Live Music Alert: Dark Star Orchestra, October 21, Varsity Theater, Minneapolis MN, 7:30 pm, $33 ; October 22, The Venue, Fargo ND, 8 pm, $21.50

The phenomenal Dark Star Orchestra is bringing it’s Wings A Mile Long Tour to ND and MN. Starting Tuesday, October 19, 2010 in Grand Rapids, MN, they will kick off a big tour through the Midwest. They will appear at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis on Oct 21 and at the Venue in Fargo on Oct 22.  On this tour, they will have a brand new guitar player and lead singer. As you may know, the Dark Star Orchestra recreates set lists from the Grateful Dead tours many years ago. The guitar/lead singer role is usually that of the spot that Jerry Garcia filled.  Jeff Mattson is the current “Jerry,” replacing John, the founder of the band, who was asked to join FURTHUR, a band with Phil Lesh and Bob Weir in what is essentially the Grateful Dead.

Refrain Magazine was privileged to be able to visit with Jeff Mattson. (The live interview is up at Janie Franz’s author site at http://janiefranz.fourfour.com/bio)

Refrain: Welcome to Dark Star Orchestra. I was catching a couple of videos that Dave Weisman sent me. I’m really impressed

Jeff Mattson:  Thank you very much.

Refrain: It’s adding an element that I don’t think Dark Star Orchestra had before. Well, you look like Jerry Garcia, by god, for one thing. But the vocal quality and what you can do with your guitar is amazing.

Jeff Mattson: Thank you

Refrain: Where were you when DSO found you? What were you doing?

Jeff Mattson: Well, for about 31 years, I was with a band called the Zen Tricksters.

Refrain: Sure I know them. They play with Donna Jean Gottschalk.

Jeff Mattson: About five years, we put together Donna Jean and the Tricksters. That ended a couple years ago. Then Donna Jean and I formed a band called the Donna Jean Gottschalk band with just us in it—a long wordy title.  The Zen Tricksters are sort of on hiatus right now because I’m doing so many other things. I play with them occasionally. It’s not like the band got broken up.

Refrain: Y’all just got busy.

Jeff Mattson: Right now I’m a member of the Zen Tricksters, the Dark Star Orchestra, the Donna Jean Gottschalk Band.

Refrain:  When did you first pick up guitar and was that your instrument of choice?

Jeff Mattson: It was the first instrument I was serious about. I’d taken a few piano lessons as a kid. I played bass a little bit. But I really found I wanted to play guitar and play lead guitar. I really started taking it seriously when I was about 14, which would have been 1972-3, right around the same time I first saw the Grateful Dead. So the two rapidly converged: playing guitar and also this passion for the Grateful Dead music, among other bands of course. That became my—I don’t know if obsession is the right word for it—but it’s pretty close actually.

Refrain: The Grateful Dead evokes so much. There are some wonderful bands out there making original music and I follow them and respect them. But it always comes back to what makes you feel good and that’s Grateful Dead music. Even when you hear Phil Lesh or Bob Weir do songs. It’s not quite the same but it is that music, those lyrics.

Jeff Mattson: The songs are so strong. They get to you right off the bat.

Refrain: I understand that you’re working with Robert Hunter with DSO.

Jeff Mattson: As of now it’s a one off. We had this little song without any lyrics. Rob Barraco who is the keyboard player in Dark Star, who had previously played with the Dead (post Grateful Dead) and Phil Lesh and Friends, had a relationship with Robert Hunter and Rob Morocco had an album he wrote with Robert Hunter. He took a chance and sent it to Robert Hunter. He heard something right away. So we have this Dark Star/Robert Hunter collaboration.

Refrain: I’ll point it out to our readers that this tradition is alive and well. It may be one song or it may be more, but the fact is it’s something unique to Dark Star, except for Grateful Dead music.

Jeff Mattson: Yeah. We know that people love about Dark Star Orchestra is seeing us play the Grateful Dead. We don’t want people to fear we’re veering away from that. But we have creative urges and creativity and why not express it by writing and recording some stuff. Then if people want to listen to it, they can.  Down the line if we accumulate enough stuff, we could conceivably open for ourselves.

Refrain: [laughter] I think that’s a great idea. What a wonderful, refreshing way to think of it.

Jeff Mattson: Everybody would still get full Grateful Dead show and a little bonus there, too. That’s down the line. But right now, we’re just having fun in addition to doing our shows, we’re experimenting with recording some of our music.

Refrain: I’ve seen Dark Star a couple of times at 10KLF. I’m familiar with a lot of the music but I couldn’t tell you it was from this album or that concert. It all blend into that wonderful Grateful Dead canon. And songs were repeated on a lot of different occasions. So when you do a Grateful Dead show is your set list a mix of your favorite Grateful Dead songs or is it we’re going to do this show.

Jeff Mattson: I would say that three out of four nights, we do actual set lists that the Grateful Dead performed, taken out of the Dead base, the great list of all Grateful Dead set lists. They never played the same show twice so they’re all a little different. The goal is to perform it in the style, meaning like

the arrangements and the instrumentation, as much as we can of the period in which the show was performed in. Like an 1985 show all of the accoutrements of a 1985 performance. We’re not copying the notes they played because it was very improvisational music. It would be completely against the spirit of the music to do anything but improvise. But as far as the arrangements go like what keyboards they were using during that era and what sticks they were using during the drum segment.

Refrain: I know that a lot of your amps are vintage amps that have that warm sound that you can’t get with new ones. Some people wouldn’t even notice. That’s a wonderful addition.  And some younger people wouldn’t even care because they don’t know the difference. You get a nice vintage Fender amp and it’s mellow. I respect you folks for doing that, and it allows you to hear that era that folks who are twenty would not have been able to hear.

Jeff Mattson: Exactly, someone who’s twenty wouldn’t have heard any of it. That’s what we’re giving a little taste of the different eras. Right now, we’re dipping into 1969. We’re going back that far. They used to start at 1973. Now, we’ve gone back to 72, 71, 70, and 69. We’ve added most of those shows. Every fourth night, we do what we is called an elective set make up set list of whatever we want to play so it’s a mixed bag of eras. We get to play some more obscure songs or we pull some Jerry Garcia band songs. That’s a lot of fun, too.

Refrain: I’m going to be promoting two shows in my region. One is in Minneapolis on the 21 and one is Fargo in 22. I live in ND but I’ll be in Minneapolis on the 21 st so I’ll be able to see you folks.

Jeff Mattson: Wonderful

Refrain: I’m taking my daughter who is a big Grateful Dead fan to this show. Do you have any idea whether it will be a set list night or a concert night?

Jeff Mattson: No. First of all, I don’t know. And second of all, it’s against the policy. It’s supposed to be a surprise. For the folks out there, like me, with the more arcane knowledge of the Grateful Dead, they get to figure out what show it is. Then it’s announced at the end of the show. Like this set list was originally performed by the Grateful Dead on 10/1/77 at such and such a venue.

Refrain: That’s wonderful. That’s all part of the excitement and the game of it all. There are folks out there who can recite you chapter and verse. I get a lot of stuff from Denis McNally, the official biographer of the Grateful Dead…But I still can’t tell you what concert it was. I just don’t have that capacity.

Jeff Mattson: [laughs]

Refrain: I cover too much.

Jeff Mattson: [laughs] It’s not really necessary. I’m almost embarrassed that I possess that kind of arcane knowledge.

Refrain: Good for you. I think that it’s interesting that there are folks out there that do, who are avid collectors. I think that’s amazing to me. This was a phenomenon amongst avid jazz collectors. Then when the Grateful Dead came along in the 60s, suddenly you had folks really perking their ears up about this music. And you then had folks with great collections on vinyl and CDs and great tape collections that they’ve re-mastered and cataloged.

Jeff Mattson: You make an excellent point. The Grateful Dead is really a jazz band in a rock context. If you take a band like the Eagles—and not to knock the Eagles—who do pretty much the exact show from night to night. What would be the point of collecting a week’s worth of their shows? They would be interchangeable. Even Dark Star Orchestra, we play like five shows without repeating a song. We cover a lot of songs over the course of a tour. Then of course, if you played the same songs, you’d play them differently every night, which is what a jazz band would do. That’s why if you pick up a reissue of some jazz album, they’ll put on three takes to same song because they were all completely different. That’s what everybody’s listening for.

Refrain: That keeps everything completely fresh. I’m concerned sometimes because we have accessibility to carry music anywhere….But I’m wondering if young people now are so used to hearing things the way things are recorded.  I don’t see that among the jam genre at all because they see it as part of the beauty of the creativity among musicians. But I wonder how many of those people go out an buy a record and go to a concert and are very disappointed that what they heard live was not what was on the record.

Jeff Mattson: You know, that’s two sides of a coin there. Some people strongly feel that way. I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan. His take on it was the recorded version is what was recorded that day he just happened recorded it. They are living breathing things that he tweaks the words, the melodies, the chord changes, the rhythms. It’s a constantly evolving thing. But people go see him and they say that doesn’t sound like Bob Dylan.

Refrain: Steve Goodman, a Chicago folk performer, said that years ago. When he wrote “City of New Orleans” and he recorded it and Arlo Guthrie recorded it, he’d go out in concert and audiences would say, “You’re not playing it like the record is.” He’d say,  If I did that, I would die as a musicians because I need to face this song every night on the stage and if I had to sing it note for note, it would kill me.

Jeff Mattson: Exactly.

Refrain: This is the way to keep that creativity alive. You absolutely have to….This has been absolutely wonderful, Jeff. Thank you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 at 2:50 am and is filed under Live Music Calendar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.