Wake the Dead is the planet’s only Celtic Grateful Dead jam band. Their music combines the legacy of hundreds of years of Irish reels with the new American traditional music of the Bay Area’s most beloved hippie pranksters, the Grateful Dead. Coming to the Felton Music Hall on March 15, this all-star band is going to get reel(y) trippy.
Since (and even before) Jerry Garcia’s departure to heavenly Graceland in 1995, it’s almost like the spirit of his guitar playing has infused every possible type of musical genre. San Francisco’s Pop-O-Pies played a truly punk, and often riot-inducing, version of “Truckin’.” New Hampshire’s Grateful Dub’s reggae trance adaptation of “Fire on the Mountain” pictures Bob Marley as a wook. Brooklyn’s TRüKKEN, shredding very heavy metal power chords on “Touch of Grey,” brings a whole new level of head banging while snake dancing.
There’s also rap, symphonic, bluegrass and techno versions of the Dead’s music. It seems as if all possible permutations and combinations have been tinkered with, and yet, Wake of the Dead’s Celtic version, featuring a huge repertoire of Grateful Dead songs, seems like a perfect collared dovetail fit.
“You have to understand,” begins Danny Carnahan, the band’s octave mandolin, guitar and fiddle player. “I was a Bay Area kid, growing up in Marin County circa 1967. That’s when I got the first Grateful Dead album. Then in 1968 I took a family trip to Wales to visit relatives. And that was when I first heard Irish music on Radio Caroline, which was a pirate radio station that broadcast on a boat, in the Irish Sea. I just went nuts for it.”
In the states, Carnahan played the cello from elementary school through college, musically following a traditional path. But growing up in the 1960s, in Marin, offered windows that looked out at much stranger vistas. Carnahan’s girlfriend (and then his wife) worked at an art store frame shop called the Creative Merchandisers. Among the regular customers were Jerry Garcia, Grace Slick and psychedelic poster artist Stanley Mouse. But this didn’t faze the young musician. “We were so innocent,” Carnahan says. “You know, kind of only in retrospect did we realize just how cool it was to be marinating in that milieu. There were lots of extremely interesting people wandering around loose. We were really blessed.”
Wake the Dead began at a party with not-yet-members Maureen Brennan, Paul Kotapish and Carnahan. They got to talking about playing Irish music and Dead music together. It turned out Brennan and Kotapish had a similar habit. They would both crank the Dead on their stereos and play reels over the music. “Maureen played the harp. And she had a slightly different angle on it,” Carnahan says. “You know, she went for the dreamy stuff. Maureen could play 18th-century Turlough O’Carolan and slowly morph into ‘Black Muddy River,’ just to amuse herself. The three of us sat down at a party and quickly had an hour of material.”
Being around high-powered musicians, or at least high, Carnahan made some special friends. When the Wake the Dead project finished their first CD, Carnahan got it into his friend Eileen Law’s hands. Law has been called “the spiritual mother of all Dead Heads, their most direct link to the band.” And that’s not hyperbole.
“I dropped off the demo with Eileen,” Carnahan says. “I’m not sure what she thought of the music. But less than 24 hours later, we got a call from Peter McQuaid, who was the head of Grateful Dead records, and he said that he wanted to put it out. And he also invited us to play a gig.”
Carnahan believes the music of the Grateful Dead will still be sung around campfires in one hundred years. He also believes Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter had deeper musical roots than most know about. “They were up to their kneecaps in British Isles and Irish music, and they knew this stuff backwards. The way Garcia would write the shapes of his melodies, and the use of chord changes, were all deeply informed by four hundred years of British Isles tradition and a lot of Celtic stuff.”
What began as a party jam has become a career. “It was just this little fever dream. We did it for fun because it was just so damn perfect,” Carnahan laughs.
Wake the Dead plays at 8pm on March 15 at the Felton Music Hall, 6275 Highway 9, Felton. $22 for standing room general admission. feltonmusichall.com
