January 2026 | MendoWerks

26Jan

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Features, Music

MendoWerks Goes Live on WKZE 98.1 for Bob Weir Tribute Broadcast

The MendoWerks team joined WKZE 98.1 for a live on-air tribute honoring the life and musical legacy of Bob Weir, airing over multiple segments as part of the station’s memorial programming. The broadcast featured John Barry and Andrew Eisner of MendoWerks, hosted by WKZE co-owner Andy Gladding. Together, the group explored Weir’s influence on American music, live performance culture, and generations of listeners, blending conversation with curated selections spanning the Grateful Dead catalog and related artists. Exploring Bob Weir’s Influence During the broadcast, Barry discussed MendoWerks’ recent deep dive into cover songs, specifically reinterpretations that radically depart from their originals, highlighting how the Grateful Dead’s open-ended approach to music continues to in...

20 Years Later: Matchbook Romance Release “Something Worse Than the Night”

More than 20 years after helping define an era of emotional, melody-driven post-hardcore, Matchbook Romance are opening the vault (and the next chapter) with the release of a powerful new song, Something Worse Than the Night. The story behind the track stretches back to the fall of 2005, when the band packed up and headed to Long View Farm Studios in rural Massachusetts to begin work on their second full-length album, Voices. With producer John Goodmanson guiding the sessions, Matchbook Romance spent a month living and recording together in an old barn surrounded by woods, isolation, and inspiration. Songs emerged organically, born from soundchecks, long drives, and cramped practice spaces on both coasts, slowly transforming from scattered ideas into something cohesive and deeply person...

Grateful Dead, Garcia and ‘Big Steve:’ Parish Honors History with Iconic Merch Launch

"Big" Steve Parish. Courtesy Photo. By John W. Barry Scarlet>Fire. China>Rider. Estimated>Eyes. These are some of the most iconic phrases—song segues, actually— introduced across generations, by the Grateful Dead, into the modern Dead Head lexicon. Well, now you can add another two-word phrase into that lexicon, courtesy of “Big” Steve Parish, an anchor of the Grateful Dead family whose contributions to mankind could never be quantified. Chonga Bonga. Decades ago, Parish and Grateful Dead lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia were outside the Hotel Navarro in New York City, later to be the Ritz-Carlton, about to get into a limousine. A car materialized out of nowhere and someone handed out the window a white shoebox. Inside was a white ch...