Reflections on having done our 2000th show..

As I sit hear early Monday morning enjoying some peace and quiet on the bus before the rest of the gang shows up I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the 2000th show we did in Ithaca on Saturday night. These sorts of things can get a little strange and esoteric but this one proved welcome and friendly. There are always so many emotions associated with special shows like this especially when we think of the ones that are no longer with us who helped get us to where we are. Scott is the first to come to mind, if it wasn't for his dedication running this dog and pony show early on we never would be here now. My dear friend Glen "Chub" Carrier who started in 2001 and passed away while on tour in 2005. He truly believed in what we were doing and that comes from a guy who worked on the GD crew from 1985-1995. Our manager Tim Walther came with our booking manager Jeff Laramie. They brought everyone in the band and crew and very nice custom DSO winter coat. Very kind gesture from them. In closing we had fun playing and the vibe all around was beautiful.. Thanks to all who came out to help us turn a corner with our 2000th show..

Peace

Rob Eaton

Start of East Coast Tour...

Hey All,

Having just returned home from my first vacation in 10 years I'm very relaxed and energized for the start of our big east coast tour. As I sit here in the small band room at the Wilber Theater in Boston I'm reminded how lucky I am. I get to play music for a living. Not just any music but Grateful Dead music. Though we experience hard times on the road and sacrifice much to do what we love I still am very humbled and respectful of the music and the scene. With 45 min till sound check I thought I'd at least take a few minutes and say thanks to all of you for your support of DSO over the years especially as we approach our 2000th show this Saturday in Ithaca NY where I'm sure to post another Blog...

Peace and out

Rob Eaton

It's been awhile but we are still here

Hey there people! We are all still here. We've been resting our bones and rejuvenating for the Fall tour fast approaching which is always one of favorites. We haven't completely forgotten how to blog. We see that some have pointed out that we haven't had any entries lately and it's nice you to see you are paying attention. It's not for lack of exciting things happening.

Last tour we had our biggest gig to date considering the size of the audience at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park San Fransisco. Estimations on the size of the crowd seem to be something like 25,000 to 30,000. It's really hard to say but the promoter who hired us said it was the most people they have ever had in that space and jokingly commented that they can't have us back because we drew too many people. The band felt very honored to be able to play that space and to have so many show up. Needless to say we all had a blast. Thank you! Hopefully we can make it back to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in a couple of years!

We felt very positive about the way we played many of the shows on the rest of the tour as well. We had a lot of fun with the late 60's style elective in the Yost Theater in Santa Ana CA area to the awesome new venue Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater, Austin TX.

New App for smart phones:

I want to share with you an awesome app I found for smart phones. Search for "archivist" from your app store. It's an app that makes it easy to listen and stream any DSO show on archive.org as well as any other show including the 7000 plus recordings of Grateful Dead shows. It cost a couple dollars but it will allow you to easily navigate to any show quickly and easily. It breaks it down by recordings per year. It's interesting to note that there are 312 DSO shows up at the time of this writing and most of them have been from the last few years. I did however listen to some old school stuff from 2000 which I hadn't listened to a very long time and I gotta say it was fun to look back on the development of the band.

Hope to see you all soon for our upcoming Fall Northeast tour to help us celebrate our 2000th show and 14 years since the bands first gig (which happened on 11/11/1997)!

Until then, Cheers!

Dino English