17 FEBRUARY 19-25, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Still Kicking BOOTS JAFFEE KEEPS ON TRUCKING, FROM GRATEFUL DEAD CREW TO COLORADO ARTIST. BY NIC K HUTC HINSON Born in Brooklyn in 1949 and now a longtime resident of the Poudre Canyon area, Leonard “Boots” Jaffee has led a life full of adventure and music. Boots, as he’s widely known, owes his memorable nickname to his unusual gait, which he says made his shoes wear out fast – and led to his mother outfi tting him in a pair of work boots. “I walked a little funny,” Jaffee explains. “So my mom got me a pair of Wellington boots, which are kind of a sturdy motorcycle/work shoe. Nobody in New York wore boots in the summertime, so when I would come around, people would say, ‘Here comes the boot.’ ” Jaffee, who went on to favor cowboy boots for footwear, is known among Grateful Dead fans for his appearance in The Grateful Dead Movie, released in 1977. The fi lm chronicles a fi ve-night run by the Dead at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom in October 1974. The beloved production, which was directed by Jerry Garcia and includes a well-known psychedelic-animated opening segment, pro- vides an inside view of the mythical Deadhead concert culture and includes brilliant live footage of the band performing inspired takes from its legendary catalog. In one of the movie’s more colorful mo- ments, a young man with a mus- tache and an impish gleam in his eye is seen igniting fi reballs on stage during a groovy version of “Eyes of the World.” The crowd cheers its approval and the band noodles along enthusiastically. The stagehand conjuring the fl ames is Boots, who had joined the Dead’s road crew several years earlier in New York. “I had a job doing stage work at the Fillmore East,” recalls Jaffee. “When the Dead appeared in New York at the Fillmore in 1969, they played the fi rst night and then decided that they wanted something special for their second show. I had some friends who worked with the light show there and I said, ‘Hey, I do sleight-of-hand stuff and I can do some fl ame things,’ and that was the start of it. The Dead really liked what I did, and they invited me to come out to California. At that time, the band was just making a name for themselves outside of San Francisco. They didn’t really have any of their music on the radio yet.” Jaffee, who estimates that he worked approximately a thousand Grateful Dead concerts during his time with the group, still interacts with fi re, though these days he can be found helping put out fl ames. In addition to being the president of the board of direc- tors for the Poudre Canyon Fire Protection District, Jaffee is a volunteer fi refi ghter and vehicle driver for the fi re department. He also has a gig as a weather watcher for CBS Colorado, channel 4 in Denver. Igniting balls of fl ame in crowded spaces with a lighter might not pass code in present times, but Boots says he had it under control. “I knew what I was doing with the fl ames inside the venues,” says Jaffee with a chuckle. “One fi re department in New York, at the Capitol Theatre, were very cooperative and they even gave me a patch for their fi re de- partment. I was technically part of what was called ‘road crew’ at the time. I traveled with the Grateful Dead between 1969 and 1976. My role was pyrotechnics, but I also helped move equipment and pick up cables and other stuff at the end of the night. There was always something that needed to be done.” Jaffee was part of the legendary group of old-guard Grateful Dead roadies and technicians that included “Big Steve” Parish, now a host on Sirius Radio’s Grateful Dead Channel, and other fi gures such as artist and equipment handler Bill “Kidd” Candelario, audio engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson, road manager Rex Jackson (for whom the chari- table Rex Foundation is named), sound man Dan Healy, roadie Sonny Heard and head Grateful Dead crew member Laurence “Ram Rod” Shurtliff, who allegedly received his nickname from legendary Beat fi gure Neal Cassady after successfully “ramming” seven adults into a VW beatle. Being on the younger side of the Dead’s posse, Boots, who turns 77 this year, also found himself befriend- ing Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, who recently passed away. “I was close with Bobby in age and we became very good friends because of that fact,” says Jaffee, who played harmonica in 2006 with Weir’s band RatDog at the Denver Fillmore and recently appeared onstage with longtime Colorado Dead tribute act Shake- down Street at the well-attended Bob Weir memorial celebration at the Boulder Theater. “Everyone else in the scene was about three or four years older, so we wound up spending a lot of time together,” he says. “I was happy to be part of his celebration in Boulder. I’d never seen so many people in that theater in my life. The line was around the block.” In addition to his ongoing enthusiasm for musical per- formance, Jaffee’s artistic skills include painting, sculpting and sketching. He has painted por- traits of some of the musicians he’s known over the years (in- cluding Jerry Garcia) and cre- ates the art for his own annual Christmas cards, which he sends to his network of long- time friends. Other Jaffee gigs included working as a chef for Colorado State University dining services and providing bodyguard services for O.J. Simpson and Yul Brynner. Beyond his work with Weir, Jaffee has jammed onstage with famous artists including singer and Civil Rights activist Odetta, whom he met when he was a teenager and who later adopted him as her son, and keyboardist and longtime Jerry Garcia collaborator Merl Saunders, whom he toured with and managed over the span of three decades starting in the ‘70s. “I sometimes get asked to play harmonica with local bands,” says Jaffee. “There’s a voluminous amount of Grateful Dead cover bands in this area, and I have fun sitting in with some of them when I can. My pas- sion for playing the harmonica goes back to when the folk singer Eric Andersen gave me a harmonica one day at a coffee shop in Greenwich Village. I kept trying to play it and wasn’t really getting anywhere, until one night when I met Paul Butterfi eld. He gave me a little lesson. He said, ‘All you have to do is learn to play one song and fi gure out where all the notes are, then everything else will be easy.’ And the other advice he gave me was ‘make the instrument talk.’ I started playing better after that, and I loved the blues. I’ve been playing harmonica for 61 years now.” Jaffe has a total of fi ve children in his blended family with his wife, Chris, whom he met at the Mishawaka Amphitheatre while he was on tour with The Rainforest Band. Many of the people who were part of the extended Grateful Dead community during the time he was with the band have passed away, and he fondly recalls attending backstage events with the Dead that included large groups of people attached to the group in various capacities. “Some of the old Grateful Dead family are still around,” Jaffee refl ects. “I think the dancer and photographer Rosie McGee is still out there. And the singer Darlene Di Domenico, who was also part of our scene, is still alive. A few of the ladies are out there, but most of the men are gone. Times have changed, but I can remember when Bill Gra- ham would host about 200 people backstage. That’s how big the family was.” Boots Jaffee will be sitting in with the Delilah West Band at 8 p.m. Saturday, February 27, at Swing Station, 3311 Colorado Road 54G, Laporte. Admission is $10 at swingstationla- porte.com. Leonard “Boots” Jaffee keeps the Dead alive. Boots Jaffee is a fi xture in the Poudre Canyon. MUSIC PHOTO BY BACKSTAGE FL ASH PHOTO BY BACKSTAGE FL ASH
