About 200 or so smiling faces gathered in the Berkeley Hills (officially the community of Kensington, Calif.) on a beautiful June 15 afternoon for a musical benefit featuring the acoustic David Nelson Band, Steve Poltz, and Ragged Charms (a one-time ensemble featuring Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz, three fellows from Hot Buttered Rum, Stephanie Salva, and Wally Ingram).

Mr. Hat Presents BETTER OFF DEAD MONDAY in COTATI at the Tradewinds featuring THE HOT MOUNTAIN DIPS!

It's back! The Monday Night gathering of the Tribe in Cotati meets again at The Tradewinds for a night of Grateful Dead music with a very special lineup from THE HOT MOUNTAIN DIPS. Featuring:

Mookie Siegel - keys / vox

Dennis Mill - drums / vox

Jonny Mojo - guitar / vox

Murph Murphy - bass

Alex Jordan - guitar / vox

7 pm start time, 21+. Two sets of High Energy Electrifying Grateful Dead Favorites.

GARCIA SONGBOOK LIVE featuring JOE CRAVEN & DAVID GANS leading a full band in exploring Jerry’s songbook is back by popular demand, and this time they will be joined by MOOKIE SIEGEL for a special ALL AGES Sunday show at the Arthouse Gallery in Berkeley. 6 pm dinner show at a unique bohemian art gallery space!

STU and the crew return with an unforgettable, electrifying take on the Bob Dylan Songbook with GHOSTS OF ELECTRICITY making a rare appearance for an early Sunday Funday dinner show on March 5th at Hopmonk Sebastopol. Featuring an amazing lineup: Stu Allen, Mark Karan, Greg Anton, Mookie Siegel and JP McLean. Outside under a heated tent, great food & drink.

Spotlighted by a first-set tribute to The Band, including such classics as “Up on Cripple Creek,” “Acadian Driftwood,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” and “Don’t Do It,” five renowned San Francisco Bay Area musicians dubbed “Lebo & Friends” got together on January 28 for a swell Saturday night of songs and jamming in Auburn, Calif., in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Collaborations including Bob Weir joining Lukas Nelson for an unforgettable version of Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”; an unamplified, in-the-dark, Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz/Elliott Peck-led version of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” during a power outage; and a unique closing musical sequence highlighted the eight annual benefit on November 23 for Music Heals International (MHI).

A grand celebratory sendoff to the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s psychedelic music scene of 1967 took place at one of its once and forever epicenters, The Fillmore, on December 9. Featuring about 30 prominent Bay Area performers of today and yesterday, the commemorative event righteously celebrated that important stretch of time through which poetry, rock ‘n’ roll, cross-cultural awareness, and an anti-establishment penchant to question authority challenged traditional America’s consciousness.

Euphoric dancing paired nicely with a rock ‘n’ roll varietal that included flavorful notes of blues, psychedelia, and other jam-happy material on June 3, as performed by the David Nelson Band at the Center for the Arts in the Sierra Nevada foothill community of Grass Valley, California.

There is a new trend in the music industry today, bands which have been broken up for decades reforming suddenly in order to cash in on the pocketbooks and prosperity of their baby-boomer generation fans.