Walking into the Strand Theatre on June 4 with my youngest daughter, Sarah, I wasn’t sure what we were in for.

A Grateful Dead cover band called Red Grenadine was playing its inaugural show and featured Evan Newell, son of Strand Executive Director Jonathan Newell.

I knew nothing about the band, and thought it was led by Newell’s older son, Brandon, until Jonathan told me it was 18-year-old Evan.  

Two hours later, Sarah and I walked out of the Strand smiling and chatting about what we had just experienced.

We saw four guys, ranging in age from 18 to 23, blistering through two hours of Grateful Dead tunes including a powerful “Viola Lee Blues” opener – a song, by the way, that was recorded by the Dead in 1967 – the year I was born.

They also did a 20-minute “Dark Star,” and honestly, I enjoyed it more than many times I saw the Dead do it.

And that’s why I’m smiling as I write this and why I was so inspired by the show.

Here we have a group of guys, two who haven’t hit 20 yet, grooving to these dinosaur tunes that were done six decades ago.

And they were feeling it.

And Sarah and I were feeling it too.

In a follow-up chat with Evan Newell on June 9, he talked about how Red Grenadine bassist Will Doltz is the Dead Head in the group and the driving force behind the creation of Red Grenadine. Doltz always injected Dead tunes like “Fire on the Mountain” into prior bands they played in, but he wanted to take it further, Evan said. And the more they played the songs, the more he got into it too.

“After gig after gig, that stuff gets into your head. The tunes are so catchy,” he said. “I was like, ‘dude you want to do a Dead band? There’s this keyboard player I know, let’s get it going.’”

I got into the Dead in the late 80’s, spurred by MTV and the Dead’s only real hit, “Touch of Gray.”  I was kind of a poser Dead Head, who would travel to northeast shows racking up 35 or so before frontman Jerry Garcia died in 1995.

I continued following the various incarnations of the band without Jerry, and was lucky enough to see Dead and Company in the Las Vegas Sphere before Bob Weir died. John Mayer really breathed new life into that band in the best version post-Garcia – by far.

For the unanointed, one of the cool things about seeing The Dead was you never knew what they’d play next. They’d go days without repeating a song and it was fun to try to pick the next song after the first few notes were played.

I was doing that again on June 4, correctly nailing several with only a few notes.

They played sing-along classics like “Brown-eyed Women,” “Casey Jones,” “Friend of the Devil” and “Uncle John’s Band,” scorched through a great version of “Fire on the Mountain” and culminated with a soft, sweet rendition of “Ripple.” They concluded with the classic upbeat “Franklin’s Tower,” which was the last song played at my wedding in 1992.

On some tunes, Newell kept the vocals pretty faithful while on others he put a different spin on it, at times with a southern rock-Greg Allman-esque delivery.

And the band was tight.

Doltz, the 21-year-old Dead Head who has the job of playing the part of unorthodox Dead bassist Phil Lesh, really impressed me. His fingers were flying on the fret board all night long and his mother, seated in front of us, captured most of it on video as she swayed to his work.

Guitarist and singer Antonio Chivarelle, 22, took the singing lead on a handful of tunes, and he and Newell traded lead riffs on the guitar all night. I was particularly impressed with some of the harmonies between he and Newell.

Keyboardist Sawyer Chapman,19, frequently soloed on both the keyboard in front of him and piano behind. And while his facial expression remained serious throughout, on several songs he was pounding the ivories in vintage Brent Midland fashion. He also contributed nicely during long, meandering jams like during “Dark Star,” which has to be difficult.

Drummer Brendan Monteleone, the elder at 23, was similarly stoic behind the kit. He reminded me of Doors drummer John Densmore in appearance, and maybe a little in how he played too. He never stole the show and didn’t do a 20-minute drum jam like the Dead drummers did every show, but he was really steady and, with Doltz, kept a great grove.

Newell, if you can believe it, currently plays in seven different bands. Asked how  playing Dead songs differs, he said it’s the endless freedom to be creative.

“I just feel there are so many ways to interpret Dead songs. There’s so much openness to it,” he said. “I was talking to Antonio and I was like, ‘soloing on songs like Dark Star, it’s almost like I’m reaching into a void, like I’m speaking to non-existent spirits.’”

Was the gig perfection? No. They got a little lost on “Scarlet Begonias,” one of my all-time favorites. But just like The Dead did back in the day, the Red Grenadine boys ripped through an amazing, connected version of “Fire on the Mountain” to make me quickly forget.

It was the band’s first show, and the 50 or so people in the audience seemed to be mostly family and friends, aside from an enthusiastic dancing Dead Head couple in the balcony and a smattering of others like my daughter and me.

For me, it was well worth the $10 ticket. A great dad-daughter-Dead night. I’d go see these guys again in a second! And with that, I’ll leave you with a clip of “Ripple.”