Kitchen Dwellers Bring Out Lindsay Lou & Mountain Grass Unit In Denver

Kitchen Dwellers made sure to share the stage at Denver’s Mission Ballroom on Saturday night. The show’s first set saw the emergence of Lindsay Lou, while the members of Mountain Grass Unit appeared with the band for the concert’s encore.

Kitchen Dwellers wrapped “Drowning (… Again)” around “Comet” to start their performance. Later in the set, banjo player Torrin Daniels summoned Lindsay Lou, who sang multiple songs with the band.

Lou joined the group on “The Crow and The Raven” and “Here We Go,” tracks she contributed to on Kitchen Dwellers’ 2024 album, Seven Devils. The collaboration ended with a segue into a cover of “Little Maggie.”

The opening set by the Mountain Grass Unit included their bluegrass take on Widespread Panic’s “Ain’t Life Grand.” The members of the band were brought back at the end of Kitchen Dwellers’ second set for another WSP song, sitting-in on the “Chilly Water” encore. Both Kitchen Dwellers and Mountain Grass Unit’s performances can be viewed via nugs subscription access.

Before the encore, Torrin Daniels spoke to the audience ahead of the final song of the second set, the Grateful Dead’s “Throwing Stones.” Daniels spoke about the band’s recent visit to Minnesota, the death of Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir and the surge of federal immigration enforcement agents in and around Minneapolis. Official video and a transcript of Daniels’ statement follows:

“I have a little story for y’all. Earlier this month, we were doing some work in Minnesota. The band was there. While we were there, we received two pieces of information. The first being that Bob Weir had passed away. And the second piece of information we received was that a woman in Minneapolis had been murdered by an ICE agent that day. And that was 30 miles from where we were.

“If it’s on TV and it’s on the news, well, it seems like things can be far away. But the guys that we were working with — they were mutual friends with people that were at the scene. They had to take their kids out of school. They had to call and make sure that their wives were safe. And that happening to American citizens at the behest of the government is fucking wrong.

“Entitled billionaire assholes in the White House and a masked Gestapo in the streets is not a problem just for immigrants; it is a problem for every single fucking one of us.

“And so you may ask, what is the point? What is the point of this rant? And the point is that when the people in charge stop caring for the citizens of the country, the way to fight back is with community. And looking around at a room full of 3,500 hippies, I say this is a pretty fucking good start to a community.

“So, we have till January 31st to call your representatives and let them know that you do not support giving ICE $75 billion more dollars to operate. We have a week. Call your representatives, all right.

“Fuck Donald Trump. Fuck ICE. And long live the Grateful Dead!”