Falling temperatures and shorter days are among the indications that the Central New York summer is coming to a close. But before the music moves indoors for fall and winter, Sterling Stage Kampitheater’s annual Last Daze of Summer festival will satisfy that sun-soaking itch one last time.
Last Daze, running Thursday, Sept. 13, through Sunday, Sept. 16, is a music-lover’s dream, thanks to a skillfully chosen lineup by Sterling Stage founder and producer Eric McElveen. On Saturday, Sept. 15, Garth Hudson, widely known and respected for his unique additions to The Band, will perform with the ever-popular roots-blues-jam unit Gent Treadly.
Also on Saturday will be John Kadlecik, a favorite among Grateful Deadheads as one of the founders of Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra. Now the current guitarist with former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Phil Lesh in Furthur, Kadlecik will bring his side project known as the John K Band.
For Kadlecik and his wife, Katy Gaughan, who also plays percussion in his band, the visit will also be a homecoming: Gaughan still has family living on Tipperary Hill. “I think her parents are planning on coming,” Kadlecik happily reports in a phone interview from his home in Maryland.
The uber-talented and extremely gracious Kadlecik, 43, is ever modest about his incredible career journey, in which he now plays regularly with members of a band he idolized as a young adult. Kadlecik started on violin at age 9 and branched into guitar and mandolin before learning other instruments as a music major at William Rainey Harper College in Illinois. He never did get the hang of woodwind or brass instruments, however: “The right/left hand coordination {I’ve got}, but not so much the breath and finger,” he says with a laugh.
Kadlecik’s bands gradually took priority over work or school, as he performed in all types of original groups. In 1989 he noticed a longtime outfit was finally breaking through the pop charts: The Grateful Dead, with its song “Touch of Grey.”
“It was kinda hard to miss that,” he admits about the band that would change his life. “It was kind of a wake-up call because, before that, all I had seen was the iconic imagery {of the Dead}, which in a lot of ways resembles more Motorhead and hard rock stuff. I kinda wrote the band off when I was 16 {because of the imagery}. But by the time I was 18, I was starting to get curious about jazz. Some friends turned me on to some of the better, more art-rock and jazz-influenced Grateful Dead stuff and it got me really excited. I went to see a show and I was blown away by really how actually in the moment and modern they were as a live show, as distinguished from {how} some of their ’60s or ’70s records might come across.”
Between his first Grateful Dead show in 1989 and the start of the tribute band Dark Star Orchestra in 1997, Kadlecik saw the Dead about 60 times. “It seems like a lot to some people, but in the community of hardcore Deadheads, it’s a drop in the bucket.”
During that time, Kadlecik was more focused on his own material rather than following the footsteps of another band. “Playing original music took precedent over playing covers for me until I finally decided to start DSO, which was really done more as a fun side project.”
When Dark Star began, all the members belonged to other bands that played originals. Kadlecik notes where the shift in mentality came from: “Some people would do it {play the Dead’s music} and find out there were ugly wrong reasons or they would do it and it just wasn’t as good. I thought it {the music} could be misrepresented in a lot of ways. So, I just felt, ‘OK, if I can do it, maybe I should.’” Dark Star Orchestra was so well-received by fans that it has since welcomed such prestigious guest jammers as Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, Sam Bush, John Popper and Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay.
Kadlecik stayed with Dark Star until he received an initially suspicious invitation in his email spam folder in 2009. “Here’s this message from someone claiming to be Bob {Weir}’s manager and I was like, ‘Sure, right,’” Kadlecik remembers. “But it turned out to be real and I was pretty excited. I didn’t know at first if it was just gonna be a chance to jam, but I had honestly been hoping for the opportunity for quite a while.”
Kadlecik left Dark Star on Nov. 16, 2009, to join Furthur, where he is now flanked by Dead legends Weir and Lesh. Although Kadlecik doesn’t find the situation as surreal as some might expect, he notes the joys of gigging with the Dead duo. “They still play music with the spirit of a child getting a brand new toy,” he says. “I see that in them every day we go out on stage. And to see that at, what, 64 and 72 {Weir and Lesh’s respective ages} is just amazing.”
When Kadlecik isn’t on the road with Furthur, he’s with his side project that he began in 2010. The John K Band performs about 10 to 20 shows a year of “good-times rock’n’roll music,” according to Kadlecik. It gets psychedelic and bluesy but they also bring a lot of jamming and always danceable grooves to their stages.
Although the John K Band will be shooting up to Sterling directly from a Philadelphia concert, Gent Treadly’s Greg Koerner—who was a bassist with Dark Star in 2000—hopes there will be some downtime for the two to catch up and jam. “It’s unusual that I get to see him,” Koerner says. “He’s become quite successful since I played with him in DSO.”
Koerner hasn’t done too badly, either. He began with Gent Treadly in 1994 and has played with the group as they collaborated with members from bands including the Grateful Dead, Phish, Jane’s Addiction, Spin Doctors, moe. and The Band’s own Garth Hudson, who will join them on stage at Sterling.
“He’s not always available to join us, so we’ve very glad he’s able to for this,” Koerner, 45, says about Hudson. “His playing is immediately recognizable.”
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is well-known for his work as the organ, keyboard, accordion and saxophone player for The Band. Hudson also went on to join Sneaky Pete Kleinow in Burrito Deluxe, an offshoot of the Flying Burrito Brothers; he began a duo with his wife, Maud; he headed his own 12-piece band, The Best!; and he is currently very active with members of the Levon Helm Band at the late Helm’s studios in Woodstock.
When Hudson joins Gent Treadly, the New York City-based group will respect the traditions he brings with him. Koerner notes, “We’ll be revisiting some great songs, doing about half originals and half The Band.”
Gent Treadly performs Saturday at 6 p.m., followed by an 8 p.m. showcase with the John K Band. The star-studded weekend lineup for jam fans will also include Digger Jones, Tim Herron Corporation, House on a Spring, Aqueous, Subsoil and many more.
Sterling Stage Kampitheater, 274 Kent Road, Sterling, is about an hour’s drive north from Syracuse. Weekend passes are $75, with $40 day passes at the gate. For more information, call (818) 212-9489 or visit sterlingstage.com.
Gent Treadly will also bring their bluesy improvisational roots-rock to Hamilton’s Palace Theater, 19 Utica St., on Friday, Sept. 14, 8 p.m. Tickets are $10; call 824-1420. The following week they’ll be part of the annual Jazz-N-Caz event on Thursday, Sept. 20, 7:30 p.m., at the Brae Loch Inn, 5 Albany St., Cazenovia. A $10 donation is encouraged; call 655-7238.
