Midnight North is loading up for a four-show run through Colorado later this month, pairing headlining club dates in Fort Collins and Denver with two Terrapin Roadshow stops in Glenwood Springs. The San Francisco-rooted Americana band will play the Aggie Theatre on August 20, Cervantes’ Other Side on August 21, and then bring the Terrapin Bus back out for roadshows on August 22 and August 23, all in Glenwood Springs.
The news came via a post from Terrapin Crossroads on Facebook, which laid out the four-city itinerary and confirmed tickets are available through midnightnorth.com. For longtime followers of the jam scene, the run carries extra weight: the Terrapin Roadshow format traces directly back to the community built around Phil Lesh, the late Grateful Dead bassist and father of Midnight North co-founder Grahame Lesh.
From a San Rafael Clubhouse to a Rolling Roadshow
Terrapin Crossroads, the music venue and restaurant Phil Lesh and his wife Jill opened in San Rafael, California in March 2012, served as a community hub and an early home stage for Midnight North, according to Grateful Web. For nearly a decade, the venue hosted nightly improvised jams with rotating Bay Area musicians, per the Shakedown Archives. That physical chapter ended when Terrapin Crossroads permanently closed in November 2021 after its lease ran out, as reported by SFGATE. The vacant building later suffered severe structural damage in a suspected arson fire in March 2025, with investigators finding an empty gasoline can near the scene of the early morning blaze, according to Relix.
Rather than let the Terrapin spirit die with the building, the Lesh family grew the concept into something mobile. The Terrapin Roadshow format developed out of the family’s 2023 and 2024 Sunday Daydream outdoor festivals before launching as a full mobile concert tour in 2025, carrying the collaborative energy of the original venue across the country. Each Roadshow features a rotating cast of musicians anchored by Grahame Lesh, per the same Grateful Web account. That transition took on deeper meaning after Phil Lesh, who co-founded the Grateful Dead in 1965 and helped pioneer its avant-garde jam bass style, died at age 84 in October 2024, as reported by The Guardian.
A Band With Its Own Résumé
Midnight North didn’t start as a Grateful Dead tribute act, and it hasn’t built its career as one. The group formed in San Francisco in early 2012, when singer-songwriters Grahame Lesh and Elliott Peck teamed up with bassist Connor O’Sullivan, later adding drummer Nathan Graham in 2016, according to Martyrs’. The band initially performed as Grahame Lesh & Friends before officially taking the Midnight North name in 2013, per Purple Fiddle…