Arts & Entertainment

Daniel Donato Celebrates Jerry Garcia At The Cap With His Cosmic Country Vibe

Published 1 year ago1y ago • Bookmarks: 193

Daniel Donato. (Photo by Jason Stoltzfus).

July 25, 2024

By W.B. King–

Reflecting on Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, Daniel Donato agrees that over the years there have been “hots spots” and “goldmines” of creativity that occur in certain regions or age subsets. As a student of musical history, he made the connection to The Beatles giving The Rolling Stones their first hit single, “I Wanna Be Your Man,” in 1964.

“I read that book when I was 15 or 16 and started realizing that what’s going on in Nashville right now is kind of one of those moments,” Donato, 29, told The Hudson Independent by phone from the road (between bites of Ramen noodles). He feels the same type of synergy with kindred spirits Billy Strings and Marcus King, fellow guitarists and singer songwriters who have also created a recent groundswell of support. “I think our similarities is that we’re all taking our spot and time right now to help push music forward.”

Support our Sponsors

Busking and Yearning

Initially gravitating to music through the interactive game play of Guitar Hero, Donato later copped a few actual guitar chords by watching his father. “He was a hobby guitar player. And he has great taste in music but doesn’t play much anymore,” he said. “One of the first three CDs my dad gave me was American Beauty [Grateful Dead] when I was 12. He really loved that album.”

Donato too caught the music bug, becoming consumed with playing the guitar. Encouraged by his parents, he began busking on the streets of Nashville on the weekends. He honed his chops by learning and playing songs that could result in a passerby dropping change in his guitar case or tunes that simply caught his fancy.

“I was listening to all the archetypal American rock and roll and British rock. It’s the formalities of the music you have to dive into—there is no getting past it,” Donato said, naming inspirational acts like Guns N’ Roses, The Kinks, The Who, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Mike Bloomfield, B.B. King and Peter Green, among others. “It took me a chunk of time to get through all of that but then my tastes became a bit more abstract.”

Donato’s emerging talent soon caught the attention of the Don Kelly Band, a well-respected Nashville group who held court at Robert’s Western World, which sits in the shadows of the Ryman Auditorium, original home of the Grand Ole Opry. Kelly, known for spotting young talent, asked Donato to join the band on stage. Not long after, the then 14-year-old picked up his now signature Telecaster, plugged into a Fender amp and joined the band. The group played music by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Marty Robbins, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, among other artists. Over the next couple of years, Donato would play nearly 500 gigs.

“I discovered all those songs playing with the Don Kelly Band—that’s when that music started speaking to me. If it wasn’t for that band, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,” Donato conceded, adding that he also began listening to Elizabeth Cotten, Blind Blake, and Robert Johnson. “I got into traditional country music and then I started listening to older blues—old timey recordings from Sun House—and that allowed me to start seeing the influence that all this rock and roll music was coming from,” he said.

U.S. Blues

Whereas his father gave him his first Grateful Dead album, Donato’s experience with the band goes back to the 1990s when his mother traveled the country seeing the psychedelic-fueled Americana rock troubadours while he was in utero. “Who knows what was stirring in my unconscious reception at the time,” he reflected.

While in high school, the Grateful Dead would come back into his life in an unconventional manner. “My dad never really listened to any live recordings or anything like that. When I was around 16 or 17, then I got turned on to what was going on with the ‘living’ side of what that band does from my U.S. history teacher—it might have been the greatest U.S. history lesson he ever gave to one of his students.”

In recent years, Donato was invited to play with three of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead in different incarnations: Bob Weir’s Wolf Brothers, Phil Lesh and Friends, and Bill Kreutzmann’s Billy and the Kids. Now he can count himself part of the band’s ever expansive near 60-year history (the group will be honored for lifetime achievement in the arts at the Kennedy Center in December 2024).

“I could spend too much time talking about them but there was one thing they were all consistent on—the lowest common denominator value from those guys was to have fun,” he said. “I know that sounds logical and very simple but actually, it’s not and is quite complex if you’re really serious about it. At every crossroads that you find yourself at, you have to make the decision to find a way to engage that’s playful. So, it’s quite a task, an everyday thing.”

He will be searching for that type of fun on August 2 when Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country makes a stop at The Capitol Theatre with Leftover Salmon in an evening billed as: Jerry Daze Between. Jerry Garcia was born on August first and passed away on August 9, 1995, at age 53. Deadheads have long celebrated this time period as “Days Between,” which is the title of one of Garcia’s last tunes.

“Leftover Salmon has a whole set plan for a lot of Jerry’s songs. We’ll just leave that to them,” Donato said, noting that fans can expect his band to scroll through a long rolodex of songs they normally play, including tracks from his latest album, Reflector (2023), such as the uplifting “Hi-Country” and the exploratory “Dance in the Desert.”

Musical Curator

Next April, after “Camp Cosmic,” an annual festival that takes place in middle Tennessee, Donato said he will release a new album. “It’s going to be cosmic country,” he responded when asked what type of direction the songs will take. “I think that’s really all I honestly would be able to convey in any real depth that would be consistent between now and when it comes out.”

The “Cosmic Country” moniker is representative of Donato’s eclectic taste in music, which could find him listening to the Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds in one moment, then Django Reinhardt the next, followed by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Elton John or Irving Berlin—a never ending list of influences.

“There’s always been this thing inside of me when I hear a song and I can see myself in it like looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m always searching for those. I have a whole running list of songs that I want us to cover,” Donato said. “I think that what goes into a live show now is originality. Curation is another thing—what songs can you curate for people? And that’s something that the Grateful Dead just kind of did fundamentally.”

As Donato and his band, which features keyboardist Nathan Aronowitz, bassist Will McGee, and drummer Noah Miller, anticipate their return to The Cap, he said they all revel in the venue’s rich musical antiquity.

“The Capitol Theatre is one of those rooms where several realities can happen at once. There could be the physical reality of a show and there’s a whole spiritual reality of the history and the energy that has been made in that room that’s still in there at some level,” he shared. “So, I hope we have one of those great shows there that night.”

Read or leave a comment on this story...

Support our Sponsors