Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.
  • Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings.
Kris Nyrop has saved more lives than most everyone I've ever met. He helped found Street Outreach Services, which ran multiple needle exchanges in the city during the height of the AIDS epidemic, and which operated a drop-in center for drug addicted and homeless clients in downtown Seattle for over a decade.

After obtaining a master's degree from the UW in 1986, Nyrop found himself working on a research project studying AIDS and injection drug users. "HIV/AIDS prevention and all the work that followed from it was not a career path that I consciously chose. I stumbled into it, and it has always been much more than a career path," he told Whitman College last year when he was awarded the school's Alumnus of Merit Award.

Nyrop now works at the Defender Association, one of three public defense organizations in the city, where he heads the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion project, which diverts low level drug and prostitution arrestees into treatment and service programs. It is a project unparalleled in the nation, with nearly universal support from police, prosecutors, politicians and other policy makers. He was co-author of a bellwether 2006 report on racial disparity in Seattle drug arrests.

On top of all that, Kris Nyrop hosted the Grateful Dead shows on KBCS 91.3 FM for over twenty years—a gig he retired from recently. Sunday nights from 7-10 p.m. Kris coupled the Grateful Dead Hour from KPFA in Berkeley with Backtracks, a locally-curated Dead show.

Believe it or not, the Grateful Dead are still quite popular, and rumor has it the Backtracks program is one of the top pledge drive fundraisers over at KBCS. Heck, I know pot growers still who trim mostly to Jerry Garcia music. One funny thing about the Grateful Dead disc jockey job is that, from a listener's perspective, it requires minimal in-studio effort, assuming the CD doesn't skip. Forty minutes into the show, Kris might pull down the levels and say, "well that goes into 20 minutes of drums followed by Dark Star and we just don't have time for that tonight."

This Sunday night, the Royal Room in Columbia City hosts a tribute concert to celebrate Nyrop's time drivin' that train. Jim Page, Kuli Loach, and the Golden Road featuring Andy Coe will cover all your favorite sing-along Dead songs—Scarlet Begonias, Truckin', Shakedown Street—and reminiscing revelers, freaky flashbackers, and Deadhead devotees will dance the night away in honor of local hero and all-around amazing human being Kris Nyrop.

The Grateful Dead Night tribute show starts Sunday at 8 p.m. and admission is free. The Royal Room is located at 5000 Rainier Ave S. in Seattle.