Courtesy of Deb Trist

Aug. 27, 1972: The Grateful Dead perform the first of their many iconic shows in the Eugene area to raise money in order to save the Springfield Creamery, an establishment owned by the brother of their close friend, eccentric artist and University of Oregon alumnus Ken Kesey.

This concert was a wild success and established a connection between the Dead and the Eugene area that persists to this day. One month later, a chance encounter with Owsley “Bear” Stanley, the sound engineer for the band, led to a young Deb Trist getting an invite to see the Grateful Dead in Jersey City, New Jersey. From that moment forward, Trist, now the host of “Dead Air with Downtown Deb” on 89.7 FM KLCC in Eugene, became forever intertwined with the band.

After the shows, she got to meet the band, and the experience left an impression on her. “It was three nights; it was amazing,” Trist said.

After their stint in New Jersey, the band left town and returned to California. Not too long after, Trist ended up in the same area by complete accident. Trist wanted to move from New York to San Francisco, so she drove west and stopped when she reached the Pacific Ocean.

Aiming for San Francisco but ending up closer to Long Beach, she ended up getting questioned by a police officer while being pulled over, trying to find a final destination. The officer was suspicious that Trist may have been in possession of marijuana, criminalized in the state at the time. While the officer began demanding that he be able to search the car, a bystander began closely observing the traffic stop, insisting to the officer that he was “interested in police procedure.”

“He hung out and the cop finally took off,” Trist said. “We slept on that guy’s floor. The next day, guess who was (performing) in town? Grateful Dead! They were there, and so I knew it was meant to be.”

Not too long after, Trist became closely intertwined with the band, Kesey and others in their circle.

“I was friends with them; I would go to a lot of their rehearsals at Front Street,” Trist said. “Friends and family came together there; it became part of that Grateful Dead family. We all liked each other.”

Trist witnessed many of the iconic shows the Grateful Dead performed in the area, starting with their 1982 performance at the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta. She was fond of Eugene and chose to move there to raise her children. Over her decades in Eugene, Trist witnessed firsthand how special it was when Dead came to town.

“It was like ‘Rejoice!’ People were so glad,” Trist said. “Seeing your friends at the shows had this kind of healing and power. Even if you didn’t know the people, they were friends, they were family. It was very special.”

In 1986, Trist started requesting the DJs at KRXX to play more Grateful Dead. She even offered to give them some of her tapes. Instead, the station hired her and she began a radio show that still runs to this day (although it has since moved to 89.7 KLCC).

As the years rolled on, Trist continued her show as the Dead kept coming to town. They even performed at Autzen Stadium with Bob Dylan on the “Dylan and the Dead” tour.

Eventually, in October 1990, the Grateful Dead were banned from the University of Oregon after Vice President Dan Williams felt the association with drug culture was not a good look for the university. This led to outrage, not just from “card-carrying Deadheads” (as Trist calls them) but from the local community.

“There was all this revenue in town, so people who worked here or had businesses or hotels or restaurants were more than happy to have the band show up with all of their fans,” Trist said.

Public protests followed, and the ban was lifted three years later. Williams later admitted that an all-out ban on the group was not the right choice.

“I think at the time I probably had the right reasons, but with time I began to think that there was a better answer than ‘no,'” Williams told the Daily Emerald in 2010.

When the Dead made their fateful return in 1993, Autzen became a great venue for Deadheads. The band had cultivated a unique group of fans that would camp out in parking lots for days to see the group play multiple nights in a row, something that was becoming less common in the 90s.

“I think Autzen Stadium was one of the last places they let people actually camp out at,” Trist said. “They would have their buses, they would set up tents or they would just stay there, which is a rare thing for concerts.”

Trist even connected to the mixing board and broadcast the performance at Autzen Stadium live on the air.

This freedom also allowed other spinoff events, like when Kesey debuted his play entitled “Twister: A Ritual Reality in Four Quarters,” after the Dead’s second 1993 Autzen show. The surrealist, purposefully overwhelming, adaptation/parody of “The Wizard of Oz” did not garner much critical success during its later showings, but Deadheads were all but willing to gather in the National Guard Armory and witness Kesey and his followers, the Merry Pranksters, demonstrate classic characters battling with modern issues such as tornadoes, famines, AIDS and more.

Due to Jerry Garcia’s untimely passing at age 53 in 1995, the Grateful Dead played their last shows in Eugene from June 17-19, 1994. Their show on June 17 was particularly memorable for two reasons: the weather and O.J. Simpson.

Autzen was doused with rain, despite the adage that it “never rains in Autzen Stadium.” The band reacted to the weather by performing rain-related songs, such as their original “Samba In The Rain” and cover of “Rain” by the Beatles. The concert also allowed the crowd to miss a now-infamous low-speed car chase. “O.J. Simpson, the White Bronco Chase, that whole thing; everybody in the country knew about it or they were watching it, and it was going on for hours,” Trist said. “We were oblivious. We didn’t know anything because we were just digging the show.”

Even after Garcia’s death, the spirit of the Grateful Dead still lives on in the area. Whether it’s through Trist’s radio show or the Ducks filling Autzen with tie-dye, the Dead never seem too far when you are in Eugene.

“Dead Air with Downtown Deb” airs on KLCC, 89.7 FM and online, on Saturdays from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Editor’s note: This story was edited to clarify that Deb’s first radio station was KRXX. Additionally, this story was edited to clarify that Deb ended up near Long Beach, CA instead of San Lorenzo, CA.