For those of you who didn’t catch this item yesterday on Jambands.com, there is some big news coming out of the Grateful Dead camp. Take a look…

Sources confirm that the surviving members of the Grateful Dead — guitarist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann — are planning to tour in April and May of 2009. There’s no word yet on the band’s configuration — previous configurations of “The Dead” and The Other Ones have included singer-guitar hero Warren Haynes, guitar ace Jimmy Herring, singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi, singer Joan Osborne, keyboardists Jeff Chimenti and Rob Baracco, as well as guitarists Mark Karan and Steve Kimock.

Also in the works, likely for October 13, is a second Deadheads For Obama concert, planned for the swing state of Pennsylvania.

The first Deadheads for Obama concert took place at the Warfield in San Francisco — with Weir, Hart, Lesh, drummer John Molo, keyboardist Steve Molitz, guitarist Larry Campbell, pedal steel player Barry Sless, singer-guitarist Jackie Greene, and Karan — on the eve of the California Democratic primary.

The Dead allied with Obama after Lesh’s son began volunteering for Obama’s campaign.

“This is the real deal,” Lesh said of Obama then. Report by Richard B. Simon

2009 could be a big year for jamband reunions, and we couldn’t be more excited.

Bonefish Grill’s Notes From The Road offers glimpses of life on the road, behind-the-scenes footage and candid conversations with bands and artists touring the U.S. this summer. This week’s episode features ol’ HT favorite Ben Folds.

Friday [all times Eastern]:

• Live From Abbey Road: Ben Harper, Justin Currie [Sundance 9PM]
• Documentary: Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man [Sundance 10PM]
• The Tonight Show w/ Jay Leno: Chuck Berry [NBC 11:35PM]
• Last Call w/ Carson Daly: Moby [NBC 1:30AM]

Saturday:

• Austin City Limits: New Orleans Social Club [PBS Check Listings]
• HDNet Concert Series: Dickey Betts & Great Southern [1PM]
• Notes From The Road: Ben Folds [Ovation 7PM]
• Saturday Night Live: Feist [NBC 11:30PM]

Sunday:

• Concert Film: Genesis – When In Rome [MTVHD Noon]
• Soundstage: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers [Rave HD 7PM]
• The Strat Pack: 50 Years of the Fender Stratocaster [HDNet 9:30PM]

One of the most talked about musicals of 2008 isn’t even on Broadway…yet. The off-broadway dance musical Fela! is earning raves from anyone who attends. Just ask the NY Post or our friends at Intelligent Rectum about this brand-new show.

Fela! tells the story of Fela Kuti’s meteoric rise as a composer and performer and includes plenty of afrobeat music to get you movin’. We haven’t checked it out yet, but hope to make it over to 37 Arts at 450 West 37th Street before too long.

Let’s take one last look at the ‘nets before heading out for the long weekend…

• Bob Dylan-endorsed harmonicas are coming to a music store near you
• The members of Yonder Mountain rocked the DNC yesterday afternoon
• Look for more of the Grateful Dead’s Egypt concerts on Road Trips #4
• U-Melt shares a free MP3 of Air to promote the U-Tunes download series
• Antiquiet’s Kevin Cogill faces jailtime and fines for leaking G’NR tunes
• The Avett Brothers journey back in time in a rousing ZooTunes show

Finally, Roger Friedman of Fox News breaks the news that the surviving members of the Grateful Dead will team up once more to raise money and awareness for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Friedman thinks the band will team up with Warren for a gig in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh on October 13. Sweet deal.

moe. kicks off their ninth annual moe.down in just a few short hours up in Turin, New York. As we mentioned a few weeks back, those of us who can’t attend the end of moe.’s pre-hiatus days can watch most of their performances thanks to iClips.

Here’s the full webcast schedule:

Friday:
6:45 pm – American Babies
8:00 pm – U-Melt
9:00 pm – The Sparrow Quartet w/ Bela Fleck
10:30 pm – U-Melt
11:15 pm – moe.

Saturday:
1:00 pm – Benevento Russo Duo
2:15 pm – U-Melt
2:45 pm – moe.
4:15 pm – TBA
5:30 pm – Fishbone
6:45 pm – PMG
7:45 pm – TBA
9:15 pm – PMG
9:30 pm – TBA
10:00 pm – moe.
11:30 pm – TBA
12:00 am – moe.

Sunday:
1:00 pm – Cornmeal
2:15 pm – TBA
3:00 pm – Presidents of the United States of America
4:15 pm – TBA
5:30 pm – TBA
7:00 pm – The Bridge
8:00 pm – moe.
9:30 pm – macpodz
10:00 pm – moe.

Jeremy and Carla are on the scene in Turin, so we’ll have a full report next week.

As we await the announcement of the Classic TAB Fall Tour, the folks at TreyAnastasio.com have given us a few goodies to tide us over. Not only do we have the jawdropping Mr. Completely from All Points West that was the highlight of the two shows Classic TAB played, we also get the red-fucking-hot Gotta Jibboo as well as the interesting version of the Phish standard Bug from Williamsburg.

[Photo by Adam Kaufman]

DaveO points out that Trey.com has upped the bitrate on their MP3s from 96kbps to 128kbps. Okay, so now we’ve gone from horrible quality to poor quality. C’mon Trey, kick down some FLACs or at least MP3s with a decent bitrate.

• Previously on HT: Trey and Classic TAB @ All Points West, Exclusive Video: The Williamsburg Sand, More Classic TAB Videos and Williamsburg Live Blog

If you’re lucky enough to live in live music strongholds like New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Boston or Chicago, there’s something good to go to literally every night of the week. It isn’t always the national headliners, of course, or indie-blog buzz acts that make the rounds, either—it’s the tireless musicians who form the backbone of every local music community and the tireless music hounds who come out to see them week after week.

With that in mind, welcome to Soul of the City, where we’ll be checking in on city-specific scenes and getting the lay of the live music land from local correspondents from time to time. To kick things off, here are a few dispatches from the unslept city. If you want to wax on a bit about your local music scene—NYC or otherwise—and give us a scribbler’s tour of local haunts, drop Chad a line at cberndtson[at]gmail[dot]com.

Shayni Rae’s Truckstop (Mondays at the National Underground, Lower East Side)

I first heard Kevn Kinney the same way a lot of folks in the Northeast do: through his longstanding association with Warren Haynes and other heavyweights of the jam scene. His catalog of honky-tonk-ready, folk-blues nuggets includes at least one great (and regionally iconic) song, Straight to Hell, and every time you see him you’re hard pressed to figure out why he’s a well-known quantity in the southeast but nowhere else.

Anyway, Kinney’s in New York often—he splits his time between the Big Apple and Atlanta—and apart from one-offs, opening slots and scooting back down South for gigs with Drivin ‘n’ Cryin’ and others, he holds it down every Monday night with the weekly (and recently revived) honky-tonk series Shayni Rae’s Truckstop. The titular Shayni Rae, of course, is Kinney’s wife, and the National Underground is a kind Houston Street nook, co-owned by Gavin DeGraw and his brother Joey.

This, friends, is a greasy slice of Monday night country-soul nourishment, and apart from the regular contributors, which include Kinney, drummer Anton Fier, and the wily Madison Square Gardeners, the Truckstop has played host to impromptu appearances from Norah Jones, Audley Freed, Cat Popper, Gov’t Mule’s Andy Hess, and Gavin himself, and members of the Drive-By Truckers and other big guns have also been spotted there. Good scene. Sob into your beer a bit but come out feeling better than when you went in.

READ ON for more of the debut edition of Soul of the City…

It’s time once again to check in with the irreverent mind behind Uncensored Interview’s blog, The Shark, for another installment of Uncensored Thursdays…

We’ve all been guilty at one point in our lives of being on an American Airlines flight and secretly perusing through the Sky Mall Catalogue to check out the odd, seemingly random crap that you can purchase while cruising 30,000 feet above Wichita. Hey man, don’t feel embarrassed, the crap they offer is almost trance-inducing in its ridiculousness. Even indie Aussies like The Presets aren’t immune to the hypnotic spell cast upon weary travelers by Sky Mall:

Just in case you’re wondering, yes, both the Pet Ramp and Fake Rock Cover-ups are real, honest to God items that you can buy while sitting in coach. In the words of the immortal Casey Kasem, “Ponderous, fucking ponderous.”

READ ON for more of this week’s Uncensored Thursday…

The Radiohead crew shared a piece of advice this morning on Dead Air Space:

Might come in handy.

If you’ve got a mac, download flip4mac for your quicktime player, or download VLC.

If you’re on windows, make sure your windows media player is working or download VLC.

Sounds like they’re gonna webcast tonight’s show from the Santa Barbara Bowl on Radiohead.tv. Ticket time is listed as 6:30, so be sure to tune in around 7PM PDT.

• Previously on HT: Cover Wars – Radiohead Edition

UPDATE: Radiohead confirms tonight’s webcast

Our political correspondent, Jennifer Kirk, has been on hiatus for the past few weeks, so I’ll take her place by letting y’all know that local boys Yonder Mountain String Band will be performing this afternoon at Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field in Denver. The Nederland natives join a lineup of huge superstars that includes Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow and will.i.am. Probably not the best time to drop Two Hits and the Joint Turned Brown.

A number of stellar clips from the AT&T Blueroom Webcast of this weekend’s Outside Lands extravaganza have already hit the web. We’ve rounded up those videos and videos pro-shot by Spin (bolded) as well as some of the best audience-shot footage (not bolded) to enjoy.

Andrew Bird: The Master Swarm,

Beck: Where It’s At, E-Pro, Chemtrails, Loser, Nausea, Walls, Leopard-Skin Pill Box, Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime, Lost Cause, Ghettochip Malfunction, Soul of a Man, Modern Guilt, Devil’s Haircut, Gamma Ray, Que Onda Guero, Timebomb, Girl,

Bon Iver: Plume, Lump Sum, Blood Bank,

Broken Social Scene: Pacific Theme, Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl, Ibi Dreams of Pavement, Love Is New, Churches Under The Stairs, Fire Eye’d Boy, Farewell To The Pressure Kids, 7/4 (Shoreline), KC Accidental,

Cake: Stickshifts and Safetybelts, Rock N Roll Lifestyle, Frank Sinatra, Comfort Eagle, Love You Madly,

Cold War Kids: New Song, Every Man I Fall For,

Devendra Banhart: In The Summertime, Bad Girl, Carmensita, Seahorse,

Dredg: Cellar, Catch Without Arms, Ode to the Sun, Ireland, Saviour, Waterbourne,

Felice Brothers: Frankie’s Gun,

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals: Stop the Bus,

Jackie Greene: Uphill Mountain,

Jack Johnson: Sitting, Waiting, Wishing, Better Together,

Lupe Fiasco: Go Go Gadget, Kick Push,

Lyrics Born: Callin’ Out, LBTV Episode,

Manu Chao: Bienvenido a Tijuana, Rainin’ In Paradise,

Matt Nathanson: Car Crash,

Mike Gordon: Meat

Primus: John The Fisherman, Harold of the Rocks, Frizzle Fry, Jerry Was A Racecar Driver, Here Comes The Bastards,

Radiohead: Karma Police, Fake Plastic Trees, National Anthem, Bodysnatchers, 15 Steps, Pyramid Song, Paranoid Android, Talk Show Host, Everything In Its Right Place, All I Need, Nude,

Regina Spektor: Ain’t No Cover, The Flowers,

Rodrigo y Gabriela: A Couple of Tunes,

Rogue Wave: Chicago x12, Harmonium,

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: It’s A Man’s World,

Stars: Soft Revolution, Elevator Love Letter,

Steel Pulse: Ten Minutes of Their Set,

The Black Keys: Girl is on My Mind, Set You Free,

The Coup: Me & Jesus,

The Walkmen: New Country, On The Water,

Tom Petty and …