Canadian Beauty

In 2004, a handful of experienced Victoria, BC musicians banded together to pay tribute to one of their (collectively) favourite bands, The Grateful Dead. What started out as a summer time Jerry Garcia birthday celebration slowly expanded to a bi-annual event at summer at New Year's for Vancouver Island's multitudes of overt and in-the-closet Deadheads. Many of the members started playing together years ago in various western Canadian jam bands such as Lift, A Particular Wave, and Nonfiction. Since then they've all moved on to bigger things, and tighter bands. Our member's main projects include original local and international acts Elephant Island, Outlaw Social, Noises from the Toolshed, Toni Childs, and Jesse Ferell. I'm sure I'm missing some. While this project is an admitted side-project for all of us, we've devoted quite a bit of time to ensure that we don't disappoint any fans of the original songs. Many times we've taken the liberty to carefully re-arrange a song to something that suits our style a little better. And although we're covering THE original Jam Band, we try to focus on what makes some of these songs so great: the lyrics and the melody. There are always a few extended jams at a Canadian Beauty concert, but there are also many straight up, song-writer-style renditions of Deadhead's favourite tunes.... In addition to Canadian Beauty, the same general group of musicians has at various times billed themselves as Two Bobs and a Mule, Walcott's Medicine Show, and Ragged Glory, covering Bob Dylan, The Band, and Neil Young respectively. Yes we play BOTH kinds of music, Country AND Western.