Blossoms blooming…

DPO is ramping up summer activities, and we had a BLAST kicking off the Boulder Creek Festival at the Boulder Bandshell.  Up next, we have shows in the freaky little mountain towns of Manitou Springs and Buena Vista, followed by our annual Summer Solstice visit to Alaska. We’ll also be playing a late-night post-WSP show in Denver. More shows on tap this summer too. Hit our upcoming shows page for the details!

New Live Recordings: A couple of our recent shows produced some outstanding recordings, which you can check out at the Live Music Archive:
7/2/22 @ Wibby Brewing, Longmont, CO w/ special guests Dave Hebert on guitar and Jack Marty on keyboards
7/27/22 @ River Runners outdoor stage, Buena Vista CO
8/19/22 @ Snow Bowl outdoor stage, Steamboat Springs CO, special guest Ben Rafferty on keyboards

And check out our Acapella quarantine vid
of the Grateful Dead’s “Attics of my Life”:

 

 

WHO, WHAT, WHY, AND WHERE

The Deadphish Orchestra is a quartet of Colorado musicians who, above all, are close friends who have played together for many years. They had played Grateful Dead songs together, and they had played Phish songs together.  But they got to wondering what would happen if they tried to merge the music of these two bands, the Granddaddies and Daddies of the jamband scene.

While these two bands have their surface similarities, most fans realize that their actual musical styles are quite different. The Grateful Dead are an earthy, folky, bluesy band where Phish is sharper around the edges–funky and more aggressive. But both bands have an improvisational approach to their live shows, and it is in that spontaneity where the magic really happens.

The guys in DPO have posed themselves a unique challenge in merging the two styles.  Setlists end up with segues that look like Divided Sky > Morning Dew > Divided Sky, or Help  > Slip > Frankenstein.  Or how about Mike’s Song > Stella Blue > Weekapaug Groove.  Or even stranger, like My Friend, My Friend of the Devil…or It Must Have Been The Roses Are Free.  You can see that between the vast repertoires of the two bands, the possibilities are endless.

It’s just about as much fun as humans are allowed to have.

Guest Musicians

We are fortunate to know a lot of great musicians here in Colorado and elsewhere, and one of our favorite things to do is invite guest musicians to join us for songs, sets, or entire shows.  DPO has had many guest musicians onstage with us, including:

John Kadlecik (Furthur)
Michael Kang (String Cheese Incident)
Fareed Haque (Garaj Mahal, Fareed Haque Group)
Darol Anger (David Grisman Quintet, etc.)
Andy Thorn (Leftover Salmon, Drew Emmitt Band)
Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon)
Chris Pandolfi & Jeremy Garrett (Infamous Stringdusters)
Jeff Austin (Yonder Mountain String Band, Jeff Austin Band)
Stu Allen (JGB, Mars Hotel, etc.)
Dave Hebert (JGB)
Edwin Hurwitz (Shakedown Street, Shockra)
Tyler Grant (Grant Farm, Drew Emmitt Band)
Pete Wall (Particle, Motet)
Bridget Law (Elephant Revival)
Larry Keel (Bluegrass Legend!)
Jeff Lloyd (The Heavy Pets)
Brock Butler (Perpetual Groove)

Go to our YouTube and Audio pages for video & audio of many of these shows!