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]

Yesterday, we ran an amazing list of HT Contributor / UM Crew Member Wade Ellis Wilby’s favorite fall albums. Wade also noted his favorite track on each album and we’ve compiled those Fall Mix Tunes for this week’s Friday Mix Tape.

Track Listing:

John Mayer-Something’s Missing
DMB-Best of What’s Around
Pearl Jam-Release
Bill Frisell-Gone Just Like A Train
Counting Crows-Raining in Baltimore
Ani Difranco-You Had Time
Smashing Pumpkins-Rhinoceros
Radiohead-Exit Music (To A Film)
Ben Folds Five-Don’t Change Your Plans For Me
Phish-Bliss

• CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS WEEK’S FRIDAY MIX TAPE

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

The fall beckons the romantic in all of us. Most any music fan you talk to will have a list of albums that remind them of the fall. There is an emotional attachment to the scenery around you, the climate change, and the music you were listening to that time of year. I’m not going to wax poetic about the autumn, as we all know the myriad of emotions the fall conjures. Rather, I would love to have your list of fall albums speak for those emotions. Sound off in the comments if you are feeling inspired and if your team is hunting for the Wild Card spot as well, god bless ‘em.

10. John Mayer - Heavier Things

On his second major label outing, Mayer sounds composed, more mature, and well produced. With Jack Joseph Puig at the helm and Matt Chamberlain and Steve Jordan sharing time behind the kit, you can hardly go wrong. This sonic milkshake pours from loop to horn line without spoiling the stomach and is just sweet enough to please the ladies, while maintaining an aura of professional gloss the guys can get behind. Kudos, John. Unfortunately, his next best accomplishment would be Jennifer Aniston. Fall Mix Disc Track: Something’s Missing

READ ON for the rest of Wade’s list of favorite albums for the fall…