The Grateful Dead played 2,318 official concerts over a 30-year run that started in San Francisco in 1965. That’s pretty impressive.

The Dark Star Orchestra—the premier Grateful Dead tribute band—has been together 16 years and will soon surpass the Dead in number of shows played, in about half the time. That’s very impressive.

The Orchestra are playing a couple of shows at Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh’s club, Terrapin Station, as a lead-up to a much-anticipated 2,319th show at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

Like the Dead, the Dark Star Orchestra have toured coast-to-coast in an obsessive and nomadic fashion, offering lots of improvisation to fans along the way. The band performs a repertoire of Dead jams and puts together shows that are recreated from the band’s actual set lists. The Orchestra have averaged one show every two-and-a-half nights over those 16 years, and show no signs that they’re crashing anytime soon, or will pour their light into ashes, or anything like that (the Orchestra is named after the early Dead tune “Dark Star”).

Quantity aside, the Orchestra are renowned among Deadheads for the interpretative and improvisational spirit that captures the Dead concerts that inspire them. The band’s two North Bay appearances at Lesh’s joint mark the eve of their milestone achievement, and we’re wondering if Phil will bake a cake for them. Shall we go, you and I while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?

As the sun set on the Reggae on the River Festival last August, the towering figure of Jamaican roots artist Prezident Brown could be seen walking down a path among the Humboldt County redwoods.

Reggae music filled the expanse of a river not yet parched by drought, and huge Jamaican flags waved in the breeze as Brown came into view, his gentle smile reflecting the early evening light.

It was a compelling image. At 6-foot-3, the reggae singer has a striking nature that exudes mindfulness, a characteristic he is pleased to share with fans stopping him when on the road. And whenever he parts ways with his fans, Brown stands at attention with fists pressed together in front of his heart and exclaims, “Towerful!”

It’s a symbolic gesture from Brown that leaves fans shouting, “There goes the Towerman!”

The underlying philosophy is more than just a handshake. “Tower” stands for “thinking, overstanding, working, enlightening and reasoning.” Each word represents a spiritual and pragmatic tool for making one’s way through the chaos and materialism of our fast-paced world.

Prezident Brown’s career spans three decades. Often hailed as Jamaica’s best-kept secret, Brown is now working with Kingston producer Rivah Jordan and says he’s been dipping into a pool of artists to collaborate with on an album due this fall. He’s mum on whom he might be teaming up with.

Even if he’s keeping his collaborators a secret for now, Brown does wear his political message on his sleeve. His current West Coast tour is called the “No-GMO Tour.”

“The issue of food is very important to speak on, as an artist,” he says via telephone, “for the human beings that might not know or understand what is happening. I am using my platform to raise the awareness of what is happening with food.”

But what if GMOs are not all bad?

“There is no scientific proof,” says Brown, “but what does that mean? That we should go ahead with this experiment? The population is going to be the experiment. It is big money and the control of profits—food being controlled by profit.”

Music fans promote food sovereignty when they align with artists like Brown. The solution to GMOs lies with the masses—so dance and be Towerful.