When a new supergroup is born, it’s not the circumstances that matter as much as the music it makes. At Brooklyn Comes Alive 2017, Rooster Conspiracy—the brand-new group featuring Eric Krasno, Reed Mathis, Todd Stoops, and Jay Lane—showed that they could generate high-voltage mayhem and infuse fireworks into lengthy improvisations centered around the beloved catalog of the Grateful Dead.
Rooster Conspiracy was actually 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 Eric Krasno just arrived on his little island of Kauai, he invited the guitarist to join in.
The ensemble spent the better part of New Year’s Day casually jamming just for the fun of it. The following evening, Kreutzmann arranged for a surprise luau at his house. He had instruments set up in his garage and ready to go, so the four jammed again—this time going into unrehearsed Grateful Dead songs. This time around, they landed in a funky style that showcased Kreutzmann’s signature shuffle and locked in with Krasno’s jazz-club funk, Mathis’ constant drive for creation, and Stoops’ kinetic approach to the keyboards.
The “Bill’s Garage” jam felt like a purification ceremony that opened up pathways for the new year. In a 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), the four new jamming buddies decided on the name “Rooster Conspiracy.”
When Kreutzmann couldn’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. The group tapped the great Jay Lane of Ratdog and Primus fame for the highly anticipated first-ever East Coast edition of the Rooster Conspiracy. The resulting set turned out to be a nearly ninety-minute jam session that was, at the heart of it all, only two songs! Rooster Conspiracy proved that “It’s not always the destination it’s the journey,” weaving between the two songs like madmen and creating seemingly endless amounts of psychedelic space between them.
We managed to get the entire set on one long video (though there is a short break in our camera footage during a speedy battery change), so you can get lost in the magic just as we did when it happened live. Enjoy!
“Deal” > “Cassidy” > “Deal”