The Mickey Hart Band has announced new May tour dates for the second leg of their Worlds Within tour.  The band will once again bring along Babatunde Olatunji protege's, the African Showboyz, as main support for the tour.The band has also released three free live tracks from their 3/6/13 Solana Beach, CA show including the brand new song, "The Sermon" featuring  lyrics by Robert Hunter.

Seemingly a departure from Anela’s first album of Hawaiian music, "Mele from the Harp", this album acts as a vehicle for continuing to spread the Grateful Dead's mission of peace and love throughout the world. This album will be part of the Rex Foundation’s musical caravan, supporting the arts worldwide. For those who are not familiar with the Dead’s music, this is a "safe" introduction to it.

Dead.net is taking it all the way back to 1966 for Record Store Day. Limited to 6,600 2-LP 180-gram vinyl copies and featuring new cover art, Rare Cuts & Oddities 1966 features a variety of early live and studio tracks produced by Owsley Stanley.

The Rex Foundation has recently received a major gift of $550,000, having been designated as the primary beneficiary of the estate of David Thorberson.

This is my first newsletter of the year, so... welcome 2013!  Thanks for your continued subscription to the JK Wireservice.  I use ReverbNation to maintain this subscription list (similar to Constant Contact, but music-oriented), and if you are interested, they have an entire social network dedicated to music.  Also, if you wish to unsubscribe, please feel free to click the 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom of this email.Its already been an eventful year...

The contemporary musical universe of Mickey Hart is perfectly aligned with the cosmos. Never has his theological approach to music or pursuit of combining music sensibilities across the globe been so relevant. From the beginnings he sought out further bounds than his primary project, the American rock institution, The Grateful Dead.

Do you believe in augurs? As a bookworm and English teacher, I always look for them in literature and instruct my students to do the same. Omens of good things to come and harbingers of impending doom are common tropes in fiction. But the portents woven into those narratives are intentional and premeditated – mechanisms to clue the reader in to future events. Real life is another matter entirely.