Daniel Donato's Cosmic Country

The Read

Donato came up in the Don Kelley band at Robert’s, playing four-hour honky-tonk sets before he could legally drink in the room, and the technique he built there has since been pointed somewhere much stranger. Cosmic Country is telecaster country grammar applied to jam-band structure — long, patient, psychedelic, still recognizably Nashville underneath. The lineage runs through Clarence White and the Burritos more than through anything currently on the radio. This is one of two Ryman nights, so the setlist will not repeat itself. The room’s reputation for reverence is going to sit oddly next to fifteen-minute excursions, which is part of the fun. Expect a young crowd, a lot of guitar, and no particular hurry.

The Room

Ryman Auditorium

116 5th Ave N

Built in 1892 as a tabernacle by river captain Thomas Ryman, who was converted at a Sam Jones revival — little did he know it would become the church of American roots music.