Surviving members of the Grateful Dead regroup

The work ethic is inherent.

That the four surviving members of the Grateful Dead played a staggering 2,000-plus concerts in their 30-year career, completed a thorough trek together in the fall, and can still perform by telepathy, hasn't stopped them from putting in a solid three weeks of rehearsal for their summer tour. The tour stops at the UMB Pavilion in St. Louis on Wednesday in a 5 p.m. show.

There's a little more riding on their reputation now that they have changed their name from The Other Ones to The Dead.

"We wanted to call it like we saw it and like we felt it," says bassist Phil Lesh. "That's who we were and are. We're sticking with that. It really is The Dead. It's that same feeling. Nobody liked The Other Ones anyway, it was a throwaway name." It's miraculous that they're performing together at all. The eight years since guitarist Jerry Garcia's death have been marked by band members forming their own groups, familial feuding and, in the case of Lesh, a health scare that required a liver transplant.

So what brought them back together last summer? "It was just our desire to return to the relationship that started it all off, which was making music together. Everything else should be secondary," Lesh says. "The whole hadn't really played together since 1995, really. It was just time to put all that other (stuff) aside." That seemed to come easily last fall when Lesh, guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (along with guitarist Jimmy Herring and keyboardists Rob Barraco and Jeff Chimenti) toured as The Other Ones and had Internet deadheads abuzz. Some went so far as saying it was the finest music the aggregation had created since the 1970s.

"We're trying to find some exquisite balance between what's been so satisfying and productive with our own bands and (finding the time) to keep this thing going with The Dead," Lesh says.

The Grateful Dead's legacy is tremendous. The group was spawned in the tumultuous '60s and developed a new sound out of the chaos. The group's members allowed the worlds of bluegrass, jazz, the folk tradition, blues and emerging psychedelia to collide in a manner that was unprecedented but distinctly American. Like all lengthy improvisations, the group made itself up as it went along -- and early on saw legions of fans christen themselves the Deadheads.

It's the "jump off the cliff to see what's at the bottom" approach to music that the Dead continue to pride themselves on. Last summer began as a two-show event in Wisconsin to commemorate Garcia's birthday. A full tour was announced before those gigs even happened.

Last fall the most watched man was Herring, who had the daunting job of filling the lead guitar role. Comparisons to Garcia, while silly, were unavoidable. Herring, a former member of the Allman Brothers Band and the Aquarium Rescue Unit, brings Southern grace to his poised playing. He's also a longtime member of Phil Lesh and Friends .

"Every note he plays is a poem and he brings a marvelous fluid sensibility and some of the biggest ears in music," Lesh says of Herring.

The dual keyboard team of Barraco and Chimenti come from Phil Lesh and Friends and Weir's band, Ratdog, respectively. Joan Osborne, who scored a pop hit with "One Of Us" in 1995, has been hired to add a female vocal presence to the band similar to the role Donna Jean Godchaux filled in the early 1970s.

"Joan is a kick in the butt. She's as solid as the day is long," Lesh says. "She's going to pull a lot of good playing out of us." The group had worked together on more than 150 songs during its three weeks of rehearsal and Lesh says that three new compositions will debut this summer as well as "three songs Bob has been doing with Ratdog." The tour features Steve Winwood, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. Lesh anticipates collaborating with all three of them.

Garcia and Weir handled the majority of lead vocal duties during the Dead's three-decade run. Naturally many of Garcia's tunes have found new life in The Dead.

"There are some songs that I feel are suited for my voice and I feel like I want to take possession of those songs," Lesh says. "Bobby has his, too." (Optional add end) Last weekend, the band kicked off its tour at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee. In its inaugural year last summer, the festival proved to be among the most successful of the year and featured bands that largely mirrored themselves after the Grateful Dead's musical and business models. Lesh couldn't be happier to see the jam-band scene blossom.

"It's more delight than pride. What did we do? We applied what jazz musicians have been doing for 100 years to rock," he says. "That that took hold as an alternative to the three-minute pop song, that's just icing on the cake."