While some may think being a roadie is all “glitz and glam,” Steven Kuykendall will be the first to tell you it’s not.
After years on the road with the Grateful Dead carrying heavy speakers and running cables, he knows better.
But, when it’s all said and done, he will also admit it was pretty cool to be among a coveted group to routinely watch the band perform live from backstage.
“It was definitely a phenomenon,” Kuykendall told The Dispatch. “I mean, the (Grateful) Dead would show up somewhere. And … man, you’d look out there and there’s nowhere to stand in an arena that seats lots of people.”
From 1983 to 1986, Kuykendall traveled with the Grateful Dead as a roadie. During that time, he met all the founding band members, including Bob Weir, the lead guitarist, who passed away Jan. 10.
Kuykendall took lessons he learned from his time with the band and applied them in the 1990s to his work managing music venues in Columbus, including The Princess Theater and The Stage Door, a coffee shop once housed in the building next to the theater.
Kuykendall said he remembered the Grateful Dead band members, including Weir and the legendary late Jerry Garcia, as very kind men.
In conversations, he said, they focused on learning more about the people who ran the shows rather than talking about themselves.
“They would take your hands and talk to you,” Kuykendall said. “They could call you by name. They knew who you were. It wasn’t like they didn’t know who you were.”
When Kuykendall heard about Weir’s passing he said it felt like he had lost a “good friend” again, just like he had felt with the passing of other members over the years.
“It’s kind of sad you’re seeing all these people (die) that you almost feel like you have a personal relationship with because you saw them so much and listened to them every day,” Kuykendall said.
Hitting the road
Kuykendall, who grew up in Columbus, became a licensed electrician at the Golden Triangle Vocational Technical Training Center in 1977, which later became East Mississippi Community College.
Finding a job in Mississippi during that time was difficult, so Kuykendall traveled to New York City, Texas and California working odd jobs and seeking something more fulfilling.
While performing electrical work in a building owned by Bill Graham, the promoter for the Grateful Dead, he found just that opportunity.
Graham offered him a job working as a roadie with the band. Kuykendall said the choice was easy, though the work he found himself doing on the road was not.
“I was a grunt, man. I was a roadie,” Kuykendall said. “I pulled wire and carried large pieces of equipment.”
While on the road, Kuykendall said some of his favorite memories were getting to see nearly all 50 states. He said getting to see different cultures was insightful after growing up in Mississippi.
The band’s signature sound is what has kept Kuykendall a “Deadhead” all these years and what led him to traverse the country seeing the band as a fan more than 300 times.
But Kuykendall is quick to point out he never considered himself a part of the crowd of tie-dye shirt wearers and psychedelic consumers.
“I wasn’t a hippie. If you were going to have to categorize my group of people, we were freaks with credit cards,” Kuykendall said. “… When we traveled, we camped some, but I was kind of partial to that cheap motel.”
The music lives on
In 1990, Kuykendall moved back to Columbus where he started his maintenance business along with managing The Princess Theater, which was built in 1925 by his grandfather Ed Kuykendall Sr.
Steven featured black-and-white movies in the theater, as well as popular musicians like Eddie Money and The Marshall Tucker Band, he said.
Steven said he felt inspired by his time traveling the country to host another space where local music could be authentically appreciated in Columbus.
In 1995, Steven turned a connecting shop space, which had been a local fixture called Steve’s Cafe for about 53 years, into The Stage Door coffee shop.
At the coffee shop, anyone from a truck driver passing through the city to a local with a guitar and a newly written song could croon their piece to an audience, Steven said.
“We had an open mic every day in the coffee shop,” Steven said. “I had a full PA system set up in there. … People wanted to come in and play and do music and stuff like that. I think that’s what Columbus is missing. Personally, I think they’re missing a spot (where) nobody cares who you are. You walk in, there’s a place to plug your guitar in already, and you can just sit there and play if you want to, and that’s what we did.”
Steven’s work with The Princess and the coffee shop led him and Chris Chain, a longtime friend and local developer, to meet. Chain was a frequent patron who enjoyed listening to the local talent.
“It was mostly local stuff,” Chain said. “But, local was (a) Caledonia, West Point, Starkville, New Hope type thing. And then people would hear about it, and I think that they would come down there, because it (was) just a unique space. … A lot of people, they’ll travel just to go do live mic stuff like that, because not everybody gets paid $400 to $600 to play a guitar for an hour.”
Steven, after selling both buildings by 2000, now hopes that one day there will be a space similar to what he had fostered in Columbus that will give local musicians a space to bloom and potentially form the next phenomenon.
“Everybody should be given a chance,” Steven said. “… And that’s what you (had) in the coffee shop. You didn’t get judged about who you were, or what you wanted to play.. … That’s the basis of any band that’s ever played, from the Grateful Dead to Lynyrd Skynyrd to whoever.”
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
