It is my honor to be writing to you all again about the wonder and beautiful sight that is Dark Star Jubilee. However, this year I write to you with feelings of pure joy and love that come from this festival but also a heavy heart. Dark Star Orchestra has had a tough week, as they face a possibly career-changing event. But more about that later, let’s talk about the joyful, blissful, wonderful, paradise event for friends and family that was Dark Star Jubilee.

Performing to critical acclaim worldwide for nearly 15 years and over 2000 shows, Dark Star Orchestra continues the Grateful Dead concert experience. Their shows are built off the Dead's extensive catalog and the talent of these 7 fine musicians. On any given night the band will perform a show based on a set list from the Grateful Dead's 30 years of extensive touring or use their catalog to program a unique set list for the show. This allows fans both young and old to share in the experience.

Dark Star Orchestra and Island Gigs announce Dark Star's Jamaican JAM IN THE SAND VI, returning to the all-inclusive Jewel Paradise Cove Resort in Runaway Bay, Jamaica, January 18-22, 2018.

Continuing the Grateful Dead concert experience in its 20th year, Dark Star Orchestra today announces special plans for The 40th Anniversary Shows as a celebration of the Dead’s infamous May 1977 tour.

Following a tour-ending, Memorial Day celebration at the 6th annual Dark Star Jubilee festival at Legend Valley in Thornville, Ohio May 26 - 28, Dark Star Orchestra Summer Tour 2017 gets underway June 24-25 in Aurora, IL and winds all around the Midwest and East Coast. Additional shows still to be added in the coming weeks.

One day in 1997, two Deadhead musicians were ruminating about life without Jerry Garcia and simultaneously came up with the same idea: "Let's recreate a Grateful Dead show."  Around forty people came down to Martyrs' in Chicago on November 11, 1997, to hear the brand-new Dark Star Orchestra's rendition of the Dead's show of 10/8/81. They'd planned it as a four-week experiment, ninety folks showed up the second week, then two hundred, then a 400-person sell-out, so it seemed like a good idea to keep going.

No stranger to the music of the Dead, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti  - of Dead and Company, and formerly of Furthur, RatDog, The Dead, and The Other Ones - joins Dark Star Orchestra November 18 at College Street Music Hall in New Haven, CT and November 19 at The Palace Theatre in Albany, NY.  DSO bassist Skip Vangelis is unavailable for these dates, so keyboardist Rob Barraco will pivot to fill in on bass while Chimenti, who joined DSO in 2012 and 2014 for similarly brief sit-in

On Oct. 4, 2016, I had the opportunity to catch Dark Star Orchestra in concert at the Lafayette Theater in Lafayette, IN. The experience was interesting, to say the very least.

I had the privilege of attending my favorite festival of the year for the fifth year in a row, and I am here to tell you about the best place on Earth. I would travel across several oceans to get to this festival. It is one that if you haven’t experienced, it should be placed on your bucket list. I’d like to start this tale of Dark Star Jubilee, held at Legend Valley, in Thornville Ohio, each Memorial Day weekend, with some words from the band, written in each schedule passed out:

The first night of this three-night Dark Star Orchestra run at the Boulder Theater was powerful, exciting, and fun. They played the first night of Red Rocks 1978, which was on August 30th, and it featured the first time ever played “’I Need a Miracle,” “Stagger Lee,” and “If I Had the World to Give.” Many of the patrons of the Boulder Theater were extremely happy as the buzz went around the venue of which show it was.