Grateful Shred is kind of like a sonic time machine. 

The septet, which interprets, but does not copy, music from and adjacent to the Grateful Dead songbook, plops the 1970s right into late-2025. 

And it’s not just the music. These cats dress mainly in bellbottoms, heeled boots and long sleeves. And, with vocalist Mikaela Davis and two drummers on board, the Shreds are configured like the Gratefuls of the era as well. 

But, while the songs mostly mirrored the ’70s, they also rewinded to the ’60s on an amphetamine arrangement of “Cold Rain and Snow” and fast-forwarded to the ’80s on the 25-minute funk mashup of “Feel Like a Stranger” -> “Franklin’s Tower” -> “Stranger Reprise.” This sandwich was the fuel for liftoff Oct. 22 inside Columbus, Ohio’s, intimate Summit Music Hall and was the highlight of an evening, that stretched for more than 2.5 hours across two sets. 

During their generous stage time, Shred consistently made clear they are not trying to ape the Dead; they remember all the words to “Truckin’” for goodness sake. This makes them stand out in a crowded field; they take the music Furthur while always underscoring they are Other Ones. 

“Cassidy” was a key to this approach. With a male-female vocal arrangement between rhythm guitarist and primary singer Austin McCutchen and Davis, the song was musically harder-edged, angular, with leads from guitarist John Lee Shannon and keyboardist Adam MacDougall thinner in tone than traditional solos, thus nestling in to, rather than cutting through, the band’s deep-rutted rhythm section and Dan Horne’s chest-rattling low end. 

Along with Shannon and MacDougall, who played clavinet, organ and synth and sung lead on a sludgy “West L.A. Fadeaway,” Horne makes up three-quarters of Circles around the Sun, the band that came together in 2015 to make PA music for Fare Thee Well. Something of the onstage cheerleader, Horne sung “Hard to Handle,” danced happily and raised and lowered his bass in time with the music, as Davis, untethered from her ubiquitous harp, swayed and shuffled in front of her center-stage mic. 

The amalgamated band thus spun Circles around the Dead Southern Star. It opened with “The Music Never Stopped” and presented the song in an cosmic way that recalled CATS’ Interludes for the Dead. It mined its disco cred to recreate the tie-dyed, dance-floor arrangement of “Dancing in the Street” of 1976. It channeled Dead Set with a feedback-laden, full-band “Space;” and allowed Davis to take charge on “Bird Song,” as she did with Phil Lesh & Friends, which floated with a purposeful wobble and contained musical elements of “Estimated Prophet” and “Dark Star.”

Davis was on and off stage and sipped hot tea between glasses of red wine to soothe her throat. Though she frequently coughed off-mic, she was in fine voice whether harmonizing with drummer Chris J. English on “They Love Each Other” and with McCutchen on “Lay Down Sally” or taking the lead on such tracks as “Shining Star.”