MB: He definitely embodies the Americana spirit.
RB: He and Dylan are probably the two greatest lyrical treasures we have in this country.
MB: So do you get a chance to play that stuff when you do original sets with Dark Star?
RB: No, we haven’t done that yet, but we have talked about doing an original project. Now that John is moving on, that might become an easier option for us. We’ve already started working on stuff – we’ve been doing it at shows – we’re always on the road and live in different places. But it’s so easy now with Pro Tools to be just backstage at a show and lay down tracks. So I came up with a couple of things, and we laid them down and little by little, people are adding parts. Who knows, maybe we’ll get a couple of complete things; maybe I’ll send them to Hunter and see if he’d be interested in doing it. Who knows?
MB: That’d be a really interesting way in pushing Dark Star forward and seeing what else you guys are capable of doing. At this point, the band has generated such an incredible following in the Dead community.
RB: Yeah, we’re in a unique position because we have an audience, a core audience, that’s large enough that if we did put something out, it would get listened to. I’ve been championing that ever since I’ve been around here. There are quite a few people in the band that really embraced it right away. It took a couple of years to get it moving but now we’re talking about it more and more. I don’t know what is going to happen with Jeff Mattson, if he’s going to end up being a permanent addition of this band, who’s to say? But Jeff’s really into doing the original thing – I’ve done it with him once before, and we did some beautiful music together, it’s just unfortunate that the Tricksters could never garner much of an audience to get anywhere with it.
MB: Well it sounds like you guys have some pretty cool ideas to get out there, and hopefully it’ll materialize.
RB: Oh yeah, I’m looking forward to it and I’m very optimistic that this will come to pass in the next year.
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