Music like New Riders Of The Purple Sage

New Riders of the Purple Sage is an American country rock band. The group emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco, California, in 1969, and its original lineup included several members of the Grateful Dead. The band is sometimes referred to as the New Riders, or as NRPS.

The roots of the New Riders can be traced back to the early 1960s Peninsula folk/beatnik scene centered on Stanford University's now-defunct Perry Lane housing complex in Menlo Park, California, where future Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia often played gigs with like-minded guitarist David Nelson. The young John Dawson (also known as "Marmaduke") also played some concerts with Garcia, Nelson, and their compatriots while visiting relatives on summer vacation. Enamored of the sounds of Bakersfield-style country music, Dawson would turn his older friends on to the work of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens and provided a vital link between Timothy Leary's International Federation for Internal Freedom in Millbrook, New York (having boarded at the Millbrook School) and the Menlo Park bohemian coterie nurtured by Ken Kesey.