Elementary School Choir Sings the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple,” “Box of Rain,” “Brokedown Palace” & More: RIP Bob Weir
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Down in Austin, Texas, music teacher Gavin Tabone leads the Barton Hills Choir, made up of 3rd- through 6th-grade students. Backed by professional musicians, the choir performs a wide-ranging mix of music, from classic pop and rock to indie songs by artists like Wilco, Muse, The Flaming Lips, and especially the Grateful Dead. Above and below, you can find performances of such Dead classics as “Ripple,” “Box of Rain” and “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” → “I Know You Rider.” And if you head to their YouTube channel, you can find versions of “Cassidy,” “Touch of Grey,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “Brokedown Palace,” and more.
With the passing of Bob Weir this weekend, it seems like a fitting time to highlight these performances. Weir first joined the Dead when only a teenager, still basically a kid himself, and then continued the journey for the next 60 years, introducing the Dead’s songbook to successive generations of fans. In recent years, he talked about the Dead songbook enduring for the next 200 to 300 years, much as Beethoven remains with us today. As we watch elementary students perform Grateful Dead classics, it’s hard not to think that Weir was on to something.
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