New York City singer/songwriter Emory Joseph will pay tribute to the Grateful Dead on his forthcoming release, Fennario - Songs by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. The disc, which will hit stores on August 19 via Iris Records, features a mix of material, with special emphasis placed on material Garcia never recorded in the studio with The Dead or the Jerry Garcia Band. To produce the album, Joseph enlisted the core group of top-shelf multi-instrumentalists he’d used on his debut album, Labor & Spirits: Tom “T-Bone” Wolk (Hall and Oates, The SNL Band), Duke Levine and Jon Carroll (Mary Chapin Carpenter), and vocalist Soozie Tyrell (The E-Street Band). The album’s other principals are Larry Campbell and drummer Dennis McDermott (Marc Cohn). Fennario’s twelve tracks were recorded in five days at New York’s legendary Legacy Recording Studios. There are two guest performances, bassist Lincoln Schleiffer (on “Mission in the Rain”) and long-time Garcia associate, David Grisman (on “Brown-Eyed Women”).

“I produced Fennario to be something that Deadheads and non-Deadheads alike could love,” Joseph said in a statement. “I absolutely wanted it to be a respectful tribute to a beautiful working partnership, and something that could maybe help to explain to the world why so many kids spent so many years of their youth following these songs around the country and back. Fennario is a long overdue letter to Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter for having written songs that have inspired, amazed, and informed me since I was twelve.”