Rob Eaton is an American guitarist. He is best known for his work with the renowned

Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...

tribute band,

Dark Star Orchestra Dark Star Orchestra is a Grateful Dead cover band formed in Chicago, Illinois. They serve as a tribute band to the rock group the Grateful Dead. Since 1997, the band has been "celebrating the Grateful Dead concert experience." Overview Dark Sta ...

, of which he has been a member since 2001.

Career

Rob Eaton grew up in

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

and was inspired to start playing guitar at the age of 12 after hearing the

's ''

Europe '72 ''Europe '72'' is a live triple album by the Grateful Dead, released in November 1972. It covers the band's tour of Western Europe in April and May that year, and showcases live favourites, extended improvisations and several new songs including ...

''. He joined his first band, The Peyote Ridge, in 1975 which played a combination of originals and Dead covers. Eaton has been a member of the Grateful Dead community since the 1970s and used to tape shows. This led to him moving to New York in 1980 and getting a job in the recording industry with the Power Station recording studio. Around the same time he began playing with the Dead cover band Border Legion. He continued gigging with them until 2001 when he was offered a permanent position in

, playing the part of

Bob Weir Robert Hall Weir ( ; né Parber, born October 16, 1947) is an American musician and songwriter best known as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the group disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead ...

. Since then he began putting most of his time into performing with that band as well as his new side project, American Beauty. He has also produced albums for

Pat Metheny Patrick Bruce Metheny ( ; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer. He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works, and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progre ...

and appeared as a guest on other albums such as

Peter Wolf Peter Wolf (born March 7, 1946) is an American musician best known as the lead vocalist of the J. Geils Band from 1967 to 1983 and as a solo artist. Early life and education Peter Wolf was born Peter Walter Blankfield on March 7, 1946 in The ...

's '' Sleepless''. Betty Cantor-Jackson, a longtime recording engineer for the Grateful Dead in the 1970s and early 1980s, made high quality reel to reel recordings of many Grateful Dead shows. They are colloquially known as ''Betty Boards'' as many were direct feeds from the soundboard. Thousands of recordings were sold to three anonymous buyers in 1986 in a storage locker foreclosure auction. In 2014, one of those buyers asked Eaton to begin restoring and digitizing the old, sometimes moldy or disintegrating

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...

s. Eaton felt the work so important as, in many cases, these were the best if not the only recordings of the performances. He eventually tracked down and convinced the other two buyers to allow him to do the same.

References

External links

Bio at Dark Star Orchestra WebsiteInternet Movie database page on Rob Eaton.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eaton, Rob Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American male singer-songwriters American singer-songwriters Guitarists from Vermont Record producers from Vermont American male guitarists Dark Star Orchestra members