If you build it, they will come.
It’s a line that could just as easily describe a Grateful Dead show in 1977 as it does a spring evening on the North Fork in 2026: an old barn, a big American flag, a hand-painted “Steal Your Face” sign and a gathering of strangers that soon feel like family.
It’s the origin story of Deadwood & Friends, a North Fork jam band whose annual spring and falls shows at Treiber Farms in Peconic now regularly draw legions of fans.
As with so many Dead-adjacent tales, it all began in a barn.
Years ago, Southold drummer Joe Campisi found himself at one of Levon Helm’s Midnight Rambles — freewheeling jam sessions in the late, legendary drummer from The Band’s Woodstock barn, where visitors came away swearing the music was conjured, not performed.
Around the same time, Campisi first heard the North Fork multi-instrumentalist Greg McMullen play pedal steel guitar.
“It became clear to me that I had to get in on the fun these two guys were having playing music,” Campisi wrote in a 2024 reflection on the formation of the band.
Benefit show in Greenport this weekend
A few years ago, he started reaching out to local players, most of whom move between projects rather than playing in a single group. McMullen showed up. So did mandolin player Sam Shaffery, bassist Doug Broder, and others, depending on the night.
What took shape was not a band exactly, but a loose collective, elastic by design. Some nights, it grows to eight or nine players, including additional vocalists, keyboardists and often a second drummer — honoring the Dead’s layered, percussive drive, powered by Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. Naturally, Deadwood & Friends’ repertoire is Dead-centered, with Dylan, Tedeschi & Trucks and some curveballs threaded into each show.
Ahead of their now-annual spring/fall shows in the old barn at Treiber Farms, the latest formulation of Deadwood & Friends is set to play a benefit show for the North Fork Chamber of Commerce this Saturday, April 11, at Greenport Harbor Brewery.
This weekend’s show will include Joe Ciampa on lead guitar and vocals, Shaffery on mandolin and vocals, McMullen on lead and pedal steel guitar and vocals, Joe Delia on keyboards, Sara Mundy on vocals, Broder on bass guitar, and Campisi and Mike Severino on drums.
The band is also planning a show in the barn at Treiber Farms in late May, with more details to come in the weeks ahead, Campisi said.
‘A scene right away’
The players in Deadwood don’t rehearse. The shows are improvisational jam sessions, based on the same philosophy that underpinned the Dead: that a performance could be discovered, not delivered.
The first show at Treiber Farms a few years back was bare-bones. Campisi’s friend painted a “Steal Your Face” sign by hand and he set it out by the road on Route 48 in front of the farm. He figured maybe a few dozen people would come. He hoped enough would attend and donate to at least cover the musicians’ modest costs.
Instead, a couple hundred turned up.
“They brought lawn chairs, coolers,” Campisi said. “It kind of became a scene right away.”
The vibe that emerged that night, and has held since, is unstructured. No tickets. No gate. No real boundary between the band and audience. People drifting in and out of the barn. Kids playing in the yard. The music unfolding in long, unhurried sets.
Like a bowling pin
The Grateful Dead built an empire on uncertainty, stepping onstage with just a loose map and trusting the music to find its way. Songs would stretch, collapse and reassemble. Campisi and his friends lean into the same instability. Players show up prepared, but not scripted.
“It’s very much in the spirit of the Dead,” he said.
After the first summer’s shows, Campisi began refining the experience, with tapestries along the barn walls, a projector casting slow, psychedelic loops behind the band and lighting rigs that respond to the music.
By last summer, the audience had swelled to 400 or 500, Campisi said, drawing a crowd far beyond the core circle of Deadheads that recognized the roadside symbol and just turned up, the way they do.
Just as it had for the Dead in their heyday, growth inevitably brought pressure, and the law.
Parking along Route 48 became an issue. The town stepped in. Code violations were issued. Fingers were wagged. Tempers flared. And the band kept playing on.
Permits, parking plans and some basic infrastructure are now a part of the preparations for Treiber Farms’ Deadwood shows.
But the governing idea remains intact, Campisi said.
“I just want to have a party.”