Dead & Company’s second residency at the Las Vegas Sphere may be reaching the end, but Bob Weir and John Mayer recently offered fresh hope that the live entity could record new music together.
The band were formed in 2015, with Grateful Dead veteran Weir enlisting Mayer's ever-dazzling electric guitar chops for an elite-level Grateful Dead honoring project. The band was supposed to have played their last gig in 2023 but they reversed that decision when the opportunity to strut their stuff at Las Vegas' futuristic dome fell at their feet.
The final show of their second residency happens May 17, but in an interview with Guitar World earlier this year, Weir left the door open to studio projects – whether that be revisiting the songs they’ve been playing live, or penning original material.
“Oh, it's something I would still love to do,” Weir said at the time. “We've got our best guys on it.”
Answering the same question Mayer, who broke some fingers towards the end of their first residency, is a little more diplomatic. “It hasn't been discussed in a while,” he says. “But I have a boilerplate response to ideas like that. Which is: If Bobby and Mickey [Hart, drums, the band’s other original GD member] want to do it, I want to do it.
“I want to follow them where they want to go. So if that's something that naturally comes up and it starts to materialize, you won't see me being the one to say no.”
Weir, meanwhile, has other ambitions for the band that could well see them take to the stage many more times.
“I wouldn't mind taking it across the seas,” he extends. “This is quintessentially American music that we're doing, and I would love to play it for people everywhere. It would be nice to be able to do that because we put on a pretty tight show.
“And for what it's worth, these are the same songs we've been playing all along, but we've somehow learned to make it a little more accessible. So whereas people from other cultures may have heard us in the past and maybe were not really able to relate, I think we could do better now.”
For Mayer, there aren’t specific goals he’s aiming to smash with any sort of continuation of the band, but in the same breath, he says he’s an open book. He just wants to play.
“Well, right now someone somewhere is coming up with an idea that's so ahead of its time, I couldn't think of it,” he responds. “The mission statement has always been forward-facing. The music is so vast, they're who you'd want to use for whatever your technology is. So I think it made sense to do the Sphere. And whoever dreams up the next something incredible and wants us to be a part of it? I would never say no to that kind of experimentalism.”
The pair’s GW chat also saw them discuss what they’ve learned from one another during a decade of trading licks, which yielded some fascinating answers.
Dead & Company's twin Vegas residencies have been full of highlights, from Mayer playing Jeff Beck’s Custom Strat to his ingenious way of blasting his amps without upsetting the venue’s iron-fisted bosses.
And during a recent break in the band’s Vegas run, Weir made a surprise appearance across town with the Best of All Worlds band, playing a Montrose classic on Sammy Hagar’s Gibson Explorer.
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