Grateful cowboys cheer Willie, Phil in Hershey
INTELLIGENCER JOURNAL (LANCASTER, PA.)
Byline: Justin Quinn - July 30, 2001

HERSHEY -- Phil Lesh brought all the pageantry of the Grateful Dead to Hersheypark Sunday night, but not before Willie Nelson dazzled the crowd with a dose of honky-tonk.

Fans gathered in front of the Star Pavilion stage boogied and twirled to the music amid odors of sweat, incense and pot. They were a mix of young and old, cowboy and hippie. There were even combinations of the two. T.W. Moore, of Fairmount, W.Va., wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and a straw 10-gallon hat with a feather in the band. He and Tommy Hartlieb, another grateful cowboy from Fairmount, were celebrating their birthdays. "How cool is this?" Moore said. "I turn 18 today and he turns 19. We came up here just for this show." Moore said he came to see Lesh, but "Willie was a nice little extra." Nelson played a number of familiar tunes and belted out a song called "The Great Divide," the title track of his new album due out Sept. 21. The real treat for Nelson fans came during the first set of Phil Lesh and Friends. After opening up the set with some familiar Dead tunes, including "Half-Step Uptown Mississippi Toodeloo" and "Tennessee Jed," the former Dead bassist welcomed the redheaded stranger onto the stage. "Let me introduce the real deal," Lesh said. "Willie's going to take us for a couple of songs."

Nelson sat in for several traditional songs, including "I Know You Rider" and "Going Down The Road Feeling Bad," which he partly sang. After Lesh's first set, Nelson's buses, with airbrushed horses and sunsets painted on the sides, zoomed off for the next venue at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md. One fan looking for a ticket to Merriweather was Carrie Hummel, 22, of Hummelstown. She said she had come to see the Derek Trucks Band, the opening act, but was "severely impressed" with the combination of Nelson and Lesh. "I definitely want to see these guys again," she said.

Despite gray clouds and calls from forecasters for a steady soaking rain, it never came. Instead, a light mist fell, to the delight of overheated dancers. "This is awesome," said Tracy Ellwanger, 17, of Fairfield, Conn. "We were touring with (The) String Cheese (Incident), but they're not playing tonight," Ellwanger said. "So we thought we'd see Phil. Phil Rocks."

Lesh began the second set with "Cold Rain and Snow," the same song the Dead opened with 16 years ago at Hersheypark Stadium. The moment wasn't lost on Deadheads who remembered. Chris Pfeiffer, 27, of Manheim Township, stood near the stage in a camouflaged rain slicker, bobbing his knees. Though he wasn't at Hersheypark on June 28, 1985, the only time the Dead performed there, Pfeiffer said he's heard bootlegs of that show. "It's nice to bring back the music Jerry (Garcia) left behind," he said. "It's all about the jams."

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