Earth Day Concerts at Grand Central

Today was the Earth Day festival at Grand Central Terminal. There were free concerts throughout the day outside as part of the Green Apple Festival. The first act was Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. They were amazing. Grace has a soulful bluesy voice and plays a Rhodes keyboard as well as acoustic guitar. Her band had a hard rocking bluesy feel to it. Great songs and a great performance. I will definitely check them out again.
Next up was Umprey's McGee. UM played a decent set, nothing spectacular but much better than the shows of theirs I saw in Amsterdam last month. Here you can see the stage setup on Vanderbilt Ave, next to Grand Central. UM drew a much larger crowd, perhaps due to their 1p lunchtime slot.
After a 3 hour break, the next act was up- Mickey Hart and Mutaytor. Mickey Hart was one of the drummers for the Grateful Dead, and today he was joined by Mike Gordon (Phish) on bass, Steve Kimock on guitar, as well as a menagerie of percussionists and dancers. Played a few songs from the Dead catalog- Iko Iko and Not Fade Away. It was a very lively and fun show, lots going on and thundering percussive beats throughout.
Mickey unfortunately did not have his red white and blue wristbands on tonight but he did have awesome biker gloves on and was joined by special guest percussionist Walter Cronkite (seated). Walt plays a mean tom-tom.
Martin Sexton closed the night. I did not stay for much of his solo singer/songwriter style performance. Overall some really good shows and nothing beats a free outdoor concert.
.category: music_ nyc_