Led by veteran keyboard player Barry Flast, The Dead Ringers bring to life the musical magic of the Grateful Dead. When you see this band live, you’ll be dancing in the aisles to the classic tunes made famous by Jerry and the gang.
The current line-up includes Paul Biondi on sax, Bill Shreve on guitar, Pete Burger on percussion, Scott Coppola on guitar and Mike Brewer on bass.
History
What a long strange “ring” its been! It was the summer of 1991 when Barry Flast, hard at work producing a new album for his band KINGFISH was invited by a promoter friend to put together the “acoustic” half of a tribute to THE GRATEFUL DEAD for a summer long tour to coincide with the release of “Deadicated”, the first of what would be many Dead tribute albums. Barry put together an all-star acoustic lineup to pay homage to the “American Beauty/Workingman’s” era of the Dead’s music, and it seemed to him the choices were inevitable; David Nelson, fresh from his stint in the Jerry Garcia Acoustic band, Barry Sless master steel player from Kingfish, and Fred Campbell, who though he played bass for Kingfish, also played acoustic lead guitar for The New Riders Of The Purple Sage. That foursome, joined later in the tour by Tom Constanten, early pianist with THE GRATEFUL DEAD became the acoustic half of ‘GRATEFULLY YOURS” and played all summer long for thousands of Dead Heads all across the USA. When that tour was over, the members of our band decided to keep it going and would take over doing the electric half of the show as well…but since we were no longer officially sanctioned, David Nelson suggested we change our name to ‘DEAD RINGERS” and we forged ahead in our new identity….three years later, the band split, basically to give Nelson the chance to form his own outfit, THE DAVID NELSON BAND with Barry Sless , Bill Laymon (a bassist who had replaced Fred Campbell in 1993) and Arthur Steinhorn (who had been our drummer for most of the band’s career) essentially gutting what had been DEAD RINGERS. Barry soldiered on with different lineups featuring such stellar “Ringers” as PETE SEARS, DAVID LAFLAMME, PETER KAUKONEN, PETER GRANT, and DEBBIE (GREENE) ANDERSEN, but in 1994 he finally put it to pasture when he got a call to play keyboards for JEFFERSON STARSHIP (but that’s another story!)
