" It all started with the 1990 Las Vegas Grateful Dead shows when I fell in love with the whole scene. Over the summer I met Sha Niazi who was a tye dyer who knew what was up. I asked him if he would teach me .He said, for a small fee, to which i still owe my mom, he would teach me.
In the fall of '90 I started to dye on my own, I spent the next year figuring it out on my own. Later in '91 I was joined by my brother Jeremy who learned really fast. Together we dyed and sold shirts off our street corner house in Vegas. While doing this we met Charles and Jody brown , Mike Aupperly, and Charlles ............ . Together we formed Color Me Dead the Tye dyed Experience. We all lived and worked in a two bedroom apartment, where we made dyes and went to shows and the occasional fair.
Our big break came in 1993 at the GD shows in Arizona at Compton Terrace amp.,I had the opportunity to trade one of Jeremy's tapestries for a back stage pass, When I went backstage with the tapestryI had of mine, I ran into the wife of Vince Welnik ,(Dead's Keyboard player),. She helped me hang up the tapestry and arranged for me to show the band. When the band came off stage they walked right past each taking a good look , They all smiled and headed for the vans except for vince who stopped with his wife to say hello, I got so excited I gave it to him.
Soon after things got a little bit easier, After showing several more people how to tye dye properly and another year of shows we hooked up with Rock Medicine where we were inclined to donate some of our art to their space tent(hospital). They in turn open up some avenues of communication in the dead network by making us the official tye dyer of Rock Med. To which continues today.
In 1994 The Grateful Dead filmed one of my best pieces ever,the scarab steal your face with the roses at the bottom. Once inside the show I was amazed to see it on the video screen behind the band. After seeing this at a couple more shows we decided to use this to our advantage, Finding the camera crews and getting them to film Color Me Dead artwork with the hopes of seeing it in the visual images used by the band to dazzle the fanz.This worked many times . Through out '94 and '95 one could see much of Color Me dead art work and also different interpretive art in makeup and props that we created.Some where in here we were joined by our half brother Paul Waghorn from Canada. Unfortunately with the passing of Garcia we were once again on our own...
In the years that followed we did a run of shirts for the GD almanac Christmas issue of '96 with featured dancing bear and terripin turtles tye dyes as the premier item, selling for 36.oo.lot of work . As less work became available we all split up and it is mostly back to me and Jeremy, though most people that we'ved worked with are still dying somewhere on their own.
We know mostly concentrate on doing festival backdrops ,Art or logo banners, and clothing for jambands,some of the bands include but are not limited to Chola,Psydecar, JGB,Missing Man Formation,David Nelson Band, Jahmimia puddleduckand, John Molo' band Modereko. In 1999 at the Mt.Aire festival Phil Lesh from the GD wore on of my T-Shirts on stage, the first tye dye he has worn since the Garcia memorial.
And of course this and much, much more was created using Dharma Trading Company for all of my tye dye supply and fabric needs.
Benjammin Strebel and Jeremy Strebel
living dyed thankfully alive thanx everyone for loving to live in full color. "