Brooklyn Comes Alive recently announced its massive artist lineup, with over 100 artists slated to perform 35+ sets across two days in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This year, the event is expanding to two days, September 23rd and 24th, and will take over three of Brooklyn’s premier venues, all within a 10-minute walking radius. Fans’ imaginations have been running wild dreaming up what band lineups may be formed from the extensive roster of musicians. The guessing game is always one of the most fun parts of the Brooklyn Comes Alive experience, but today, we’re ready to roll out some more surprises.
Following the previous announcements of The Road Goes On Forever: Celebrating The Music Of The Allman Brothers Band, A Tribute To Jamiroquai, Eric Krasno & Friends, moe.queous, and a tribute to Green Day’s Dookie, Brooklyn Comes Alive has announced that Reed Mathis, Todd Stoops, and Jay Lane of Electric Beethoven will team up with guitar hero Eric Krasno to form a funky Grateful Dead tribute project dubbed Rooster Conspiracy.
Rooster Conspiracy was born from Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann‘s good intentions and celebratory spirit during the first few days of 2017. Having just rung in the new year in a friend’s backyard in Hawaii, with a band that included his Billy & the Kids bandmate Reed Mathis, and Mathis’ Electric Beethoven bandmate Todd Stoops, Kreutzmann was in the mood to keep jamming. When he heard that guitarist Eric Krasno just arrived on his little island of Kauai, he invited the guitarist out to join in and told Stoops and Mathis to stick around. They spent the better part of New Year’s Day casually jamming just for the fun of it. The following evening, Kreutzmann arranged for a little surprise luau at his house. He had instruments set up in his garage ready to go, so the four jammed again, this time going into unrehearsed songs plucked mostly from the Grateful Dead catalog. They performed the songs in a funky style that showcased Kreutzmann’s signature shuffle, which locked in with Krasno’s jazz-club funk, Mathis’ constant drive for creation, and Stoops’ kinetic approach to the keyboards.
Having ushered in the new year in style after cleansing their palate of the sour taste left by a rocky 2016, the “Bill’s Garage” jam felt like a purification ceremony that opened up pathways for the new year. In nod to both the time–(the Chinese “Year of the Rooster” was just about to begin) and the place (Kauai, an island with wild roosters everywhere) of the catalyzing jam session, the four new jamming buddies decided on the name “Rooster Conspiracy.”
While Kreutzmann can’t make it to New York for Brooklyn Comes Alive, the rest of the guys wanted to bring their Dead-funk 2017 jams to Williamsburg, so they tapped Jay Lane (Ratdog, Primus) for the highly anticipated first-ever East Coast edition of the Rooster Conspiracy. It’s one-quarter Soulive, half Golden Gate Wingmen, three-quarters Electric Beethoven, and 100% funk-driven Grateful Dead-inspired meditations and dance therapies–making for a set of music you surely won’t want to miss!
