Tea Leaf Green plays Monterey Live.

Instead of playing a fancy new synthesizer that can sample hip-hop beats and reproduce the sounds of barking dogs, Trevor Garrod prefers a late ‘70s Fender Rhodes electric piano. Garrod, the keyboard player and vocalist for the San Francisco jam band Tea Leaf Green, says that the instrument’s full electric sound is one of the reasons that he plays the vintage model. “I think of it as a guitar,” he says.

Another reason could be that the electric piano fits in perfectly with the band’s fusion of a ‘70s rock sound—at times, the band sounds like The Grateful Dead tackling a Steve Miller song—and a contemporary jam band.

Formed in 1997, the quartet played its first gig at The Cocodrie, a small venue located in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. Being underage for their first nightclub performance, the musicians had to rely on fake IDs to gain entrance to the venue. Thinking way back to that evening, Garrod says that he enjoyed the band’s first public show though “it was probably godawful.”

Now, having played more than 100 performances this year, there are probably few who would call the group’s live shows “godawful.” In addition to strong originals like “Vote On Tuesday,” Tea Leaf Green is sometimes known to pull out an unexpected cover song onstage—recent examples include bluesman Taj Mahal’s “Corrina” and Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name.”

Matter of fact, Tea Leaf Green is so proud of their live work that over 80 of their shows are downloadable from a link attached to their website, www.tealeafgreen.com. Garrod believes that this will get more people to their performances and then the band’s reputation will spread via word of mouth. “We pretty much work outside of the music industry,” he says. “That is our publicity.”

TEA LEAF GREEN PLAYS MONTEREY LIVE, 414 ALVARADO ST., MONTEREY, SATURDAY AT 9PM. $10/ADVANCE; $12/AT THE DOOR. 646-1415.