KGGV - Live Broadcast * 02/27 * 7:30pm KEYSTONE REVISITED
Live Broadcast - KEYSTONE REVISITED 02/27 - Friday 7:30pm - 10pm
Keystone Revisited: Rekindling the Sacred Jam
Somewhere between the loose swing of late-night jazz and the cosmic drift of psychedelic rock lives a sound that never quite belonged to any single band — a sound born in small clubs, stretched across marathon improvisations, and carried by musicians who treated songs as living organisms. That spirit returns in Keystone Revisited, a project less about nostalgia than about reopening one of the most fertile chapters in improvisational rock history.
Long before “jam band” became a marketing category, the template was being forged by the inspired collaborations of Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia. When the two came together in the early ’70s — particularly at the legendary Keystone Berkeley — they created something looser and more exploratory than the already expansive Grateful Dead. Their collaborations in groups like Legion of Mary and Reconstruction fused soul, jazz, gospel, and rhythm & blues into a free-flowing musical conversation. It wasn’t just improvisation — it was communion.
Keystone Revisited exists because fans never stopped asking for that feeling.
The Sound That Started a Movement
To understand Keystone Revisited is to understand the musical gravity of Garcia and Saunders. Together they forged a language that would echo through generations of improvisational musicians. Their performances felt less like concerts and more like collective discoveries — songs evolving in real time as musicians listened and responded to one another.
The music breathed. Tempos stretched and contracted. Solos emerged organically rather than by design. Each performance felt singular — a quality that would later define the jam-band ethos embraced by countless followers.
Keystone Revisited taps directly into that lineage, not as a tribute act but as a living extension of the original experiment.
At the center of Keystone Revisited is bassist Tony Saunders, son of Merl Saunders and a musician whose life has been steeped in the Keystone tradition from the beginning. A two-time Emmy Award–winning bassist, composer, and producer, Saunders grew up inside the music that would become the foundation of the jam-band movement. He earned his first Emmy at just fourteen for collaborating with his father on the PBS documentary Soul Is, and by seventeen he was already performing alongside Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia in their legendary collaborations.
Saunders’ musical roots run deep. One of his earliest piano lessons came from Herbie Hancock, and the bass guitar that would define his career came via the family of John Fogerty. Watching studio sessions with master bassists helped spark a lifelong devotion to the instrument — a path that would ultimately lead him to become a major independent force in contemporary jazz.
A graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a pianist, Saunders ultimately found his voice on bass, drawing inspiration from giants like James Jamerson and Stanley Clarke. Over the decades he has built an extraordinarily diverse career, performing and recording with a sweeping cross-section of modern music including Eric Clapton, David Crosby, Dr. John, Chaka Khan, Ringo Starr, Bo Diddley, Mavis Staples, and John Lee Hooker, among many others. His work spans jazz, gospel, R&B, pop, rock, and world music — a range that reflects the genre-blurring spirit his father helped pioneer.
Beyond performance, Saunders has scored films and television, produced artists from his own Studio 1281, and served as musical director for stage productions including Rock Justice, co-written by Marty Balin of Jefferson Starship. Yet despite the breadth of his career, Keystone Revisited represents something uniquely personal: a continuation of the musical conversation he witnessed — and later joined — as a teenager.
Returning to the Keystone Spirit
Keystone Revisited’s performances center on the landmark recordings that captured Garcia and Saunders at their creative peak. The band performs the classic Keystone-era material in its entirety, recreating the arc of those historic sessions — the slow builds, the exploratory detours, the moments when a groove suddenly lifts into orbit.
But the setlist extends beyond the Keystone recordings themselves. Expect selections from Legion of Mary, Reconstruction, and Garcia’s solo catalog — songs that blur the lines between folk storytelling, gospel uplift, and jazz improvisation.
The result is less a history lesson than a revival meeting.
These performances emphasize what made the original collaborations so powerful: interplay. Solos unfold as conversations rather than spotlights. Rhythms simmer instead of sprint. The music lives in the spaces between notes — that elusive pocket where groove and spontaneity intersect.
Beyond Tribute
There’s always risk in revisiting sacred material. Too much reverence can turn living music into museum display. But Keystone Revisited avoids that trap by embracing the core principle that defined Garcia and Saunders in the first place: nothing is fixed.
Songs stretch. Transitions shift. Improvisations wander into unexpected terrain.
It’s precisely the unpredictability that keeps the music vital.
For longtime Deadheads and improvisational-music devotees, Keystone Revisited offers a rare chance to experience the DNA of the jam-band movement in a contemporary setting. For newer listeners, it provides a window into a period when genres dissolved and musicians followed inspiration wherever it led.
The Endless Jam
The legacy of Garcia and Saunders isn’t just in the recordings — it’s in the idea that music can be an open-ended journey rather than a finished product. Keystone Revisited carries that idea forward, guided by a musician who grew up inside the sound itself.
Because in the end, the Keystone spirit was never about any single lineup or moment in time.
It was about the possibility that every performance might reveal something new — and that the jam, if you let it, could go on forever. 🎸✨