Dead Guy Days marks 10th anniversary

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Frozen Dead Guy Days returns to Nederland for its 10th year March 4-6.

 

The festival of live music, deceased town forefathers and death-themed antics will take place at various venues around town and will feature music from Onda, The Zydecoasters, The Mile Markers, The Longest Day of the Year, Fatt Rabbit, Celestial Hoedown, Shakedown Street, Kort McCumber, Elegant Survival (featuring five members of Elephant Revival) and more.

Other highlights include the Friday Night Fever Blue Ball and the Dancing Queen & Stayin’ Alive Grandpa Constume Contests, which will award the winner a $350 Mont Bell jacket. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door, and the contest costs $10 to enter.

The popular Grandpa’s Pub Crawl will hit the First Street Pub & Grill, The Stage Stop and Whistler’s Café on Saturday night. Beer from Avery Brewing and Left Hand Brewing Company will be available in the beer tent throughout the festival. The famous coffin races, featuring KBPI’s Uncle Nasty as emcee, will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 5.

Tours to see the eponymous Dead Guy, Grampa Bredo Morstoel, who is still frozen in a Tuff Shed outside of town, will take place on Saturday for $30 a ticket. Bo Shaffer, aka Bo the Iceman, will lead the tours. Shaffer has transported dry ice to the facility for 17 years to maintain Grampa Bredo’s frozen carcass and has just released Colorado’s Iceman & the Story of the Frozen Dead Guy, a book chronicling his experience and the history of the festival.

Shaffer’s book tells how the festival has its roots in a mid-’90s municipal controversy about where you can and cannot freeze dead bodies in Nederland. Trygve Bauge and his mother, Aud, were a pair of Norwegian immigrants with an interest in cryogenics. They moved to Nederland in the ’90s and brought with them the frozen body of Trygve’s father, Bredo, and stored him in a Tuff Shed behind their house. Eventually, Trygve’s visa expired, and he was forced to move back to Norway. When his mother eventually followed him, she told the local newspaper about Bredo’s body, shocking the townfolk into a frantic discussion about what to do with the body. The town passed a law making it illegal to store dead bodies in town, but they couldn’t move Bredo, as he was “grandfathered” in. A few years later, the chamber of commerce made lemons out of lemonade and launched the festival, and a tradition was born.

For a complete listing of events and musical acts, visit www.nederlandchamber.org/events_fdgd-home. html.

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