Project Helps O.C.-Bound Hart Come Back From the Dead

Mickey Hart has spent virtually his entire adult life drumming for the Grateful Dead. When he joined the group in 1967, he was barely out of his teens.

Still, he laughs at the notion that he might have felt a little rudderless a year ago when the death of Jerry Garcia led to the dissolution of the beloved hippie band. It seems that life after the Dead has actually been quite busy for the percussionist, as a former side project has become his primary musical focus.

When he heard Garcia had died of a heart attack at a drug treatment center, Hart immediately plunged headfirst into the project on which he had been working between Dead tours for four years. Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box, as the band is now called, centers around lush pop vocals and spry, Third World drum patterns.

The band will be at Irvine Meadows today as part of the traveling Furthur Festival, which also features Ratdog with ex-Dead guitarist Bob Weir, Los Lobos, Bruce Hornsby, Hot Tuna, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, John Wesley Harding and Alvin Youngblood Hart (no relation).

After Garcia’s death, “I found a lot of peace through the music,” Hart said from a tour stop in Eugene, Ore. “It calmed me and centered me. I think Jerry would have said, ‘Make music. Don’t be grieving.’ If I stopped making the music, grief would have overcome me. I thought about Jerry a lot, but [Mystery Box] allowed me to go on.”

The Furthur Festival sojourn, which began in late June and concludes Sunday, has attracted some of the same Deadheads who followed Hart, Weir and Garcia’s band with a religious zeal unmatched in rock history. Just like at Grateful Dead concerts, tie-dyed clothing and twirling barefoot women have been part of the scenery throughout the tour.

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Hart and Weir haven’t exactly been shy about resuscitating their past. Each festival date has been sprinkled with a handful of selections from the Dead’s catalog of songs. But the numbers are being interpreted by new musicians--which, Hart says, makes these versions unique and sometimes very un-Deadlike.

“It’s interesting to see what other people think these songs should sound like,” Hart said. “Sometimes they understand a lot of it, and sometimes they understand a little of it. They never get close to the originals, but no one can. It’s not supposed to be like that.”

There’s a loose musical interaction among the various tour artists that Hart said is immensely satisfying. At the conclusion of every show, some of the musicians and singers come together to jam on pre-selected numbers. And the shows are taking place in smaller venues than the stadiums and arenas that had been home to the Dead in recent years, further creating what Hart sees as a welcome sense of intimacy.

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Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box is quite unlike anything the adventurous drummer has explored during his 29-year career. It started out as a sequel to Hart’s “Planet Drum” disc from 1991, which featured such skilled world-beat percussionists as Giovanni Hidalgo, Zakir Hussein and Sikiru Adepoju, who also appear on the “Mystery Box” album. (Hart also composed--with Hussein, Hidalgo and Philip Glass--an elaborate drum piece that was played at the opening of the Olympics.)

As the Mystery Box developed, Hart said, he realized he wanted to add lyrics and layered vocals to his music’s heavy rhythms. He recruited former Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and the Mint Juleps, a female a cappella group from England.

“I was a big fan of the McGuire Sisters, the Shirelles, the Supremes--all the big vocal groups from the ‘50s and ‘60s,” Hart said. “That was my idea of pop music when I was in high school. I thought they had a sound that was perfect for Hunter’s lyrics.” The “Mystery Box” album also includes several spoken word/rap vocals by Hart.

Because of Hart’s meticulous nature in the studio, a good deal of time and labor went into the album. He ended up with about 250 reels of recorded instrumental and vocal parts. Producer Robin Millar, best known for his work with such English artists as Sade and the Fine Young Cannibals, was brought in to give the music a polished sheen and to edit the tapes into something more manageable.

Hart said one of the most emotional moments during the course of making the album occurred when Hunter changed a verse in a nostalgic song called “Down the Road” to include a nod to Garcia:

I heard a laugh I recognized come rolling from the earth,

Saw it rise into the skies like lightning giving birth.

It sounded like Garcia but I couldn’t see his face,

Just the beard and the glasses and a smile on empty space.

“I didn’t want to ask Robert for a [verse about Garcia],” Hart said. “But what Robert wrote was brilliant.” He remembers that when Hunter first sang the verse to the rest of the musicians, they broke down.

Garcia’s death at 53 wasn’t a big surprise to Hart or to most people who knew about the guitarist’s long-standing health and drug problems.

“It’s a great shock when your best friend dies, but I saw it coming. It was pretty evident that his health was deteriorating. His diet wasn’t improving. It was, like, milkshakes and hamburgers. And he was a diabetic. He wasn’t really in love with his body. That wasn’t his main concern.

“He tried to resuscitate it, but by that time, he was real over the hill. He was breathing very heavily on the last trip back home on the plane. His heart just wasn’t able to pump that much.”

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To many fans, the band is inconceivable without Garcia. But Hart says it is possible the surviving members could reunite at some point as the Grateful Dead.

“Just maybe. We just haven’t talked about it. We’d been doing it so long. We need time off to look around and smell the roses.”

* The Furthur Festival with Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box, Ratdog with Bob Weir, Los Lobos, Bruce Hornsby, Hot Tuna, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, John Wesley Harding and Alvin Youngblood Hart takes place today at Irvine Meadows, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. 4 p.m. $27. (714) 855-4515.

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THE FURTHUR FESTIVAL

* 4 p.m.: Hot Tuna

* 4:45 p.m.: John Wesley Harding

* 5:15 p.m.: Los Lobos

* 6 p.m.: Alvin Youngblood Hart

* 6:30 p.m.: Bruce Hornsby

* 7:30 p.m.: Flying Karamazov Brothers

* 8 p.m.: Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box

* 9 p.m.: Hot Tuna (again)

* 9:30 p.m.: Ratdog

* 10:30 p.m.: Jam session