Steely Dead brought their unique fusion of the Grateful Dead and Steely Dan to the Crown Room at Crystal Bay Club Casino for a two night run on an autumn Friday and Saturday night. Complete with impressive psychedelic visuals provided by the Crown Room throughout, the pair of shows were face melters from start to finish, steeling the crowd’s faces right off their heads.
They kicked things off with a rocking “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead, jamming into “Black Friday” by Steely Dan and back into “Truckin’”, demonstrating right off the bat the group’s ability to jump back and forth between the two band’s catalogues without stopping playing. In talking to guitar player Dave Abear between shows on Saturday, he mentioned that the group likes to hit the stage without a plan and let the crowd’s energy decide what they will open with. The crowd was apparently chomping at the bit to get such a high energy song sandwich right away.
Throughout the shows, the band’s keyboardist Dylan Teifer was intently scanning the crowd, having a knack for making each person in the crowd feel as though he was staring directly at them. Not only was this with the intent of creating connection between the crowd and band, but according to Dave Abear this is how Steely Dead determines what songs will come next. The band has been doing things this way since they ditched writing traditional setlists about four years ago. Both Dave and Dylan search the room for hints of what the crowd wants, whether it be body language or an audible mention of a song.
A highlight of night one was the Grateful Dead’s “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot”, which made way for a jam into Steely Dan’s “The Fez” until finally coming back into “Slipknot” and eventually “Franklin’s Tower”, the classic follow-up from “Slipknot”. A very 80’s esque Brent Mydland type tone could be heard pouring out of Dylan Teifer’s keyboard throughout this string of songs, Dave mentioned that the band really likes this type of tone and that Dylan uses it often, even in Steely Dan songs.
In our interview, Dave Abear explained that the idea for Steely Dead was born quite organically, with him and Dylan Teifer playing together in a Grateful Dead cover band.
“I started doing gigs with Dylan just in our regular pub circuit, and we would always play Grateful Dead. One night we were playing “Deal”, and we ended up in the riff of “Reelin’ in the Years”. So we started kind of messing around with that and we both love Steely Dan, so we thought if we could you know blend those two bands together – it turned out we ended up learning “Reelin’ in the Years” and putting it together with “Deal” and we played it one night and the audience went crazy. So when we noticed that great reception we started doing other tunes like “Truckin’” into “Black Friday”, and then we just sort of went down the rabbit hole.”
Dave mentioned at that point that the drummer Chris Sheldon was an obvious choice as he had already been playing in a dead fusion band called DeadPhish Orchestra. They eventually added Dave’s brother, Matt Abear on bass who had played plenty of jam band music together back in the 90’s and Steely Dead was born.
Stay up to date with Steely Dead on the band’s Instagram or Facebook page.
Check out Larry Sabo’s full galleries of images of Steely Dead’s Night 1 and Night 2!
