“Get Lost in the Great North Woods” is the perfect way to describe Hoxeyville Music Festival.  The 8^th annual festival was held in the Manistee National Forest in Northern Michigan.  Each year Hoxeyville has grown and improved this year followed suit and featured a bigger and better lineup than ever before, cleaner and more organized festival grounds, and the largest crowd to date at around 4,000 people.  One of the greatest things about Hoxeyville is the family atmosphere, whether it was a grandparent and grandchild watching a mid-day set, lon

Dear Dead Heads:

In 1980, the Grateful Dead needed a director to shoot the planned multi-city broadcast of their Halloween show from Radio City Music Hall.   They brought a guy named Len Dell’Amico out to San Francisco for an interview, and he managed to navigate through one large Hell’s Angel and some fat, potent spliffs sufficiently well to persuade Jerry Garcia that he was the guy for the job.  The result was Dead Ahead, which went on to become a platinum home video.

A Slingshot On Mars Tour Preview

Following a stellar summer tour full of great festivals and friends we are excited to hit the road again for the Slingshot On Mars Tour starting September 9th. Upcoming dates include stops in Knoxville and Memphis, TN, Terrapin Hill Farm in KY and the Orange Peel in Asheville, NC. Then we make first time stops at the Greenfield Lake Amphitheatre in Wilmington, NC and the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, VA before a weekend run through some of our favorite east coast stops including The Norva, Rams Head Live and 9:30 Club. Along the way we will celebrate our time in Baltimore and DC with a Cap Centre Weekend. On 9/17 and 9/18 DSO will choose from the legendary Grateful Dead Capital Centre shows and will recreate that show in its entirety. We will then round off our tour with a special acoustic set at Mexicali Live along with stops in Munhall, PA, Wilmington, DE, Philadelphia, Albany, Toads Place in New Haven, CT, Syracuse, Northampton and Lowell, MA before closing out the tour in the 'Big Apple' at the Nokia Theatre.

Visit our Tour Dates Page for complete details.

From A City Near You Tour

DSO is celebrating our return to the West Coast by recreating shows From a City Near You. Each night Dark Star will choose a Grateful Dead show from a city close to that venue and will recreate that show in its entirety. This will be the perfect time to gather your tour buddies and relive the experience or for you to see that show for the first time that you have only heard stories about.

The tour kicks off in the "Golden State" with 2 nights in good ole San Francisco at the Regency Ballroom. From there we head up to Sacramento then over to the banks of Lake Tahoe for a stop at the Crystal Bay Club Casino before returning to Cali for shows in Anaheim and LA before a Saturday night stop in 'Sin City' and a Sunday/Monday run at the Belly Up Tavern in Solona Beach. The last week of tour brings us back to the Mile High City with stops in Tempe and Flagstaff AZ, Salt Lake City and the tour Closer at the Fillmore in Denver.

Visit our Tour Dates Page for complete details.

The Rex Foundation and DSO

In addition to continuing the Grateful Dead concert experience at our shows we are working with The Rex Foundation to continue their legacy of giving. We have recently created a donation module on our fanclub-ticketing page that allows you to make a donation to the Rex Foundation while purchasing tickets to our shows.

For our summer tour former Grateful Dead tie-dye artist Courtenay Pollock designed a backdrop for us. We are pleased to raffle this off with part of the proceeds benefiting the Rex Foundation. If you would like to bid on this one of a kind tie-dye design on 4 10' x 10' panels, please send your bid and contact info to: brett@darkstarorchestra.net.

August 9, 2010 marks the 15 year anniversary of legendary musician and Grateful Dead co-founder Jerry Garcia's death. As a way to honor his musical and community legacy, the gifted musicians on this compilation have generously contributed stirring live performances of Jerry Garcia songs to benefit the Rex Foundation. The album includes four exclusive previously unreleased live Garcia songs from Phish, Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers, The String Cheese Incident, and Keller & The Keels. Other artists in the order they appear on the album are: Railroad Earth, The Black Crowes, Moonalice, Yonder Mountain String Band, The Waybacks, Widespread Panic, Hot Buttered Rum, and Steve Kimock Crazy Engine. All proceeds are a contribution to the Rex Foundation.

Download the files (MP3, FLAC, or ALAC) or buy the CD here.

TOUR DATES

Cut from the same cloth as Animal Liberation Orchestra, G-Love and the Special Sauce, or the Dave Matthews Band comes a jam-pop band for the 21st century known as The Heavy Pets.  This Florida-based collective has been touring like mad since their inception five years ago, and have finally delivered their first full-length studio album.  The result is a sturdy, uplifting project that could cement the Heavy Pets as the next band to break the mold and enter the ma

Leading up to the release of his solo album All Birds Say, which is out next week on August 31^st (ATO Records), My Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel has been steadily revealing performances of some of the tracks off the record.   You may have seen Broemel do a rendition of “Questions” over at MOG, creating an epic solo version of the track that builds to a thrillingly noisy climax.  He also played the earnest and whimsical “Enough,” which recently debuted at My Old Kentucky Blog. Lastly, his version of “Carried Away,” a contemplative and heartfelt ballad that My Morning Jacket recently performed, premiered at JamBase.  Please feel free to post and share all three videos!

As evident by these three clips, Broemel is a sophisticated songwriter  and an elegantly effortless performer.  He has the lyrical perspective of an individual who truly reflects and learns from his life’s experiences.  However, Broemel favors a Zen-like approach, keeping his philosophical musings from getting anywhere near being preachy.  Needless to say, MMJ fans who know him solely from the fiery riffs and guitar solos he performs with the band are going to see a whole other side of him.

Click HERE for photos of Carl, an mp3 off the album (which you are also welcome to post/share), and more info on him.

Click HERE to Watch Carl Perform “Questions”

Click HERE to Watch Carl Perform “Carried Away”