Onramp Where to start with any artist
Music • where to start

Where to start with any artist.

Onramp is a growing library of opinionated listening guides. For each artist: the story, the essential albums, the deep cuts, the influences, and exactly where to drop the needle first.

27 guides7 lanesmore every week

Blues & Blues-Rock

3 guides

Bluegrass & Acoustic

5 guides

Songwriters & Americana

3 guides

Jam & the Dead Family

7 guides
Grateful Dead
Psychedelic Rock • American Roots

Grateful Dead

The house band of the American counterculture: a tight studio songbook wrapped around a live, improvisational jam that never played the same night twice for thirty years.

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Jerry Garcia
Solo Recordings • Hunter/Garcia Songs

Jerry Garcia

Away from the Grateful Dead, the guitarist made a handful of warm, songful solo albums that quietly became some of his most beloved work, the home of "Deal" and "Sugaree."

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Jerry Garcia Band
Soul • Reggae • Dylan

Jerry Garcia Band

Garcia's other band: a loose, soulful group that took songs by Dylan, Motown, and reggae artists and stretched them into long, glowing, transcendent journeys.

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Phish
Jam Band • Vermont Psychedelia

Phish

Four musicians from Vermont who built the most devoted following in the jam world by turning every show into a one-of-a-kind, deeply improvised adventure.

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Railroad Earth
Jamgrass • String-Band Improv

Railroad Earth

Six New Jersey players who took a Kerouac poem and a bluegrass string band, plugged them into the endless jam, and built two decades of Red Rocks-sized improvisation.

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Dangermuffin
Roots-Rock • Oceanic Groove

Dangermuffin

A College of Charleston duo who turned tides, saltwater, and Lowcountry sunlight into two decades of groove-driven, horizon-chasing roots-rock.

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Goose
Jam Band • Modern Psychedelia

Goose

Five friends from Connecticut who became the most talked-about jam band of their generation, blending indie songcraft with long, exploratory improvisation.

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H.O.R.D.E. & '90s Jam

4 guides

Prog, Psych & Art Rock

2 guides

Groove, Psych & Indie

3 guides