It’s hard to believe a rising star on the jam band circuit was born in 1995, the same year the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia died. After all, in a genre that embraces virtuosity and group interplay, well-journeyed musicians tend to rise to the top.
But Nashville-based guitarist-songwriter Daniel Donato is quickly earning his stripes.
And — appropriately or ironically, depending on how you look at it —he got his start obsessed with the classic shredtastic video game Guitar Hero.
Donato and his band Cosmic Country will make a stop at San Antonio’s Paper Tiger on Thursday, Feb. 19, as part of their current tour.
Donato has appeared on hallowed stages such as Red Rocks Amphitheater, and he’s shared the stage at different times with the late Garcia’s bandmates, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, the latter two also recently departed.
For the initiated, the word “jam band” needs no explanation. For everyone else, the Grateful Dead and Phish defined the genre, which stitches together an eclectic array of rock and country styles with a jazzy, improvisational spirit. The concerts tend to feature lots of hippies and extended jams — both of the psychedelic and traffic variety.
Donato and Cosmic Country belong to a wave of acts that has brought the genre more mainstream interest than it’s enjoyed in a couple of generations. Most prominent is bluegrass monster Billy Strings, who’s selling out arenas and winning Grammys with his brand of jammy Americana, and with whom Donato has also appeared onstage.
Donato’s playing has elements of all of these sounds, but he adds his own spin via an emphasis on songwriting. However, he’s also capable of unleashing guitar pyro that may singe the eyebrows of even the most jaded live-music vets.
We spoke to the grounded, personable Donato by Zoom from Nashville about what makes timeless songwriting, when it’s OK to shred and his connection with the Dead.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jam band music is hard to describe but easy to identify for people that are familiar. How would you describe your music for somebody that maybe hasn’t listened to much outside mainstream rock or country?
I would say the songwriting blends traditional country songwriting with dance and rock ’n’ roll musicality.
How does that happen? Because using “rock,” “dance” and “country” in the same sentence may not be an obvious combination for most people.
There are a lot of genres in America that are proprietary to this country. Rock ’n’ roll being one of them via Chuck Berry, country being one of them via Jimmy Rogers and Bill Monroe, and improvisation being one of them through jazz legends like John Coltrane and Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner and so forth. We kind of blend a lot of the American influences and just amalgamate and bring them into one. And that is Cosmic Country.
In some ways, the name answers the question.
As with the biggest questions … (Laughs.)
You just need it on the business card, right? When somebody asks the question, the motto, it’s right there in the name.
I like that. That’s something that is becoming increasingly clear to me, that Cosmic Country [is] a frequency approach and the music is a fruit from that, much like a branch from a vine. It’s a natural extension of the source itself.
When you talk about nature metaphors, I think of timelessness. And I would say that a good song is timeless. But what gives a song that quality, and how do you know if a song has it?
[Some people] believe they know the answer, but if that were the case, I think there would be a lot more timeless songs than there are. So, I don’t know. I do worship the fact that it happens. And I believe it can happen. And you can definitely feel it when a song is timeless — i.e. “Country Roads” by John Denver or “In My Life,” “Yesterday,” all those timeless songs. And there happen to be themes and tropes that are common denominators between all those songs spanning out through different genres. A Bob Marley song might have the same chords as a Hank Williams song, the same three or four chords.
Much like how stories in movies, even though Hercules might be different than Happy Gilmore, it’s still a hero’s journey. And there’s still a protagonist that needs to be faithful and go conquer and bring light to the dark unknown and then return back home transformed, liberated and stronger. I think there are themes and perhaps vibes, frequencies that denote something as timeless. But I don’t know. I think maybe at best we’re 50% responsible for it on the human side.
All these old traditional American songs are so true that the transient ownership of one singular author has dissolved through time. So now they become public domain. And then the true gift of having received a song — like you said, a timeless song like that — is that it gets to become everybody’s, it gets to become quote unquote, open source.
My dad’s a software engineer. And when he first told me about the concept of open source, that was right when I was starting to study Bob Dylan, specifically the early era of Bob, when he moved to New York and all the Woody Guthrie inspiration was happening. And I think American music, if the song is good enough to become open source, you know, that’s a really great thing. I would love to write a song that could be open source.
And so, they’re everybody’s songs and you can take them and do what you want with them. Every time I played with Phil [Lesh] or Bill [Kreutzmann] or Bob [Weir], it was always that. I remember sitting in Bill’s garage and we were about to play [the Grateful Dead’s] “Franklin’s Tower,” and he looked at me and said, “How does it go?” I had to stop and think for a second. It was like, you’re not actually asking me how it goes. That’s a faith question. Like, “You start it, son … young man.” Bill Kreutzmann knows how “Franklin’s Tower” goes.
How do you deal with it, growing up with the Dead and then playing with them? “Oh, you know, Bill Kreutzmann is telling me to start off ‘Franklin’s Tower.’” Is it surreal?
Yes.
What do you do?
I view that as a moment to receive. The reason why I like the concept of receiving is because there is a certain text out there that suggests that once you’ve received something, so shall you freely give it. And so that means that you don’t have to go through the niceties of portraying a humbleness. You don’t have to go through the niceties of suggesting that there’s an imposter syndrome. Because really, if you’ve received something, that’s only half the story. It’s, like, now you have to give it. You’re on a mission to give, you’ve been called to give because you have received. The very act of receiving is a delegation cosmically.
Playing Jerry Garcia’s parts has to be sort of both an honor and a burden, if you know what I mean. And I don’t mean a burden in a negative sense, but it’s a lot to live up to.
Yes. I always ask for that though. I’ve always been on that. I’m that kind of a person where it’s like, build it and they will come. And I voluntarily will, you know, and not everyone’s like that. And thank God, you know, because that would probably be a much more chaotic place to live in. But I think I am in that small percentage of people that are going to go out there and be like, “Well, you know, let’s cut the ice on the river on Christmas morning and take this boat and go kill them Redcoats. Let’s go!” We need some of those people. (Laughs.)
You mentioned storytelling, the hero’s journey, plot frameworks. I wonder how that plays into the show. Can you tell me about how you write set lists?
I think the thing that makes a good set list to me is very different than what makes a good set list to someone who is on show three or five that they’re following us to see. What’s good to me is not objectively true, it’s only subjectively true. I’ll answer from that perspective. I look at our set list as acts and sequences, and it’s usually about two to three songs per act or sequence. It’s the same story, but it’s a new story every day. But the deal with Cosmic Country is when we’re playing on stage, I’m playing for my life on stage, and so is everyone in the band. What that allows us to do—which can be very painful and existentially disorienting—is to treat every gig as the first and last.
There’s often criticism of guitar players that their playing is more technical than soulful. … When people talk about “soul,” if they’re saying, “That guitar lead doesn’t simulate the human voice singing,” well, OK. Steve Vai has overdubbed, seven guitars at once, each a half step apart. And at a million miles an hour. So, you’re correct, that doesn’t simulate the human voice. On the other hand, it’s something that’s interesting and engaging and makes me feel emotional. It’s just not the same emotion that David Gilmour’s solo from “Comfortably Numb” gives me. So where’s that line? How do you know “now’s the time to tear it up” versus “now’s the time to break everybody’s heart?”
Oh, right on, brother. You know, that’s an attunement. That’s a dynamic attunement that I’m humbly progressing at in small increments, more and more. Just like when you’re driving a car, how do you know to get into the right lane or the left lane? Because when I go to dinner later with my father and my sister, I don’t know when I’m going to get in the left lane to pass the truck, but I will when I get there.
$34.97, 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19, Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com.
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