Wave House

Dark Star Orchestra

Dark Star Orchestra achieves notoriety by performing shows from among the nearly 2,500 that the Grateful Dead performed during their 30 year tenure as fathers of improvisational rock. On most, though not all their performances, Dark Star Orchestra presents the complete original set list, song by song, and in order, recreating historic music with faithful interpretation. On many occasions, the band will also improvise their set lists, often based on sections of famous shows and familiar groupings of Grateful Dead songs.

Dark Star Orchestra adapts their phrasing, voice arrangements, and even arranges specific musical equipment for the various eras in which they perform. At the end of every performance, the band announces the date and venue where the original show just covered took place. Dark Star Orchestra dips into nearly every incarnation of the Dead, so most fans can “see” shows that happened long before they were born.

DSO has drawn national attention with their true-to-life performances. Rolling Stone praises “Dark Star Orchestra’s fanatical attention to detail.” USA Today says DSO is “channeling the Dead” and the Washington Post declares them “the hottest Grateful Dead tribute act going.” Dallas Morning News affirms DSO is “the next best thing to being there”, the Denver Post describes Dark Star Orchestra as “a perfection-oriented practitioner of homage” and the Associated Press notes that DSO “takes its act to a level of detail that befits a rock band famous for its fanatical following.”

Members of the Grateful Dead themselves, rhythm guitarist/singer Bob Weir, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux, and keyboardists Vince Welnick and Tom Constanten, have appeared on stage and performed with the Dark Star Orchestra. In October 2004, the group performed its 1000th show and has released a three disc set of that performance.

“We’re given a canvas with a boundary, whatever the stage set up is the framework and all of the painting that we do within that framework is unique to us”, says rhythm guitarist/vocalist Rob Eaton. “So we offer the sound and the structure, but all the stroking and painting is all us. So it’s fresh at the same time and also very historically correct.”