If you walked in to the Abbey Pub for Terrapin Flyer’s Wednesday night jam on May 8th, you may have noticed something strange after the first couple of songs.  If you stuck around for the second set, and were well-versed in Grateful Dead history, you surely would have put the pieces together and realized that [...]

It was a family affair back at Martyrs for when Terrapin Flyer hit the stage for its sold out Saturday night gig, with the band welcoming several guests to partake in some good ole Grateful Dead (and, of course, JGB) with Melvin Seals and Mark Karan.  Norman Sands has some nice photos of the proceeding [...]

It will be a busy August for Terrapin Flyer founder, guitarist and vocalist Doug Hagman.  He’ll hit the road for 9 shows in 11 days with an all-star cast in a routing that spans both Jerry Garcia’s 70th birthday and the 17th anniversary of his death (including at stop at Chicago’s Abbey Pub on 8/4).  [...]

Grateful Dead and Talking Heads on the same bill?  It never happened when these bands were together, but Chicagoans get a chance to see some of the foremost re-creators of this music on the same stage — Friday March 2nd at The Abbey.  This Must Be The Band plays a two hour set starting at [...]

It’s Melvin and Friends tonight at Brixie’s. Game on! For your drinking pleasure, here’s a list of the 105 different varieties of beer on tonight’s menu at Brixie’s.

While The Barn’s recent interview with Melvin Seals intended to shed some light on the Jerry Garcia Band catalog, Melvin made it clear that the Jerry tunes weren’t the only thing he’s been up to lately. I took this as an open door to explore some of the other projects Melvin has been involved with, [...]

As the self-proclaimed “Keeper Of The Flame”, Melvin Seals is committed to honoring the Jerry Garcia Band songbook and carrying it forward through performance. Deliberately crafted with songs that span decades, songwriters, and styles, and with only a handful of overlapping tunes from the Grateful Dead’s vast repertoire, it is no wonder that fans consider [...]

How would you like it if somebody took a recording of your first month on the job, and posted it to the web?  We’re not trying to be mean, we’re just excited about our upcoming event, and think this is genuinely awesome. Consider the circumstance: a 27 year old Melvin Seals, an organist “straight out [...]

At long last, we have updated our FAQ Page to reflect The Barn’s latest mission Prince: genius or madman? A guide to all the celebrity cameos in the Beastie’s new Fight For Your Right Revisited long form video. We lost Lynn Hauldren, the Empire Carpet Guy this week.  Here is a link to our trip [...]

The Barn is pleased to announce our next HUGE live music event, and we’re just bursting with pride at the talent that we are bringing to the Western ‘burbs. For 15 years, Melvin Seals traded licks with Jerry Garcia in the Jerry Garcia Band, contributing to some of the most moving, inspirational and soulful output [...]