UPDATE: The Brooklyn Come Alive festival, originally scheduled for March 21, has been postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. A new date for the festival has not yet been announced, watch this space for updates as they become available.

Oteil Burbridge will soon be back in a Brooklyn groove.

The Dead and Company bassist is headlining the 2020 edition of the Brooklyn Comes Alive festival, a gathering of vibes that looks to create a musical bridge between the worlds of Brooklyn and New Orleans.

Burbridge will be joined for the occasion by a titanic assemblage of his Oteil & Friends ensemble, a 12-person force that also includes his Dead and Company bandmate Jeff Chimenti on keyboards.

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Eric Krasno of Soulive and Jason Crosby, a frequent Phil Lesh collaborator, will be on hand, as will Scott Metzger of Joe Russo's Almost Dead, Eric Bloom and Ryan Zoidis of Lettuce and Tom Guarna of Blood, Sweat and Tears, plus John Kimock, Alfreda Gerald, Lamar Williams Jr. and Weedie Braimah,

Burbridge — also a former Allman Brothers Band member who will be taking the stage at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night as part of the celebratory Southern rock gathering The Brothers — spoke via email about Brooklyn Comes Alive, finding his voice in Jerry Garcia's ballads and more.

Q: Brooklyn Comes Alive is a jam-focused festival that serves as a musical bridge between the communities of New Orleans and Brooklyn. How do you think both of these potent artistic environments make their influences felt in your music?

A: Well my parents are New Yorkers so there’s always that influence because of the music I grew up hearing. And New Orleans is probably my favorite city in America, so that music is deep in my heart too.

Being someone who loves funk, jazz, blues, gospel, Latin music and many more genres, I think that I get a lot of all of those influences from both cities for sure.

All of that can’t help but come out in my playing and writing.

Q: You’ll be leading a super-sized, 12-person version of Oteil & Friends at Brooklyn Comes Alive. What most excites you about hitting the stage with this particular iteration of the band?

A: Well a lot of the excitement comes from nervousness because we have never played together all at once before! But I also will probably not have everyone on stage all at the same time but rather for a few songs. For instance, I don’t need three guitarists all at the same time for every song. I probably won’t have the horns on every single song either.

It’s gonna be really cool though when we do have everyone up there all at once. It’s a great bunch of people. I’d love to be hanging with them if we weren’t playing music.

Q: Your Dead and Company bandmate Jeff Chimenti will be joining you for Brooklyn Comes Alive. What do you think you and Jeff in particular spark in each other as collaborators?

A: Joy. Playfulness. Inspiration. It’s just really fun playing with him. He has a spirit of adventure as well as a wide breadth of musical knowledge. It’s always a blast playing and hanging with him. I always learn something new.

Q: In addition to Jeff, you’ll be sharing the stage with a number of players who are incredibly familiar with the Grateful Dead canon, such as Jason Crosby from Phil Lesh & Friends and Scott Metzger from Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. What sort of bond happens between musicians who are all fluent in such a rich musical language?

A: It’s funny because Jason used to play in my band the Peacemakers many years ago, so playing Jerry Band and the Grateful Dead with him is new for us as far as doing it together. It also makes it easier for me to pull out some of my old original tunes because he knows them all already!

Metzger has done a number of gigs with Oteil & Friends so we’ve put in some time on top of playing together with JRAD, too. He’s one of my favorite players out there. The more time you have together the more you link up. Like me, he didn’t come from a Grateful Dead background but he knows it all as good as any musician alive right now. We both love the music and enjoy bringing our other histories to it.

Q: It’s always a pleasure to hear you sing selections from the Jerry Garcia catalog, either with Oteil & Friends or Dead and Company. What is it about the Garcia material – both his originals and the songs he chose to cover over the years – that speaks to you as a vocalist yourself?

A: Well it’s funny because I never really enjoyed singing that much until I started using inner ear monitors. It blocks out all of the really loud volume and makes it so much easier and more fun to sing.

When I started trying out Jerry ballads, it just felt easier to sing those than even my own songs! There’s something about the way he writes that is very natural to sing. Him and Hunter just had a magical chemistry that is undeniable. I couldn’t have seen it coming any more than anyone else.

You know my wife has a plant that she’s had for like 17 years and a couple of years after we moved to Florida, it bloomed for the first time! She couldn’t believe it. That’s how it feels to me.

Health officials are advising those at high risk of developing severe illness from the coronavirus to avoid crowds, particularly in poorly ventilated areas, and to avoid touching common surfaces when out in public.

The risk of illness and death is highest among those over age 80, and increases with age, starting at age 60, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. Members of the public are advised to carefully consider whether to attend large public events, and to use common sense precautions of covering coughs and sneezes, frequent hand-washing and avoiding touching the face​​​​​​.