In a phone interview with The New Times Mattson talks about why he chooses to play The Grateful Dead night after night, visiting Japan and the big Deadhead family he’s happy to be a part of.
Q: Where are you?
A: In Black Mountain, N.C. It’s sticky out. Not as hot as it was yesterday. It rained here. We’re doing an outdoor show so it’s a little humid.
Q: You joined in 2009?
A: I officially joined in 2010. But I first started filling in for John Kadlecik when he first started playing with Furthur {with Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir}. He had to be away to do shows or rehearsals. Then at the end of 2009 he left the band. I did a bunch of shows and another guitar player tried out for a tour and they decided to go with me and ever since I’ve been playing. I’ve played every show.
Q: Before that what bands were you with?
A: I played with a band called the Zen Tricksters primarily. We’re sort of on hiatus now, but we’ve been around about 32 years. And I also still play with Donna Jean Godchaux, who was a singer in the Grateful Dead. That’s what I was doing before I joined DSO. By necessity it’s become more of a side project now since we’re so busy.
Q: DSO is already closing in on about 2,000 shows. How do you maintain that pace?
A: Everybody just really loves to play and we come out on the road and we travel on the bus and it’s a lifestyle. And when you go home, it’s time to rest. Except for a couple of guys…one of our drummers had a baby a couple of weeks ago, so I don’t know how much rest he’s getting. He was actually like, “I can’t wait to get on the road so I can get some rest!”
Q: Prior to DSO were you always a huge Grateful Dead fan?
A: Yes. Going back to the early 1970s I’ve been really enamored with the Grateful Dead, to almost exclusion for probably the first 10 years I was into them. I got almost obsessed listening to pretty much just Grateful Dead. I saw my first show in 1973 and that was it for me. I was hooked.
Q: Rob {Eaton, on guitar} has seen more than 400 shows. How many have you seen?
A: I don’t know. Several hundred I would say. I never counted them. Somewhere I have the ticket stubs. I guess I could count them. But I saw lots of Grateful Dead shows and I know all their side projects: The Jerry Garcia Band, The Bob Weir Band…in the early days I used to travel all over to go see shows, but then I always went to see them when they came to town. They came to New York pretty regularly. They’d play like nine nights at Madison Square Garden. New York is a real hotbed for Grateful Dead fans.
Q: How is it for you going from being a fan to playing beside members of the Dead?
A: It’s a huge honor. I’ve gotten to play with a bunch of them over the years and like I mentioned before I play in Donna Jean’s band who was the female singer in the 1970s and ya know, there’s nothing quite like it. You know that sound, the way they play and then you hear it coming out right next to you and you’re playing with it, interacting with it…it’s a tremendous thrill. It’s an honor to get to play with your musical heroes. I’ve gotten to play with a bunch of them over the years, not just the Dead, but a bunch of them and I consider those some of the highlights of my career.
Q: Who else?
A: I got to play with Rick Danko of The Band and David Nelson and Buddy Cage of The New Riders of the Purple Sage...That’s just off the top of my head.
Q: So you’re doin’ all right?
A: Yea! (laughs) Happy.
Q: Rob picks what songs and shows you play each night, correct?
A: Yes, yes. And it’s a pretty complicated process because there are a lot of things to consider. What we played the last time we were in town, trying not to play the same era of Grateful Dead, not to play any of the same songs, to mix it up and also to mix it up for what we played last night in whatever town we were in and what we’re going to play tomorrow night…so there are a lot of things to consider. It’s not just random, picking them out of a hat. He works very hard at it. I’d say it’s a complicated algorithm.
Q: Do you ever stray from straight set lists?
A: Every fourth or fifth night we do what we call an elective set where we don’t do a Grateful Dead show. We pick the set list and we play what enables us to cycle through some material that by chance or by rarity has sort of passed over on the tour. That’s fun for us too because we get to experience the creativity of putting the songs together in combinations that the Dead perhaps didn’t ever do. So, that’s fun and very much in the spirit of the Grateful Dead.
Q: Do you have a favorite era or show to play?
A: There’s a bunch of favorite shows that I have. Favorite era I would say 1972 to 1977. I felt they were at their peak during that period. Not that there wasn’t plenty of good stuff before and after that. Sort of my go-to stuff.
Q: When you perform you’re very specific to the set list, equipment, layout, etc., but allow yourself to jam out. Where’s the line in this balance where you don’t go note for note, but you don’t stray too far either?
A: It’s a pretty ethereal line. It’s something we go on feel. We want to be true to the era and of course to the sound of the musicians of the period, but at the same time it is very improvisatory, so you want to play the way you’re feeling and step up when you feel the whole thing take you there instead of saying, “Well, they played this song really laid back. We have to play it really laid back,” or vice versa. You have to kind of let the music dictate it. What you’re really searching for is this musical gestalt where it’s not just seven individuals performing, it’s this one sound that’s happening and everything informs everybody else, where it’s a oneness. I know it sounds a little hippie, but the music is playing the band.
Q: It’s been said you “channel the Dead.” Is that what you mean?
A: That’s a compliment to say that, so not for me to say, but that’s what we’re shootin’ for.
Q: How do you prep for shows?
A: We listen to the show that we’re going to do every day. We don’t listen to every single minute of it, but we listen to get the arrangements right for the period and maybe any special things that they did and transitions and stuff like that. So anything that jumps out aside from getting the music right for the era, the period that they’re playing, anything that really makes the show jump out, which if you listen to and say, “Oh, I really love that they did that,” --we want to get that, whatever that is. We listen to it, but we don’t look to play it note for note. That would be incredibly difficult to get one show together to play note for note let alone doing another one. Ya know, hundreds of thousands of notes…it would be a huge effort to do that and completely against the spirit of the music, which was improvising.
Q: What is it about the Grateful Dead that you’re all so dedicated to this?
A: Well, there’s a lot of things. I love the songs. I think the Dead get the credit they deserve for having great songwriting and great lyrics, but…it’s where they go out on a limb…the set lists are always different, you never know when they might play something that they haven’t played in a long time or play something they’ve never played before on the spur of the moment, so there was a sort of danger. I don’t know if that’s the right word. There was an excitement. It’s for more adventurous people, I think. Instead of seeing a tight, well-rehearsed show, you’re seeing something that really is going to have its own personality every night and that’s why I went back night after night. You never knew what was going to happen. You never knew if you were gonna be there on the night when X….not the drug, I mean, like, the letter X, variable, you know what I mean…whether they did a such and such a song or such and such a jam or they just completely tore it up, you know? You could go see the Eagles or someone like that put on a very tight show and it’s exactly the same every night. How many times are you going to go see the exact same thing? But with the Dead it’s different every night. It keeps it fun and interesting.
Q: You try to match all the equipment as well. How much do you travel with?
A: We have a tractor-trailer full of gear. In fact the tractor trailer used to belong to the Dead.
Q: What’s next?
A: Doin’ it, doin’ it, night after night and havin’ fun and meeting new people and we’re doing Fuji Rock Festival in Japan this summer and we’re going to Alaska for the first time this summer; that’s gonna be fun. The band or myself has never played in Alaska. I went to Japan with the Zen Tricksters, but that will be fun.
Q: How did playing Japan come about?
A: They have this big festival there every year and, believe it not, I was surprised when I went there close to 10 years ago and there were all these Deadheads! The Japanese audience is also very respectful. It was almost unnerving, because an American audience would be real rowdy and noisy and they would get really quiet between each song. Lovely audience.
Q: Have you played Syracuse before?
A: Being the new guy, I’m sure we have, but I couldn’t tell you where. We’ve certainly played in Buffalo a bunch of times, Ithaca…I can’t think! I’m sorry, that’s what happens when you’re on the road all the time. It’s hard to keep track of hundreds and hundreds of gigs all the time.
Q: You get to see a lot of places and meet a lot of people.
A: Yeah, that’s really a lot of fun. You have a Deadhead community, family that stretches across the country and abroad also and it’s like a big family reunion. Everybody gets it. They know what they’re coming for. And there’s a lot of young people too who aren’t old enough to have seen the Grateful Dead and they’ve sort of adopted DSO as their next best thing and they come to a lot of our shows and that’s really gratifying to know that the music will carry on and we’re doing our part to help it carry on.
Dark Star Orchestra is making their way to the Westcott Theater, 524 Westcott St., on Wednesday July 20; doors open at 7 p.m., show at 8. The show was moved from Papermill Island to the Westcott and original tickets issued will be honored. Tickets are $25 and available at www.thewestcotttheater.com and www.darkstarorchestra.net.
