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Dark Star Orchestra, August 29th, 2025 Gerald Ford Amphitheatre

The other night I saw Dark Star Orchestra at the Gerald Ford Theater in Vail, Colorado.  It was a couple hours’ drive from my home in Southern Colorado. The venue was spacious and beautiful- nestled in evergreen trees with sloping mountains all around. Yet, it’s convenient to i70.  The grounds of the park are full of gorgeous flowers this time of year, and the river runs right next to it. 

The day and evening were soggy, from a few hours of rain, but sun peaked through for most of the first set. I got in a very short line early and staked a spot in front of Rob Baracco’s keyboard and beautiful tie-dyed batik, right side of the stage. Heads around me were Vail locals, and a big group who had traveled from Washinton state, for a three-show run. Everyone was incredibly friendly, introducing themselves and sharing excitement.   

This is what I love about the Dead scene. It’s almost like we are all about to go on a very cool Disney or Six Flags ride together, that each of us has waited in line, or waited forever to get to ride on. Smiles are big if you are a Deadhead and you know they will likely play a song or two you love, or one that reaches out for you, in the moment, on that day, in that place. 

What’re they gonna open with? My seat mates and I wonder. One guesses “Alabama Getaway.” I feel “Cold Rain and Snow,” just cause it feels mountain chilly. It’s “Jack Straw.” I love this song because it mentions a town in the state where I grew up. 

The whole show, I kept thinking about my characters and how they would feel hearing the songs from the recreated set list of September 27th, 1981 at Capitol Centre in Landover, MD.

Cass would surely love the “Jack Straw” and I could imagine her shoulders swaying side to side, and studying the big screens. I can see her smile when they sing “Jack Straw from Wichita,” …..

During the wicked “Lost Sailor,” I imnagined Devon feeling down and wishing his life was different, and willing himself to, “Pull through.”

Rowen would have loved the “China / Rider” and “I Need a Miracle,” as they’re classics he knows well, and “Good Lovin,” cause he was thinking about Cass. 

Hettie would delight in the little in between licks of “Freight Train,” because she knew that old music. I think she would have liked the “Little Red Rooster,” too. 

And I bet Percy, would like “Candyman,” and “Mexicali Blues,” having seen parts of the country and lived the hardscrabble history. 

Edit

I’ve spent a lot of time around Deadheads, at shows, in parking lots, on the road, but not so many Grateful Dead scholars as I did at the Grateful Dead Studies Association in conjunction with the Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA) Conference in Albequerque, New Mexico. Each day was packed with sessions ranging from poetry, musicology and counterculture of the Grateful Dead to philosophy and material culture of the band and subculture. I was amazed, and yet not entirely surprised, that so many connections and explorations could be found with the Grateful Dead. Brian Dyke’s talk on using “Dark Star” in clinical treatment of addiction fascinated me. A review of Grateful Dead TV (DTV), which aired from 1988-1990 was filmed in the lot, on the road and included interviews with band members. It was a delight to see the footage, and some of it can be viewed on: https://dreamswedreamed.com As an English major, I appreciated David L. Emerson’s session comparing Robert Hunter’s work to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) and Kenneth Grahame (Wind in the Willows). Nicholas Meriwether, from the Grateful Dead Studies Association, introduced Robert Hunter’s uncollected elegies in his session. Hawk Semins discussed the connection between Phil Lesh and the Charles Ives Society, and Christopher Coffman the connection between “Terrapin Station” and Abraham Cowley’s Pindaric odes. I also enjoyed a technical talk on “Birdsong.” During another, the whole group sang lyrics from “Dire Wolf.” I was lucky enough to share my session spot with Cecilia Vidal who spoke about Franciscans and Deadheads and Annabelle Walsh who presented on the resale value of vintage Grateful Dead t-shirts. I spoke about the use of historical fiction and magical realism to capture the Grateful Dead and Deadhead experience. You can read my paper here:

I was also an exhibitor and signed and sold several copies of Birdenwheel! On Friday, there was a great Grateful Dead cover band, Easy Jim, that played the venue, Fusion. It was so cool to break loose and shake our tail feathers, remembering the band and music we all love.

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Me and my Little Blue Wing made it ten hours across the Midwest, flapping the wide lands—a lake holding trees, bordering highway and fields. On 70 going west from KC, I passed Kingdom City—gateway me towards the Jubilee grounds.  I stopped in Ozarkland, those hilly stretches that landed me in star-studded, chewy-taffy Missouri. I soared across a bit of Illinois, chasing bluebirds and Grateful Dead on my stereo.  I dipped and darted across Indiana- shouting “Terre Haute, Terre Haute,” like a backyard football coach, just to remember an old tour friend from there.  Under the arches, into Ohio, Stella blue stretch and onto Columbus, thenHebron.  Oh, Dover, oh, Buckeye Lake, oh playground.  Truly this is where it started, back in 92’ trekking here with high school friends, and breaking the world of the freedom-riding America wide open, to stick with me and keep me coming back. 

Back in the early 90’s when I was still in high school, my love for the Grateful Dead began.  It was easy to flow with the free ramblings of the music, the words that became my backdrop, the creativity that stemmed from my love of poetry and color and nature.

Even before I graduated, I logged hours on the road, and turnstile entries around the country.  It didn’t hurt that I had a cool Deadhead boyfriend from California, who knew how to mail order and sell cases in the lot.

After my first mini tour, I finished my last semester of high school, tracing tape covers and stringing beads during class.  I walked around with a songbook, and always wore my patchy hat and long hair flying underneath. 

Everything was geared on getting back to Dead tour, back to the music and the glimpse of an American freedom, I didn’t know before in my small town Kansas life.

Set in New Mexico, Southern California and across the United States, this novel incorporates the music of the Grateful Dead…its magic, storytelling and roots.

Ex-con and Deadhead Devon Maxwell must come to terms with his humanity and pain, even as he encounters mystical experiences of becoming a free-flying raven and the realities of being a father to the daughter he does not get to see. When Cass, a beautiful teenager who longs to enter the larger world like her absent but worldly photojournalist father, is lured into defying her mother and joining the Grateful Dead scene by young Rowen, who avoids his own grief at his mother’s death by continually following the band, Devon befriends Cass and tries to protect her from being hurt by Rowen. Yet Cass is too naïve to see how damaged the older Deadhead is or the complexity of the younger man’s escape from emotion.

Meanwhile, Rowen’s grandmother tracks the mystery of an old quilt hanging on the wall of her remote New Mexico cabin with the help of her great-grandfather’s spirit. She wants the spirit to assist her grandson Rowen, while the spirit pushes her toward helping Devon, who is distant family, recognize the importance of ceremony in his search for his true self. As the Grateful Dead summer tour progresses, Cass becomes a key to helping Rowen process his grief and Devon find the ceremonial marker of his humanity before he can fly away.