On Sunday, August 3rd, Trey Anastasio (Phish) sat in with Dead & Company for “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” at San Francisco, CA’s Golden Gate Park. Amid a larger celebration of the Grateful Dead’s 60-year legacy, that moment closed the loop on a secondary storyline a decade in the making as the first onstage meeting of Anastasio, who served as the stand-in for the late Jerry Garcia for Fare Thee Well in 2015, and John Mayer, who has assumed the same role in Dead & Co ever since.

On Tuesday, Mayer reflected on his first jam with Trey Anastasio in a post on social media. “Night 3 in Golden Gate Park celebrating 60 years of [Grateful Dead] will be a one we’ll never forget. I finally had the chance to play with [Trey Anastasio], and beyond the full-circle moment of it all, the lock we had going was instant. Trey’s ear-to-fretboard data transfer time is unparalleled. I’m still blown away.”

Related: Trey Anastasio Honors Jerry Garcia, Joins Dead & Co For “Scarlet” > “Fire” At GD60 Finale [Photos/Videos/Audio]

The post also thanked Grahame Lesh, the son of late bassist Phil Lesh, who sat in with Dead & Co during all three Golden Gate Park shows in addition to hosting a three-night GD60 event of his own, The Heart of Town.

Mayer’s thoughts on the “guests” at these shows—guests whose connections to this story significantly predate his own—then spilled into reflections on his role in the extended Grateful Dead universe: “No matter how many shows we play as a band, I will always be a guest in this musical world, and I’ll never lose sight of what is the great honor of my life… Happy 60th, Grateful Dead, and long may you run, [Bob Weir], [Mickey Hart] and [Bill Kreutzmann].”

That grateful sentiment spoke to the uphill climb Mayer faced as he began his late-in-life trip down the Golden Road ten years ago.

From the moment the Dead & Company band lineup was announced just a month after Fare Thee Well, the virtue of the project was debated by fans at excruciating length. One common gripe was how closely this new spinoff followed Fare Thee Well, a 5-show limited engagement billed, at least implicitly, as the end of the Dead’s story. Hundreds of thousands of people planned trips to catch the “final” Dead shows in Santa Clara and Chicago, which featured Anastasio alongside all four surviving Grateful Dead band members (Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart) as well as keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and pianist Bruce Hornsby.

A vocal contingent of fans who had shelled out big bucks to bid the band farewell felt that the announcement of Dead & Company just one month later cheapened the finality and significance of the Fare The Well experience. Other fans were unhappy that Phil Lesh had been removed from the equation—although few were upset about the choice of former Allman Brothers Band bassist Oteil Burbridge as a replacement.

Related: Revisit Bob Weir & John Mayer’s First Jam Session: The Late Late Show In 2015 [Video]

But the main source of Deadhead outcry about Dead & Co centered around the new band’s lead guitarist and vocalist. In a 2017 Live For Live Music article I had long forgotten writing until a Google search turned it up this morning, I cast the initial Mayer dissent as the imagined inner monologue of a Deadhead:

Dead & Company would feature…wait…John Mayer? Am I reading this right? That cocky pop-bro “Your Body Is A Wonderland” kid? The choice simply did not compute for many fans. Trey–the leader of his own religiously-followed band–had famously put himself through Grateful Dead “boot camp” to get ready for his 5-show run with the band at Fare The Well. Did Mayer even know who the Grateful Dead were? They’re not on pop radio, last time we checked…At the time, Deadheads’ knowledge about Mayer was largely confined to his bubblegum pop hits and his famously shitty attitude. How do you go from Trey Anastasio to John f—n’ Mayer? How could the band let this uninitiated, outsider, mainstream asshole try to fill Jerry’s enormous shoes? 

Harsh, I know. But even at that point eight years ago—two years into Dead & Company’s nearly decade-long-and-counting run—that passage was a setup for a change in direction. As I continued back in 2017:

In the time since those first MSG shows, Mayer has largely won over the reluctant Deadhead base. These days, the Trey comparisons tend to swing the other direction, with even the biggest Phish fans admitting that, ‘OK, Mayer may actually be a better fit (but Trey only prepared for 5 shows, and Mayer has been in this band for years now, so it’s apples-to-oranges, you know?)”, etc. Over the course of his tenure with Dead & Co, Mayer’s growth as an artist and as a person has been clearly apparent, and his genuine humility and gratitude toward his “dream job” and all that it entails has endeared him to the Dead’s famously stubborn fans. For now, it seems the group has no intention of slowing down.

It’s been a long time since 2016—when my now-wife and I dressed as the “John Mayer Fan Club” at Phish’s Halloween concert to troll bitter Deadheads in the crowd, when the internet lost its mind over Mayer himself attending the show and riding the rail in a unicorn onesie. The celebrity novelty factor has faded into the background.


[Photo: Our John Mayer Fan Club costume for Phish Halloween 2016]

Dead & Company have only grown more popular over time. Even after their massive Final Tour in 2023, the music never stopped: over the course of two extended Dead Forever residencies in 2024 and 2025, Dead & Co have notched more shows than any other act at the high-tech Sphere in Las Vegas—a venue that was barely a twinkle in Jim Dolan’s eye when I wrote that piece in 2017.

On Sunday, gathered among friends and family in Golden Gate Park, I never noticed the cloud of competition and skepticism that lingered through Dead & Co’s early days. More than anything, reverence and humility won the day.

During Trey Anastasio Band‘s opening set, Trey called our attention to the reason he, Mayer, and the rest of the tens of thousands in attendance were there: “I saw my first Dead show in 1981 at the New Haven Coliseum,” he explained. “I fell in love with all of it… but I want to do a particularly heartfelt shoutout to Mr. Jerry Garcia. We’re all here to celebrate… I think to myself, I look out at this crowd, and, like, this guy came along and here we all are, all these years later. So, I’m going to sing this song now and try to stress my love for him, and please sing along, because I’ll do the best I can…”

“I really don’t think anybody else can sing this song,” he added with a humble laugh before leading his band through melancholy Jerry Garcia Band favorite “Mission in the Rain”—one of the most personal, local, and evocative songs in the storied Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter songbook.

By the time John Mayer and Trey Anastasio locked in on “Scarlet” > “Fire” on the final night of GD 60, it was hard to see it as the “Trey vs. Mayer” showdown that many in attendance—myself included—had built it up to be in their minds. Their connection was electric, their individual voices assertive yet symbiotic, but it never quite sounded like “Trey doing Scarlet Begonias” or “Mayer doing Fire on the Mountain”. It sounded like two masters coming together to channel a higher power and find a way to fit into a story in which they started as observers, not characters—a story that was never sure to continue after Garcia made his exit thirty years ago.

Related: GD60 Sit-Ins: Watch Billy, Sturgill, Trey, & Grahame Join Dead & Co In Golden Gate Park [Videos/Audio]

John Mayer ended his reflections on Sunday night’s show in San Francisco on much the same note: “It must be 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. Thank you for accepting me.”

We’ll never forget this one, either.

Below, read the full post from John Mayer about the final night of Dead & Company in Golden Gate Park featuring Trey Anastasio, watch videos of the aforementioned Dead & Co “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” and TAB “Mission in the Rain”, listen to an audience audio recording of the full performance, and view a gallery of professional photos via Jay Blakesberg and Alive Coverage.

 

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Dead & Company w/ Trey Anastasio – “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” (Grateful Dead) – 8/3/25

[Video: Todd Norris]

 

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Dead & Company w/s/g Trey Anastasio, Grahame Lesh – Golden Gate Park – San Francisco, CA – 8/3/25 – Full Audio
[Taped by: Oren Levy]