Dead & Company Share Origin Story In New Feature

The April/May edition of Relix Magazine features a cover story on Dead & Company. An excerpt of the article has been shared online and finds members of the band discussing how they came together and many other topics.

Dead & Company finds Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann joined by guitarist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. Mayer recalls his first listening session when “Althea” came on Pandora and how that led him down the Grateful Dead rabbit hole. Producer Don Was introduced the guitarist to Hart and Weir in early 2015 and Mayer soon jammed with Bobby during his term as guest host on The Late Late Show. “We had decided, more or less, which tunes we were going to do. So we rehearsed them but, two hours later, we were still playing. We had run the tunes and were still going at it. They finally just told us we were done and unplugged us,” Weir recalled. Bobby enjoyed performing with Mayer and told Relix “the whole thing seemed like too much fun to run away from.”

Bobby, Billy and Mickey decided in March of 2015 they wanted to hit the road again and jammed with a number of musicians including John Mayer. “We weren’t looking for John,” Hart explained to Relix. “John came to us so impassioned that we couldn’t turn him down. It would be stupid. So we tried it out, and it worked from the get-go. He is really, really good—he’s fast and he’s confident. He came into this band knowing that it would be a great challenge, but he felt good about being a part of us. And we felt good about turning this solo artist into a groupist. So now he’s a groupist, and he really loves it too. There’s something you have to give up when you become a groupist. He’s normally a bandleader himself but, in this band, there are a lot of leaders. He has our sensibilities and he doesn’t have any of the pop-music trappings, as it were. We felt really good about him being a part of us, it was a very natural place.”

Phish bassist Mike Gordon was the first thought to hold down the bottom end with Phil Lesh done with active touring. “Mike gave it a shot and it worked out pretty well,” Weir said, “but then he decided he had too much on his plate, so we kept looking and we ended up with Oteil. And I’m glad that happened because Oteil is just a different style of bass player, so we can take the songs places that they don’t particularly go when we have a lead instrumentalist on the bass. It showcases the songs a little more and showcases the playing a little less.” The article also reveals it was John Mayer who first brought up Dead & Company as a name for the project. “There are only so many iterations of Dead,” Mayer commented. “I brought it up and it seemed right because it lives just between new and of course.”

John Mayer also discusses his time as a taper in the late ’90s with Relix, while additional topics covered in the article include fan reaction to the band, the Grateful Dead repertoire, Weir’s take on the difference between Furthur and Dead & Company, how they create setlists and more. Head here for more of the excerpt from the Relix article. Dead & Company begin Summer Tour 2017 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on May 27.