On Friday, April 11, 2025, the duo Lazy Lightning 420 — featuring Marc Gartman and Erik Berry (of Trampled by Turtles) — lit up Lost Saint Brewing in Blue Earth, Minnesota, with a performance that bent time, space, and song. This review channels that night through the haze of bootlegs, basement parties, and psychedelic Americana. I howled it into existence with a little help from the spirit of Ginsberg, Garcia, and everyone who ever forgot their glow sticks in the car.

I saw the best chords of my generation strummed by callused fingers of Dead-icated madmen,
Wild-eyed and thick-skinned under the microbrew moon of Minnesota. Lazy Lightning 420 channeled Lake Superior through their veins into the Prere Pils flowing through the lines at Lost Saint Brewing just over the border from Iowa in Blue Earth, MN. 

Mike Lahti, like a prophet in the wilderness, has created a community stage here.
Marc Gartman sang like he had seen the edge.
Erik Berry (of Trampled by Turtles) bent strings into spiral galaxies with a mandolin that laughed, wept, and sometimes screamed into the abyss. 

The bootleg burned into our lazy bones. 4/12/83 from Binghamton, NY, start to finish plus Philler. (Tastes Great!) Lazy Lightning 420 performed the whole dang thing, a token of affection to the bootleg faithful. Tapes passed hand to hand, dubbed and redubbed, lived again here at Lost Saint Brewing, live. 

“Alabama Getaway” fired the starting gun while the heavy world forgot about itself for a while. It was a spiral jam ascending, hotter inside than the frosty April outside.  We circled like the rim of a pint glass, moths to the flame of a mandolin halo. Talked in a gathering tone, huddled in the temple of sound built on mandolins and malt. 

“Ask him for water, he poured me some wine
We finished the bottle and broke into mine.
You get what you come for, ya ready to go
Well, it’s one in ten thousand that come for the show.”

“The Greatest Story Ever Told” shimmered and brimmed with bravado. Half the folks here are just in it for the energy. Once they plugged in, the dancing began. It must have been after “Bird Song” when the rafters lit up with soundwaves and suds. Two players – Gartman and Berry, but they conjured a seven-piece sound, full and alive. 

Tales of “Peggy-O” were handed down like a torch, crumpled corners of an age-old book. Tender and true, there was nothing left to do but smile smile smile. The show was resurrected in a brewery where farmers and teachers sipped West Coast IPA and danced like Footloose. What do you mean this town don’t dance?!

At the set break, we met Dale & Paula. They filled in the details of this town. We talked about classrooms and crops, about how hard it is to help. The music pulled us back in, reluctantly. The call of the second set was Help> Slip> Frank, a medicine wheel lit up by another trick up Lahti’s sleeve. He smiled a smile that only Bobby fans know. If there was a name for that soft, sweet squeal, I wish I knew what it was. 

The whole place softened. The Truth was about to begin. Let your life proceed by its own design—playful hearts tuned in the key of transcendence and triumphant strums. What was the deciding factor in this show selection? Ah, yes, “Lost Sailor” into “Saint of Circumstance.” We raised our cups and our hearts to Mike Lahti for a fine time unfolding. No time to lose! Talked about help. Talked about hope. The math didn’t make sense, but the music did. Lahti’s lighting was like lightning bugs in a mason jar, and then they dared to climb the mountain: “Terrapin Station.” 

Lazy Lightning 420 wandered it barefoot. Revved up and ready to welcome whatever comes next, it was a blasting off journey with a spaceship of pedals, 8 effects at least. Crafting a small space into a listening room for 100 people, maybe more, but I’ll never tell. “Saint of Circumstance” rained down dark and dazzling. Nothing was as it seemed anymore. 

My companion Mel sparked a tabletop drum circle while Marc tooted into his recorder. We went to grab the glowsticks in the car. The vibe was lit, and the glow sticks only buffered the already glowing gang. During “The Other One,” Erik’s glasses slid to the tippy top of his tapered nose, one with a hook that kept them from coming off miraculously. He caught them without missing a note while the other one blew into the dust of the parking lot. “Wharf Rat” bled out behind, one after another. No sacrifices were made to the musical gods here tonight, but rather, caught mid-fall like the last beat of a bridge about to collapse. 

Half the crowd came for beer. The other ones came to believe again. Psychedelic Dixieland was reborn in these small spaces. They summoned a spirit, and they made it their own. After all that, the whole set from New York made fresh here in small-town Minnesota, they also played another encore. Scarlett>Fire> Ripple. It felt like the only place a night like that could happen, in the land of 10,000 lakes. 

I left with a “Ripple” running down my spine. The encore was for the broken, the healing, the tie-dyed faithful still swaying. Scarlet>Fire> Ripple stitched the night closed like a velvet curtain. Fuzzy mammals everywhere, but mostly just teachers and farmers. A small town, a hot room, and a stage full of YES. Lazy Lightning 420 weren’t just playing the Dead. They were living it, rewriting the gospels of good old Grateful Dead under that Lost Saint sky. 

This is a love letter to the scene and the sound, told in tempo with gratitude to all who enter. Thank You! (for a real good time)