A lawyer can be a band’s best friend, especially if they used to represent the Grateful Dead. Last February, the Dani Paige Band’s entertainment council scored an opportunity for the outfit to shoot a video at Bob Weir’s TRI Studios in San Rafael. 


Paige says she felt the vibe of the seminal Bay Area jam band throughout. “There was fun shit hanging on the walls everywhere,” she says. “A setting like that could be really intimidating but everyone was really relaxed and it was an easy environment to work in.”


The three-camera/multi-mic video features four tunes from DPB’s forthcoming album – due out sometime this month – and is currently being distributed to record labels around the country.


Paige says the new album combines contemporary and classic rock sounds resulting in something more evolved than the band’s previous LP.


“It’s still got all of the fundamentals of soul that we love and are attached to,” she says. “We’ve been spending more time thinking about our songwriting. On our first record, we went with whatever we felt like writing.”


Throughout the years, Dani Paige Band has been tapped to open for everybody from Los Lobos and George Thorogood to Leon Russell and Pat Benatar. “When we opened for Benatar,” guitarist Jesse DeCarlo says, “everyone got out their seats and started dancing.”


On Friday at East Village, DPB will perform an unplugged set debuting several new tracks including the ballad “Take You Away,” which Paige wrote for her mother who passed away last summer after battling brain cancer.


“You put up walls and let no one inside/ Let me in so I can ease your mind,” Paige sings with soulful, heart-on-the-sleeve vibrato. The accompanying music is a blend of acoustic blues with eruptive harmonies that evoke as much emotion as the lyrics.


Weir would definitely approve. 


THE DANI PAIGE BAND plays at 8pm Friday, May 18, at East Village, 498 Washington St., Monterey. Free. 373-5601.