THERE’S A REWARD: A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE & MUSIC OF NEAL CASAL
Wednesday, September 25 The Capitol Theatre Port Chester, New York
Embedded Stream Provided by Relix.com – thank you!
The lineup features Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Circles Around The Sun, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead’s Joe Russo, Dave Dreiwitz, Tom Hamilton, and Scott Metzger, Duane Trucks and Dave Schools of Widespread Panic, Citizen Cope, Eric Krasno, Jason Crosby, Todd Sheaffer, Leslie Mendelson, and many more.
In honor of Neal Casal’s memory, please Consider a donation for MusiCares® who provide a safety net of critical assistance for music people in times of need.
Alternate Feed, has Neal Casal slide show at beginning:
An absolutely beautiful version of the complete Weather Report Suite, including the Prelude and Parts 1 & 2. Written by Bob Weir and John Barlow, and performed here by Bob Weir, as a special guest of Oteil Brubridge and friends. featuring the late Neal Casal.
This set of music is now the final public performance by Neal Casal.
While no one knew it at the time, this is the final performance of Neal Casal‘s band Circles Around The Sun, from the late night set in Garcia’s Forest, Lockn’ Festival,Thursday August 22, 2019.
Neal Casal created this music to be used between sets for the Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well 50th anniversary shows in 2015. People loved it so much, it was eventually released for the public. A little later, he began performing it live with this band.
They had been at Lockn a few years before, also with a late night set of CATS music. The band had done some small tours, and was planning on more. They released a second album, and were in the studio working on another one.
I don’t know the how or why of Neal’s passing. It is being called a suicide, though I don’t know the specific circumstances. He seemed to be in good spirits this weekend at the festival, and played with gusto, and a lot of smiles. He was in a relationship, and had plans for the future, and involved in lots of music projects too, all of which which makes this all the more tragic and shocking, and difficult to understand.
While there are many questions that may not be answered, we will have his music forever. Neal let me video him often, and I will be sharing much more of it in time.
Fare thee well Neal… may the four winds blow you safely home my friend.
Neal, played barefoot that night. He picked up his shoes as he left the stage…
The official music video for Circles Around The Sun
– “One For Chuck”
Including A Cameo By Hip-Hop Legend Chuck D
from the album “Let It Wander” (available August 17)
Circles Around The Sun will release their new double album, Let It Wander, this Friday, August 17 via Rhino Records on limited edition vinyl, CD and digital formats. It’s the first new music from the quartet since their acclaimed 2015 debut, Interludes For The Dead. In advance of this week’s release, they have leaked the video for “One For Chuck,” featuring a cameo by hip-hop legend Chuck D. The charismatic leader of hip-hop pioneers Public Enemy happened to stop by the studio they were recording and overheard the session. He raved to the band how much he loved the music, so they asked him to record an intro. He obliged, and they dedicated the song to him. Watch and share “One For Chuck” here.
Circles Around the Sun (CATS) was born when guitarist Neal Casal was asked to record a handful of Grateful Dead-influenced instrumentals to be played during the set breaks at the Dead’s “Fare Thee Well” concerts in 2015. He configured a band featuring keyboardist Adam MacDougall (his bandmate in the Chris Robinson Brotherhood) along with bassist Dan Horne and drummer Mark Levy. Initially, it was only meant to be a one off recording session. But the response was so positive, and the band was having so much fun making music together, that they all agreed to keep it going.
Let It Wander signals a new beginning for the band as they move beyond their original musical mandate of evoking the spirit of the Dead and fully embrace their own personality. Recorded earlier this year at Castaway 7 Studios in California, CATS cut seven instrumentals for the album that explore new musical horizons. “More than anything, what you hear on this album is a band growing into its own sound,” Casal says.
The songs on Let It Wander are focused and filled with imaginative musical turns. Horne and Levy form a veritable groove machine that knows intuitively when to tighten up and when to stretch out. They expand and collapse the rhythmic pocket around Casal and MacDougall, who pass melodies back and forth in an elaborate game of musical tag as they take turns adding color and shade from a seemingly endless kaleidoscope of cosmic sounds. David Fricke at Rolling Stone writes in a review of the recording: “‘Let It Wander’ is a two-CD set of even deeper spells that thread suggestions of Little Feat–style grooves and Bernie Worrell‘s percolating synthesizers in Parliament-Funkadelic through the German mid-Seventies space travel of Tangerine Dream and the offbeat churn of the Dead’s ‘Estimated Prophet.'”
Circles Around The Sun’s individual members are busier than ever due to participation in other projects, but the band plans to tour behind the album as their schedules permit. Seven shows have already been announced, including five East Coast and two West Coast dates with more expected to be added shortly.
August 22 – Asbury Park, NJ – Wonder Bar
August 23 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Bowl
August 24 – Ardmore, PA – The Ardmore Music Hall
August 25 – South Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
August 26 – Pine Plains, NY – Huichica East
September 27 – San Rafael, CA – Terrapin Crossroads
September 28 – Half Moon Bay, CA – Old Princeton Landing
