When Slide&Banjo took another lap riding shotgun with Daniel Donato across his expansive Cosmic Highway, one thing became crystal clear. This expedition has no finish line. Donato’s journey is one of endless exploration. He has no interest in getting from point A to B. The thought a finite ending point exists for his travels would certainly give Donato nightmares.
After an all-star Hawaiian weekend jamming with the Grateful Dead’s Bill Kreutzmann followed by his own all-star two night Cosmic Christmas Jam, Donato has more than earned the right to lay off the throttle for a bit. His ‘24 schedule resembled a professional baseball team more than a musician. 150 shows in almost as many cities would drain the most seasoned veteran. Physically, mentally, spiritually, and then some.
It’s Donato’s sincerity, faith, and willingness to travel whatever path a greater force sends him that fuels this unending journey. Donato is certain his role is far more involved than sitting back and hanging on for the ride. “It is physically challenging. There’s a harmony working. However, challenging the task is equals the same reward and unity of personality and expansion of self that you find. I try to be an athlete about things. Not in a competitive sense. For however many hours we’re playing that day on the stage, I’ll play that many hours off stage. It’s crazy, but that’s the deal. It’s a consecrated devotion of my will to serve music. It hits me the most when I’m home. I get a real desire to recharge. You have to.”
Wise well beyond his years, Donato has figured out the formula to create momentum while conserving energy. That cosmic combo makes his journey into infinity a sustainable one. “I’m not doing it for me. I’m in on the deal, but it’s not just for me. When you open that rabbit hole of who are you doing it for. There’s no line of logic that is sufficient to say you’ll know all parties concerned. You can be doing it for the whole universe. You have no idea where the ripples go.”
Reflecting on the unimaginable high times he’s experienced on his journey, Donato is humbled. “Beyond belief is very striking. There’s this concept, I find to be omnipresent. There’s earthly things and divine things. Earthly must be known and believed to love them and have faith in them. That’s a trust you may have with someone. You have to have transactions with them before you can have an enduring faith and love for them. Divine things are the opposite. You have to have faith and love for them before you can believe them. That’s the beyond belief things I have in my life. I have faith in these things. It’s internally realized and I feel that phenomena in me.”
After Donato takes some much needed time to recharge, he’ll head to the studio in 2025 to record his next album. According to Donato, the album should consist of many of the new tunes he and his righteous bandmates Sugar Leg, Mustang, and Bronco have been introducing live on stage. “We’ve been playing a lot of new songs. See Through, Translation, Broadside Ballad, Down Bedford, Illusions, Lady Justice, Hangman’s Reel, Cosmic Country Gardens, Another Dimension. The songs we’ve been playing last year and this year are going to be on the record. We’re not in the business of unveiling the iPod. We have to show our work as we go. That’s the way I like to do things. That’s the way things have turned out to be most enduring and true. Music isn’t a hardware invention. Phil Lesh said it so eloquently. He said the “reason” already exists somewhere else. Because you hear it in your head before you play it. Whenever it comes here in this dimension, we play it live first and then it goes on the recording.”
In a world overrun with conflict and discourse, the ability to rise above and be unified by music is a constant goal for Donato and his growing legion of cosmic followers. He muses, “There’s the idea that music is still a sacred space. Conscious or unconscious going to a concert is one of the most unifying things. Everyone in the audience is looking at the same thing for several hours. We’re all focused on the same sound for several hours. That’s odd. If you had thousands of people talking about an idea for several hours, it wouldn’t take 90 seconds until there’s a difference of opinion. If you go to a show everyone agrees what’s unifying, true, and what we need to focus on and be with.”
With a musical range and deep knowledge from Waylon Jennings to Led Zeppelin and all points in between, Donato and his Fender Telecaster has created a unique voice that resonates with a wide range of music fans. In typical Donato fashion, one of his biggest goals for ‘25 came from an epiphany he had grabbing a meal at a festival. “I was getting some food from the food trucks. You know how the trucks play music from their speakers? I heard one note and just knew it was late 80’s Jerry Garcia. I just knew. That one note was like a smell. It transported my entire being of thought and feeling to a specific place.”
“One note. Thats what I’m focused on.” Donato reflects. “I want to get to the place where people can hear one of my notes at a low volume in the middle of the day trying to order a slice of pizza from a food truck and they feel that. You get it with Trey Anastasio, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Bob Dylan, Billy Strings, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson. I’m focused on that and don’t think we’re at that point. Right now, someone will hear me sing or my guitar and think maybe that’s one of three people. I want to it be so unconsciously real it transports people immediately.”
It doesn’t matter how wide open or free flowing Donato’s cosmic journey may be, he clearly recognizes the importance of the individual song and the foundation it sets for all musicians, “Songs are personalities and humans are vessels for personalities. There is an element to a human that you are engaging with that is not visible. It’s just as crucial and instrumental to the experience of engagement as the physical. I can’t physically see you right now, but I know it’s you. I can tell it’s you. It feels like you. It’s the same with me. That’s why I think songs are personalities to themselves. When you hear them each time, you’re meeting them once again. Songs are friends.”
Looking back at one of ‘24’s long list of highlights, Donato muses, “When I was at the clubhouse with Phil Lesh and he went into Row Jimmy I was like I get to meet this being again. Not Phil, but the song. How many times have I heard this? Every time I hear it, I’m a different person. The song seems different to me. I’m seeing it in a new light. You get to offer something to a person they can take with them for as long as they live.”
As our time traveling the Cosmic Highway with Donato comes to an end, he sets the stage for what everyone can look forward to in ‘25. Starting with a slight decrease in a 150-concert schedule. “There’s a little less next year. We’re never going to make a sudden change. Things that happen suddenly are miraculously positive or miraculously negative. We have a whole narrative and relationship with the Cosmic Country community. It makes sense to have a realistic trend of subtle downgrading. Nothing crazy.”
As far as changes on stage, Donato offers “I think playing more acoustic guitar would be nice. That’s definitely the next horizon. We’ve experimented with it a bit this year. We did an acoustic show at Jackson Hole. It was a sellout show at the Virginian Saloon. It was the biggest crowd they had ever drawn. We announced it a week in advance. We also opened several shows acoustically. Thats definitely the next horizon.”
“Progress is inevitable. People think progress is positive at all points. It’s not. You need growth within progress. You need a positive trend of growth. Nobody has been able to stop time, so it will keep progressing. You need to grow or else you’re diminishing. The idea of things being static or nothing’s changed is an illusion. It’s not true. You don’t have the luxury of staying static. This is a kinetic realm. Even on a molecular level everything is moving and changing. I’m trying to always grow and stay on the positive trend upward.”
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With the energy of our conversation flowing as easy as a gentle breeze, Donato veers off course for a second to randomly reflect on a Grateful Dead song that hits him in a unique way. “There’s that moment when you’re having a psychedelic experience at a live show. Where things go negative. You get scared and think you’re going to die. It’s an amazing moment people should experience. There’s something about Garcia’s solo on the studio track of Victim or the Crime. When I hear that solo, it terrifies me. It’s like Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” It’s a feeling like the world is ending. The studio version of that song is amazing.”