Guitarist John Mayer is no stranger to the limelight, but he’s getting situated as a new member of the Grateful Dead community. The lead guitarist has dedicated himself to the band’s prolific song-list for his new role in Dead & Company. With a tour coming up in just a few weeks (June 10th), Mayer sat down with For Guitar Players Only for an in-depth interview about the Dead, the new job, and where he is with the new John Mayer Trio album.
On immersing himself into the Grateful Dead catalog:
What most people don’t understand is I was falling in love with the music as I was learning it. So it was not a task. It was not building a deck. I could’ve discovered the catalog in its entirety, but this pushed that process up a little bit. It was a little bit of force-feeding, but for the most part I was going on the same ride every other Deadhead goes on when discovering the music a song at a time. So it was a lot of learning the music.
On playing Jerry Garcia’s role in the Grateful Dead music:
It was really trying to get to what was the music, and in some ways what was Jerry Garcia? Would I be doing the music a disservice by trying to emulate him? That was almost harder than learning the songs was figuring out what to reproduce and what not to gene-splice into the way I wanted to go about playing the music.
On his favorite songs to play:
I think of “Ramble On Rose.” To play “Broke Down Palace” at the end of the night and see what it does to people in the crowd. I’ll always now listen to these songs and think about what they were like to play. What a trip it is to be in your car, falling in love and listening to this music and then go on tour and play this music for people and have these incredibly deep moments with people. You can see it in your eyes. And then to listen to this music for the rest of my life and be able to have the memories of not just listening to it but performing it in certain cities at certain times of the set. I have an appreciation for these songs as moments in my life — not just songs I listen to, but I got to play them. I could not have a bad day in my life, if I just put on some Grateful Dead music and be like, “This is ‘Deal.’ Yeah, I got that right in Philly. That was a fun one.’”
On Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart’s rhythm section:
There’s something that happens with Billy and Mickey; The only way I can describe it is this cascading waterfall of a rhythm section. As I started to dive deeper into being a guitar player and trying to get ready for this project, I wondered, “Why is it some nights my guitar playing can soar and other nights it doesn’t,” and it wound up being because of the drummers. When you listen back to these recordings and try to figure out what makes this music soar, you realize the notes have a place to rest because of those drummers’ playing. It’s rolling and tumbling where you can do less on a guitar and make it sound like more.
There’s this interplay between the notes on the guitar and the notes on the drums. When the music is interpreted without that rhythmical approach of the drums, it loses dimension to me. Billy and Mickey invented a way to play as a rhythm section. It’s a different kind of driving force, and playing with them is going to make me a better musician when I go to make my own record. Being inside that, now I can always tell a drummer for the rest of my life what goes into that Billy Kreutzmann thing and what goes into that Mickey Hart thing. It’s like going to school.
On the future of Dead & Company:
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 left on the table to try and explore. I couldn’t be happier as a musician and career artist right now.
On a Dead & Company album:
I’m open to anything that … How do I put this … that could really take strong root on a musical level, that could really validate itself on a musical level. If it can state its case for the reason it needs to exist, then I would absolutely jump to doing it. I would actually be very interested to see what the band could do as composers or as composers through improvisation.
But it would have to come out of the earth; it can’t be planted from above the soil. But I’m open to anything this band could or wanted to do as long as it answered the constant question “Well … why?” And if it has a strong answer, I’d love to do it.
On a new John Mayer Trio album:
I put the record aside last April, I would say, and just wanted to start learning all this (Grateful Dead) music, and I came back to the album in January, which was actually really good to take time away from it and come back and see what are the songs that have stood the test of time and what I can do to this song or that song to make it better. I will finish by the end of the year. This year will be sort of the year I’m both in this band, finishing touring, and finishing my record, so next year will be a solo artist sort of a year.
For more from Mayer, be sure to read this great interview in For Guitar Players Only right here.