Crickets & Cicadas

Crickets & Cicadas is a New Jersey and Pennsylvania based Grateful Dead collective that performs across the greater Philadelphia region and the wider Northeast, with regular dates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware. The band works from a fluid lineup of rotating musicians rather than a fixed roster, treats the Dead catalog as a launching point for extended improvisation, and keeps a standing policy of not repeating a song within a month, a constraint that suits a schedule local press puts at upwards of 150 shows a year. Sets mix well-known material with deep cuts and with songs from outside the Dead songbook. A July 2025 lot show in parking lot 22 outside the Mann Center in Philadelphia, played ahead of a Phish concert, opened with Here Comes Sunshine and ran through El Paso, Alligator, Bertha, New Potato Caboose, Playing in the Band, Ramble On Rose and Throwing Stones, with Phish teases threaded through the jams. The group is a regular at regional rooms including Ardmore Music Hall and 118 North in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Tonewood Brewing in New Jersey and Catskill Brewery in Livingston Manor, New York. In June 2026 it opened the inaugural Island Jam festival at Cooper River Park in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, starting the day with Terrapin Station and hosting Disco Biscuits keyboardist Aron Magner for the entire set; Magner had also guested with the band at Tonewood Brewing in December 2025. Taper recordings of its shows are collected in a dedicated Internet Archive collection.

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