Earlier this year, we interviewed RatDog drummer Jay Lane regarding his Band of Brotherz project. Band of Brotherz evolved out of his early 90’s group Alphabet Soup, which melded jazz and hip-hop. In its current incarnation the group also has built a number of songs around Grateful Dead samples. The results can now be heard over ten tracks on Deadbeats and Murderous Medlys, which is now available on iTunes. In describing the collection, Lane told Jambands.com, “The good thing is we’re sitting on all these Dead-sampled tunes and all these other things too. So while we were getting all the tracks together, we realized there are a couple of the Band of Brotherz original songs that are so good, we probably should throw some of those songs on there as well. That’s why we called it Deadbeats and Murderous Medlys. And also to let people know we’re not just doing a gimmick thing. We’re trying to show that we had been conceptualizing original music for the last three years before this idea came up.”