A Dead-Style Event to Be Grateful For

You can teach new dogs old tricks, it seems.

Christina Oliva and her husky puppy are both too young to have joined the Deadheads and followed the Grateful Dead on the road. Oliva, 19, of Massachusetts, never even got to see the Dead before leader Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack nearly three years ago.

But she’s getting the chance she never expected. With the Other Ones--featuring Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart touring together for the first time since Garcia’s death--headlining the Dead spinoff Furthur Festival tour, Oliva has been on the road for nearly a month.

“This is the closest thing there’s going to be to a Dead tour,” she said during Furthur’s stop at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Wednesday.

And on stage, it was the closest thing there’s going to be to the Dead, but with an infusion of new blood. The band had been tentative at the start of a preview show in San Francisco six weeks ago, but there was nothing hesitant about the group Wednesday as it launched its set with a confident blast of the anthem “Truckin’ ” and the ebb-and-flow dynamics of “Jack Straw.”

Guitarists Steve Kimmock and Mark Karan and saxophonist Dave Ellis--who collectively have more or less stepped in to the void left by Garcia--have now become integral parts of the unit (which also includes keyboardist Bruce Hornsby), especially in the trademark ensemble improvisations.

It was far from perfect. Having a friend come on stage early in the show to sing an Irish rebel song was a nice gesture, but also a momentum-killer. And later, after a soaring run of “China Cat Sunflower” and the folk-blues favorite “I Know You Rider,” Lesh stepped forward to sing Garcia’s elegiac “China Doll”-- a gorgeous song, but a downer that had to be overcome with the rousing closer “Touch of Grey.” But then, unevenness was also a Dead trademark.

After Garcia’s death, longtime fans watched the Deadhead community fragment, with many veterans staying away from the first two Furthurs, which featured Weir and Hart fronting separate bands, but lacked a galvanizing sense.

The show--which also featured young Pittsburgh tribal-rock band Rusted Root and Hot Tuna, the veteran blues-rock band fronted by Jefferson Airplane co-founders Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady--drew plenty of hard-core Deadheads to fill the seats that were empty at last year’s Furthur Fest, when there was no act strong enough to attract the fragmented Dead community.

Should the Dead alumni feel guilty that they had to revive the old format to draw and satisfy a crowd? Not as long as they pursue it with the spirit they’ve shown on this tour.