After sitting in with the band during live performances as his schedule permitted, the day after an honorable discharge, TC made his stage debut with the Dead as their permanent keyboardist on November 23, 1968 at the Memorial Auditorium in Athens, Ohio.
While he had successfully contributed to their complex experimental music, his instrumental style was then grounded in classical technique and bore little consanguinity with the folk, blues, and country and western stylings that would largely anchor the band's oeuvre throughout the early 1970s.