From Jefferson Airplane to Jefferson Starship, Freiberg's been knee-deep in the hoopla

Since the psychedelic rock days of the mid-1960s, a lot of bands have come and gone.

A lucky few have survived the decades, but not without learning to roll with some changes.

And Jefferson Starship, appearing this week at The Maryland Theatre in downtown Hagerstown, has had its share.

Formed as Jefferson Airplane in 1965 in the counterculture haven of San Francisco, the band has experienced several incarnations. And David Freiberg has been there for at least part of all of them.

"This band has been through so many changes, and honestly, I'm the only one left that played in Jefferson Airplane," he told Herald-Mail Media during a recent interview.

Freiberg joined Jefferson Airplane shortly before the band morphed into Jefferson Starship and remained until it became simply "Starship."

He left the band for a while, but then the late Paul Kantner, a founding member of Jefferson Airplane who had also left Starship, restarted the band as Jefferson Starship.

Kantner, an old friend, "asked me one day if I wanted to come and sit in, and I did, and it was fun again!" Freiberg said. "I've been doing it for about 18 years again."

A little music between friends

"I was friends with Paul Kantner since about 1962, I guess," Freiberg said. "We had tried to get work as a folk duo, but being able to earn a living singing folk music, for a whole lot of people, seemed to be stopping right around when the Beatles started.

"And then when we went and saw the Beatles movie we thought, 'Oh yeah, that's what we want to do.'"

But they didn't do it together at first. While Kantner formed Jefferson Airplane with the late Marty Balin, Freiberg and several other musicians started Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Both bands played at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, which also featured The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin's band), The Grateful Dead, Ravi Shankar, The Mamas and the Papas and many others.

"That was memorable," Freiberg said. "That was kind of like the first big festival that ever happened. And it was probably, actually, the best."

He laughs, then notes that Jefferson Airplane was also at Woodstock.

Quicksilver Messenger Service wasn't.

Kantner brought Freiberg into Jefferson Airplane shortly before the band, including vocalist Grace Slick, became Jefferson Starship. Balin, who had left, came back and sang lead vocals on several more of the band's hits.

"This band just kept changing," Freiberg recalled. "It had people coming back, people going out — and it always worked out that something good happened, you know, so it's all worked out."

Staying positive

These days, Freiberg is joined by bandmates Donny Baldwin, Chris Smith, Cathy Richardson and Jude Gold. But he says fans of any era will hear their favorite tunes on Tuesday night.

"We'll do Jefferson Airplane songs for sure. And we'll do a lot of the Jefferson Starship songs and we'll do a few Starships songs, probably — because people get mixed up and we don't want people to be disappointed," he said. "So if 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now' was your wedding song, we'd love to play it."

Not that they're resting on their laurels; Jefferson Starship released its latest album just last year.

"We've got a new album out that actually came out right as the pandemic started," he noted. "That's when it was due to come out. So rather than hold it up, we just let it come out — at least it would give us something to do to promote it a little bit. We promoted it on Zoom if we couldn't go play it."

Last year, in fact, the band played "about two" concerts. Usually, he said, they play about 70 per year.

Background: Marty Balin, founder of the Jefferson Airplane, dies at 76

'Tis the season: Hundreds turn out for downtown Hagerstown tree lighting, Hollyfest

The new album is a mix of old and new.

"We wrote some songs and then we get some things from the past … Jude plays a guitar instrumental that Jorma (Kaukonen) originally played on the second Jefferson Airplane album 'Surrealistic Pillow' called 'Embryonic Journey.'"

But while the composition "was an acoustic fingerpicking song back then with just an acoustic guitar … Jude is a master at, you know, he's got his pedal board and a bunch of effects and stuff that he plays really well. And so he just did his thing to it. So it's different. We put that on there. But that was a really good one to start with. And it still sounds pretty, pretty darn good."

Not unlike the band, the members and the music have evolved, but the drive is constant.

"Everybody that's come into the band was encouraged to sing the song but sing it like you sing it," Freiberg said. "I mean, just because Grace Slick sang a song doesn't mean that you're supposed to sing it exactly like she did. That wouldn't be fair.

"But we do try to get the spirit and the feeling of the song to remain. And I think we do pretty well at it. Cathy Richardson sings Grace Slick songs, and I think you can feel the spirit as being more or less the same — even though it doesn't sound exactly the same because she's just a magnificent singer, as Grace was, and Cathy is a great singer in her own right. So it remains really, really very nice.

"And we don't try to play all the songs exactly the same. We play them like we feel it that that night, you know, as the band always did; we never tried to imitate the record at all. Paul used to always say, 'Well, we didn't really know the song when we recorded it; we were just writing it. We rolled it out and we found out how it really was supposed to go."

In a discography that spans more than 50 years, does he have a favorite?

"That's kind of like asking who your favorite child is," Freiberg said.

"Any particular night it could be any of them. I mean, we're so blessed to have … so many songs that … came from this group, from the great writers like Paul Kantner and Grace Slick and Marty Balin.

"I love 'Miracles.' I have to love 'Jane' because she was my girlfriend."

If you ever wondered whether that one was about a real person, now you know.

"It's about somebody, but you can bet that her name wasn't really Jane," Freiberg quipped.

Back to the future

You might think that after more than half a century, Jefferson Starship has explored about as much of the musical frontier as it can.

Think again. New albums are in the works.

"We've got some more music in the can," Freiberg said. "We started recording; we got some basic tracks down for about five more tunes, and so we're looking for a time when we can all get together and actually get some time in the studio and and finish it.

"And we have a live album that's pretty much finished … And we've done a few other things on the side that remain secret until they get ready."

Yet the same drive that inspired Jefferson Airplane in the beginning pushes the band forward today.

"I think we'll continue to write about what's going on," Freiberg said. "And not that we're going to solve anything — that has to be done just with people getting together and realizing that things aren't as polarized as people think they are.

"All these people are still all human beings, every single one of them, and they have the same wants and needs as every other person. And their blood is all the same color.

"The way I look at it is, we just have to get out there and play and be among the people, and just show that really, you know, America really should be one country. And it has room for everyone."

If you go …

What: Jefferson Starship in concert

When: 7 p.m. Dec. 7

Where: The Maryland Theatre, 21 S. Potomac St., Hagerstown

Cost: Tickets cost $39 to $109

Contact: Go to www.themarylandtheatre.com/starship or call 301-790-2000.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Jefferson Starship revisits all its eras for Maryland Theatre show