Dave Harrington’s Pranksters South

Like so many good things in life, Dave Harrington started Pranksters because of the Grateful Dead. A decade ago, a friend asked the endlessly curious Darkside guitarist to play an afterparty for a Dead & Co. show; another pal piped up with an audacious suggestion: put together a big band intent on heading into outer space. In the years since, including at Big Ears 2026, Harrington has very occasionally convened his ever-growing ensemble in assorted corners of the country, building what he calls a “behemoth grooving machine” with as many as four drummers, even more percussionists, horns, and assorted instrumentalists. “It’s a large-format, full-on improvising band that attempts to answer the question: What’s the space between Bitches Brew and Blues for Allah?” Harrington has said.

This will be just the Pranksters’ second Southern appearance. (There was technically a very Southern appearance in 2026, aboard Jam Cruise in the Atlantic, but Harrington rightfully dubbed that Pranksters at Sea.) At Big Ears 2026, the amorphous band included Nels Cline, Yuka Honda, Patrick Shiroishi, Kenny Wollesen, Spencer Zahn, and several others for an hour of high-volume, high-reward jamming with as many musical twists and turns as people on stage. The ranks of Big Ears’ roster will once again become Harrington’s fantasy draft, allowing the Pranksters to expand at will and whim. With so much of his work, Harrington seems to be on a mission to close the gap between hippies and hipsters, between the jam band community and other scenes that happen to jam. Pranksters delight in that divide even as it pulls the sides together.