Written by Seth Weiner, CEO and President of Sonic Promos
A Drum, a Senator, and the Grateful Dead: Looking Back Twenty Years
Today marks twenty years since one of my most memorable jobs in Sonic Promos’s history. In May 2006, we designed and sold t-shirts at a Washington, DC fundraiser headlined by Bob Weir and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. For someone who once spent every long drive of a new job with nothing but Dead shows playing in the car, it was about as good as a work assignment gets.
Here is how it came together.
A merch company, a senator, and a band
For several years, Sonic Promos was involved in political fundraising events, producing the branded pieces those events needed. One of those relationships was with the Deadheads for Leahy effort, supporting Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
The Grateful Dead have long carried a reputation for staying out of politics. Even so, the band and its members have never been shy about lending their name to people and causes they believe in, from environmental work to candidates like Senator Leahy.
In 2004, our role was simple. We produced t-shirts and shipped them out. Low key, no fanfare. Two years later, the ask got more interesting.
May 23, 2006
For the 2006 event, we were brought in to design the shirts and to sell them at the show itself. The venue was the Renaissance Washington Hotel. Picture a hotel ballroom, the kind of room you might see set up for a wedding, with around 500 people inside and members of the Grateful Dead on stage.
The lineup featured Mickey Hart and Bob Weir, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and the Flying Other Brothers. We built the shirt around a drum design on the front, a nod to Mickey, with the full bill of performers and the date printed on the back.
We set up a booth outside the room with one simple deal. Sell through the shirts, then come inside and enjoy the rest of the night. We sold out. I went in.
The back room
The music ran three or four hours. When it wrapped, there was a VIP experience in a back room: Magic Hat beer, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and a chance to have your photo taken with the performers and with Senator Leahy and his wife.
I will be honest. My contribution to the campaign did not exactly buy a spot in that room. I nudged my way in. It was worth it.
They sat everyone down for what amounted to a class photo. Bobby on one side, Mickey on the other, the senator and his wife, the rest of the band, and me in the middle with a baby face and short hair. A few weeks later, a signed photo arrived from Senator Leahy. It reads, “To Seth, great t-shirts.”
Twenty years later, the poster and that signed photo are both framed on my wall.
Why this one stuck
I came to the Grateful Dead a little later than some of my friends did in high school and college. Growing up, my taste ran all over the map, from Barbra Streisand to Pink Floyd, and through middle school I was a committed progressive rock kid. My first real brush with the Dead was at summer camp in the Poconos, where counselors played Ripple and Uncle John’s Band every Saturday.
My brother took me to my first show at RFK Stadium in 1994, near the very end of the band’s run with Jerry Garcia. I caught Highgate in 1995 and a couple more RFK shows before Jerry died that summer, the same year I graduated. My first job out of school kept me on the road constantly, and I spent those long drives working through every show and album I could find. That is when it truly took hold.
So when the chance came to work an event with two members of the band, it did not feel like an ordinary job.
Watch a piece of that night
Some video from the 2006 fundraiser made it online over the years. You can watch the band run through Big River here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEZT1gBMrtQ
I told this whole story again recently, sitting in Barton Hall at Cornell University, one of the most iconic venues in Grateful Dead history, for the So Many Roads podcast. Barton Hall happens to be a short walk from where I went to school, which makes the place doubly meaningful to me. You can watch that conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33nYbPaaqiU&t=25s
Looking back, that night in 2006 is a good reminder of what we like about this work. The right branded piece is never just a shirt. It is a marker of a moment, something people hold onto. I still have mine, twenty years on.
