirt, the creation of a fan. He has a ginger beard and reddish-brown hair pulled back into a man bun. On and off stage, he smiles easily and seems happy with his career choice, and with Midnight North’s musical direction.
‘We can jam’
“We’re not a jam band, but we can jam,” he says. “We’re not the kind of band that’s going to go off on a crazy jam like the Grateful Dead, but we’re still living on the edge in a different way.”
(Photo by Jay Blakesberg
Elliott Peck, left, Phil Lesh and Grahame Lesh perform at Great American Music Hall in 2017.
In Midnight North, he shares songwriting and lead vocal duties with Elliott Peck, a transplanted Midwesterner regarded as one of the top female singer-songwriters on the Bay Area music scene. Last year, she released a solo album, “Further from the Storm,” and had her CD release show at Terrapin.
“I’ve had experiences being in a band before Terrapin came about, and the difference of being in a band with Terrapin’s support and its music community behind you is just night and day,” she says, speaking by phone from the East Coast while visiting family for the holidays. “It’s a whole different attitude when you get a chance to meet all these different musicians who have similar goals, want the same things and are willing to work together instead of competing against each other.”
As one of the few male-female lead duos in rock, Lesh and Peck have been inspired by the collaboration between Grammy winners Susan Tedeschi and guitarist Derek Trucks, the husband-wife team in the Tedeschi Trucks Band.
“It’s a really nice balance to have more than one front person,” Peck says. “And I think the audience appreciates it because they get to hear different voices at different points during the night. It keeps the shows feeling fresh.”
They’ve also been influenced by the country-rock harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and especially Graham Parsons and Emmylou Harris.
“Those two are a big influence for a guy and a gal singing together, and they definitely are for us,” Lesh says. “The harmony Elliott sings back to me is never what I expect, and hopefully it’s the same for her. Elliott and I are songwriters first. We’re trying to create what’s cool to us, going back to the roots of what we like, blending it all together in our own way.”
National footprint
Lesh and Peck, bassist Connor O’Sullivan and drummer Nathan Graham spent a great deal of 2019 on the road, nurturing a growing fan base in New York and the Northeast, and making forays into the South and southwest, hoping to establish a national footprint.
They wrote many of the songs on their last album, “Under the Lights,” about their experiences touring for the first time as a fledgling band. But, the lifestyle of musicians on the road is nothing new to Lesh, who was a newborn when the Grateful Dead hit superstar status with the double-platinum “In the Dark.” Recorded in the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael, it was the Dead’s only top 10 album, boosted by the band’s one and only hit single, “Touch of Grey.”
As a boy, Lesh and his family would often go on tour with his dad and the high-flying Dead when the band was one of the top-grossing touring acts in the concert business, drawing record-breaking crowds across the country.
“They were playing these huge stadiums then,” he says. “Every band member had a little area backstage where their family and friends would hang out. My brother and I would just run around from area to area, and eventually we’d run into everyone.”
His purest memory is of the avuncular Jerry Garcia. As a little kid, he would position himself behind the charismatic guitarist on stage, perching on a Grateful Dead road case with his noise-canceling headphones on, while he watched the rock icon from the best seat in the house.
“I must have been 5 or 6 when I got into space and astronauts, so I really liked the (Garcia-Robert Hunter) song ‘Standing on the Moon,’” he says. “It’s beautiful song. I still love it. I remember that I drew Jerry in a picture of what was supposed to be him on the moon.”
He also has an indelible memory of Garcia’s 1995 death, which shocked the music world and ended the 30-year run of the Grateful Dead.
“I was 8, and my dad was driving me to a summer science camp,” he says. “We were on Highway 101 and had just passed Blithedale on the way to Sausalito when he got a call. We had to pull over. My dad dropped me off and later it was on the news. It was the first time someone I knew was on the news for something like that.”
His father didn’t play publicly for a couple of years after Garcia’s death, eventually enjoying renewed success with Phil and Friends, an ever-changing group that featured him with members of various name bands, including the Allman Brothers, Phish and Government Mule. Lesh credits his mother, Jill, with being the driving organizing force behind that aggregation.
“I know my mom and her team put a lot of work into making it successful,” he says. “She’s the reason for that, other than the music.”
Easy to fit in
Both Lesh and his brother went to the Branson School in Ross, where being the sons of a rock star was no big deal.
“It’s Marin, and there are so many people who are the kids of parents who were in music or other entertainment or were super-wealthy bankers,” he says. “It wasn’t really much of an issue.”
Lesh took piano lessons as a boy and got into the guitar as a teenager, learning the rudiments pretty much on his own. As a high school kid, he was more into Metallica than the Grateful Dead, but now sees the Dead’s classic albums “American Beauty” and Workingman’s Dead” as influential in the country rock sound of Midnight North.
At Stanford, Lesh dabbled in various bands, gaining practical experience recording in the university’s studio and performing the occasional frat party gig. After graduation, he and his wife, Claire, who works as a bookkeeper at Terrapin, moved to San Rafael. He seems himself as a part of a vibrant new music scene that has been built around the club, a kind of petri dish for young musicians to experiment and grow.
“There’s more of us than I expected when my wife and I moved back here,” he says. “I grew up in San Rafael, and you discover there are still plenty of younger folks moving to or living in Marin. There is a community here with a lot of young people who used to be based in San Francisco and are now centered on Terrapin.”
In advance of the new album, Midnight North has released its first single, “Long View,” the band’s entry into NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts contest. The title seems to embody the pragmatic attitude Lesh and band are taking as they look at building their audience and career. And if they’re searching for a role model, they need look no further than Lesh’s father.
“My dad’s still going and he’s almost 80,” he says. “And so, here at Terrapin, all of us, including Midnight North, are trying to play music as much as we can. The goal is to keep doing it and have a go of it as a group. Hopefully, there’s a community of people who like to see live music and will appreciate it.”
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net
IF YOU GO
What: Midnight North
When: 8 p.m. Jan. 18
Where: Terrapin Crossroads, 100 Yacht Club Drive, San Rafael
Admission: $18 to $20
Information: terrapincrossroads.net