The Bear’s Chris Witaske Shares Live Dead Picks, Jesse Malin Talks New Book, Joe Strummer and Bob Weir
Oteil & Friends’ Soundcheck Session, Lesh and Donato Review
Relix Daily
June 25, 2026
June 25, 2026
NEWS
Back in February, the Grateful Dead launched a new monthly series titled, A Beginner’s Guide to the Grateful Dead Live. The initial post explained, “Start ’em young, start ’em old. Don’t know where to start ’em? We’ve got a brand new episodic series featuring some of your favorite Dead Heads and key members of the community who will help guide the way. Each will offer five live takes that they would recommend for new fans and the reasons why. Journey along through many different eras, many years, and soon you’ll find you’ve found the moments that make you dance, make you cry, make you smile, smile, smile.”
FEATURE
Making A Scene: Jesse Malin on His Manhattan Projects, Stage Diving at SNL and the Bob Weir/Joe Strummer Summit
“It was a situation where people had been saying to me, ‘You should tell these stories in a book of some sort.’ I already had been telling them on stage and through blogs and through my social media. So eventually I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to go for this,’” Jesse Malin recounts, while tracing the origins of his bold and big-hearted new autobiography, Almost Grown: A New York Memoir.
Jerry Garcia Polarized Sunglasses from TMBR, created in collaboration with TMBR, Grassroots California, and Garcia Family Provisions. Lightweight wood and acetate frames with polarized lenses, officially licensed by the Garcia family. Every purchase plants 20 trees. These are the sunglasses for the lot, the festival, and anywhere the sun is shining and the music is playing.
WATCH
Oteil & Friends | Soundcheck Sessions
During their two-night run at Brooklyn Bowl New York, we caught up with Oteil & Friends for a special Relix Soundcheck Session featuring songs from Oteil Burbridge and Lamar Williams Jr.’s latest record, along with an instrumental jam penned by the legendary Steve Kimock. Featuring Oteil Burbridge, Melvin Seals, Steve Kimock, Jason Crosby, Johnny Kimock, Tom Guarna, and Lamar Williams Jr., this session brings together some of the most celebrated musicians in today's jam scene. The performance captures the spirit of collaboration that has made each of these artists such beloved figures in the community. Presented in partnership with Rythm Beverages.
Trey Anastasio Live and Acoustic may have only been recorded last year, but it was years in the making. While steadily outputting blue-ribbon tunes for Phish’s catalog (“What’s Going Through Your Mind”) and for his namesake band (“All Pretending”), Anastasio has simultaneously been accumulating a quieter, more song-oriented cache to fortify his episodic acoustic tours with songs that appear calibrated for the format. This 3-LP captures 22 performances from his spring 2025 solo acoustic tour.
REVIEW
On June 12th, Grahame Lesh and Daniel Donato played an epic two-man acoustic show at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, NY. A live duo is almost the most exposed format there is: two players, two guitars, two microphones; nowhere to hide, no rhythm section to lean on, every choice audible. But Lesh and Donato clearly were playing for the love of the game, and those in attendance were lucky to bear witness to two top-notch musicians enjoying the shit out of playing together.
NEWS
The 2026 Grateful Guitars Foundation and Music Heals International Annual Benefit Auction will wrap up on Friday, June 26 at 9 PM PT. Both of these nonprofits are focused on the future.
NEWS
The seventh studio album from Rhiannon Giddens will be released on September 18 via Nonesuch Records. Hope is the Thing with Feathers emphasizes community and connection both through the roster of personnel as well as the material that appears on the record. She has just released “Carolina Rain,” the first single from the album, which is available on multiple platforms.
RECAP
In August 2025, fiddler Jake Renick Simpson made his initial appearance with Dave Matthews Band. Simpson joined the group for portions of all three nights during DMB’s Gorge run. Earlier that month he had connected with the band’s namesake when Dave Matthews performed two solo dates at the Wildlands Music Festival in Big Sky, MT where Simpson was on hand as a member of Lukas Nelson’s group.
NEWS
Although we’ve just reached the official launch of summer, The Motet is already looking ahead to the fall. The group will perform two nights at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver on October 30 and 31. Both of these shows will find the band performing special sets.
