USANA Amphitheatre, Salt Lake City, UT 6/7/17 (Live) Digital

Six shows into the tour and building a nice head of steam, Dead & Company rolled into Salt Lake City – a town that, as John Barlow and Bob Weir once unforgettably told us in words and music, “just really makes Des Moines look second-rate.” Salt Lake is also known as the home of the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir, as well as an NBA basketball franchise that, after relocating from New Orleans, decided to retain the team’s previous brand name, redubbing itself the Utah Jazz, despite its new home city’s less-than-clear relationship to the musical genre in question. But whatever its liabilities as a jazz mecca, for at least one June night in 2017, the spirit of improvised music was very much present and warmly received in Salt Lake City, as evidenced in this recording, which displays Dead & Company stretching out on such jam-friendly tunes as “Feel Like A Stranger,” “Jack Straw,” “Crazy Fingers” and “Shakedown Street,” mixed in with back-in-the-alley blues (“Wang Dang Doodle” and “Big Boss Man”), tender ballads including “Row Jimmy” and “Standing On The Moon” and flat-out rockers like “I Need A Miracle,” “Going Down The Road Feeling Bad,” and “U.S. Blues,”