Dark Star Orchestra returns to relive two more Dead shows.

Byline: Serena Markstrom The Register-Guard

If you're going to copy another band, it seems there are two choices.

No. 1: Try to make the original band's material your own and give a new twist, a la the Easy Star All-Stars doing Pink Floyd and Radiohead reggae- style.

Or, No. 2: You can mimic the original band to the last detail.

Dark Star Orchestra takes the second route with the Grateful Dead, performing entire concerts to the last persnickety note. See if you can guess the day and year of the two shows the band will bring to the McDonald Theatre this weekend.

The Chicago-based band re-creates complete shows, from specific dates. The most devoted fans can figure out which show the band is doing.

Considering the Dead played upwards of 2,500 concerts, Dark Star has plenty of material to choose from. At every show, it faithfully performs two sets, song-by-song.

Rolling Stone calls it a "fanatical attention to detail." USA Today says the band is "channeling the Dead."

The first time founder John Kadlecik played a Dead show, his band, Hairball Willie, set it up as a contest. No one at that show got the exact date correct.

It was years later, in 1997, when Kadlecik was looking to form a new band, that he picked back up the idea of doing a Dead tribute act. After assembling Scott Larned, Kevin Rosen and Lisa Mackey (she plays the part of onetime vocalist Donna Godchaux), the group got four Tuesday night gigs at Martyrs' in Chicago.

By the fourth show, Martyrs' was sold out, according to a news release. The group became the regulars on Tuesday night, eventually touring Chicago and booking a regular Wednesday show, too.

"What we offer is sort of a historical perspective at what it might have been like to go to a show in 1985, 1978 or whenever," keyboardist Larned said before his 2005 death. "Even for Deadheads who can say they've been to a hundred shows in the '90s, we offer something they never got to see live, like 'Here Comes Sunshine' performed with one drummer and a Donna vocal."

After Jon Fishman from Phish sat in for a show in 1998, the band started to get noticed on a national level and started to tour outside of Illinois.

Soon, the band's press bio says, the group's MP3 Web site was getting millions of hits. People wanted to know how the sound became so precise.

The band explains it's some combination of having absorbed the music over years as fans and replicating the equipment the original musicians used during a particular show.

A rotating cast of characters also beef up authenticity. That's why the band tries to avoid choosing the show date it will replicate too far in advance of a tour stop, lest the right voices and hands are not available.

Dan Klepinger has taken over keyboard duties in the wake of Larned's death.

CONCERT PREVIEW Dark Star Orchestra What: Grateful Dead redux When: 8 p.m. today and Saturday Where: McDonald Theatre, 1010 Willamette St. Tickets: $20 in advance or $22 days of show