Brushes With Greatness

Over the last few months, DeadBeat (Your Grateful Dead party band) and Mark Karan (The Other Ones, Bob Weir’s Rat Dog) have performed three concerts to benefit the Oral Cancer Foundation and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The gigs, in Boston, MA; Dover, NH; and Westerly, RI raised $7500 for the Oral Cancer Foundation and $5000 for oral cancer research at Dana Faber Cancer Institute.

On 2/9/13, at precisely 11:30PM, 40 Grateful Dead tribute bands around the word played “Eyes of the World” as part of the Eyes Around The World event. DeadBeat was scheduled to perform, with the great Mark Karan as guest guitarist, at a club in Southern NH that night, but alas a massive blizzard shut down New England for a couple of days and the gig was cancelled. Not be be deterred, our intrepid heroes braved the road hazards and assembled with Mark at DeadBeat’s rehearsal studio and played eyes at exactly 11:30PM.

A big ‘thank you’ goes out to Jeff Mattson from Dark Star Orchestra who stopped by after their show in Boston on Friday June 1st to sit in on a few songs with DeadBeat. Jeff and Brian traded some smokin’ leads on Deal and Sugaree. Jeff played and sang Tangled Up In Blue and he ended with a fine Scarlet Begonias into Fire on The Mountain then into Eyes. A memorable night for all us in DeadBeat.

Our April 6th show, a post Furthur concert gig at the China Pearl restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown was a smashing success. Over 250 DeadHeads joined us to party, dance, eat, and drink well into the night. DeadBeat was honored to see John Kadlecik of Furthur in the crowd – Thanks for stopping by, John!

Mark Karan sitting in with DeadBeat at the Sneaker Ball Benefit gig