Matt Busch saw his first Grateful Dead concert at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 14, 1988.
“I was hooked right away,” he said.
The following February, Wetlands Preserve opened at 161 Hudson St. in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood. Busch figures he was around 16 when he started sneaking into the music venue and bar. He eventually spent six nights a week there, enjoying live music.
“There was no way I was going to be kept out of it,” he said.
Busch, 53, now co-manages God Street Wine, a Wetlands fixture and jamband from the city that will headline “Ghosts of Wetlands Past” at Bearsville Theater this weekend.
The concerts will celebrate the club’s history and its connections to Woodstock. God Street Wine will perform Saturday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m., with Ominous Seapods opening, and Sunday, Nov. 1, at 6 p.m., with Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors opening. Tickets for each evening range from $50.65 to $76.65, and Wetlands memorabilia will be on display.
Bearsville Theater is operated by concert promoter Peter Shapiro, who owned Wetlands from 1997 until its closure in 2001. Shapiro started managing Bearsville in 2024.
Michael Weiss, who co-manages God Street Wine with Busch, came up with the theme for the Halloween weekend shows. While discussing costumes, Weiss suggested turning the theater itself into the “costume.”
Plans include screening old footage, displaying photographs from Wetlands, and bringing in guest musicians who evoke the era.
“Our plan is to make it look and feel like the old days,” Weiss said.
Bands that performed at Wetlands include Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Counting Crows, and Blues Traveler. Pearl Jam played there on July 17, 1991, about six weeks before the release of its debut album, “Ten.”
Jenn Glickman, 50, Bearsville Theater’s director of operations and a former Wetlands regular, described the “connective tissue” that has long bound the Catskills to the club’s community.
Phish and Blues Traveler recorded at the old Bearsville Studios. God Street Wine’s new album, “The Method,” was recorded adjacent to the theater at Utopia Studios Bearsville.
Recalling her nights at Wetlands, Glickman said, “The happiest place on earth was not Disneyland—It was The Wetlands.”
Wetlands helped launch Shapiro’s career running music venues nationwide. His venues include The Capitol Theatre in Westchester County and Brooklyn Bowl locations in Williamsburg, Philadelphia, Nashville, and Las Vegas.
“Without Wetlands, I wouldn’t be running the Bearsville Theater,” said Shapiro, 54. “That was my training ground, my school, my graduate school was there.”
Performances at Wetlands stretched into the early morning. A bodega across the street offered breakfast, or a very late supper, depending on your schedule, and an opportunity to keep the party going after the club’s doors closed.
The club’s bookings extended beyond jam bands to hip-hop and Indigenous Australian music. Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter once sat in, unannounced, with the band Zero. Hanson sat in with Bob Weir.
Activism was part of the club’s mission from the beginning. Founder Larry Bloch envisioned a gathering place for activists, with club revenue supporting an in-house Activism Center. In a 2001 newsletter, Wetlands reported spending more than $1 million operating the center, which worked on environmental and social justice campaigns.
For Shapiro, Bearsville’s surrounding woods and location beside the Saw Kill offer another connection to Wetlands’ environmental mission.
“The theme works even better when you look out at a stream out the back of the venue,” he said.
Denise Parent, 58, a Woodstock drummer, vocalist, and guitarist who performs with the Deadbeats, Brown Eyed Women, and guitarist and vocalist John Kadlecik, remembers being drawn into the Wetlands community.
“First, I was a fan and I was going there and I was just completely in awe,” she said.
Parent saw the Indigo Girls there in November 1990 after befriending the musical duo. She spent time backstage with them and later returned to perform with her Deadbeats bandmates.
“There was just a cool vibe of people who were all, just like me, in our own, hippie, Deadhead way,” Parent said. “The colorful art and the paint on the walls—just everything about it was a moment where you could look around and stare at the wall and be entertained in some odd way. The folks were joyous.”
That sense of community carried over to her performances.
“The crowd would be right with us,” she said. “It was beautiful. We engaged.”
John W. Barry is a reporter for The Overlook. Reach him at john@theoverlooknews.com.
