Chicago got a Dark Star, though not in the expected fashion. In the very first hours of the 4th of July, the Grateful Dead’s most exploratory song was performed by a makeshift band of indie stars, three miles west of Soldier Field. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo pulled long, screeching scrapes on his guitar with a frayed violin bow, while Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan sat near the front of the stage, twirling pedal knobs in reply. Behind them, Real Estate bassist Alex Bleeker’s side project, the Freaks, provided the lengthy jam’s foundation, as they did for an ambitious two-hour set of 20 Dead songs.

Not too long ago, the Grateful Dead might have been forbidden territory for this scene. The image surrounding the Dead for much of their later years—a traveling drug-fueled circus of '60s nostalgia, soundtracked by lengthy, solo-filled jams—was the antithesis of the punk/alternative/indie ethos. In the identity-sorting ceremony of high school, many rock music fans chose and still choose one strain or the other, even if it was by proxy, picking between Pavement and DMB, or Coachella and Bonnaroo.

-=-=-=-But of late, those lines have blurred. In the year of the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary, the quintessential jam band appears to have greater currency than ever among the indie, the underground, and the generally weird. Members of the National plot an indie-rock-stocked Grateful Dead tribute album, Stephen Malkmus drops musical references to "St. Stephen" into his recent album, and more and more indie artists find themselves a safe space to talk Dead fandom in a public forum.

The star-studded Freaks’ after-show was one of dozens in Chicago on 4th of July weekend, a constellation of barnacles riding the blue whale of Fare Thee Well, the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary celebration and semi-reunion send-off. But where most of these bills were predictable combinations of Grateful Dead collaborators and jam-world descendents, the Freaks’ gig at City Winery stuck out.

Besides guitarists from two of the most influential acts in indie rock history, the lineup included Jenny Lewis, Little Wings’ Kyle Field, Nicolas Jaar collaborators Dave Harrington and Will Epstein, and Chicago singer-songwriter Ryley Walker. Though there was more plaid than tie-dye in evidence, the crowd showed no reservations about the smooth jazz of "Eyes of the World" or the earnest sing-along to Buddy Holly’s "Not Fade Away".

A couple days later, still giddy at the opportunity to play songs from his favorite band with some of his biggest influences, Bleeker said he had no problem booking guests to pay their tribute to the Dead.

"Everybody said yes, it was easy to get people to do it," Bleeker said. "Nobody got paid, it was for love of the game. It was the power the love of the Grateful Dead that everybody has. To have that all come together through the Grateful Dead, in a way the most unlikely of common ground that you would think for that cast of characters...what a special thing. It was a joy."

For Bleeker, who has made no secret of his soft spot for the Dead in Real Estate—even convincing them to drop a "Dark Star" tease from time to time—organizing an indie rock tribute to the band wasn’t the bold move it might have been just a couple years prior.

"I’d venture to say there’s not a divide any more. It’s gone. It’s over," Bleeker said. "I think the further away we get from whatever the initial reason there was a social divide, the sillier that seems. That’s a really positive thing, because there’s a massive social aspect to Grateful Dead, and they have all these connotations greater than just the music. It’s so silly to disrespect or not take them seriously for some totally arbitrary reason."