Me & My Uncle

The past few months have been some of the more exciting of ones of my life.

In the dawn of my professional career, I found myself with an adult Summer between the conclusion of my previous job and the start of my new one. Knowing I may never have a period like this again, at least for a long time, I travelled to Europe.

My travels took me to London, Normandy, back to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, then Ireland (Dublin, Dingle, Galway, and Westport).

But the cherry on top was a flight from Dublin to San Francisco, at the end of my Europe travels to go see Dead & Company in San Francisco for their “final” shows as a band. 

Dead & Company is a derivative band of the Grateful Dead that features two of the original members, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, pop superstar/guitar virtuoso John Mayer, and jam band contemporaries Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti, and Jay Lane.

I put “final” in quotation marks because like other performers, the Dead has infamously played many “final” shows (going as far back as 1974 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco) yet they still keep coming back whether for money, love of the music, pressure to maintain their massive enterprise, sense of responsibility to the fans, or some combination of these factors is up for debate. However, this time felt very final – frontman, Bob Weir, seems like he’s on his last legs as a musician capable of commanding an audience numbering tens of thousands of people.

For the few who may be unfamiliar, the Grateful Dead is an American rock band known for their extended songs that are almost never played the exact same way. The funny thing about the Dead is that when people ask you what songs you heard after going to a show you may reply “I heard a great Althea” or “I heard a mind-blowing Fire on the Mountain”. The “a” that precedes each song title implies a singularity, a uniqueness, a connotation that the performance of the song you witnessed will never be heard exactly that way again.

The Grateful Dead isn’t a band like the Eagles where you may say “I heard Hotel California” or “They played Life in the Fast Lane”. The absence of the indefinite article preceding the song title is telling.

Yet, while this description of the Dead is accurate, it simultaneously does the band a great disservice. 

The Grateful Dead is more than a band, it is an American institution. The Dead inspired an entire genre of music, were a centerpiece of the 60s/70s counterculture, are one of the longest running musical acts in American history, and penned songs that both memorialized Americana culture and gave that culture new life. In Jim Newton’s book about the former frontman Jerry Garcia, Here Beside the Rising Tide, he appropriately said “If the 1960s felt like a swirl - and they often did - they were cycling around the Dead.”

I first noticed the Grateful Dead my sophomore year of high school when I heard the song Friend of the Devil. While the title of that song evoked mischief and the devilry ethos that is so central to the origins and legend of the blues music upon which Rock & Roll was built, the song itself is a sweet, soothing acoustic ballad.

The backbone of the song is a chromatic walk down that is playful, yet the lyrics and tone of the vocals are often melancholy. The tune is soft on the ears and very palatable, adjectives that most would not use to describe the Dead sound that is known to be erratic, unconventional, and prone to long, psychedelic solos. So, Friend of the Devil is a natural gateway for many to enter into the Grateful Dead’s music and it was the entry point for me.

My Uncle, a Clevelander who later moved to South Carolina, followed the Dead around when he was a kid during the 80s, touring the great music halls of America and coming to know the landscape of our massive country and its geographic diversity. Back then, following the Dead was an opportunity for young people to come to know themselves and their country while listening to music that aided in that courtship between person and homeland.

You could experience the societal differences of our nation firsthand by going to a show on the east coast that may have had a stiffer, more serious crowd, then go to a show in California where remains of the hippie movement still percolated through the scene. You could also witness the vastness of our country from its lush forests to its snow-topped mountains to its arid deserts all of which are referenced in Grateful Dead lyrics. Like John Steinbeck, deadheads could perform their own Travels with Charley but instead of companionship from a French poodle they had the company of fellow music enthusiasts who followed the Dead around as a way of life.

Ever since I got into the Dead, it had been a dream of mine to go see Dead & Company live with my uncle. For years this dream never came to fruition as I was busy with school and he was busy growing his business. But the stars aligned for this final string of three shows in San Francisco to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Dead and so my uncle, cousin, and brother managed to pull off our dream of seeing Dead & Co. together for their “final shows” in Golden Gate Park.

When I landed late Friday night in San Francisco coming in from Dublin by way of Chicago, I was exhausted from a full day of travel and crashed as soon as my head hit the pillow at my hotel. But when I awoke, the excitement of seeing the Dead in person one final time immediately hit me.

After rolling out of bed, I caught up with a friend at a nearby coffee shop to discuss the previous night’s performance which I missed. Dead & Co. was playing three shows August 1 – 3. I missed the August 1 show on Friday night and was eager to hear how the band sounded from my friend who witnessed it.

The consensus opinion was that the band didn’t sound great.

Bob Weir, one of two remaining original Dead members and a frontman alongside John Mayer, was apparently showing his age. He was given singing duties on most of that day’s two sets, instead of John Mayer, likely in honor of Jerry Garcia’s birthday. Garcia is the deceased member of the Grateful Dead who is widely viewed as its leader.

While it was a touching tribute for one of the last original members of the Dead to sing songs dedicated to its deceased musical/spiritual leader and reluctant messiah of the counterculture, the impression of my buddy was that it didn’t serve the quality of the performance.

While I was disappointed to hear this, both out of sympathy for the aging rock star and fear for the performances to come, I was also selfishly pleased that I didn’t miss a great performance. I knew I was taking a gamble by only attending 2 out of 3 of the weekend’s shows and when I heard that the floor had been set and the best was likely yet to come, I was thrilled.

After getting a few beers with friends at a local San Francisco dive bar it was finally time for us to make our way over to Golden Gate Park for the opening act of Saturday’s show performed by Sturgill Simpson.

Simpson is fascinating in his own right. He’s one of the few artists remaining who nurture my small flame of hope in the future of American music. He is not an artist of this age. He isn’t of the tik-tok culture, writing watered down songs, and playing music to maximize attention regardless of artistic compromises. His music isn’t maximizing for anything except authenticity. If he were playing during the time of Johnny Cash, he would be a contemporary of his in both sound and attitude.

Simpson’s outward appearance doesn’t betray the booming voice that resides within his chest. His sound is eerily similar to Waylon Jennings, and he evokes the same persona of a rambling outlaw, songwriter, and performer – a relic of an American past that is largely extinct though kept alive in many of the lyrics of the Grateful Dead (see El Paso, Deal, Friend of the Devil).

After Simpson soared to new heights in a climactic final song, standing on the drum stand belting out droning guitar riffs while the drummer thudded away at his kit, his set concluded with a fading chord.

My friends and I made haste to refill on beverages, food, and hit the restroom, so we could catch every minute of Dead and Co. who were scheduled to start playing shortly after Simpson. When they finally came on stage, Mayer assumed his PRS signature guitar and picked some playful warm up licks while the audience strained their ears for a hint at the coming number, eager to call out the song before the rest of the audience recognized it and establish some credibility in a scene infamous for its hierarchy based on knowledge of and devotion to the music.

Soon the band broke into a rendition of In the Midnight Hour, not a fan favorite but a soulful allusion to Wilson Pickett and the blues tradition to which the Grateful Dead owes a great debt. The number was also an ode to deceased Grateful Dead singer and keyboardist Pigpen who passed in 1973 yet whose blues numbers remain staples of Dead setlists today (see Don’t Ease Me In, Next Time You See Me, Turn On Your Love Light, Hard to Handle). It was an appropriate song to warm the audience up and a hint that the somewhat lesser performance of the previous day was no predictor of what was to come.

Songs 2 – 7 were when the band really took off.

Mayer played the signature G to C two chord progression for Bertha, a fan favorite that even those unfamiliar with the Dead’s music couldn’t help but nod along to. The bass and keys players danced around Mayer’s rhythm guitar, a role reversal to the typical dynamic where Mayer performs lead guitar and solos at will though Bertha did have a thrilling, extended solo from Mayer in the middle.

Bertha’s lyrics seemed very fitting coming from Mayer. It is a song about seeking relief and retreat from a hard past and the urge to keep moving in a desperate hope to outrun that past. This theme seems to resonate with John who in his early days as a popular artist said things he now regrets that were publicized by the media and used to create a villainous, playboy-douchebag image of the man. Residue of this image still exists in the minds of some audience members today and detracts from his talent as a songwriter, singer, and guitarist despite Mayer’s attempts to evade it with blues-powered guitar licks.

Mayer earned financial success in music at an early age, something few artists, even the most deserving, ever do. And the immediacy and magnitude of that success caused Mayer to fly too close to the sun like a Stratocaster wielding Icarus.

You can hear hints at his success induced intoxication in moments of his Where the Light Is documentary when he says things like “I think that’s the greatest thing about being in a band is trying to impress one another, musically,” as he carries a small dog in his lap, driving a sleek sports car, and donning a leather jacket. It's an image that Jerry Garcia likely wouldn’t have promoted and a sentiment he likely wouldn’t agree with if he were alive today.

In fact, it’s probably a statement Mayer wouldn’t agree with today. In an interview on Dead Air Mayer said “A solo has been, since the beginning of time, an exposition of ability, how can you impress someone? At this point, I go like this ‘we’re going to play They Love Each Other again, I’m not worried about whether this is the greatest version of it, but what’s the truest version of it? What’s the one where my hand just goes where it goes, where would they go if I didn’t push, it’s like a Ouija board and those [solos] have become way more musical than me going 5, 4, strap in, 3, 2, blastoff’ you’re already out of the moment by doing that.”

It's hard to imagine the (in his own words) reformed ego addict now as an egoless instrument through which an old music is channeled to new, younger ears. Yet that’s what John Mayer is! And that is the mutually beneficial engagement that Mayer and Dead & Co. have been locked in for approaching a decade now. Mayer’s undergone an ego death with no acid, simply music. And while Mayer’s ego was killed by the music, the music has been infused with a new life thanks to his guitar.

So, when John sings the Bertha lyrics “I had to move, Really had to move, That’s why if you please, I am on my bended knees, Bertha don’t you come around here anymore” he sounds like he really means it. He’s imploring the unflattering image that’s been so stubbornly cast upon him, which he’s no longer deserving of, to once and for all be cast off.

The band then went into a rendition of Jack Straw, a song whose lyrics are an ode to the free love culture that especially pervaded the birthplace and time of the Dead in 60s San Francisco. What followed Jack Straw was a mash up of two cover songs: Dear Mr. Fantasy by Traffic culminating in Hey Jude by the Beatles to which the crowd belted out never ending “Nah Nah Nah Nahs”. The shrill notes of Mayer’s guitar pierced through the vocals, signaling that this was not your parents Hey Jude, and supporting the singers in their intonation of the melody.

After a heart wrenching performance of Passenger, Mayer played the introductory riff to Brown Eyed Women a personal favorite of my uncle and me. Mayer used this song to especially show off his skills as the guitarist of his generation and a musical torchbearer of much of the music that inspired the Dead, namely Rock & Roll and the Blues – two art forms whose fingerprints remain all over popular music yet whose pure practitioners are few and far between in the ranks of contemporary artists.

Mayer has always been an interesting musical case. His skills rival those of the greats yet he lives in a musical climate where guitar heroes aren’t necessarily topping the charts regularly. He’s an Eric Clapton performing in the age of Cardi B who had to write cliché, occasionally cringe inducing, songs like Your Body is a Wonderland and Daughters to break into the mainstream.

The songs that earned Mayer’s introduction into the sphere of cultural relevance are more in the vein of Jason Mraz than they are in the veins of those who Mayer cites as influences like Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, and Jimi Hendrix. But it’s the latter artists who are so evident in the guitar work Mayer now does with Dead & Company on songs like Brown Eyed Women.

Mayer approaches the music from a different place than Jerry Garcia did. The former is of the blues tradition while Jerry came from a bluegrass/folk tradition. Mayer is a Berklee trained prodigy who has polished his chops with basically every “great” alive in the 21^st century on some of the largest stages, internationally. He travelled a fairly traditional, mainstream path compared to Garcia’s musical birth at the acid tests in the 60s cemented in historical legend by Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Garcia was forged in an underground countercultural scene while Mayer has grown up very much in the spotlight of popular culture which has lead Bob Weir to describe Mayer as a “classicist”.

But it’s those differences in styles that make Dead & Company great. While John honors Garcia and pays homage to him in his vocal and guitar performances, he isn’t trying to be Garcia. And that is what makes a derivative band of sound musical integrity.

Warren Haynes, who came to prominence with The Allman Brothers Band during their renaissance in the 90s, played a similar role to the one John Mayer currently occupies. Haynes filled the roles of the late great Duane Allman in The Allman Brothers Band and later played the Jerry Garcia role in other derivate Grateful Dead bands like The Dead and Phil Lesh & Friends.

Haynes said of stepping into the shoes of musical greats like Allman and Garcia, “What’s required is that you inject your own personality into the performance… When I started working with the Dead, they didn’t really want someone to sound like Jerry. I think it was important to them to try to discover other chemistries within the band. Because when you lose such an amazing chemistry like that, you’re never gonna get it again; you may as well look in other directions. And that’s what playing music is all about: playing with people and discovering chemistries.”

Mayer’s playing in Brown Eyed Women reflects that philosophy and is that of a mature musician. Someone who has shed the insecurity of the criticism that comes with assuming the Garcia role in a band as beloved by as many as the Dead is. Mayer knows that he will never be Jerry Garcia and he is perfectly comfortable with that. How could anyone ever hope to fill the shoes of someone who is considered by many to be a musical Jesus of sorts, a martyr who died so that we may have the great music that was born of his long-suffering mind and body?

In a social media post Mayer wrote after the shows he said “I’ll never come close to playing like Jerry Garcia. But if I can somehow get you closer to him – and to the spirit he created 60 years ago – then I suppose I’ve done my job.” And in my estimation, John succeeds in this aim.

It’s ironic that the largest gripe of many longtime deadheads with John Mayer, namely that he is no Jerry Garcia, is the band’s greatest strength. Mayer and the rest of Dead & Company aren’t trying to be something they aren’t. They aren’t trying to resuscitate the sound of the original Grateful Dead that should be left to rest in peace. Instead, they are taking the music to new places and if some of the Deadheads don’t want to follow, that’s ok.

New fans are turned on to this music everyday because of the foundation that Garcia lay and the scaffolding that Dead & Company add to the structure that is one of the greatest catalogues of American music ever assembled.

After the conclusion of Brown Eyed Women, Sturgill Simpson was invited back out to the stage to sing lead on Morning Dew.

Morning Dew was originally written and performed by Bonnie Dobson and is told from the perspective of a couple walking out into a post-nuclear apocalypse world. They lament the destruction of the world as they knew it, which seems a fitting farewell to the great music of the 20^th century and an acknowledgement of the musically apocalyptic world we now inhabit where, though, atomic bombs aren’t dropped, musical ones certainly are.

Alternatively, it’s a melancholy farewell to the music of Dead & Co. Recognition that in order for this music to grow, the old must be let go, and built over anew.

Simpson cried out lyrics while Mayer supported with guitar and I was overwhelmed with the sense that Golden Gate Park on that Saturday night was one of the last and certainly one of the most powerful bastions of good music left in America.

Saturday night’s show ended with a lovely Brokedown Palace. Of all the great songs penned by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, this one may be the greatest tearjerker for me. It’s another melancholy tune but it is tinged with silver linings throughout and there are so many ways to interpret the song especially in the context in which it was performed that night.

As Weir sang “Fare you well, Fare you well, I love you more than words can tell” it seemed a heartfelt acknowledgement of past band members: Pigpen, Keith, Brent, Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and especially Phil Lesh, the bass player who died this past year and whose son, Grahame, joined Dead & Company on stage. One of the bright spots of the previous night’s performance, that I missed, was Grahame assuming a bass (like his father played) to sing Box of Rain, a song Phil wrote and sang in the wake of his father’s death. Grahame honored his late father by singing the song that was written for his late grandfather - a generational performance in the truest sense of the term.

But Brokedown Palace’s lyrics could also be interpreted it as a goodbye from the non-original members in Dead & Company to their musical forefathers Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, an assurance that they can now take their hard-earned rest after decades of carrying the mantle of this great musical tradition and a promise that the music is in capable, caring hands.

The last line sung by Weir and Mayer that night was “Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul”. It was a magnificent closing line as a river is the perfect metaphor for the Grateful Dead’s music. Something that’s constantly moving and flowing, even within the context of a single performance. An evolving music of which to attempt to recreate any previous era’s sound is to swim upstream, against the current – an impossible task.

And so the almost 10-year long Dead & Company era of this music may be put to rest, becoming a “far-gone lullaby sung many years ago”, yet the river will flow on to some other incarnation that, though different, will hopefully remain true to its original source.

And just like the Northbound train whose headlights shine through the cool Colorado rain, I hope the music never stops.