![]() ![]() He and David Grisman - picture a person with Spanish ancestry and a Jewish guy, both hippies, traveling in the Deep South, in like 1971, hunting down Appalachian music. “He started off as a banjo player,” Hartle said. Jerry Garcia’s inventive, eclectic playing was also key to the Dead’s allure. It’s about age-old concepts, about just being a human being on planet Earth.” “Grateful Dead music is not about anything immediately topical. Hartle points to the songwriting as one reason for that appeal. It’s about a group improvisation and a group dynamic at all times. “It’s not just about one person taking a solo. Having studied jazz at the University of North Texas, he relishes the band’s proclivity for spontaneity. The China Cats started in 2008, with Hartle joining in 2010. ![]() Then the rest of it, there’s so much room for improvisation.” “The China Cats, we play straight Grateful Dead sets and in understanding the genre, there’s a real trick to knowing what is essential to making the song be that song. There are certain roles with the instrumentation. “It’s like in jazz - there are standards. “Grateful Dead music has become a genre,” said lead guitarist/vocalist Matt Hartle, reached by phone at his home in Santa Cruz. The China Cats fall more into that last category. The term “tribute band” can mean a lot of different things, from lookalikes to carbon copy sound to simply using the original artist’s work as a jumping off point. Each performance is a new, communal journey. And so they embrace the Grateful Dead tribute band, The China Cats.
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