photo: Andrew Blackstein

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“I have such adoration for this whole universe that we’re talking about,” Daniel Donato says at the outset of a discussion about the musical character and cultural impact of the Grateful Dead. The guitarist and singer has joined them in the firmament as well, having achieved liftoff on stage with Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir.

It’s a few days prior to the Kennedy Center event, where the Dead will be honored for “lifetime artistic achievement” and six weeks after the passing of Lesh. As the conversation begins, Donato speaks in general terms about his appreciation for the group. “You can tell when you talk to somebody if they love the Grateful Dead. I can almost feel it if that they’re down for that sense of exploration, that call to journey. It means we’re on the same frequency. We’re watching and participating in the story of these musicians who rose up to an adventure that was form-fitted for their lives and decided to serve that adventure until the day they die. It’s so profound for me. I get overwhelmed when talking about it.

“The Grateful Dead is an example where if the songs are enduring enough, those songs are only momentarily theirs. They’re really ours, and everyone’s included in that. It becomes a communal thing with the guys in the band and everybody who just loves the music. It’s open source on some level.”

As you describe the communal aspect of the music, it reminds me of the Acid Tests, where the band members were participants, but they weren’t necessarily the entertainment. Jerry Garcia later said that they could either play or not play and each of those decisions was an equally valid choice. That’s entwined with serving the moment and serving the music. To my mind, Phil continued to embrace those tenets throughout his life and also felt an affirmative duty to pass them on to younger musicians like yourself. Did he articulate any of this to you directly?

Yes, he did—in his actions, in his living, in his walking of the walk. That’s the most enduring way to be reflective of whatever value center and portfolio that anyone’s subscribing to and serving.

Phil served the music and there’s something about that. There was such a necessity and a matter of factness and a fire under it all due to the urgency of his time left. To be in close proximity to somebody so legendary who is still operating on that level—who’s aware what he’s serving—was very profound. I was able to see somebody at that age and that wealth of experience in creation, rolling up his sleeves and being like, “Hey kid, here’s the job. It’s similar to the job you’re doing. We’re on the same trail here.” That, to me, is a forever experience.

There’s no greater gift than bringing someone into the caravan with you and to be honestly searching after the same thing. There’s also something that’s very liberating and inspired in that he didn’t have to play, but he did have to play. It is like the Acid Tests. He chose to keep playing and that was very immense, and it led me to the idea of, “Oh, I’m going to be doing this forever.” There’s a certain strangeness that sets in because I’ve been playing music now for 17 years—longer than half my life. I’ve had a relationship with the reality of the idea that this is something I will do forever, and the more time I have with that idea, the more it changes.

So to see someone like Phil still be subscribed to that idea and serving that idea and bringing that idea to life in new, actualized ways that creates potentials for everybody, added a whole new dimension of what a life in service to music can be. It was the most inspiring experience I’ve had with any musician. It probably always will be, and the thing about Phil that I marvel at is that everyone loved him—even on the days of his life that he was just an older guy in a hoodie and jeans walking around with HOKAs on.

He still knew what to be tuned into and how to be harmonious with life as if it were music. There’s a continuum between your time on the stage and your time off the stage, and the love and the fun and truth that you bring into your life off the stage is the candlestick for the light that happens on the stage. Phil had that down to a science.

In speaking about him with some folks over the past few weeks, Mike Gordon mentioned Bob Dylan’s observation in The Philosophy of Modern Song that Phil is “one of the most skilled bassists you’ll ever hear in subtlety and invention.” What’s your response to that?

He’s only a bassist because that’s what he’s holding. I never thought of Phil as a bass player, really. His values are inclusive of a lot of values that are necessary to become an articulate bassist, but he had an imagination and an immediate spark of creativity that, with his personality, allowed him to see beyond his instrument and increase its frontier of potential in very imaginative ways.

So that’s a big one. I am not sure if I would call him a bass player. He was a Phil Lesh. That’s what I hear when I listen to the ‘74 recordings.

The last time I played with him, Phil wanted us to focus on some specific recordings from 1974. I’d listen to some of these shows, like the Alexandra Palace in London [from Sept. 9-11, 1974]. I couldn’t believe it. It’s not a bass, but it is a bass because he’s holding a bass. So you can’t say it’s not bass, but it’s more than that. It’s something else, and it really is just Phil Lesh to me.

I don’t know if he’s a bass player, I really don’t. I know he plays bass, but I don’t know if that’s what he did.

There is something going on there and every guy in the band is like that. When you play with them on stage—there’s a guy who was a founding member of the Grateful Dead and a bunch of other guys on stage who love the Grateful Dead and want to play with him—they have this universe that immediately sets in. It’s as if you’re putting on lenses for glasses. It’s just immediate. That spirit is there, and that, to me, is more than an instrument. It’s something else. It’s in between what is tangible and what is intangible and strongly felt.

There is that fascinating moment at the outset of the band’s career when Phil’s learning how to play the bass at the same time that Jerry’s figuring out the electric guitar and the band as whole is defining its sound. When you listen back there’s a lot to latch onto, as this amorphous entity coalesces while also remaining amorphous in a lot of ways.

You can hear them discovering themselves and they showed their work.

There’s something about 1974 in specific. You can hear them discovering the realization that their dreams are coming true. You can hear these young men having the hammer of the gods in their instruments and they really believe it because it’s really happening to them. It was real and it was their lives, and it was coming from the music, so therefore it was coming from their faith in themselves.

It’s coming from the most vulnerable, true, honest place inside. They’re seeing their external world organize itself and compound on itself around a fountain not built by man, not built by hand. And that is insane. It is very powerful.

When Phil gave you that homework assignment to check out ‘74, did it come with any guidance as to what you should extract from the music?

There was an email that went out saying, “Listen to these couple shows.” Then at the clubhouse, we would discuss. That’s also where I witnessed the greatness of Phil as a father by being around Grahame when Phil was around. We would sit and talk. Phil would just eat this chia seed yogurt bowl kind of a thing, and Grahame would ask him questions about ‘74, then Phil would expand on them.

Each time I played with Phil, which was three times on stage and two times off stage—which I know is numbered, but it was immense for me—he wanted us to focus on specific ideas and periods of time. Each of those periods of time had different values. This is probably just an outworking of Phil’s specific personality, but he would give us a prompt or a non-abstract direction that was delivered prior to playing.

One of the things that Phil said about ‘74 that was astonishing to me is that there was real no consistent way from one song performance to another, as to how a given song would end. He saw the songs as having eternal endings. They had ellipses on the end of them. That’s where the whole Darkstarathon concept started to make more sense in my mind. He viewed “Dark Star” as a vehicle for a song that has no beginning and no end. He viewed the catalog in that way, too. That, to me, was astonishing.

In that spirit, I’d like to mention that Grahame is a marvel. The spirit of Phil is not gone in totality. Yes, there is the shock of his death, but Grahame is still playing and he channels that approach very well.

One of the many things I appreciated about Phil’s approach is that while he was a songwriter, he wasn’t the principal songwriter in the Grateful Dead. Yet he believed so deeply in the catalog that he sought to perpetuate it. In a way, it’s like what he did with his bass playing. He wasn’t giving technical instruction about how to play like him, he was advancing a larger idea about spirit and intention.

There is a line of thought in psychology that every observation is a narrative. Whether you’re hearing a story or you’re looking at a guitar, there’s a narrative that you’re telling yourself.

So with the stories of the Grateful Dead catalog, the writing of them is obviously a crucial facet, but it’s not the only facet that brings those stories to life.

There’s a spirit that Phil had both on and off the stage, where if that spirit comes in contact with a story that’s true, it’ll be very powerful. It’s a one plus one equals three situation.

So maybe he didn’t pen the lyrics to a lot of them and he said he didn’t. He talked about how when Garcia or Weir would bring in songs, no one would add lyrical suggestions. He said that everyone in the band who wasn’t writing songs directly was just grateful to have great songwriters in the band and they would do everything they could to make the song what it was and what it could be.

So while Phil may not be writing most of the Grateful Dead songs, he’s contributing to the story. That’s what they all were doing and it’s why the story is still going on. The music never stops, this song will never end— this circular eternity.

The breadcrumbs to that tell me that the stories are true. Whether they’re fictionally or nonfictionally true, there’s truth in them. Phil had a good mind for truth, and there were a couple of times when we were rehearsing and he knew it wasn’t happening, so he would just change it up. He tried to make something exciting happen—aspiring to the slippery, unifying celebration of that moment when it happens in the music. That’s the thing he was still searching for. He knew it was a true thing and he was relentless in trying to get at it. It was remarkable.

That reminds me of the Garcia quote about tapers and the music: “Once we’re finished with it, they can have it.” People almost take it for granted at this point or describe it as a marketing technique. But I think it’s a rather profound and righteous way to approach one’s art.

That’s what I’m getting at with this. The thing about the Grateful Dead is there’s no one quote that is the quote of all quotes that goes to this idea that they’re a living spirit that influences the culture of this country within the arts and probably in other domains, but the only thing I really ever focus on is the music.

You can’t get away from them in anything that you do. They’re omni-informative of the American music form in everything, whether it’s on the commercial side of releasing your music or playing it. In my life, they’re everywhere I go and can see.

While there’s a dynamic from person to person, being brave within your art and wanting to bring your vision to life with as little negotiation with external forces as necessary, can be really challenging on the internal level.

The idea that “Bertha” was never recorded in an official studio, they just released it on Skull and Roses, that’s brave in the way I just described. Phil would talk about the Wall of Sound, and I think the Wall of Sound was brave as well.

Phil didn’t really seem to have any issue with just doing what he believed in. That also is very much taken for granted, especially now because so many artists are being told who to be.

The thing that marvels me about Phil Lesh and Garcia is that, from a very early stage, they had a great sense of what they were about. They knew what they were going for and they knew what they weren’t going for.

You can hear Phil talk about that up until his last days on the planet. He never lost sight of the cause, of what the Grateful Dead was about. He tried to stay true to what the spirit of the Grateful Dead was up until his dying day. That’s admirable. It’s really a beautiful thing to have witnessed and been a part of. It’s not something you would think would be obvious at the outset from what might seem like a hippie-dippie San Francisco musician who was taking psychedelics almost every show. You would think that he would just tune in and drop out, but he didn’t. He tuned in then and then dropped in deeper to what he was doing.

photo: Ant Braaten

Just as Phil was sharing this music with younger artists up until the end, Bill Kreutzmann is doing the same thing with the band’s catalog. You just played with him in Hawaii. How would you characterize his approach?

Bill is a genius and he plays as a genius. He doesn’t carry himself like a genius though, which is an interesting thing to observe.

I remember, at one point, Bill asked me how “Franklin’s Tower” went.

How do you respond to that?

You just start playing. That’s the example Garcia and all of them set.

Garcia isn’t just a guitarist, instrumentalist and writer. At a certain point, there’s a person holding that instrument and they’re that person all the time. So they’re going to “person” that instrument the way that they “person” their life.

When you start playing with Bill, he knows what you’re going for and he’s going to go there with you. He does it with such grace and it’s astounding. He’s like a mirror.

So when Bill asks you how “Franklin’s Tower” goes, you just start playing and you almost wonder what he’s asking with that question because he’s not asking you how the song goes. He’s asking you, “What do you have to say right now? With all the life and the positive and negative charges and the love you have for this music, what do you have to say with this song?”

Thank God the songs are strong enough for emotional reality, like Garcia said. All those songs are portals of emotional reality.

That ties into Bob’s idea of songs being characters with personalities. They’re living. So how does it go? It’s different when you play it in 2024. We’re not in Veneta, Oregon and it’s not hot outside and no children have gone missing, and they don’t need to bring out the fire truck to spray people with water. How’s it going to go right now? Well, let’s go and let’s have faith in that. Let’s embrace the potential that’s present at hand.

That’s a strange thing to be excited about at 78 years old, like Bill is. That is a life of service to what is inspired and what’s created coming through in the form of music. It’s not about money. It’s not about saving the big hit for the end of the night. It’s something entirely different and very individual and brave. So Bill is just as liberating to play with in his own way, respective to Phil.

You mentioned Bobby, with whom you’ve also performed. Can you describe what you’ve taken away from appearing with Wolf Bros.?

In my limited experience with Bobby and Wolf Bros., he was the boss in a country way. I have a lot of experience with that in my life. Not that any of this is about me, but I have a lot of experience playing sessions as a recording guitarist for an artist. I love a lot of that music, especially back in the days when Chet Atkins was producing records in Nashville. There’s the singer and then there’s the band. The dynamic of it starts with that one person. That’s how the energy flows and it’s where the song goes.

It reminds me of Dylan. To me, Bobby was probably the most traditionalist in the Grateful Dead in terms of how songs go. It seems to me that now that Bob has the reins in the fullest sense, he’s doing something that he’s always wanted to do with the music. I think the reason that Bob’s doing it is that he wants people to see a certain element and texture of the beauty that these songs hold in a way that they haven’t been dressed as before.

I was speaking with Don [Was] about the musical dynamics of playing with Bob and we agree that it’s like a cowboy band. He’s got Barry Sless playing beautiful pedal steel, like a combination of Buddy Emmons and Ralph Mooney. I love it, and Don was all about it. He was like, “It’s all about the song.” That’s the most omnipresent truth about this whole band and it’s so real that you take it for granted like the sun, but the Grateful Dead have songs.

We’re speaking just a few days before the Grateful Dead will be honored at the Kennedy Center.

If you were tasked to capture their legacy in a single sentence, what would you say? It seems to me that if you put your money where your love is, you’ll play forever.