Friends of the Devils: Dark Star Orchestra

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COVER BANDS HAVE the daunting task of re-creating songs made popular by someone else. Dark Star Orchestra takes it a step further, performing actual concerts The Grateful Dead played during its 30 years of touring.

Recently, DSO has been sharing the bill at festivals with the likes of Phil Lesh & Friends and Bob Weir & Ratdog, the Dead's bassist and rhythm guitarist, respectively. Some cover bands might find it overwhelming to share a bill with those who actually created the music, but not DSO.

"I wouldn't say it's intimidating," lead guitarist John Kadlecik said. "All the guys of The [Grateful Dead] are blazing new trails with what they're doing. And I like to think what we do maybe relieves some of the pressure to do that. There's certain audience pressure to play something that sounds like the Dead. Artistically creating that — they don't want to do that anymore. It's like Bill Monroe moving past bluegrass and deciding to do something else."

Plus DSO has approval of many Dead alumni to its credit — including Weir who has sat in with the band on several occasions. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann, former keyboardist Tom Constantine and former backup singer Donna Jean Godchaux-McKay have played with the band, too.

"It's a great honor," Kadlecik said. "It's a big learning experience when it happens —to just meet the guys or girl as human beings instead of stars on a stage."

Kadlecik, who assumes the role of Jerry Garcia — the skinny years — started the band with keyboardist Scott Larned in 1997, although Kadlecik said he first had the idea in 1989. He opened up "Deadbase," a book that lists and indexes all the Dead's set lists.

Kadlecik got his start in music playing classical music — essentially covers — so he thought, "What if I did entire sets as covers?"

After trying out a few different incarnations of Chicago-based musicians doing Dead covers he met Larned through a band he was temporarily playing in. Larned had the same idea as Kadlecik, and after some jam sessions the band recorded a demo. They scored two months of residencies starting in November 1997 and then decided to take it serious.

"It was the cream of the crop of Deadhead musicians so to speak," he said. "When it took off most of us decided to make a full-time of it. We quit our other bands or put them in the back burner or made them side-project things."

Dark Star Orchestra has gone through several incarnations since, with the biggest change being Rob Barraco, who has played as one of Lesh's friends, stepping in on keys after Larned died in 2005.

But the band continues to play full Dead shows, although now it takes a bit more liberties, sometimes creating original set lists and juxtaposing songs the Dead never would have played in the same show, let alone the same set.

"Part of it is creative and part of it is just like pulling cards out of a deck," Kadlecik said of DSO's original sets. "There's a certain flow of going through a set list rather than an agenda for each song: You don't want to do any songs with the same key in a row. If you want to do a slow song, you have to kind of set it up a little bit. It's a different thing."

But with the original sets, the band does follow often the Dead's guide —creating set lists on the fly.

"When we do our own set list, we most of the times do it on the fly," he said. "We know who's picking the first song and most times that song does actually get picked before we go on stage — sometimes we don't. Sometimes we'll make a few notes get feedback from the people [in the crowd] and bounce back. There's a certain model for live performance that we get to follow."

And the DSO does an accurate job of emulating the Dead, with Kadlecik's vocals and fret work sounding eerily similar to Garcia. Rhythm guitarist Rob Eaton equally handles the role of Weir. Kadlecik said the vocals came naturally and his guitar work becomes more Garcia-like the more he studies the man's work.

"Going to see the Dead, the more I'd see it'd come out of me," he said. "Once you start listening to Dead stuff all the time, then digging into the songs more, you find similarities and arrangements. [Then you] find what the cornerstones are."

Apart from DSO, Kadlecik also has some side projects of original material including the Washington-based duo Firewheel, which features Kadlecik and a percussionist.

"It's groove-improv with elements of folk and world and jazz," he said.

While Kadlecik said he and the other member's side projects doesn't mean DSO will be retiring from the cover game anytime soon, he did say it's possible the band could give up the DSO name to a new group of musicians one day.

"I'd like to see it be something that could eventually be handed to a new bunch of people," Kadlecik said. "I wouldn't want to see The Grateful Dead become a hand-me-down band, but I could see DSO becoming that."

» State Theatre, 220 N. Washington St., Falls Church; Tue., 8 p.m.; $25, 703-237-0300.

Written by Express contributor Rudi Greenberg

Photo courtesy Dark Star Orchestra