On November 16, DSO barreled into the Palace Theatre in Albany, a place guitarist Rob Eaton said is near and dear to the band’s heart. There are more Grateful Dead cover bands than I can count in the Albany area alone. These groups keep the spirit of the Dead alive and well.
Dark Star Orchestra
Nationwide, the number of Dead tribute acts is basically astronomic. Hell, there’s even a website to help us keep track of them all.
But there’s only one who is universally known across the jam band scene: Dark Star Orchestra. As of November 29, DSO has played more than 2,500 concerts since forming in 1997, either recreating old Dead setlists, or creating their own from the Dead’s hefty 30-year catalog of shows.
From the opening pair of “Alabama Getaway” and “Greatest Story Ever Told,” it seemed as if the band might be playing an early 1970s set. Then “Dupree’s Diamond Blues,” “Black Throated Wind,” “Ramble on Rose,” “Easy to Love You,” “Passenger,” “Shining Star,” “Beat it on Down the Line,” and “China Cat Sunflower?I Know You Rider” made me think the group had concocted it’s own setlist.
And in grand Grateful Dead fashion, DSO even had an equipment issue, when keyboardist Rob Barraco lost power to his rig following “Dupree’s,” prompting Eaton to talk about how the Palace is one of the band’s favorite venues to play.
The second set was a non-stop roller coaster, kicking off with a tender “St. Stephen>Lost Sailor>Saint of Circumstance>Terrapin Station,” before giving way to a somewhat boring “Drums>Space.” “At a Siding>Terrapin Transit>Terrapin Reprise>Hey Jude>Visions of Johanna>One More Saturday Night” closed out a fun, but at times slow second set.
One of my personal favorites, “Unbroken Chain,” finished the night in style, sending the near capacity crowd home with one of Phil Lesh’s songs.
With Dead & Company hitting the road later this month, starting at The Times Union Center in Albany, Bob Weir shed some light on the the upcoming tour as well as the potential for more shows with the Fare Thee Well “Core Four” in the future.
Weir had high praise for John Mayer, filling in for lead guitar with this modified FTW lineup. “John’s enthusiasm for this is amazing — I couldn’t believe it. He learned the songs, has great enthusiasm, and he’s a great guitar player. So he fits in perfectly.” Mayer addressed his role in a humble manner, referring to his role by saying, “I don’t feel the pressure, but I would say I feel a responsibility.”
For those looking to see the Core Four perform together again, Weir offered hope to Deadheads hoping for more shows with bassist Phil Lesh. “Phil doesn’t want to hit the road. He’s 75 now. It’s kind of not an option for him, the way he puts it. And so, you know, that’s still where we are; that’s still where we’re going to live, at least I am. And so, if we’re going to see him, we’re going to see him around here or around someplace where he is.”
Suffice it to say, if there were to be shows, they would be similar to the two and three-day events held in Santa Clara, California, and Chicago this past summer, and not a full-blown tour.
The Grateful Dead have been in quite the spotlight this past year with it being the band’s 50th anniversary and the shows they hosted to mark the occasion. After a 10-year hiatus Jazz is Dead breathed new life for a special reunion that took place August into early September, with a few shows scattered around the calendar into 2016. Jazz is Dead’s 2015 reunion is comprised of Jeff Pevar (guitar), Alphonso Johnson (bass), Rod Morgenstein (drums), Tom Constanten and Chris Smith (keys).
As the Grateful Dead’s keyboard player for a few years alongside Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Tom Constanten gave Jazz is Dead a direct inject of Grateful Dead experience. Though his recording and performance time with the Dead was relatively short, his early-formed lifelong friendships with Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia and time with the band has has rung throughout his life. After a recent Jazz is Dead performance as part of a bill with Jefferson Starship at The Ridgefield Playhouse, we chatted with him about his experiences over the years.
Steve Malinski: How is the tour going?
Tom Constanten: Absolutely wonderful.Everybody in the whole outfit is so excellent both on stage and off. The music is on a roll, each night the music is better than the previous night. I just look forward to waking up every morning.
SM: How did you get involved with this round of Jazz is Dead?
TC: I’ve been involved touring with Jefferson Starship over the last ten years or more and this is an extended family much like the Grateful Dead scene. One thing led to another. It’s almost like prom night in the back of the barn. You know, things happen and here I am.
SM: Given that you’ve had the experience of playing with the Grateful Dead, how different does Jazz is Dead feel musically?
TC: Oh, it is very different and refreshingly so. I’ve been playing with a varying number of bands over the last few decades who pride themselves on getting themselves as close as they can to the original and I’m really delighted to get away from that. One of the signs as to how much fun it is for me is none of the tricks in my bags of tricks work! I have to think of new ones and I find that challenge totally delightful. I’m plowing new furrows in my brain; I’m getting out of the rut. And being around such top-notch musicians challenges me, stimulates me. It’s like no other band I’ve played with.
SM: This was my first time hearing Jazz is Dead and to use your word, it’s definitely one of the most refreshing takes on the Dead that I’ve heard.
TC: Yeah, we fly outside of the box and think under the radar. And what you hear is the result.
SM: Going back to the roots of your involvement with the Dead, how much of an impact has that had on you over the years?
TC: Oh, immeasurable. Immense and immeasurable. I met Phil Lesh in the summer of 1961. He introduced me to his friend Jerry Garcia. Big brother Phil was 21 years of age. Jerry and I were teenagers, he was 19, I was 17, and none of us could have imagined where this was going to lead but it had delightful turns, exciting turns, and occasionally mind-blowing. Definitely unpredictable. Over the years I’ve developed a taste for that. I really like it that way.
SM: This summer marks the 20th anniversary of Jerry’s passing. What was it like to have the experience working with him?
TC: Well, like I said, we’ve done it since we were both teenagers. On stage and off, back in the early ’60s he was mainly into the Appalachian folk music. He had not yet taken up the electric guitar. Once he incorporated the blues literature in his playing, something electric happened and the rest is history.
SM: What are some of your thoughts or reflections on the Dead’s 50th anniversary Chicago shows and all the attention they’ve been getting?
TC: I’m glad they continue – I celebrate their success. I did not go to the Chicago shows. My take on that is if they invited me I would go willingly. There were a number of other invitations I got to go there but they all seemed… it seemed like I would be crashing their party and I didn’t really feel welcome by those invitations. They varied from tacky to creepy, not something I would want to be a part of. But like I say, if they invited me, I would have gone willingly. But it’s been a while since I’ve played with them and since I’ve played with them I’ve been playing with Jefferson Starship, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe & The Fish, and it’s like I got out of the frying pan and into the lake.
Tom Constanten with Country Joe and Peter Albin at the Woodstock 40th Anniversary celebration, Bethel Woods 8-15-2009
SM: Last time we spoke in 2009 about a week before the Woodstock 40th Anniversary show at Bethel Woods, you mentioned that you were looking forward to getting back to the site and playing some music in that setting. So, what was it actually like for you?
TC: Well, there are so many such settings. Over the past ten years, it’s been like a perpetual homecoming. Meeting long time old friends, making new ones. The line started to blur between them. It just lumbers on in the most entertaining and delightful way.
SM: As an engineer by day, I’m a fan of numbers and math and remember reading at some point you have a knack for number systems and whatnot.
TC: One of my mentors when I was a student in Europe, Henri Pousseur – I worked in his studio in Belgium for a couple of months. He was very much into applying mathematical models to music. In fact he has a [1958] piece for two pianos called “Mobile” and it’s a mobile score. Either or both pianos will start anywhere in it and there are certain rules to the road on how to proceed and I’s designed to turn up fascinating sounds whichever way you go.
SM: Going back to the Dead, would you, going forward, be willing to join up with them again?
TC: Of course I would but I’m not holding my breath. For one thing their evolution over the last forty years has been way different than mine. Their experience has been extremely different. I don’t know what it would be like playing with them again. It’s like, here I am, a 4-stripe sergeant and they’re generals, that sort of thing. The relations and connections with them have been totally friendly. It’s just uncertain what it would be like. I’m not shy, I’m not hesitant. I’m just basking in the unknown as I often do.
SM: Well, with the number of side appearances that are popping up, it seems like there’s always that opportunity for an invitation to pop up.
TC: Well, after the passage of four or five decades, people start to cultivate issues with each other, I know it’s much more complicated for them than it is for me or any of my colleagues who played keyboard for them, So I’m extremely hesitant to be judgmental because I know it’s much more complicated and sticky for them. So, bless them and may they live long and prosper.
SM: As Spock says.
TC: Yes indeed, I’m showing my split fingers to the microphone.
SM: Aside from Jazz is Dead, what other things are you up to?
TC: I’ve been travelling more as a solo act lately doing piano recitals, showing off the breadth of my material – ’60s material, stuff back to Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Brahms. I’ve played all of them and likely to try them at any time. I’ve also been working with Bob Bralove in an improvisational duo called Dose Hermanos – “dose” as in a measurement of medication not the number. We are the antidote to rigid, structured, stratified thinking. And also in the past year or so I’ve been working with a string quartet. I would prepare arrangements of music of the ’60s like “Eleanor Rigby” and Peter Rowan’s “Free Mexican Airforce” and I do the vocals and play along and have an awful lot of fun doing that. We have another show like that coming up in a couple of months. And these things are keeping me delightfully occupied.
SM: Well, that’s about all I had in mind this evening without going on for a while longer. So Tom, I greatly appreciate you spending a few minutes with me here and I’m sure we’ll chat again sometime down the road.
TC: I look forward to it. Thank you for your kind attention.
Fare Thee Well promotor Peter Shapiro released a statement to fans on June 10, explaining the ticketing situation and addressing some fans’ concerns over receiving tickets for seats they did not request through GDTS TOO. In it, he talks about how he wanted to use the old mail ordering process to essentially make these shows feel just like they did in the 1980s and 90s, when fans sent in money orders in decorated envelopes in hopes of snagging tickets to see the Grateful Dead. He even offers refunds to those who are not satisfied with what they received from GDTS TOO.
The most encouraging piece is that he is offering to refund the difference between what a fan paid for the seats he or she received if that person does not get the desired experience from the shows. I have to give Shapiro a round of applause, as this has been a difficult situation from the start.
He also explains how promotors decided to open up the general admission portion of the venue to fit more fans inside. In a commendable response, Shapiro comes across as a true fan and seems quite sincere. I called for him to give an explanation, as did many other media outlets, of what has become a ticketing fiasco, and Shapiro delivered.
He closes out the note with a lyric from “Terrapin Station,” where Jerry Garcia sings, “statements just seem vain at last,” making it seem like it’s in the promotors’ self interest and not the fans’. Maybe he should have completed the lyrics: “Some rise, some fall, to get to Terrapin,” as that’s how it feels to some fans.
Either way, I pat Shapiro on the back. I won’t even call this damage control — he stood up, gave an explanation, offered a solution to unhappy ticket holders and offers encouragement in advance of the shows.
Dear Mail Order Ticket Purchasers,
It’s hard to believe that it’s already June. Soon we will be together in Santa Clara and Chicago celebrating 50 years of the music of the Grateful Dead. We think you know by now that we are fans too, and your experience at the event is important to us, so before we get there, we want to address an issue that has affected a number of you who ordered your tickets through GDTS TOO mail order.
We decided early on – even though it would have been easier for us to follow the well-trodden path of nearly every promoter in the past 20 years and sell 100% of the “Fare Thee Well” tickets online – that we wanted to honor the Grateful Dead spirit and make a portion of the tickets available through GDTS TOO mail order.
When it became clear the extent to which Dead50 was resonating with people and how many of you wanted to be part of it (over half a million mail order ticket requests), we added capacity by changing the reserved floor sections to GA and opening up the sections behind the stage – quadrupling the initial mail order allotment.
Since the mail order process began in January, by the time we were able to make these ticket allotment changes and update our seating chart, the ticket requests and money orders had already been sent in. Despite the extra work opening up the floor and adding more mail order tickets made for us and the GDTS TOO crew, we still felt this was the best way to get more core Grateful Dead fans into the shows, so we set out to make our new seating configuration work within the confines of the January mail order ticket request submission rules.
It was not feasible for the GDTS TOO crew to reach out to everyone who had sent in money orders for $199.50 or other priced tickets to discuss preferred alternatives to reserved floor seats or other selected seats that were no longer available, nor were partial refunds a practical option. Also, GDTS TOO did not think it was right to force fans who had ordered reserved floor seats to take general admission standing room tickets instead — anyone who had ever been to a Grateful Dead show would be at least 20 years older now and had probably ordered reserved seats for a good reason. Nor was it possible to fit everyone who had ordered reserved floor seats into the existing allotment of $199.50 seats; there simply were not enough available.
At that point, we could have easily decided that these orders simply couldn’t be fulfilled and returned the uncashed money orders without tickets. Instead, in the spirit of trying to accommodate as many fans as possible, we decided to allocate those reserved floor and other specific requests to other available seats using the same price points. We know how disappointing mail order rejection letters are, especially since these are the band’s final shows, so we sought to figure out a way to get as many of you as possible an envelope with tickets in it.
REFUND INFORMATION
If you received tickets by mail order for seats in a different section than what you ordered on your envelope or were charged more than the price of such tickets on the seating chart made available at the time your order was mailed, and you no longer wish to attend “Fare Thee Well,” you may return your tickets to GDTS TOO for a full refund. Tickets must be received in the GDTS TOO office by Monday, June 22nd to be eligible. See gdtstoo.com for more information on how to obtain a full refund.
If you received tickets by mail order and were charged more than the price of such tickets on the seating chart made available at the time their orders were mailed and still wish to attend “Fare Thee Well,” we personally encourage you to attend the shows and sit in the seats you received via mail order. If you’re not satisfied that you got your money’s worth, we will refund the difference between what you paid and the price of such tickets on the seating chart made available at the time your order was mailed. Save your ticket stubs, and in the week following the shows, check the FAQ section of dead50.net for information on how to obtain a partial refund. However, all requests for partial refunds must be received by Monday, July 20th to be eligible.
These refund offers apply to all GDTS TOO mail order ticket purchasers who received seats in a different section than what was shown in the initial seating chart or were charged more than the price of such tickets on the seating chart made available at the time their orders were mailed.
Please understand that we did what we did in order to enable as many of you as possible to have your ticket requests fulfilled. Given the lighting, sound and video elements we have created specifically for these shows, we are confident that all mail order ticket holders will enjoy an amazing experience.
Statements just seem vain at last,
Peter Shapiro Mike Luba & Don Sullivan (Madison House Presents) Promoters, “Fare Thee Well”
And in grand Grateful Dead fashion, DSO even had an equipment issue, when keyboardist Rob Barraco lost power to his rig following “Dupree’s,” prompting Eaton to talk about how the Palace is one of the band’s favorite venues to play.
