Daniel Donato is as interesting and proficient a talker as he is a guitar player. And he’s one hell of a guitar player.

The Nashville-based musician and his rolling Cosmic Country revue is one of the headliners at 4 Peaks Music Festival June 20-23 near Bend. They’ve also spent the past several years playing all over the country for a fast-growing fan base that’s drawn not just to Donato’s heroics as a six-string slinger, but also his band’s wide-ranging style — a thrilling collision of old-school honky tonk, psychedelic space-rock, sun-baked Americana and eye-popping jammy jams.

Before Donato hopped on the bus to 4 Peaks, I chatted with him from his home in a cabin outside Nashville. Here are excerpts of that conversation, edited for space and clarity:

Ben Salmon: You’re a Nashville guy but your band is blowing up with jam-band fans like those we have in large numbers out west. Do you see a difference in the audiences on either side of the country?

Daniel Donato: There are a lot of transpersonal values that are to be found across all of America, especially if you’re trying to keep an open eye for it and trying to empathize with the differences. They make themselves known really fast and really easily.

It’s interesting, too, because me and my band have differing opinions on this. My personal narrative is that each culture of the United States of America is really different, for obvious reasons. But there are other narratives that are just as accepted as mine, such as everybody’s kind of the same and there’s no need to really overthink it or dig into it so much. That’s a reality with being in the band: It’s a personality puzzle, and everybody’s piece matters just as much as the next.

Read more: American roots legend Peter Rowan returns to The Belfry

BS: I’ve heard you talk about how you want Cosmic Country — the band and your music — to be a place for community. How do you accomplish that across many different audiences and geographic locations?

DD: One thing is that we play living music. So each set is different every night. The way we play each song is different every night — the dynamics of it, the tempo of it, the arrangement of it is different every night. And one of the reasons that comes into form is because everybody who comes to our show lives a different day in their lives every day. They are a different person to some varying degree every day. If we can effectively bring those values to form into music, there’s an unconscious portal that they can empathize and identify with and see themselves in, and therefore they can find a community of people that are also seeing the same values.

BS: This approach and mindset of yours, are you able to trace it back to its roots, whether that’s a parent or a band you loved or some old-timer you played with in Nashville who said something that still resonates with you?

DD: A lot of it just comes from my experience, I think. I spent a lot of time in Nashville playing in other people’s bands and I was able to see how different approaches to music went down. And I always wanted music to be very spiritual, because it always has been for me. So when it came time for me to be the organizing principle in my own circus, so to say, I just kept my mind open and I listened to my internal voice. I still do. I listen to it before I listen to any mortal or human. I’m really trying to serve that voice.

BS: And when you do that, what does it look and sound and feel like on stage?

DD: My prayer every day is to seek the truth when I’m not on stage, to play with the truth when I am on stage and try to serve the truth in whatever platform my feet are on and my hands are engaged with. And the truth is always more complex than you could even imagine, at least for me. So I’m just really trying to keep and stay open to those things and it has really been such a treat.

Fun facts about 4 Peaks Music Festival

Fun facts about 4 Peaks Music Festival

Lineup: Neal Francis, ALO, Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country, Diggin Dirt, Southern Avenue, Miko Marks, Tray Wellington, Pixie and the Partygrass Boys and more

When: June 20-23

Where: Stevenson Ranch, 21091 SE Knott Road, Bend

TICKETS

General admission festival pass: $322 for adults, $88 for teens age 10-17, kids under 10 are free

Single-day passes: $40.99 Thursday, $119 Friday, $119 Saturday, $40.99 Sunday

Ticket prices include fees and camping or parking

OTHER STUFF

“Sunday Phunday” recently added, with Garcia Birthday Band and The Hasbeens playing music by The Grateful Dead and Phish

Kidlandia has free activities for kids all weekend long, including crafts, instrument workshops, fort building, family yoga, storytelling, group games, a parade and more.

More than a dozen local craft beverages, artisans and craft vendors will be onsite.

Yoga sessions in the morning and a Silent Disco dance party at night

TICKETS AND MORE INFO

4peaksmusic.com