Pop Break Live: Dark Star Orchestra at The ParkStage in Freehold, New Jersey on Saturday June 20, 2026
Let me be clear: I love the Grateful Dead. They are – without question, exaggeration or hesitation – my favorite band.
However, no two Deadheads are alike. Each of us has our own preferences: Do you prefer the vibe of East Coast shows or West Coast shows? Who was the band’s best keyboard player? Was Cornell really as good as pretty much everyone says it was?
But, perhaps the most hotly-debated question of all is: Which era? The Grateful Dead, from 1965 to 1995, was a living, breathing, ever-evolving organism, constantly growing and changing through any number of phases and stages. Some folks ride or die by the primordial psychedelic blues rock of the mid-1960s. Others go for the polished Americana expansiveness of the early 1970s. And so it goes for all of the band’s 30 years. There are clearly plenty of listeners who were enraptured by the band’s “Touch of Grey” commercial peak of the mid-1980s, and I’m sure there are defenders of the glimmers of mournful majesty that could occasionally be found in what was in hindsight the long elegiac goodbye of the 1990s.
Me, I’m partial to 1973 – the Keith and Donna Gochaux-infused, single-drummer sound is just my sweet spot. Check out Dick’s Picks Volume 19 from Oct. 19, 1973 in Oklahoma City to see what I mean. On the other hand, for the life of me I just can’t fully get into the sound of the Dead in the 1980s. The brittle, crackling, high-octane charge of that era, propelled by the dominant vocals and distinct keyboard tones of Brent Mydland, just isn’t what I come to the Dead for.
That’s why, upon my recent visit to see the accomplished Dead tribute act Dark Star Orchestra on Saturday, June 20 during the opening weekend of the new ParkStage venue in Freehold, New Jersey, I wasn’t sure what I had gotten myself into; the opening with “Feel Like a Stranger,” a popular track from 1980’s Go to Heaven LP, tipped me off that we may well be headed into Reagan-era territory for the night – after all, Dark Star are known for replicating setlists from throughout the Dead’s 30-year history.
Consider my surprise then when, as all was said and done, the evening turned out to be a joyous, uplifting and even healing night of music.
Dark Star – making its Freehold debut in what must be said is a comfortable, inviting and impressive new outdoor venue – opted to re-create the Dead’s Feb. 14, 1986 show at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland, California. The band seized on the opportunity to deliver a tutorial in how to capture the many sounds of the good old Grateful Dead; the first set was packed with sturdy chestnuts, such as the Dead’s arrangements of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” and Johnny Cash’s “Big River” as well as the Jerry Garcia Hunter/Robert Hunter country-rock staple “Brown-Eyed Women,” while set two found Dark Star digging into some of the Dead’s most epic compositions, including the sweeping “Terrapin Station” suite and the winding paths of the “Lost Sailor” and “Saint of Circumstance” tandem.
It all climaxed with a masterful post “Drums” and “Space” sequence of the Garcia/Hunter ballad “Wharf Rat” into Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow’s timeless statement piece “Throwing Stones,” then the Bobby “Blue” Bland rave-up “Turn On Your Lovelight,” before coming in for a landing with the gentle encore coda of “Brokedown Palace.”
Here’s the pleasantly surprising thing about Dark Star. For many Grateful Dead tribute bands, the conversation tends to focus around who is filling Garcia’s role of singer and lead guitarist – that’s certainly true of, say, Splintered Sunlight with Butchy Sochorow or Joe Russo’s Almost Dead and Tom Hamilton. But, on Saturday night in Freehold, all eyes and ears were on Rob Eaton, filling the hotshot rhythm guitar and co-lead vocal duties of Bob Weir.
That’s not to take nothing away from the rest of the members of Dark Star – their Garcia equivalent, Jeff Mattson, expertly knows his way around the catalog, and the entire band is a well-oiled, professional machine providing fine-tuned execution of the music at hand.
But, it was Eaton’s performance of the heartbreaking Weir/Barlow ballad “Looks like Rain” late in the band’s first set that indicated to me that this night was going to be something special – a suspicion confirmed by a rousing, set-closing rendition of the complex and anthemic “Let it Grow.” Set two only took things higher, with a “Lost Sailor” and “Saint of Circumstance” combination that was on par with any of the many times I’d heard Weir himself deliver it in the past.
It’s been only six months or so since Weir died in January at the age of 78, after 60 years of continuously working to keep the Grateful Dead’s music living, vibrant, challenging and essential. His signature song was his early composition “The Other One,” and the number came to serve as his calling card of sorts – in a band where he shared singing and guitar duties with an icon like Jerry Garcia, Weir couldn’t help but feel to some like “The Other One,” but he was a pioneering and provocative artist in his own right. And, as the Deadhead family still learns to navigate a post-Weir musical landscape, it was heartening to join in with a couple of thousand fellow travelers to hear his songs taken out for a wonderful spin one more time.
