Dough Knees: Dead tribute music
Dough Knees: Dead tribute music Dough Knees was founded in 2007 in Santa Cruz, California. Guitarist Scott Cooper had a gig lined up for his other group, the Gary Gates Band, but Gary didn't want to do the gig so Scott asked a couple other guys who play with Gary to do the gig without Gary. His idea was, "We can just do a bunch of Dead tunes, songs we all know." Scott had keyboard player extraordinaire Steve Sofranko and drummer Justin Christensen onboard already for the gig, and Scott then tuned to his Deadhead bassist buddy Roger Sideman, with whom Scott had jammed on many Dead tunes before. Roger meanwhile, had his buddy Theo Winston from San Francisco lined up to play the Garcia parts. A couple rehearsals later, and a couple gigs in the hat, and the band was born. As we were all veteran musicians and Deadheads, it didn't take much to sound good. We knew the songs, the parts, the dynamics, all that was left was the sorting out as to who would cover which parts. Now that that's been done, there's nothing left to do but smile smile smile! Members of the band have performed, recorded or studied with Barry Sless (Phil & Friends, David Nelson), Ben Ellman (Galactic), Melvin Seals (Jerry Garcia Band), Steve Kimock, Mike Gordon (Phish), Ike Willis (Frank Zappa), T Lavitz (Dixie Dregs/Jazz is Dead), Bill Laymon (New Riders), Keith Graves (Jefferson Starship, Quicksilver), Dale Ockerman (Doobie Brothers, Quicksilver), Kai Eckhardt (Garaj Mahal, John McLaughlin Trio), George Marsh (David Grisman Quintet), Bobby Black (Hank Williams, Bob Dylan), Luka Frederickson (Wolfman Washington), Mike Schermer (Elvin Bishop, Maria Muldaur), Marc Carino (Fabulous Thunderbirds), James "Fingers" Shupe (Dan Hicks), Chris Cain, Robert Lowery, Luther Tucker, Johnny Shines, Rusty Zinn, Matt Hartle, Deep Blue Sea, Stackabones, Butch Zito, Jim Brighton, Gary Gates, Bundy Brown, Shady Groove, Zyg, Burnt Toast, Noodle, Hippie Grenade, and many others.