In a new feature interview with Billboard, guitarists John Mayer and Bob Weir spoke in-depth about their future intentions for Dead & Company. Now gearing up for their first major tour of 2016, which starts on June 10th, the two look past those dates and talk about what might come next for the group.

Mayer said, “I will never close the door on Dead & Company, ever… I think as long as there’s a desire to do it, I know how to carve time out. It’s always going to be worth doing. I will do Dead & Company as long as fans want it and as long as it feels like there’s something on the table to try to get right and explore.” 

The two also spoke about the band potentially finding inspiration for new music. Weir said, “I’m open to any of it… I think it’s fertile ground. I think only just now have we sort of gotten up to speed. It’s a left foot/right foot kind of deal; We have a lot of ground to cover before we get to that place, but I think we’re getting there. We don’t have any immediate plans, but I know it’s in the back of everybody’s head.”

Mayer commented on the same topic, saying, “If it can state its case for the reason it needs to exist, then I would absolutely be up to doing it… It would have to come out of the earth. It can’t be planted from above the soil. There’s no reason it couldn’t be; I would actually be very interested to see what the band could do as composers and as improvisers — composing through improvisation, I think, is really interesting. But I’m open to anything this band could or wanted to do, as long as it answered that constant question, ‘Well, why?’ And if it has a strong answer, I’d love to do it.”

From there, Mayer launched into a thoroughly appreciative message about the Grateful Dead and this experience. Mayer had been working on a solo album when the band first formed, but he put the project on hold to tour with Dead & Company and only recently returned to it. He says, “It’s very difficult to get the strength to decide to put something aside that’s become your life, that is the routine…but the music these guys make, the music of the Grateful Dead and Bob’s support and the band’s support made this such a no-brainer in terms of me understanding exactly why it was I wanted to put a record on hold. It’s just another badge on the sort of musical lapel.”

Mayer continues, saying, “Musically it’s exactly what I thought it would be, and in terms of the way it was received it was absolutely what I was hoping it would be. I knew that in the nucleus there was a lot of authenticity but there was also a validity to putting a band together and making music people would want to listen to live and hopefully record and listen back to for awhile. It couldn’t have been better for me.”

Meanwhile, Weir spoke about Dead & Company potentially outliving him and the founding members of the Grateful Dead. He told reporters about a particularly vivid dream of the band’s future days. “We were playing…and suddenly I was viewing this from about 20 feet behind my head, and I looked over at John from that piont of view and it was 20 years later and John was almost fully gray. I looked over at Oteil and his hair was white. I looked over to my left and Jeff’s hair was all gray.” He continued, saying where Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann are, “it was new guys, younger guys holding forth, doing a great job…playing with fire and aplomb….It changed my whole view of what it is that we’re up to. I find myself wondering, ‘Well, what are they gonna be saying about this new approach or this honoring of this tradition? What are they gonna be saying about that in 200 or 300 years at the Berklee School of music?’ That’s the kind of stuff that goes through my head now because this legacy here, there’s a chance now that they’ll be talking about us in years to come. So I find it incumbent on myself to think in those terms.”

Whatever the case may be, we’re grateful for all of the music right now. Keep it up! Dead & Company tour dates can be found here, and you can read the full Billboard piece here.Â