8:30 p.m. Saturday, Papa Pete's, 520 S.
Burdick St., downtown Kalamazoo. $12.
18 and older. For special VIP "meet and greet" tickets, call 388-2196. While the band name was eerily prophetic for many Dead piano-men, Constanten took his leave voluntarily in 1970 and continued along an eclectic career path performing in the off-Broadway mime-and-music musical "Tarot," serving several professorships at universities such as Harvard and recording albums with many other artists, including later Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick.
He said he hasn't gone to any extraordinary lengths to avoid the Grateful Dead keyboardist curse that plagued his contemporaries. "As a matter of fact, I pretty much eat and drink whatever I want," he said. "I stay away from some of those powdery substances that may have caused problems for others.
I don't pass any moral judgment. I just choose not to." Constanten and Gans met in the '80s when Gans lived a 10-minute walk from Constanten's then-home in Berkeley, Calif.
The show at Papa Pete's is likely to include many Dead classics as well as Constanten's and Gans' own material and may feature some Chicago backing musicians. "Sometimes we will show up in that configuration," he said. "Nothing that we do is 'usual.
' Sometimes David will be with the band. Sometimes we play by ourselves. It's like Mr.
Potato Head. Any possibility can happen. He said while the show is like a "living time capsule," it's not nostalgia for the '60s per se.
"I don't have to be nostalgic," he said. "It's still with me. It never left.
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