(A collection of exclusive photos from

the Phil Lesh and Friends' Saturday night show is available on

SonicNet.)

Contributing Editor Richard B. Simon reports:

BERKELEY, Calif. — Lest Grateful Dead fans be left out in the cold in this summer without a Furthur or H.O.R.D.E. festival, ex-Dead bassist Phil Lesh spent the weekend traipsing through the Dead's catalog, scooping up plenty of rarities along the way.

Lesh has headlined eight days of this year's Summer Sessions tour with

Gov't Mule, moe., the String Cheese Incident and Galactic. The tour came to

the Greek Theatre Friday and Saturday before ending Sunday in Santa Barbara.

He incorporated members of the other acts into his Phil Lesh and Friends sets, which served as a showcase for the younger musicians on the tour and let Lesh take Grateful Dead songs to new territory.

Some of the fans were rather young, too. "It's the first Dead show I've seen in a long time, so I'm kind of excited," said Casey Larson, 9, of Los Gatos, who was here with his parents, Maryann, 39, and Jeff, 41. Casey said he had been to 15 Grateful Dead concerts.

Fans arrived early, lining up outside the general-admission amphitheater to snag choice spots on the floor. Some sold beer and soda out of rolling coolers strapped to skateboards. One group hawked veggie burgers off the grill.

After a series of Phil Lesh and Friends shows with varying lineups in California, Lesh assembled his band for this tour around the usual core — guitarist Steve Kimock (Zero, the Other Ones) and drummer John Molo (Bruce Hornsby, the Other Ones). Joining them were keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth and fiddler/mandolinist Michael Kang, both of bluegrass-based jam band the String Cheese Incident, as well as guitarists Warren Haynes (Gov't Mule, the Allman Brothers Band) on Friday and Al Schnier (moe.) on Saturday.

On Friday, they opened with the Dead classic "St. Stephen" RealAudio excerpt), segueing into instrumental "The Eleven" — a favorite pairing from Live/Dead (1969).

The band played nonstop for close to an hour, Haynes peppering the jam with Allman Brothers-style rhythm flutters. Lesh used keyboardist Hollingsworth as the point man, signaling him to play the main theme of a song to bring the band back from a long, exploratory jam.

"A lot of great energy out there tonight. It's awesome!," Kang said before "Tons of Steel" (RealAudio excerpt) — a countrified train song from In the Dark (1987) that fell out of the Dead's repertoire after keyboardist Brent Mydland died in 1990.

Lesh led his team into another rarity, "Unbroken Chain," from 1974's From the Mars Hotel. That song had never been played live until the Dead's final tour in 1995. As Kang's violin gave the tune a floating, symphonic feel, Lesh sang, "Blue light rain/ Whoa unbroken chain/ Searching for familiar faces/ In an empty windowpane."

Lesh invited singer Theryl de Clouet of the New Orleans band Galactic onstage for a soulful take on Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour," another Dead staple.

On Saturday, with Schnier replacing Haynes on guitar, the group opened with Martha and the Vandellas' oft-covered Motown hit "Dancing in the Street," followed by "Cosmic Charlie" from the Dead's Aoxomoxoa (1970).

The guitarists and Kang took different directions in exploring leads once played by Jerry Garcia during "The Wheel." Later, Kang sang a reggae-flavored "Crazy Fingers," from Blues for Allah (1975).

Lesh's bandmates checked the sheet music for the 1978 opus "Terrapin Station." The encore was "Box of Rain," which Lesh wrote for his ailing father.

The heavy-duty power trio Gov't Mule — Allman Brothers Band alumni

Haynes and bassist Allen Woody — opened Friday's show with a set of

electric blues, including the Willie Dixon classic "Spoonful," for which

they were joined by Galactic organist Rich Vogel.

After informing the crowd of the death that morning of Blues Traveler bassist Bobby Sheehan, Haynes dedicated U2's "One" to his memory. Sheehan, who was 31, was found in his New Orleans house Friday morning; the cause of death has not been determined. Haynes sat in with Blues Traveler at the Greek Theatre in 1997, and Lesh played with the New York rock band at their most recent San Francisco show in June.

Galactic played a set of acid-jazz funk. One jam was based on the melody of "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing," while another sounded like funkified '60s spy-movie music.

"I like Galactic a lot because they're more innovative, more for the young people," Eli Mannion said. Mannion, 20, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., followed the tour out west from Colorado.