In the devoted community that has grown around Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Aug. 1 to 9 holds a kind of spiritual significance as a period of remembrance and reflection.

Those are the dates of Garcia’s birth and death, respectively, and are known among Deadheads as “The Days Between.” Fittingly, “The Days Between,” a poignant ballad, is the last song that Garcia, a reluctant rock star who was the de facto leader of the Grateful Dead, wrote with lyricist Robert Hunter before his death in 1995.

In acknowledgment of this quasi-memorial, the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley has bookended “The Days Between” with a pair of Dead-related shows: Jerry’s Middle Finger, a Grateful Dead cover band from Los Angeles, celebrates what would have been the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist’s 82nd birthday on Aug. 1. That show has been sold out for weeks. And on Aug. 9, the China Dolls, a mostly female band that bills itself as “women empowered Dead,” commemorates Garcia’s passing with a show that puts a feminine spin on classic songs by the Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band.

“It’s a special night, very sad and very bittersweet,” says singer Sunshine (Garcia) Becker, the founder and lead singer of China Dolls. “It’s allowing people the space to feel the sadness for Jerry not being here on this earth, but also to look at how his music transcends his lifetime. For me, as a Deadhead, what I hope is that we can tap into and channel a little bit of the magic and healing that Jerry gave to us.”

In March 2023, Becker pulled together a group of female musicians for a show at Ashkenaz, a nonprofit community center in Berkeley, in celebration of International Women’s Day. They called themselves China Dolls after the song “China Doll,” an affecting ballad by Garcia and Hunter on the Dead’s 1974 album “From the Mars Hotel.”

Since then, China Dolls — Becker on lead vocals and flute, guitarist-singer Pamela Parker, bassist Jen Rund, drummer Anna Elva and keyboardist Richelle Scales — have been a popular attraction on the local live music scene, routinely selling out shows as the only Bay Area Grateful Dead cover band consisting mostly of women. In what has become a tradition, fans bring roses to the shows for band members to decorate their mic stands.

“I can tell you that when you see predominately all women on stage, it’s a vibe, it’s strong, it’s feminine, it’s beautiful,” Becker says. “It’s a circle between the band and the audience. Together, we are vibing on one another. And when you put that many women on stage, especially women who are talented, there is an exchange that is unique and special. There’s an elegant beauty to this music when it’s done by women. It’s just different.”

She would know. At 52, she’s among only a handful of women who have performed in bands alongside original members of the Grateful Dead. Donna Godchaux is the best known of them, the only female member of the Grateful Dead, singing with the band from 1972 to 1979.

In 2009, Becker had been a member of SoVoSo, an acclaimed a cappella ensemble that grew out of Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra, for 14 years when she and fellow SoVoSo singer Zoe Ellis were hired by the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and Phil Lesh to sing backing vocals in Furthur, one of the spinoff bands formed after Garcia’s death to tour and play the Grateful Dead’s deep catalog of songs for the band’s legions of Deadheads.

Becker had been a bona fide Deadhead herself ever since her brother took her to her first Grateful Dead concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre when she was 20. She remembers the exact date: May 23, 1992.

“I was hooked immediately,” she recalls. “It was the music, but mostly it was the community. It was the way people took care of each other. If you needed water, you found water. If you needed a veggie burrito, you got a veggie burrito. If you needed a joint, you got a joint. If you needed to breathe and come down, you found somebody who would help you do that. That’s what really touched me.”

Over the next three years, until Garcia’s untimely death, she would go to more than 130 shows by the Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band, following them on tours of the West Coast. So when she was asked to join Furthur, it was a Deadhead fantasy made real.

“I had been singing along with the band for years, and now here I am standing behind Bob and Phil and singing the harmonies that I used to sing at the top of Shoreline, up on the grass,” she says. “It truly was a dream come true.”

But it had its complications. Married to musician Bill Becker, she had given birth to a baby boy that summer. Their son, Geddy, named after Rush bassist Geddy Lee, was just nine months old when she took him on the road for her first tour with Furthur.

“I was just learning how to be a mom, changing diapers, breast-feeding,” she says. “It was nuts.”

She would go on to sing with Furthur for five years, until Weir and Lesh left for the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary shows in 2015. In 2018, she joined Melvin Seals and JGB, a group that plays the music of the Jerry Garcia Band.

Born in Oakland, Becker, who still lives in the East Bay, is the daughter of Christian musician Gabriel Garcia. Because of her maiden name and her work with Furthur, fans have often assumed, incorrectly, that she’s Jerry Garcia’s daughter.

“It’s tremendous pressure when people think you’re Jerry Garcia’s daughter,” she says. “Fans want to bend your ear. They want to tell you things. Sometimes when I tell them I’m not his daughter, you can just see the disappointment on their faces.”

Her first name has also been problematic. She’s been confused at times with another member of the Dead’s extended family: Sunshine Kesey, daughter of Ken Kesey and Carolyn Adams, aka Mountain Girl, Jerry Garcia’s second wife.

Along with her work with China Dolls and her own Sunshine Garcia Band, Becker has been an advocate for more women in Grateful Dead-inspired concerts and events, including the annual Jerry Day festival in the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in San Francisco’s McLaren Park. The 22nd annual festival is set for Aug. 3.

“Raising awareness and speaking up a little bit is what it takes, but it also makes me very unpopular sometimes, and maybe less hireable,” she says. “Band leaders don’t want to be told what to do, and neither do I. But if enough of my fan base says, ‘Hey, you should think about doing this, hiring more women,’ they might think about doing it if it honors the music. There’s a space and a place for us.”

For the Sweetwater show, Becker is bringing in a host of special guests, including singer Zoe Ellis, her bandmate in Furthur; Ellis’s brother, saxophonist Dave Ellis, who played with Bob Weir in RatDog; and Jaclyn LaBranch, longtime backup singer for the Jerry Garcia Band. Matt Hartle, known as “the Santa Cruz Jerry Garcia,” will handle Garcia’s lead guitar parts. Some of the vintage instruments the band will be playing, including Garcia’s “Alligator” guitar, are being supplied by the nonprofit Grateful Guitars.

“It’s a lovely group of women who come together as the China Dolls.” Becker says. “There’s just love there. And if you start with that, and that’s what you aim for, you hope it will be a special night because it’s the last night of ‘The Days Between.’”

• Details >> China Dolls will perform at 9 p.m. Aug. 9 at the Sweetwater Music Hall at 19 Corte Madera Ave. in Mill Valley. Admission is $37.58. For more information and to buy tickets, go to sweetwatermusichall.com.

Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net