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The Grateful Dead era effectively ended with Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995, but a handful of projects carry on the celebrated jam band’s storied experimentalism. One such act is Rhythm Devils, run by drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. Decades ago, the duo used portions of Dead concerts to play impromptu percussion sets loosely steered by a theme devised that day — like, say, the end of the world.
Around 2006, Hart and Kreutzmann fleshed out the idea, and formed a full band. Utilizing improvised concepts, and original music written by Dead songwriter Robert Hunter, the Devils unravel tracks heavy on thick grooves and electronic effects. (Hart has characterized his crew’s style as dance and trance.) And while the band’s history is slim, it includes some nifty details. In one account of how the drummers got the moniker, Kreutzmann recalls that director Francis Ford Coppola called them rhythm devils after they contributed to the Apocalypse Now soundtrack.
