Dark Star Orchestra members are Dead ringers

Spencer Patterson

Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 | 9:22 a.m.

Traveling from gig to gig in a bus with more than 2,000 Grateful Dead concert recordings on board, Rob Koritz and his mates might easily be taken for average hardcore tourheads.

In reality, however, the seven musicians actually compose what many have hailed as the world's top Dead cover band: Dark Star Orchestra.

The group is so widely respected that four former members of the Grateful Dead have sat in to play with DSO over the years, hardly a common occurrence for the nation's plethora of Dead cover bands.

"Since we're a cover band, I'm sure there's a, 'These guys need to prove themselves' type of mentality when musicians first see us," Koritz, one of Dark Star Orchestra's two drummers, said in a recent phone interview from his Boulder, Colo., hotel room.

"But I feel like after they hear us play and see that we take what we do really seriously and do it in a totally humble fashion, they dig it and they want to play with us."

DSO rolls into town for a show at the Hop, 1650 E. Tropicana Ave., Saturday night at 7. The show was originally scheduled for the now-defunct Blue Note Las Vegas. Tickets for the original venue will be honored.

Formed in November 1997, Dark Star Orchestra has earned its reputation in part because of attention to detail unmatched by other cover bands. For most of its live performances, DSO selects an actual show from the Dead's vast tour history and recreates it song-for-song.

"We're all huge fans, slash students, of this music," Koritz said. "So if we're going to do a song like 'Scarlet Begonias' but we don't have the show from that night, we'll go through the library that we have, find a 'Scarlet' from two nights earlier or a week later, and listen to that. Generally formwise and tempowise, it's going to be about the same."

Similar to the Dead, Dark Star Orchestra splits its shows into two sets. DSO also frequently adds material from an unrelated Dead concert to fill out its usually four-hour performance, the same way many Dead traders have used "filler" to round out live tapes.

Though Dark Star's set list parallels an actual Dead show, Koritz is quick to point out that the music itself is still quite improvisational, with the long jams intended only to present elements of the Dead's sound from a particular era.

"Without a doubt, the jams are definitely us," Koritz said. "What we're going for when we go from year-to-year is the tempo, the arrangement, the groove, the tone, all that kind of stuff."

Of course, DSO's appeal is hardly limited to its song sequences. The seven musicians are each renowned for being able to reproduce sounds eerily similar to their Dead counterparts.

The band's lineup is guitarist John Kadlecik (Jerry Garcia), guitarist Rob Eaton (Bob Weir), bassist Kevin Rosen (Phil Lesh), vocalist Lisa Mackey (Donna Godchaux), keyboardist Scott Larned (Brent Mydland, Keith Godchaux and Vince Welnick) and drummers Dino English (Bill Kreutzman) and Koritz (Mickey Hart).

"When I first got the job and played my first gig, I was freaked out, just marveling at their voices," Koritz said. "That's really what sets us apart. I don't think those guys consciously try to sound like them, but they do a really amazing job with the vocals."

While DSO sounds similar to the Dead, members of the ensemble do not dress, speak or act like Garcia and company onstage, setting themselves apart from such Beatles cover acts as 1964 or the Fab Four.

"We don't want to be a novelty act. That's very important to us," Koritz said. "We're all serious musicians who all have a love for this music and came together to do it justice.

"I'm not slagging the Beatles bands at all, but because there's very little improvisation involved for them, there's a different level of creativity that takes place every night for what we do compared to what they do."

As you might expect, the members of Dark Star Orchestra all share a level of fanaticism in the Grateful Dead. Koritz estimates the seven members have seen around 1,800 shows by the Dead, some of those as far back as the early 1970s.

"We couldn't do this if we weren't all incredibly major Deadheads before this," Koritz said. "We couldn't do this job and love it the way we do if we weren't so into the music."

Koritz said Dark Star's audiences generally include both longtime Deadheads who saw the band often in concert and newcomers who might never have seen the Dead before Garcia's death in 1995.

"We have shows where you see the 60-year-old grandpa who saw them in the '70s and the 40-year-old father who saw them in the '80s and the grandson who never saw them," Koritz said. "All three of them come to the show together, and share this common bond."

Since joining the band, along with English, in the summer of 1999, Koritz has shared the stage with Weir, Welnick and former Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten. But it was the chance to play alongside Kreutzman -- a drummer for the Grateful Dead for its entire 30-year run -- that left the greatest impact on the St. Louis resident.

"It was absolutely surreal and amazing to be playing "China/Rider" ("Chinacat Sunflower"/"I Know You Rider") with Billy sitting next to me, telling me to 'Get it on,' " Koritz said. "We all had a blast."

It goes without saying that Dark Star Orchestra fans won't be seeing original Grateful Dead member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan onstage with the band. Pigpen died in 1973, after a battle with liver and stomach ailments.

But you also won't hear anyone playing McKernan's organ part or singing his lyrics when Dark Star comes to town, either. The band has been unable to fill his slot, therefore limiting its repertoire to post-Pigpen shows from late 1971 and beyond.

"It's just such a hard role to fill. You have to be able to play keyboards and harmonica and really sing the blues," Koritz said. "We've had our feelers out for years."

So if anyone out there thinks they might have what it takes, there just might be one more seat on the Dark Star Orchestra tour bus for a Pigpen in waiting.

"If there's anybody in Vegas who can do it, we'd love to find them," Koritz said.