In the early '60s, Mickey Hart was in the Air Force, stationed in Spain, drumming in rigid military bands and performing strict big-band jazz. Today, after decades of stretching out onstage in the cosmic, improvisational percussion midpoints of Grateful Dead concerts known as Drums and Space, Hart is trying to match the rhythmic sound of the big bang. If that seems like a lot of ground to cover in one career, to Hart it's a natural progression.

"It's very logical. It doesn't matter where you start, as long as you understand your place in the universe and why you are and how you are," the drummer says, in a phone interview from a tour stop in Aspen, Colo., with his new band. "What I'm doing is vibratory in nature. I'm demarcating time. That's what a rhythmic drummer — anybody in music — that's what they do."

It doesn't take much to get conversation out of Hart, who joined the Dead in 1967 and began writing books about his worldwide explorations of percussion cultures in 1991. He spends roughly the first 20 minutes of a half-hour interview enthusing about his latest work, collaborating with Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist (and longtime Dead fan) George Smoot to sample light waves from space, convert them to sound waves and turn this data into percussion music. "And now I am having a conversation with the infinite universe," Hart says. "It was my personal investigation into the spirit of percussion. ... As I was going back to the Neolithic and Paleolithic (eras), I started to realize we were having this dance with the vibrating universe. And that led me back to the big bang.

"The moment of creation — that's where the vibratory universe started," he continues. "That's where the brotherhood and sisterhood came from and music came from and everything that has to do with life — it's all about the vibrations and the rhythm of things."

To this end, Hart formed a new band over the summer, auditioning musicians — near his home base, Sonoma County, Calif. — who could be trusted to connect with the spacey new material rather than using the band to advance their careers. Among others, he settled on guitarist Gawain Mathews and singers Crystal Monee Hall and Tim Hockenberry. In addition to the sounds of the universe, they also play Dead tunes such as "Casey Jones" and "Scarlet Begonias" and new Robert Hunter-penned songs like "Let There Be Light."

Hart's parents, Lenny and Leah, were champion "rudimental" drummers in the '30s and encouraged Mickey to follow their example — which he did, painstakingly learning Gene Krupa's famous drum pattern from Benny Goodman's 1938 classic "Sing, Sing, Sing."

"When I was 11 years old, I thought, 'I want to do this forever,'" Hart says. "As soon as I saw a girl dancing on the beach by the fire — I was a scrawny, little kid — I went, 'OK, yeah.' A no-brainer. The mating ritual — that's what drums and drumming are about."

Lenny Hart left the family, but after Mickey received his Air Force discharge in 1965, he tracked him down; father and son ran a drum store together for a few years in the Bay Area. One night in 1967, Hart was checking out a performance by Count Basie's Big Band at the Fillmore when he met another percussionist, Bill Kreutzmann. They shared a bottle of scotch, and Kreutzmann later introduced Hart to his band, the Grateful Dead, which invited Hart to play. (Later, at Mickey's suggestion, the Dead would bring Lenny Hart into the fold as a business manager — until he was found to have embezzled band funds.)

About 7 billion performances of the extended version of "Dark Star" later, Hart today splits his time between his own bands, including the cosmos-playing Mickey Hart Band and the Rhythm Devils, with his old friend Kreutzmann. He also takes part in periodic Dead reunion tours, trying to recapture the magic of the band's legendary performances despite the death of old friend and founder Jerry Garcia in 1995.

"You have to give up a lot to be in a group — sometimes you might think it takes away your self-expression," Hart says. "Sometimes I would look up in the air and listen to the band play — and it was another band playing. It was much better than the Grateful Dead, but it was the Grateful Dead. It was larger than the parts. When that kind of imagery and sonics (start) happening, you know you've got something really special. When that other thing appears, I know the beast is loose."

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When: 9 p.m. Saturday

Where: Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln Ave.

Price: $30; 773-525-2501 or lincolnhallchicago.com