Grahame Lesh Announces New Grahame Lesh & Friends Album Vol. 2 – Juno

PRE-ORDER VOL. 2 - JUNO [ HERE ]

STREAM "JUPITER" [ HERE ]

October 16, 2026 - Grahame Leshannounces the latest Grahame Lesh & Friends album, Vol. 2 - Juno, arriving December 4. The new body of work follows 2024's Vol. 1 - Let The Mountain Be My Home and features a new interpretation of "Jupiter," Lesh's composition set to previously unused Robert Hunter lyrics, out today as a single. Self-released and available through Bandcamp and in a limited physical edition, Vol. 2 - Juno continues Lesh's exploration of unfinished musical ideas and overlooked compositions connected to his family's musical history and the broader Grateful Dead community.

The album's title references NASA's Juno spacecraft, which became the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, an apt nod to this second recorded version of "Jupiter." On the full project, the song follows "Juno," a new instrumental introduction, while the standalone single presents "Jupiter" on its own. Grahame first recorded the song with Midnight North for the band's 2023 album Diamonds in the Zodiac, featuring his father, Phil Lesh, on bass. He wrote the music to previously unused lyrics by Robert Hunter that originated in an unfinished concept tied to Phil's Planet Jams, a series of seven instrumental compositions inspired by the planetary spheres and written for the Phil Lesh Quintet's 2001 summer tour. Hunter envisioned lyrics to accompany the music, but the larger project was never completed. Grahame later discovered Hunter's "Jupiter" lyrics and set them to music, bringing new life to the song. On Vol. 2 - Juno, he revisits the composition with a fresh interpretation.

In addition to the "Juno" > "Jupiter" opening sequence, the collection includes "Mountain's Other Side," a new song written by Grahame Lesh & Friends keyboardist Damian Calcagne, who developed an unused jam composed by Jorma Kaukonen during the 1971 PERRO sessions into a new composition. The track features Grahame on bass, Damian on lead vocals, and special guest Jennifer Hartswick on trumpet. The album also features a new version of David Crosby's "The Wall Song" with Graham Nash on harmony vocals, and "Wave to the Wind," a Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter composition from the early 1990s that the Grateful Dead performed only a handful of times but never recorded in the studio.

Vol. 2 - Juno was engineered and mixed by Damian Calcagne at The Pinebox in Northwest New Jersey and mastered by Fred Kevorkian, with additional recording at Birdsong in Marin County, California; Brooklyn Recording in Brooklyn, New York; and in Nashville, Tennessee.

Alongside the new release, Grahame Lesh & Friends will continue a busy year of performances with a fall headline tour spanning the Northeast, Los Angeles, and the Southeast. The run begins October 29 at Paradise Rock Club in Boston, followed by two nights at The Muse in Nantucket on October 30-31. The band returns to Los Angeles for three nights at Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever on November 12-14, before heading to The Orange Peel in Asheville on December 18 and Brooklyn Bowl Nashville on December 19. Lesh will close out the year with two New Year's Eve shows at The Parker in Fort Lauderdale on December 30-31, joined by Kanika Moore and the Wolfpack.

Vol. 2 - Juno Tracklist

1. Juno
2. Jupiter
3. Mountain's Other Side
4. The Wall Song
5. Wave to the Wind