By: Eric Renner Brown
Jay Blakesberg
The Kids Are AlrightThe revamped Billy & The Kids lineup – Tom Hamilton, Carlos Santana, Aron Magner, Bill Kreutzmann, Reed Mathis, Billy Strings and James Casey (from left) – perform in Kauai to celebrate drummer and Grateful Dead co-founder Kreutzmann’s 75th birthday.
Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, who turned 75 on May 7, is no stranger to birthday jamming. During the Dead’s 30-year run, the band played on Kreutzmann’s birthday a dozen times, including particularly esteemed gigs at England’s Bickershaw Festival and at the Boston Garden, in 1972 and 1977, respectively.
To mark his latest trip around the sun, Kreutzmann reconvened Billy & The Kids, a band built around core players Tom Hamilton (Joe Russo’s Almost Dead), Reed Mathis (Tea Leaf Green) and Aron Magner (The Disco Biscuits, see page 16) that played from 2014 to 2016, in Kauai for three shows, streamed on fans.live as