Grateful Dead Members to Tour as Dead & Company With John Mayer
Don’t retire that Steal Your Face t-shirt just yet. A month after Grateful Dead members played their “final” “Fare Thee Well” shows, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann have announced that they’re going on tour again, Billboard reports. This time, they’re known as Dead & Company, and John Mayer is joining them on guitar. (Trey Anastasio joined them on the “Fare Thee Well” shows). Phil Lesh won’t be participating; he’s focused on his own group, Phil and Friends.
Dead & Company will play their first show at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Halloween night, with more dates to potentially follow. “It’s kind of late in the year to put together a tour,” Weir told Billboard, “but we’re gonna try.”
In addition to Mayer, Dead & Company will feature the Allman Brothers’ Oteil Burbridge (on bass) and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti (who played the “Fare Thee Well” shows).
Speaking with Billboard, Kreutzmann espoused Mayer’s versatility, as well as his commitment:
When we first started playing years ago, it was with Pig Pen, and he was nothing but a blues guy. We took that and made it into the Grateful Dead and we’re doing that with John. And John gets to open up to many styles and doesn’t have to be locked into any one genre. And I think that’s why John is excited to play with us because we offer up a whole new cookie. He’s told me that he’s been at home working on our material like crazy. He’ll be one of us.
Read “Broken Thoughts and Hand Me-Downs”, Mark Richardson’s Resonant Frequency column on the Grateful Dead. Also, check out Rob Mitchum’s feature on the Fare Thee Well shows, “Fake Rainbows, Hologram Jerrys, and the Sloppy Legacy of the Grateful Dead’s Final Shows.”
Watch footage from the Grateful Dead’s “Fare Thee Well” show in Chicago:
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