Jerry Garcia needed exactly three songs at their first rehearsal before he had his verdict: “You play some pretty good organ.” Melvin Seals spent the next eighteen years proving how much that understatement contained, anchoring the Jerry Garcia Band on Hammond B-3 through its final performance in April 1995, and has spent the three decades since keeping the music alive, unchanged, in rooms across the country. He brings Melvin Seals & JGB to the Sherman Theater on Thursday, October 15.
About the Show
Seals formed JGB in 1996, after Garcia’s death in August 1995, to continue the Garcia Band’s repertoire with total fidelity to the original. “I want to go back out and do exactly what we used to do with Jerry,” he has said. “Not change any of it.” The current band — Seals on Hammond B-3, keyboards, and vocals; John Kadlecik on guitar and vocals; John-Paul McLean on bass and vocals; Jeremy Hoenig on drums — draws from the classic Garcia catalog alongside rare material that the original group played only a handful of times. The set changes nightly, moving through blues, funk, rock, jazz, R&B, and gospel.
That gospel thread is not incidental to who Melvin Seals is. He started on piano at age eight, playing for his local church in San Francisco, and that foundation is audible in how he plays: not as ornament but as structure, the organ holding a room the way it holds a congregation. He became the Jerry Garcia Band’s longest-tenured keyboardist, serving from his debut in 1981 through the group’s final show in April 1995. That first year, he contributed organ to Garcia’s final solo album, Run for the Roses (1982), playing on the title track and a cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” The band describes their live show as “an exciting, often psychedelic musical journey that changes nightly”; the grounding in gospel and soul is what keeps it from floating away. The tagline is “Keepers of the flame.” After thirty years of holding that role, Seals has made it clear he means it.
Venue & Logistics
Melvin Seals & JGB plays the Sherman Theater, a venue serving the broader Hudson Valley area, at 524 Main Street in Stroudsburg, PA. Doors open at 7 p.m.; the show begins at 8 p.m. The show is all ages; 21 and older may drink with valid ID.
Tickets
General Admission Standing is $37 in advance or $42 day of show. Reserved Balcony is $47 advance or $52 day of show. Fees apply. Tickets went on sale to the general public July 17, 2026; after 5 p.m. on the day of the show, tickets must be purchased at the door. Buy tickets