Photos: Frankie Cavone
Writer: Kassady Quimby
We had the pleasure of sitting down and catching up with one of upstate New York’s favorite Grateful Dead cover bands and our good friends Neon Avenue! Neon Avenue is a 5 piece band consisting of Joe Davis (guitar,vocals), Mike Urbon (rhythm guitar,vocals), Mike Cassels (bass,vocals), Mike Mcdonald (keyboards,vocals) and Doug Klein (drums). Neon Avenue was born in the depths of the 2020 pandemic and since has become a staple in the upstate dead scene! Check out what they had to say about upcoming events and how they get themselves prepared for long nights filled with dancing, friends and classic Grateful Dead tunes.
Mirth Films: How has 2024 been and is there anything exciting to be on the lookout for?
Neon Avenue: (Davis:) 2024 has been great! We’ve had some good shows so far and we have Rock The Dock coming up which is really fun playing the festival for the last two years and we’re really excited about that so that should be a great show, awesome show!
(Cassels:) I have a feeling we will get to some larger venues soon; because some of the venues we’ve been playing are getting a little too small and that’s not a knock on the venue, It’s a really big praise. The people who come to see us playing are very loyal and tend to like to come out and see us so in appreciation we better give them more room to dance!
Mirth Films: What are the band’s favorite Grateful Dead songs to cover and why?
Neon Avenue: (Davis:) It changes monthly but it’s probably Peggy-o
(Cassels:) Help/slip/Franklin’s because it captures different aspects of grateful dead music: interesting chord changes, vague lyrics, an extended jam, and eventually a danceable section with repeated chorus for everyone to sing along with to end everything
(Urbon:) I’ve really enjoyed playing Corrina, it seems to be one that not a lot of bands touch upon.
(Mcdonald:) We do a cover of Wharf Rat that i think is pretty good, it’s not quite how the dead would play it, but i feel like during the flow we try to push it and it’s a strong candidate of what this band is going for.
Mirth Films: How does it feel to be able to carry on the iconic music of the Grateful Dead and how does it affect you as a band?
Neon Avenue: (Cassels:) I think it’s easy to say that nobody else but the dead did what they did, so since they are no longer doing it I mean, there’s various tribute versions of the dead like further and dead and company, but if Jerry Garcia is not there, it’s really not the dead right, at least the Grateful Dead anyway and so one of the things that it’s great for everybody else is to keep carrying these traditions on and if if the market has shown us anything, there’s no stopping this people really wanna hear more this music wanna see this music perform live and why not we love it we people enjoy hearing it so we are bringing it to the masses I guess. It’s really a privilege to be able to go out there and play it and have people enjoy what you’re doing. Let’s face it…They created a whole genre of music.
(Mcdonald:) The Grateful Dead music is pretty timeless so songs are good songs and there’s probably a zillion Grateful Dead bands everywhere and certain people if you say that in front of them, they’re gonna roll their eyes and I would say every musician in this band has played, just about every genre under the sun like a lot of us have done a lot of original music and grind that out and it’s not easy and you know this is just us kind of playing some music that we love like we grew up listening to and it feels right and I’m sure there’s an oversaturation that takes everybody over but for us it’s pretty new right we try to mix it up. We try to play a lot of different music from the different Grateful Dead branch outs, like Bobby Solo stuff and RatDog, but when it comes down to it we try to make it different every time just like the Dead did and for that reason, we haven’t gotten sick of it just yet so yeah, keeps it pretty new for us,
Mirth Films: What are the peaks and pits of festival season?
Neon Avenue: (Urbon:) Some of the peaks would be you are cross pollinating with other groups meeting other musicians and festival goes. So in a way It’s a lot like networking, and a lot of your meeting other musicians can lead into future collaborations and things like that so that’s cool. I guess some of the downsides of that would be I guess maybe an abbreviated set. it’s hard to pull that off especially for a band like us, who like to stretch things and take it for a walk.
Mirth Films: Who decides setlists and how does the process go for picking songs?
Neon Avenue: *everyone points to Joe Davis
(Davis:) so I write a lot of setlists with a lot of input from them with song selection and stuff like that but like I guess we categorize the songs in two different categories, right so there’s like first set songs and then the second set for the dead. At least some of the jerry band stuff can be like either or. Kinda fits anywhere, but and even sometimes I sent two songs make it set one you can kind of do that but you can’t really do the other way like you can, but people are more excited about set two songs than set one so that’s more of like a thing we do, but it’s kinda just trying to play something different every show. We don’t repeat songs and we’re not tour or anything like that but we still don’t repeat songs from show to show. It’s kind of all about keeping the flow of the music special set like keeping everything flowing like the dead was very, very good at like making a story out of the song or out of the whole set list like it was almost like a journey throughout the entire night so you kinda have to like put that in there and then with us we like to play like the offshoot stuff like RatDoog ,JGB like some of the random stuff like that kingfish, you know. So we had to sprinkle that into so it’s really kind of What fits what we kinda wanna do with the music where we wanna go from song song, especially in the second set and just really like what songs we haven’t played or songs you know that been on the shelf for a while you know we like to take those out every once in a while too so it’s kind of it’s fun. It’s a fun process for me to write sets. It’s really cool. It’s kinda like making your dream Grateful Dead but then you get to play it too so it’s fun.
Mirth Films: Who are you most excited to share the bill with at Rock the Dock?
Neon Avenue: (Cassels:) The bar bill, I wanna share it with all these guys.
(Urban:) It’s definitely cool to see Formula 5; not to play sides.
(Mcdonald:) The lineup is awesome as usual Having Lotus on there is pretty awesome. We grew up seeing them in the scene and just to have an act like a national act like that is just amazing and Luke’s really done a great job with that so it is cool that Joe and I are going to be pulling double duty so to speak; just being playing Formula 5, and then doing the Neon Avenue thing in between the main stage acts, but yeah, the lineup is sick we got Wild Adriatic, which are friends that go way back for everybody in the band; coming up from the same area and they haven’t been playing a lot which is super cool so this is gonna be a really special show for them and its always always always a great event there’s so many people there, there’s nothing like it.
Mirth Films: Lastly, do you have any pre-show rituals?
Neon Avenue: (Mcdonald:) I think we talk through the Setlist a little bit. We usually practice quite a bit. I would say it compared to maybe some other some other groups, but I don’t really know that but we like to practice we like to craft list like Joe said and a lot of that includes segues and we try to think through you know, a certain degree how we’re gonna get from A to B. we don’t like to map it out too much because then you’re alienating the spirit of the music.
(Urbon:) just running over the list and running over lyrics and try not try not to overdo it to be to the point where you’re kind of freaking yourself out to set yourself up for forgetting the lyric or something like that but I like to try to like to dry run my rig make sure it’s working although it’s not always a guarantee because it’ll work at home and I get it somewhere won’t work sometimes for me personally it’s a day filled with like adrenaline and excitement and like anxiety but in a good way. Then before I leave the house I do a whole regiment of back stretches.
(Davis:) I like to do a lot of just fine-tuning parts. I’ll find little cheat code licks for like different version songs are gonna play that night and stuff like that and like OK let’s play that tonight. I’ll usually throw a new set of strings on like in the morning when I get up the day of show.
(Cassels:) I like to make sure I go to the bathroom before I go on stage, take my Metamucil so I’m regular, it all depends though.
