Rhythm Devils

Infobox musical artist
Name = Rhythm Devils


Img_capt = Rhythm Devils performing during the Green Apple Festival.
Background = group_or_band
Genre = Rock, World Music
Years_active = 2006
Associated_acts = Grateful Dead, Phish, Mike Gordon, SerialPod, Deep Banana Blackout
URL = [http://www.rhythmdevils.net/ rhythmdevils.net]
Current_members = Bill Kreutzmann
Mickey Hart
Mike Gordon
Steve Kimock
Sikiru Adepoju
Jen Durkin

The Rhythm Devils are a band led by founding Grateful Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. The Rhythm Devils had their origins as an informal but frequent fixture in the Grateful Dead concert ritual. Starting in the mid-to-late 1970s, and continuing until the Grateful Dead's last concert in 1995, most Grateful Dead concerts featured an extended segment during the 2nd set of improvisational drumming and percussion by Hart and Kreutzmann who took over the stage as a duo (with occasional guests). This segment was variously known to fans as "Rhythm Devils", "Drums", or conversationally as "the drums", and was usually followed in post-1979 concerts by another extended improvisation by the rest of the band, usually without the drummers, which known as "Space". The "Rhythm Devils" segment of a Grateful Dead concert almost always segued out of a full-band song, and the "Space" segment almost invariably would segue into the beginnings of another full-band song as the drummers resumed their thrones with the rest of the band. The Grateful Dead album "Dead Set" has a characteristic example of a 1980 "Rhythm Devils" segment which is titled as such, and which is followed by a "Space" segment.

Formally, the Rhythm Devils duo were recruited by director Francis Ford Coppola to record the soundtrack to the film "Apocalypse Now". During 1979 and 1980, Hart and Kreutzmann, along with other percussionists, recorded sessions at the Grateful Dead's Marin County studios and Hart's barn in Novato. The process included improvising jungle sounds as they watched the film at the same time. An LP record was issued from the sessions, and the sounds were edited into the movie. In October 1990, Rykodisc re-released the original 1983 LP, "The Apocalypse Now Sessions".

The current lineup of the Rhythm Devils is comprised of drummers Kreutzmann, Hart, Phish bassist Mike Gordon, and guitarist Steve Kimock, with percussionist Sikiru Adepoju and vocalist Jen Durkin (formerly of Deep Banana Blackout.) The band formed in the summer of 2006 and toured throughout the US shortly thereafter. Former Dead lyricist Robert Hunter provides lyrics for a number of original songs.

DVDs

"The Rhythm Devils Concert Experience" (2006)

External links

* [http://www.rhythmdevils.net/ Rhythm Devils] Official site
* [http://www.archive.org/details/RhythmDevils Rhythm Devils collection] at the Internet Archive's live music archive