Many say the best thing about the Grateful Dead is its ability to create timeless music. As time goes by, fans never forget their favorite songs and unforgettable concert experiences.

For Dark Star Orchestra, its memories of the Grateful Dead were not enough.

Instead, the Chicago-based group decided to take the typical “cover band” concept one step further, by recreating everything it could about the Grateful Dead, right down to the very set lists played at specific shows during the Dead’s long career.

Rob Koritz, one of Dark Star Orchestra’s two drummers who impersonates the former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, elaborated on his role in the band and how band members keep their own talents present through the recreation of some of the greatest music ever written.

Chris English: Dark Star Orchestra attempts to recreate certain moments in the Grateful Dead history that were made special to yourselves – and many others – at some point. What exactly is your mentality on this concept?

Rob Koritz: Well, what we’re doing for the most part – not every night – is recreating a different Grateful Dead show every night. But it’s not note for note by any means, that’s not what we’re about at all. In fact, we’re quite the opposite. We’re very much about the improvisation, that’s what made the Grateful Dead’s music so good and so different to people. It’s always different. So what we’re doing is taking maybe a stage set up, the tempos, the arrangements, the tones that they used during those particular eras and using them as a framework or a map for our own improvisational explorations.

CE: So, in the pursuit of all this recreation, do you try to maintain a piece of yourself as a musician and a performer in some way?

RK: You know, it’s a really fine line between being able to use your creative expression but still do it within the confines and the vocabulary of the Grateful Dead’s idiom. And that’s the challenge every night – to be able to feel like I’m closing my eyes and throwing my own creative expression into it, while still maintaining the role I’m trying to play. And there’s other nights where we don’t recreate a Grateful Dead set and just play songs – from the Dead’s repertoire, of course.ÿWe’ll mix up stuff from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s altogether. And on those nights you can kind of let go, maybe just a hair more, and you’re not quite as restricted.ÿBut for being in a band that’s playing someone else’s music, I don’t think anyone has the privilege of having the kind of freedom we did.

CE: I think one of the most notable accomplishments of your band is that you play hundreds of shows a year, something a lot of mainstream bands never do in their entire careers. How do you manage to partake in such rigorous touring without getting burnt out or splitting up?

RK: It’s hard man, it’s hard. But we’ve kind of got it down to we know how long we can go out for at a time, and we know how long of a break we need to recharge our batteries to get ready to do it again. We’ve been doing it for enough years now that we’ve kind of figured out what works for us to maintain both musical integrity and our sanity.

CE: This may sound kind of general, but considering the legendary nature of the Grateful Dead, what have been some of the most notable reactions you’ve received from fans and listeners?

RK: I think the biggest endorsement would probably be the fact that most of the living members of the Grateful Dead have played with us and dig and approve of what we’re doing and give us their blessings. They’ll come out with us whenever we have a chance to have them. They almost always are gracious enough to say “Yes, we’d love to.” That’s probably the biggest compliment you could get from any Deadhead.

CE: In your personal situation, what are some of the technical means in which you recreate your Dead role?

RK: Before we even joined the band we knew how to do it, just because we were such big fans of the particular guy we might be in the role of. I was already paying so much attention to what Mickey Hart did and already was aware of how his playing style changed over the years. It was really pretty easy for all of us to just kind of slip in and start doing this.

CE: So what does the future hold? Not to be cliche, but Dark Star Orchestra does so much as it is to “raise the Dead,” how much further can you go?

RK: Right now we’re going to keep plugging away [and] hopefully the crowds get bigger. We’re working on some plans to possibly – very preliminarily right now – but possibly do some stuff with some symphony orchestras doing some kind of Dead thing. But there are some other things in the works that we’re thinking about as part of our forward progress. In the meantime, we’re just going to keep going out and try to bring the music to as many people as we can.