Grateful Dead incarnation Furthur brought their nearly 50 years of jam-band, rock-and-roll goodness to Red Rocks this past weekend, playing four nights of shows from Thursday through Sunday.

Furthur, formed in 2009, is led by Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist, and Phil Lesh, bassist, two founders of the Grateful Dead. John Kadlecik, new lead guitarist, is growing increasingly into a natural arm of the Weir-Lesh partnership. Jeff Chimenti plays keyboard while Joe Russo is the band’s drummer. Their backing vocalists are Sunshine Becker and Jeff Pehrson.

These shows in Furthur’s fall 2013 tour seem especially poignant, considering the band announced the night before the first concert at Red Rocks that this would be their last run before taking a break in 2014. That is no surprise after 65-year old Weir fell on stage earlier this year. Lesh, still going strong at 73, has been playing and touring for a year straight, according to a recent Furthur Facebook update. The audience and community of Furthur followers were left wondering if perhaps this might be the final tour with both Weir and Lesh together. Although this, if true, would mark the end of an era, Kadlecik and others will undoubtedly continue the legacy and keep touring.

This being their final run for an unknown amount of time, Furthur reached deep into the vault for their first set and the first half of their second set. Their repertoire, having been refined and expanded over nearly 50 years of touring, is full of hidden gems and underappreciated tunes, some of which were trotted out Thursday as a ripe, glowing Harvest Moon rose over the show. The show opened with “Crazy Fingers” and “I Need a Miracle,” two less popular Dead songs.

Understanding their audience and the context in which they played, the band played “Here Comes Sunshine” partway through the first set. The song comes from the less-well-known Dead album “Wake of the Flood.” The audience needed, it seemed, to hear the lyrics from the uplifting song, considering the deadly floods that Colorado has experienced the past few weeks.

Although the first set was debuted from relative obscurity, the second set was certainly filled with more well-known, crowd-pleasing hits. The second set opened with “Mountain Song,” a unique take on a classic Dead song that was partially rewritten and rearranged by Lesh’s son, Grahame. “Mountain Song,” with its bright guitar and liberating lyrics, is particularly significant to Colorado, as the chorus declares, “Gonna make the mountains be my home/ Gonna free my soul to roam.”

After “Mountain Song,” the band transitioned slowly and airily into the extended freeform jams defining the songs “Mountains of the Moon” and “The Eleven.” These transitions and unstructured jambreaks between songs, which define the jam band genre, are perfected by Furthur. The Dead are arguably the granddaddy of all jam bands, so to see Furthur, led by two original Dead members, was a historic and incredible experience.

The band then tore into a fan favorite, “Terrapin Station,” which opens with an ethereal, persistent supplication to the muses, “Let my inspiration flow/ In token lines suggesting rhythm.”
Weir led a slow descent into the elegiac, nostalgic “Days Between,” a song from the Dead’s final touring years. It outlines stark, existential questions of existence and goodness, again reinforcing the unknowns and potential finality of this tour.

From there, Furthur ended their second set in a complete reversal from the spacy jams that defined its opening. “China Cat/Sunflower,” an effervescent and nonsensical ballad that never seemed to leave their repertoire after being introduced in the 1960s, was remarkable. It is most often followed by “I Know You Rider,” but during the Thursday show, the band switched things up and followed it with the venerated “Playing in the Band.” The transition seemed to take Kadlecik and Russo by surprise, as they both looked sharply at Weir when he ripped into the iconic opening riff of “Playing.” One thing that defines Furthur is their communication on stage; they never seem to speak or shout, only communicating through their music.

Lesh teases at a bass line and glances towards Russo. Kadlecik smiles and politely suggests another tune while glancing towards Weir. Weir, undeterred and impish as ever, kicks into a parallel jam. The result, though, is not dissonant–rather, it is harmonic and enjoyable for the audience. The band is so in tune with one another that the jamming is natural and free-flowing.
Lesh was once quoted as saying, “‘Dark Star’ (a popular Dead song) is always playing somewhere. All we do is plug into it.”

Indeed, that night at Red Rocks, something magical was afoot as the Harvest Moon rose, and Furthur channeled it.