Before the Grateful Dead turned him into a trippy psychedelic-rock icon, Casey Jones was the folk hero of a classic children's train song.
But it turns out if you want to play the Dead's version for an audience of 1-to-12-year-olds, all you need to do is eliminate the phrase "high on cocaine.""Honestly, we don't change all that much," says Mike Greenfield, drummer for Galactic, who adapts classic-rock covers for a decidedly under-21 crowd at Philadelphia's Ardmore Music Hall. "I tell the musicians, 'For the improv part, we take it mellow.'"Greenfield's makeshift band is part of the Rock and Roll Playhouse, which promoter and Brooklyn Bowl co-owner Peter Shapiro hatched in 2014, when his kids were seven and four.