Former Grateful Dead touring keyboardist Tom Constanten and Allman Betts Band bassist Berry Duane Oakley will helm a new project, Live Dead & Brothers. The new live act will celebrate the 1969–1973 heydey of joint performances between the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band.
Constanten played live with the Dead from 1968–1970, handling the more instrumentally exploratory keyboard work while Ronald “Pigpen” McKernan focused on vocals and percussion. Berry Duane Oakley is the son of late founding Allman Brothers Band bassist Berry Oakley. The younger Berry helped form the Allman Betts Band with fellow ABB kin Devon Allman and Duane Betts back in 2018, though he no longer performs with the second-generation outfit. The new Live Dead & Brothers band will hit the road this spring and feature an array of accomplished musicians from throughout the greater Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers families.
Filling out the rest of the lineup are guitarists Les Dudek and Mark Karan, keyboardist Scott Guberman, and drummer Pete Lavezzoli. Dudek is heard on the Allman Brothers Band’s classic 1973 album Brothers & Sisters playing guitar harmonies with Dickey Betts on “Ramblin’ Man” and acoustic guitar on “Jessica”. Karan entered the Dead orbit in the late 1990s when he stepped in as the Jerry Garcia ringer in The Other Ones alongside Steve Kimock. He later toured with RatDog for over a decade. Guberman has been a frequent collaborator of Phil Lesh‘s for much of the past ten years, serving as a regular guest of Phil Lesh & Friends. Drummer and accomplished author Lavezzoli plays in Jazz Is Dead and has also performed with Phil & Friends, Bob Weir, Oteil Burbridge, and more.
Live Dead & Brothers will play their first show on April 5th at Jannus Live in St. Petersburg, FL. The band will go on to perform throughout the Eastern United States, making stops in Orlando (4/7), Atlanta (4/12), Asheville, NC (4/14), Cincinnati, OH (4/18), Buffalo (4/19), Syracuse (4/24), Ardmore, PA (4/25), Washington, DC (4/27), and New York, NY (4/28) before wrapping with a pair of Illinois shows in De Plaines (5/10) and St. Charles (5/11).
Tickets for most shows will go on sale to the general public on Friday, January 19th. Visit the group’s Bandintown for specific show information.
