Derek Trucks has looked back on his experience playing Jerry Garcia’s Tiger guitar on stage, revealing the iconic six-string beast is a struggle to tame.

Some vintage gems play like butter and are everything their glittering reputations promise. But there are others that either put up a fight – like Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein – or, as Derek Trucks found out, crumble at the first sign of one.

“It’s a very unique instrument,” Trucks tells Guitar World in a new interview. “It’s super heavy and has a lot of different tones in it.”

But, he adds, “It’s not a guitar where you grab the strings and bend them Albert King-style. I tried twice and broke two strings!”

One of several highly customized guitars the late Doug Irwin made for the Grateful Dead pioneer, the hefty slab of tone was part of the recent Jim Irsay auction, where it sold for an eye-watering $11.5m, making it the second most expensive guitar in the world.

Trucks attended the event when Bobby Tseitlin, of Chicago-based collectors, Family Guitars, became its proud new owner. Hours later, Tseitlin loaned the guitar to the slide guitar ace for a run of shows at New York’s Beacon Theater, and Trucks believes his presence might have helped keep the price slightly lower than the $14.5m that David Gilmour’s infamous Black Strat sold for that same day.

“I was sitting with Bobby, [and] you could just tell that everyone in the room thought I was buying it,” he laughs, “Maybe it benefited in that people were not bidding against Bobby the way they were on some of the other guitars.”

Taking the guitar to the stage so soon after, Trucks says, helped him understand “how fans of Jerry and the [Grateful] Dead revered that instrument.”

“Watching the way people reacted to it was pretty special,” he continues. “I remember the first time I got to hold one of Duane Allman’s guitars, and feeling like, ‘This is the reason that I started playing the instrument.’ That guitar changed the way I thought about life and music. So, I understand the allure of it.”

Thankfully, night two of his brief affair with the guitar went far better.

“I found some spots between the different pickup combinations where you could really get some unique sounds,” he says. “And there were a few sounds where I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s that Jerry shit.’

“On the second night, I went to bend a string, and I could feel it, where I was like, ‘Oh, it’s about to give,’ and I backed off. I found the threshold, and I felt like we understood each other a little bit more.”

Trucks’ full interview will be published in the coming weeks.

Since Jerry Garcia’s beloved custom-built “Tiger” fetched $11,560,000 at the historic Jim Irsay auction, it has appeared at a gig… or two.

Just hours after the sale, Derek Trucks took the instrument to the stage at New York’s Beacon Theater. Now, another guitarist has been added to (what we can only assume is) an ever-growing list.

Last weekend (May 3), jazz fusion virtuoso Al Di Meola took “Tiger” out for a spin at Park West, Chicago. He was accompanied by Josh Olken from Terrapin Flyer, a nationally touring Grateful Dead cover band.

“I never got to meet Jerry Garcia, but I later heard he mentioned me as one of his favorite guitar players,” wrote Di Meola on social media.

“I couldn’t believe it, honestly. When I was 15, my friends and I would skip school, take the bus into the city, and see the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East. Some of my best memories! That era was magical!

“Last night in Chicago, I had the chance to play Jerry’s famous ‘Tiger.’ It was emotional in a way I didn’t expect. This is a close-up from soundcheck, just getting a feel for it. And there it was… the Jerry tone.”

Di Meola went on to thank Olken for “sitting in,” as well as the guitar’s new owner, Family Guitars co-founder Bobby Tseitlin.

Terrapin Flyer also pitched in with Olken’s own experience of getting to witness “Tiger” being played by a living legend.

“Josh had very little rehearsal time. Al changed the key so Josh had to transpose the song on the spot. It was a tight spot for Josh to be in performing with someone so talented and revered and he slayed it. We’re all very proud of him. Josh walks amongst giants. Mind blown.”

In other, “Tiger”-related news, in an exclusive interview with Guitar World, artist guitar expert Matthieu Lucas from Matt’s Guitar Shop recalled the exact moment “Tiger” went under the hammer for that jaw-dropping amount.

Doug Irwin, the legendary guitar maker who built instruments for Jerry Garcia, died at the age of 76 over the weekend (March 27), it has been confirmed.

A statement posted to the Irwin Guitars Facebook channel paid tribute to the visionary luthier, writing, “Today we remember and honor Douglas Leo Irwin.”

“Doug was a master craftsman, a visionary, and someone who dedicated his life to his work,” it continued. “His guitars were never just instruments, they were built with intention, precision, and soul, becoming part of the music and the artists who played them.

“To his family, friends, and everyone who had the privilege of knowing him, Doug was more than his work. He was a presence, a character, and someone whose impact reached far beyond words.

“His legacy will live on through the instruments he created and the music they helped bring to life. He will be deeply missed and never forgotten. Rest in peace, Doug.”

A boundary-pushing luthier whose own penchant for the unconventional made him a perfect collaborator for Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, Irwin spent time working with Alembic, before eventually branching out under his own banner to create his daring custom guitars.

It was during his Alembic days that Irwin first crossed paths with Garcia, who bought the Eagle – one of Irwin’s early Alembic builds – on the spot for $850 in 1972.

Impressed by how it played, Garcia asked Irwin to customize another guitar for him – a guitar that would eventually become the legendary Wolf guitar. Loaded with an abundance of electronics and concocted from an obscure melting pot of tonewoods, it became one of Garcia’s most iconic instruments, selling at auction in 2017 for $1,900,000.

That wasn’t the only guitar that Irwin built for Garcia, though, nor was the Wolf the only Irwin Guitar model to make big bucks at auction.

Immediately after receiving the Wolf, Garcia asked Irwin to build him another, and told him to make it the way he thought best, regardless of cost. Six years later, the Tiger hit the stage for the first time, and began its decades-long partnership with the guitar hero.

Irwin’s second creation for Garcia became the Grateful Dead guitarist’s main player, noted for its ultra-heavy, ultra-premium composition and the wealth of onboard controls that gave Garcia an absurd array of tones that he used in his jam band.

Such was the cultural and musical impact of the Tiger, it became one of the most expensive guitars of all time when it sold for $11.5 million at the Jim Irsay Collection auction earlier this month.

However, as per the Jerry Garcia website, Irwin’s masterpiece was the Rosebud – an evolution of the Wolf that featured onboard MIDI. There was also the Wolf Jr. – a headless sibling to the OG Wolf – bringing the total number of guitars Irwin made for Garcia to five.

In a press release shared with Guitar World by Irwin's daughter, a statement reads, “As the family begins the process of honoring my father’s life, our priority is ensuring his artistic legacy and historical archives are preserved with the respect due to his monumental contributions to American music.”

The announcement of Bob Weir’s death on January 10 sent shock waves of sadness and grief through the Grateful Dead community. Coming just over a year after the passing of bassist Phil Lesh, it seemed to signal a real, definitive end to a 60-plus-year era.

Lesh and Weir carried the torch high and mighty, together and separately, since Jerry Garcia’s 1995 death, giving the Grateful Dead a robust after-life that was hard to imagine when Garcia “left this mortal coil,” to use Weir’s preferred term.

Weir’s final performances were with Dead & Company last July before massive crowds at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, celebrating the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary.

Dead & Company, originally featuring Weir and GD drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, along with guitarist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, had a 10-year run from 2015 to 2025 that surpassed all expectations, playing before millions of fans and filling stadiums and 48 nights at Las Vegas’ 20,000-capacity Sphere. (Kreutzmann stopped performing with the group in 2023.)

Weir’s contributions in the 30 years after Garcia’s death created a new generation of collaborators who have never stopped singing his praises and cemented his central role in the band.

While Weir’s playing was often misunderstood and under-appreciated while the Grateful Dead was active, the simple fact that Garcia chose Weir as his three-decade wing man speaks for itself. Weir dedicated his musical life to forging a distinct style of rhythm playing that was essential to the Dead’s sound.

Rather than playing repetitive chords, his approach was based around counterpoint, riffs, inversions and partial chords, filling the musical gaps between the band’s drummers and Lesh’s similarly unconventional bass playing.

“He’s an extraordinarily original player in a world full of people who sound like each other,” Garcia said of Weir in a 1982 interview. “I don’t know anyone else who plays guitar the way he does… That in itself is really a score, considering how derivative almost all electric guitar playing is.”

Weir explained the development of his unique style simply; instead of trying to duplicate other guitarists, he tried to mimic jazz pianists, specifically McCoy Tyner of the John Coltrane Quartet.

“I just loved what he did underneath Coltrane’s work, so I sat with that stuff for a long time and tried to absorb it starting when I was 17,” Weir said.

“I got further toward it. I’ve never had much of an idea of what I’m up to, but I have always been there to serve the music and believed that if you do that, your role will present itself to you. Then it’s just a matter of finding the perfect place to play that perfect role, and I’m very fortunate this happened to me at a very young age.”

Weir described his dedication to complementary guitar playing as “putting my shoulder to the wheel,” but bassist Don Was, who played with Weir in Bobby and the Wolf Brothers from 2018 to 2025, says the style is so unique that he hesitates to even call it “rhythm guitar.”

“There is not another guitarist in the world who plays like him,” Was says. “He never played the same thing remotely the same way twice in a row and will alternate between being as raw as John Lee Hooker to as sophisticated as Andrés Segovia from one phrase to another. I’ve worked with a lot of folks, and there’s no-one like Bob Weir. He’s a brilliant artist.”

The unusual choices the guitarist made pushed soloists toward making more interesting choices – and the ensemble toward full band improvisation, traits that astounded and delighted all the younger players who performed with him since ’95.

“Bob’s very unique chord shapes and rhythmic patterns pushed you to play differently and outside of yourself,” says Warren Haynes, who played frequently with Weir, including two stints in the Dead.

“He very naturally led you into a lot of bobbing and weaving, counterpoint, call and response. And he had this wonderful sense of not needing to compare this moment to any other moment. He approached every song, every performance, with a fresh outlook. It’s an intangible thing, but it was so crucial to everything he did.”

Weir’s singular approach extended to his songwriting. Many of his compositions, notably The Other One, employed time signatures that are unusual in Western music, but common in Indian music, from which he took a lot of inspiration.

He chalked that up to the “explosion of Northern Indian classical music in American popular culture” after the Beatles studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation. As with all things, Weir approached this intently, immersing himself in the music of sitarist Ravi Shankar and sarod player Ali Akbar Khan.

He went beyond the Indian flourishes or riffs that many of his peers were employing, working in foreign time signatures that are common in Indian classical music.

“To even begin to appreciate their music, you have to be able to count in their time signatures,” Weir told me.

Weir was with the Dead since the very beginning. The first step of the Grateful Dead’s long, strange trip was taken in Palo Alto, California, on New Year’s Eve, 1963. A 16-year-old Weir and some friends were walking through an alley behind Dana Morgan’s Music Shop on their way to a coffeehouse when they heard banjo music coming out of the store. They stopped in to explore.

“We knew damn well it was Jerry, who was a local hero, playing banjo with the Black Mountain Boys, a really hot bluegrass band,” Weir said. “He was sitting there waiting for his students. I said, ‘This is New Year’s Eve, I don’t think you’ll be seeing anyone.’ He wasn’t quite ready to give up the ghost, so he said, ‘Do you guys play? I have the key to the instrument room.’

“He got some guitars, and we ended up playing well into the evening and had enough fun to think about doing something together. The next week we had a jug band.”

Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, featuring a mix of traditional and homemade instruments, quickly garnered a strong local following. Members came and went, including future Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter.

Garcia and Weir were constants and were soon joined by Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, a singer/harmonica player who possessed an outgoing stage presence with a love for the blues. A young drummer named Bill Kreutzmann sat front and center at one Palo Alto show, mesmerized by what he was watching.

“Jerry was so charismatic, just bigger than life, and the first time I saw him play, I thought, ‘I’ll follow this guy forever,’” Kreutzmann says. “You could say I was the first Deadhead.”

About three weeks later, Garcia called Kreutzmann and asked if he wanted to join a band. Pigpen was pushing to go electric, and Jerry was growing frustrated with the limitations inherent in the jug band and decided it was time to move in a new direction. The new group was now called the Warlocks.

Bass was handled by the son of music store owner Dana Morgan, which provided the band with free instruments and rehearsal space. Their first gig was at Magoo’s Pizza in Menlo Park in May 1965, and they were a standard dance rock band of the day, playing blues patterned after the Rolling Stones’ versions as well as adapting some of the old-time tunes from their jug band.

After one show, Garcia enlisted Phil Lesh, a casual friend, to become their new bassist, even though he had never touched a bass. On the surface it made very little sense, but the ever-perceptive guitarist saw Lesh’s potential. A classically trained trumpeter and composer, Lesh was a brilliant musician with a wide-open mind.

He embraced the avant garde and had a newfound interest in rock ’n’ roll, thanks to Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Given his freewheelin’ background, it was no surprise he quickly discarded any preconceived notion of the bass’s role.

“I’ve always wanted to avoid exact repetition, and that put me against the grain of rock bass, which at the time was tied to the root of the chord or followed the bass drum,” Lesh said.

He played his first gig about two weeks later, and – while he had learned the rudiments – he was still an inexperienced player who would learn on the job. However, with his extensive musical background and curious intellect, it didn’t take long for him to carve out a unique style and become an integral part of the band’s developing sound.

“It’s okay to repeat an idea once, but then I like to do something different, like displacing the rhythm by half a beat or not playing a root in a melodic section,” Lesh said. “The basis of my style revolves out of the more melodic function of the bassline in classical music.”

Lesh’s non-traditional style also demanded that Weir find a new approach to rhythm guitar, and he was immediately searching to do so, even as he, too, was learning his way around the instrument.

The group honed their sound in small clubs, becoming more involved in San Francisco’s emerging psychedelic music scene. Then they hooked up with author Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, who had been throwing events where the participants dropped acid.

The newly named Grateful Dead became the house band for these “acid tests,” which were soon fueled by the work of chemist Owsley “Bear” Stanley, who would become the band’s soundman and patron, essentially supporting the group with the proceeds of his LSD sales.

“There were no rules at the acid tests,” Kreutzmann says. “It was a place where you could take acid – or not – and play music – or not. No-one was judging if you looked right or were playing a song right. You could be a total free spirit, and that encouraged us to experiment and to just play.”

The group signed with Warner Bros. in early 1967 and released two albums that mostly just pushed them into debt. The year 1969 was epic in all respects for the Dead, however.

They released two primo psychedelic recordings, the labored studio effort Aoxomoxoa and the free-flowing Live/Dead. They played a poor set at Woodstock – bad enough that they refused to appear in the album or movie, eliminating their presence from popular memory.

They also played a central role in planning a free concert at California’s Altamont Raceway that was to feature them, Santana, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, the Jefferson Airplane and the Rolling Stones. About 300,000 fans arrived to find insufficient facilities and growing bedlam.

The Dead never actually performed, taking off in helicopters when they saw the chaos descending. An audience member was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels during the Stones’ set.

In the wake of such a tumultuous year, the Dead looked to scale back, turn inward and make more intimate music. With the band ready for a change of direction as a new decade dawned, Garcia proposed making a quick and easy album, a work he suggested approaching “like a country record” with “simple songs that aren’t going to take us forever to learn?”

Their back-to-their-roots approach was in sync with the wider world of popular music. Country and roots music was impacting rock from Woodstock, where the Band’s music was infused with rustic Americana, to Los Angeles, where the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers were making waves, even influencing the Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan had recorded Nashville Skyline. The Allman Brothers Band’s first two albums were out. Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett and their gospel-infused good-time blues were drawing George Harrison and Eric Clapton on the road as band members.

“We were certainly well aware of those people, and we were influenced by anything that came our way,” Weir said. “Anything that came within pissing distance of us would be sucked up and incorporated into our music. We osmosed it right up through our systems, and it came out of our pores and into those songs.”

The Dead had already been trending rootsier over the ensuing year. Garcia had picked up pedal steel guitar, which he was playing in the New Riders of the Purple Sage and the acoustic-based music impacted Garcia’s overall outlook and his songwriting with Hunter. The lyricist’s work had also taken a new direction, with mythic Americana imagery becoming more commonplace.

By the end of the year, the Dead introduced country songs like Merle Haggard’s Mama Tried – sung by Weir – and debuted new material like Dire Wolf, Casey Jones, Cumberland Blues and Uncle John’s Band.

They had also become friendly with Crosby, Stills & Nash, who were frequent guests at Mickey Hart’s Marin County ranch. Garcia played the beautiful pedal steel guitar on Teach Your Children. CSN’s gorgeous vocal harmonies had a profound impact on the Dead, who received instructions on stacking vocals from the masters.

True to Garcia’s vision of a quick and easy album, they finished work on their fifth album in less than a month, and it represented a stark change in direction. From the opening strummed acoustic guitar and well-executed three-part vocal harmonies of Uncle John’s Band to the last notes of Casey Jones, Workingman’s Dead was a mature collection of hummable songs that pulled listeners into an intimate communion.

The songs harkened back to the band’s roots in traditional music, even as lyricist Robert Hunter painted modernist lyrical pictures of a mythical American West, evoking a past that never existed.

The next year, Garcia told Guitar Player that these different methods of recording were all part of the learning process. “We’d been experimenting with how to make a record,” he said. Elaborating, Garcia referred to the studio experimentation of Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa as “going in and making a record with nothing at all.”

For Workingman’s Dead, they took a very different approach, rehearsing the material rigorously for a month before they got near a studio. “It works really good,” Garcia said. “Everybody stays alert, and happy, and bright-eyed, and nobody gets bogged down.”

The band took the Workingman’s Dead concepts even further when they returned to the studio in September 1970, to record what became American Beauty. The album is almost fully acoustic, with the only electric guitar solo played by the New Riders’ David Nelson on Box of Rain.

Garcia plays his beloved pedal steel on Candyman and Sugar Magnolia, and most of the other songs don’t have instrumental breaks. The focus was purely on the songs and the singing – and what a collection of tunes they had.

As the recording sessions began, Weir had recently lost both his parents, Lesh and Garcia’s mothers were terminally ill and Pigpen’s health was faltering. The sense of mortality lent the proceedings not darkness so much as depth. Songs like Ripple and Lesh’s Box of Rain grappled with life and death, with philosophical profundity that has had them sung and read at countless weddings and funerals for decades.

The album also contained a trio of the band’s most upbeat, commercial tunes – Truckin’, Friend of the Devil and Sugar Magnolia. Weir wrote the latter, inspired by extensive jamming with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett and their band members, including bassist Kenny Gradney, who went on to be a member of Little Feat, on the Trans Canada Festival Express. That moving festival involved a train packed with musicians, also including Janis Joplin, the Band and Buddy Guy, rolling across Canada.

Weir explained that Sugar Magnolia was his “take on Southern rock.”

“I loved the way Delaney played rhythm guitar, doing things like sliding into A chords, which I picked up on, and you can also hear Monkey See, Monkey Do,” he said. “At the same time, there was an outbreak of Cajun fiddle music with guys like Doug Kershaw. What I tried to do was a straight overlay of the two.

“The chorus uses a simple trick all the Cajun fiddle songs do, where you go to the IV chord, then walk to its IV chord and back. We were trying to do a rock and roll version of a Cajun fiddle tune – and I must say that it worked! The song fit right in with what Jerry and Hunter were doing.”

The final album of the band’s more stripped-down trilogy was the untitled live album released in 1971 and commonly called Skull and Roses – after the distinctive cover imagery – or Skullfuck, the title Warner Bros. rejected. With Hart temporarily out of the band and no keyboardist other than a fading Pigpen, the album mostly presents the group as a lean five-piece.

“We sort of forgot our roots during our psychedelic era, but as soon as we stopped taking psychedelics with absurd regularity and put our feet back on the ground, our love of American music took back over and those albums resulted,” Weir said.

Pigpen, in failing health, performed his final show with the band on June 17, 1972, and died the following March. He had already been supplemented by pianist Keith Godchaux, who now became the sole keyboardist. The change helped push the Dead in a more polished, musically adventurous direction, tinged at times with prog-rock influences.

That became evident with the 1973 release of Wake of the Flood, the first of a series of strong, more produced studio albums. That recording included Weather Report Suite, another greatly ambitious Weir-penned track (in collaboration with several others). More would follow on albums to come, including The Music Never Stopped (Blues for Allah, 1975) and Estimated Prophet (Terrapin Station, 1977).

All these complex and inarguably beautiful songs became Grateful Dead catalog cornerstones, as did a trio of his songs from 1980’s Go to Heaven – the simmering, funky Feel Like a Stranger and the conjoined Lost Sailor and Saint of Circumstance.

By 1986, the Grateful Dead had not recorded a studio album in six years, and there wasn’t much reason to expect one anytime soon. One 1984 attempt was aborted despite some strong new songs. Garcia had grown badly overweight and concern for his health proved prescient, when he fell into a diabetic coma on July 10, 1986.

He woke up after five days but had to learn to play guitar almost from scratch. No one knew if the Grateful Dead would ever play together again – which made the smashing success of 1987’s In the Dark and its hit single, Touch of Grey, even more improbable.

The band entered a new era of mass popularity, which brought its own problems, as Lesh described to me in 2000 in Guitar World.

“The effects were dramatic,” he said, “It brought in young people who didn’t really have a feel for the scene and the ethos surrounding it, which was considerable after two decades. We were thrilled with the interest in the band, but it just stood everything on its head.

“More people wanted to see us, so we had to play larger venues. Playing in front of larger crowds resulted in a loss of intimacy, and for me, the experience was all downhill from there. Of course, the decline might have happened anyhow, because after [so many] years we were struggling creatively. We were just out there hacking away at it, and the new success made it easier to keep going, because it gave us more resources.”

Still, the band soldiered on, with some excellent tours, before Garcia played his final show on July 9, 1995, at Chicago’s Soldier Field. He died August 9, and the future of his band and its beloved catalog became an unknown.

It took some time to come together, but the surviving members, joined by a variety of guitarists, including Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring and Trey Anastasio, continued to perform in a variety of groups including the Dead, Furthur, the Other Ones and ultimately Dead & Company.

Weir never stopped performing, seemingly on stage somewhere every night in some configuration. In addition to the bands with his former Dead mates, he fronted Ratdog from 1995 to 2014 and the Wolf Brothers from 2018 to 2025.

He sat in with everyone from the Allman Brothers Band to Paul McCartney. He performed solo and duo acoustic gigs. Remarkably, given that he probably performed in front of more people than anyone ever, Weir said he never got over “horrendous stage fright,” insisting that “those last few steps onto stage are like walking into a torture chamber every time.”

He told me that he overcame it by leaving his ego behind and giving himself over to the characters in the songs. Great instrumentalists often speak of themselves as vessels for a higher power. Weir felt the same way about the characters he seemed to regard as dear old friends.

“The music gets me past myself as soon as it starts, because what I’m doing is not about me,” he said. “I give my body to those characters so that they can tell their stories. The more I give myself to them, the less I’m there to experience the stage fright, and it goes away.”

As for why he never slowed down and stopped to smell the roses, Weir was surprised at the question. Why slow down when he finally felt in control of his craft?

“After putting in a lifetime of work, stuff is opening up to me that I just can't walk away from,” he said. “Opportunities are arriving that make life worth living, so I got to go for them. Retiring is not an option.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Following the record-breaking sale of Jerry Garcia's “Tiger” at the Jim Irsay auction earlier this month, Julien’s Auctions has just announced Treasures From The Golden Road Featuring The Property From “Big Steve,” “Ram Rod” & Trixie Garcia, an “extraordinary offering” of more than 300 pieces from the inner circle of the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia.

Sourced from the personal archives of Grateful Dead crew chief and Jerry Garcia Band manager “Big” Steve Parish, longtime family associate “Ram Rod,” and Garcia’s daughter Trixie Garcia, the auction includes its own fair share of guitars and gear.

These include Garcia’s studio- and video-played pre-war Gibson Super 400N, used on non-Dead projects including Not for Kids Only and Been All Around This World, and estimated to sell for between $80,000 and $120,000, as well as his custom Alvarez-Yairi acoustic, labeled “Custom Made for J. Garcia,” which is predicted to fetch between $70,000 and $100,000.

His stage-used 1975 Mesa Boogie Mark I, part of his 1975–76 live rig and later kept in his living room, is also up for grabs – with an estimated value of $30,000 to $50,000 – alongside a 1988 Dobro Model 64 square neck resonator guitar in a walnut finish with a “Tree of Life” fretboard inlay that reportedly never made it to the stage, estimated at $25,000–$30,000.

“These items represent fifty years of memories and experiences with the Grateful Dead – from the early days to the final shows in Chicago. Each piece tells a story of the music, the journey, and the community that made it all possible”, comments Parish.

“Being part of that community for all these years has meant everything to me, and I’m proud to continue representing what the Grateful Dead stood for. Now is the time to share these with the fans and collectors who understand what they mean.”

These Deadhead heirlooms and gear will be heading to auction on April 22, live at The Box SF in San Francisco, and online via the official auction house website.

For more information, head to Julien's.

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi have described the experience of getting hands-on with Jerry Garcia’s iconic Tiger, after the pair were given the opportunity to play the $11.56 million electric guitar hours after it was sold at auction.

The sale of Garcia’s Tiger was one of the biggest headlines of the Jim Irsay Collection auction, which shattered world records on multiple occasions and ushered in a new dawn in the value of the guitar.

Though David Gilmour’s Black Strat was the most expensive six-string of the evening, selling for a cool $14.6 million, Garcia’s Tiger was just behind, becoming the second most expensive guitar of all time when the hammer went down for just shy of $12,000,000.

Hours after the event ended, the Tiger was on its way to the Tedeschi Trucks Band camp, and swiftly returned to the stage in the hands of Trucks. The slide guitar master used the legendary instrument – crafted by Alembic Guitars in the late 1970s – for one of the band’s residency shows at the Beacon Theatre, New York.

Trucks and Tedeschi both took the Tiger for the spin backstage, and now the pair have looked back on the experience in a new interview with Howard Stern.

“It’s super-unique. It weighs about 14lbs, which is about twice what my guitar weighs, but it’s super-articulate,” Trucks says. “There’s a unique sound. It was very Jerry Garcia-sounding – like, you play it and you know it was his. It was a very 1980s instrument.”

The guitar is famously a bit of a beast. The body has a layered concoction of cocobolo, maple and paduak, with a bunch of expansive electronics and ornate accoutrements to boot (although, it should be noted, no secret drugs compartments).

It is heavy, and unlike anything else out there. As such, it proved to be a unique instrument to wrangle – something that stuck out to Tedeschi.

“There’s metal on the neck. It’s kind of hard to play, honestly,” she admits. “Guitars want to be played, and they want to be played in a certain way. So when you start playing it, it’s like, ‘Oh, it wants to play this kind of stuff.’”

Garcia’s Tiger was bought at auction by Bobby Tseitlin of Family Guitars – a Chicago family of historic instrument collectors – who wanted the guitar to see back in action as soon as possible.

“We knew that if Tiger went somewhere else, it was most likely going to be left behind glass,” Tseitlin explained to Rolling Stone. “They deserve to be out there, and people want to hear them. Those guitars bring out something in players.”

Other highlights from the Irsay auction include Prince's Yellow Cloud guitar, Neal Schon's Don't Stop Believin' Les Paul, and a suite of basses played by Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac and ZZ Top.

Just hours after someone raided their piggy bank to buy Jerry Garcia’s fabled ‘Tiger’ guitar for just shy of £12 million, Derek Trucks has taken the iconic instrument to the stage.

It was auctioned off along with a raft of seven-figure electric guitars from the late Jim Irsay’s monumental collection last week. The eye-watering $11.56 million sale price makes it the second most expensive guitar in history, with the winner also crowned during a record-shattering auction.

The guitar, crafted by Alembic Guitars for Garcia in the late ’70s, weighs 13.5 pounds, and the chiropractor's nightmare is lavishly kitted out. Garcia is said to have told Alembic not to hold back on its creation, and the ornate axe was the result.

It, along with Alembic’s Wolf build for Garcia, is the only guitar on the most expensive list (now expanded to 22) that is not produced by a major manufacturer.

For its body layers of cocobolo, maple, and padauk are laminated together for a 'hippie sandwich' approach to tonewood, and the six-string, which cost Garcia a comparatively measly $5,800, became his main guitar for the next decade.

Not much longer after the gavel went down in New York, Trucks was taking the instrument 24 blocks away, to the Beacon Theatre. There, the guitar featured Tedeschi Trucks Band's latest residency show.

“There are instruments where you look at it and go, ‘Holy shit, what has this thing seen?’” Trucks tells Rolling Stone. “Just imagining Garcia in his dressing room, fucking playing the thing. Instruments carry a spirit.”

But Trucks isn’t the guitar’s owner; he was merely loaned it. Bobby Tseitlin, 44, from Family Guitars – a Chicago family of historic-instrument collectors – is the man who broke the bank on this one-of-a-kind guitar.

The Tiger is his third purchase linked to Garcia's legacy, after the Travis Bean TB500 and Modulus Blackknife.

But like Matt's Guitar Shop has done with Jeff Beck's Yardburst and Steve Jones’ Les Paul, the family wants them to “live and breathe” rather than become museum pieces. So expect to be seeing a lot more of the Tiger in the hands of guitar greats in the future.

“We knew that if Tiger went somewhere else, it was most likely going to be left behind glass,” Tseitlin explains. “They deserve to be out there, and people want to hear them. Those guitars bring out something in players.”

“It’s like a work of art,” Amelia Walker – specialist head of the Private & Iconic Collections at Christie’s – reflects of Jerry Garcia’s ornate ‘Tiger’ custom electric, which has now sold for $11,560,000 as part of the Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame.

“For a lot of people, that is the guitar in the collection – it’s kind of the ultimate because it was the last guitar he played live before his death and it was his main guitar for about 10 years, from when it was delivered in 1979 up until to 1989. It was one of his most recognisable and favourite guitars.”

Guitar historian Tony Bacon says that ‘Tiger’ was the third such guitar Garcia owned: “Jerry Garcia’s custom guitar known as Tiger was made for him by Doug Irwin, who Jerry met in the early ’70s when Doug worked with Rick Turner at Alembic.

“He bought a couple of guitars that Doug made there, the first known as ‘Eagle’, and then one named ‘Wolf’ for the snarling inlay behind the bridge on its highly figured exotic-wood body. Wolf became Jerry’s stage favourite for a few years,” Tony says.

“Toward the end of the ’70s, Doug delivered another guitar to Jerry – this one, too, with a body inlay that provided its nickname, ‘Tiger’, and this one enjoyed an even longer life as a Jerry fave.

“He was first seen playing the guitar on stage with Grateful Dead in summer ’79 at the Oakland Auditorium in San Francisco. Jerry had given Doug free rein with the guitar’s construction, clearly evident in the deep-red body’s layered exotic woods including cocobolo and vermillion, as well as the brass strips for binding and body decoration,” Tony adds.

“Cocobolo is an incredibly exotic wood, and the maple on the back of the neck is hand-selected for the most figured timbers,” Amelia Walker observes. “Even on the front, as you’re looking at the horns, he’s carved the wood in such a way as to select the peak of the grain where it curls over the arched top. It’s very, very beautifully done.

“It’s a sort of sandwich laminate construction, but I think it is chambered as well. Otherwise, it would weigh about a ton,” she says, adding that the chambering gave rise to some very ’70s theories about why these cavities had been added.

“There was a lot of mythology around there being ‘secret drugs compartments’,” Amelia says. “I don’t think that’s the case; I don’t think that Doug Irwin specifically put in a ‘weed slot’. I think it’s just chambered and therefore to access the preamp cover, which has got this beautiful inlay, there is another little corner – which could potentially be used for transporting [small items].”

The guitar houses some quite complex electronics to serve Garcia’s broad sonic palette, Tony Bacon says: “Tiger’s DiMarzios are arranged in HHS format.

“The guitar was fitted with three controls (master volume; tone for neck and bridge; tone for middle), a pickup selector, three mini-switches and two output jacks (a mono out and a stereo socket, selected by one of the mini-switches: selecting the stereo looped the signal out to an effects rack and back to the guitar’s controls, then out via the mono jack).

“The other two mini-switches were coil selectors for the humbuckers, and the five-way selector provided Jerry with ‘in-between’ pickup selections when he needed them.

“‘So right there,’ Jerry told Jon Sievert at Guitar Player, ‘that’s like 12 discrete possible voices that are all pretty different.’ The rest of it was touch, he explained. ‘I mostly work off the middle pickup in the single-coil setting and I can get almost any sound I want out of that. And touch is so individualised. It’s something every guitar player has to find for himself.’”

Needless to say, such ornate decoration and complex electronics took a long time to craft; Doug Irwin estimated that it took a total of around two thousand hours of work in order to complete the build.

“Jerry Garcia commissioned it as soon as Doug Irwin completed Wolf in 1973 and it was delivered in 1979 – so it was six years on the bench,” Amelia Walker says. “And in terms of modifications, it was delivered with white pickups and then at some point during the ’80s it changed to these black pickups in an HHS configuration, which is what it has today.”

• Christie’s auctions The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame starting 12 March. For more information on the four-part sale series, visit Christie’s.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Most would label Jerry Garcia the ‘frontman’ of the Grateful Dead, a Bay Area band born out of 1960s counterculture. But Bob Weir’s importance cannot be understated.

Weir shared writing credits on Truckin’, Sugar Magnolia, Looks Like Rain and Hell In A Bucket, and his laid-back style of rhythm (and occasionally lead) guitar made him indispensable to the Dead – especially after Jerry Garcia’s drug addiction took hold.

Robert Hall Weir, who we’ll refer to as ‘Bobby’ from here on, was born on October 16 1947. He was 78 when he died on 10 January 2026 after he “succumbed to underlying lung issues” that followed a cancer diagnosis in July 2025, said an official statement.

Bobby was born in San Francisco, an area that helped influence a life spent mainly in Birkenstock sandals with a guitar slung over his shoulder. His biological father, John Parber, and mother, Phyllis Inskeep, gave Bobby up for adoption, and he was adopted and raised by Frederic and Eleanor Weir, who encouraged him to play guitar at age 13. This came after Bob had dabbled with piano and trumpet – and was expelled from school, stemming from a case of undiagnosed dyslexia.

Bobby probably shouldn’t have been so easygoing, but he was. By 1963, a 16-year-old Bobby was digging deeply into music. He met Jerry Garcia, who was 21 – five years his senior. The pair hit it off after an all-night jam session, forming Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, a band that would become named the Warlocks and eventually the Grateful Dead.

Following 1967’s self-titled debut, by the early ’70s the Dead – who now consisted of Weir, Garcia, Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Keith Godchaux – had cemented themselves as staples of the Flower Power era, reeling off a string of classic records in 1970’s Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, 1973’s Wake Of The Flood, and 1974’s From The Mars Hotel. But there were issues, such as drug and alcohol abuse – especially surrounding Garcia, who picked up a nasty heroin habit.

But Bobby dug in as a player. He expanded his skillset, becoming a fabulous slide player. Then came Weir’s first solo record, 1972’s Ace, which actually featured the Dead as his backup band.

Speaking to Guitar World in 2024 about his playing, Weir said: “I just keep changing. I wake up in the morning and I’m kind of different. You take all those mornings that I woke up kind of different, and you add ’em together, and after a while you start amounting to a different guy.” An interesting outlook on life and music – and perhaps one that helped him weather the ups and downs of a life in music.

By the 1980s, the Dead were on hiatus from recording, and Bobby formed Bobby And The Midnites. Then came the Dead’s final albums: 1987’s In the Dark, a big hit, and 1989’s Built To Last.

After Garcia’s death in 1995, Bobby soldiered on with RatDog, the Other Ones, Furthur and, finally – alongside John Mayer – Dead & Company, who toured until the end, fitting for a man who spent so much of his life on stage.

When Weir performed his final show at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on 3 August 2025, he was home – doing what he loved, surrounded by friends he saw as family, relaying the songs that he helped make famous to Deadheads.

Bobby put it best while speaking with Guitar World in 2024: “For what it’s worth,” he said of the Dead’s resurgence, “these are the same songs we’ve been playing all along. 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.”

Following Bobby’s passing, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio shared memories of his “sweet, kind, gentle friend”: “Bobby was completely allergic to compliments. I’d say, ‘Man, that guitar riff you were doing on that song sounded really killer,’ and he’d respond, ‘Well, I’m sure I’ll fuck it up next time.’ I loved that about him… Mostly, he just loved playing.”

John Mayer, among other musicians and some 25,000 fans, paid tribute to Weir during a public memorial in San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza one week after his death: “We were unlikely partners and that was part of our magic… Bob took a chance on me. He staked his entire reputation on my joining a band with him. He gave me musical community. He gave me this community.”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

John Mayer has looked back on his partnership with the late Bob Weir, recalling the early days of the pair’s professional relationship as Dead & Company bandmates.

Weir, who passed away last month, became one of Mayer’s closest collaborators during the latter half of his life. After the pair were put in touch with each other by producer Don Was, a mutual respect – and a love for Grateful Dead’s music – soon developed into something more.

The resulting Dead & Company project continued the jam band’s legacy, resulting in numerous tours that – with the help of Mayer’s contributions – brought its music to a new generation of fans and listeners.

It was a project that Mayer approached with the utmost respect, and took some time getting used to. Playing electric guitar with one of his heroes, after all, was both the opportunity of a lifetime – and rather daunting.

“I spent a lot of shows in the beginning wondering if he was upset,” Mayer remembers in a new interview with Rolling Stone. “I’d think: ‘I hope he’s happy. He might not be. Oh, he just went and turned his guitar amp up. Does that mean he thinks I’m too loud? Is someone going to come into my [dressing] room and say, “Hey, can you turn your guitar down?”’

“Then one day, you walk up onstage and there’s plexiglass between the amps and you go, ‘I have a feeling I’m a little too loud.’”

Mayer clearly learned to manage his insecurities. You don’t embark on global tours – and host two high-profile residencies at the Las Vegas Sphere – if you don’t.

“The first couple of tours were proving to the audience that I had a right to be there. And the rest of the tours were proving to Bobby that I meant well for everything I was trying to do,” Mayer continues when asked about when he finally felt comfortable sharing the stage with Weir.

“You got to understand, I never quantified it. And I don’t think Bob ever quantified it. Looking at it now, I think he never interacted with whatever that energy field was of adulation, or ‘Oh, my God, can you believe?’ He didn’t account for it. And oddly, I didn’t account for it – only when I heard what it meant to people.

“We never talked about it. But towards the end, maybe from ’23 on, and certainly the two Sphere runs, we had done it for so long. How did I read his signals? I just knew the way his head moved – we all do – and had an understanding of what his instincts were night after night. It got to the point where, in those last few tours, he knew when I would step forward and really hit the gas.

“And because I’d figured it out by then, I knew when to step back, look at Bobby and say, 'It’s yours again.' We were aligned. Bobby and I both had the same clock – where he knew what I was going to do, and he knew I’d give it back and go, 'All yours.' There were times where Bobby started singing as a way of letting me know, 'That’s the end of your solo, son.'”

Weir’s death prompted an outpouring of tributes from all corners of the music, with Mayer delivering a powerful and emotional eulogy during a public memorial.

Last year, both Mayer and Weir sat down with Guitar World to discuss their years-long collaboration and ever-evolving musical partnership.

John Mayer has paid an emotional tribute to the late Bob Weir, whose life and legacy was honored at a recent public memorial at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco on Saturday (January 17).

Weir, the counter-culture guitar icon who helped define the jam band movement with the Grateful Dead, died earlier this month at the age of 78, prompting an outpouring of tributes from the likes of Steve Vai, Trey Anastasio, Joe Bonamassa, Bob Dylan and more.

Mayer, who spent the past 10 years of his professional career playing alongside Weir in Dead & Company, was also among those to honor the guitar juggernaut’s memory, with an emotional post that read, “Thanks for letting me ride alongside you.”

As part of a public memorial service for Weir last weekend, Mayer followed his post with a touching speech that looked back on their bond, which first began when the two started performing Grateful Dead music under the Dead & Company banner back in 2016.

“Bob and I were born on the same day exactly 30 years apart. In the 30 years that had preceded me, Bob had become a counter-cultural icon,” Mayer begins. “I was a child of the 1980s. I come from a world of structural thinking. The concept, the theorizing, the reassessing, the perfecting.

“Bob learned early on that spirit, heat, soul, curiosity and fearlessness was the path to glory. We both found success with each of our templates and then we found each other.

“The echoes of the music Bobby and the Grateful Dead made would lead me to him, through whatever strange and nervy knack I have for sidling up next to the things I’m in awe of. What would follow would become the adventure of a lifetime for me.

“It’s hard to find the words to describe the relationship Bob and I had. We never really went looking for them. We didn’t need to. We stood side by side together in the music. That’s where those 30 years would melt away, and that Libra balance would kick in, and we’d become comrades, sometimes brothers, even if only by one shared parent.

“We were unlikely partners and that was part of our magic. Over the course of a decade we came to trust each other. He taught me, among many other things, to trust in the moment, and I’d like to think I taught him a little bit to rely on a plan.

“Not as a substitute for the divine moments, but as a way to lure them in a little closer. I guess maybe what I was really doing was showing him he could rely on me.

“Bob took a chance on me. He staked his entire reputation on my joining a band with him. He gave me musical community. He gave me this community.”

Mayer first crossed paths with Weir via Don Was around 2015. At the time, Mayer had set his sights on recording a followup to 2013’s Paradise Valley but after the opportunity to play with Weir came up, any plans for an imminent record were shelved.

Instead, Mayer and Weir embarked on a journey that will go on to largely define both of their careers, with highlights including a blockbuster Las Vegas Sphere residency and a worldwide farewell tour.

Last year, both Mayer and Weir caught up with Guitar World reflect on 10 years of Dead & Company and discuss their ever-evolving guitar partnership.

At first glance, it might seem that Marlin Perkins should put rock rhythm guitar on the endangered species list. But on higher ground, it's easy to see there is a lot more rhythm guitar playing than most people think about.

Wah-wah guitar, simple strumming, power chords, and chunky R&B phrasing are just some of the family relations that papa Berry's Johnny B. Goode spawned.

The Seventies produced few if any guitar heroes from the rhythm side. The Sixties of Berry, Richards, Townsend, Lennon, and Hendrix still pave much of the most-traveled roads. And while new avenues are beginning to open up in the hands of Andy Summers, Andy Gill, and Buzzy Feiten, it's still too early to tell how much of a mark they'll make on the grand map of time.

Since the mid-Sixties, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir has been absorbing and redefining the subtle complexities that link the past to the future of rhythm guitar playing. His most recent insights are shared on [the 1981 album] Bobby & the Midnites.

Weir started by copying the guitar figures of Joan Baez and progressed onto the country blues of Reverend Gary Davis, who for a short time was his only “real” teacher. Today his ideas for rhythm guitar playing come from listening to pianist McCoy Tyner and string quartets.

Tapping those years of experience on stage and in the studio, Bob Weir offers the following insights into developing your skills as a rock rhythm guitar player.

1. Playing With The Band

“Gary Davis taught me how one guitar player could be a whole band. I've never applied this directly on stage. It's too complicated for a whole band to fall behind, especially a band with six members.

“When you play with another guitarist or keyboard player, you're either going to dance around or walk all over each other. It's one or the other. So you have to play with other people you like and who will listen to you. And of course, you have to listen to them. Play long jams together, tape them, and find out who is good at what.

“If you're playing in a band, you have to get over the soloist ego hangup. You've got to listen to the whole sound. When you're first starting to learn, it's especially difficult to not sort of concentrate on what you yourself are doing. It's hard to step away from that and hear what the whole thing sounds like. The tape will do that for you. Go back and listen to see how everything fits together.

“You've got to listen for what a song needs. Even if you've got three guitarists in the band (remember Moby Grape?) at one point two of them have got to be comping behind the third one. They are going to have to work as one instrument.

“If you think of yourself as two lead guitarists working together, then suddenly you have a whole new different approach to rhythm guitar. You might play two or three notes and start thinking in terms of counterpoint. If you're thinking of three notes, you can start throwing in leading tones.”

2. On Developing A Part

“When you get close to a song it will tell you what kind of texture to play. Something that I like to do is try and be a horn or string section.

“For instance, on Sugar Magnolia, I'm a cross between a brass section and a guitar. I'm playing lots of triads punctuated by a line here and there and then another triad.

“There are two separate registers that I play off of. The alto register is the brass section and the baritone register is the guitar. It goes back and forth and I try and get a swing thing happening between the two.

“In this particular case the song developed because I was playing brass licks that I heard on a Delaney and Bonnie record. I was going for brass licks and whatever time I had in between was filled in with guitar. Then I thinned the whole situation down so it wouldn't be a big mess that nobody could play over.

“Once again, when you're playing in a six-piece band you have to be sparse and succinct to get through.”

3. On Strumming

“I use my whole hand to play the strings. I do brush strokes with the back of my nails and I pluck with the front.

“About seventy percent of the time I'm playing each note individually, either arpeggiating or plucking a chord all at once. Once you work up a touch for plucking a chord all at once, you have the ability to bring out a certain note within that chord. I use as many as four notes in a chord and I'll still be plucking it.

“I can bring out a certain note and create an ascending or descending line through a series of chords. I'm just playing the chords but there's that one note which sticks out. Besides a line, you can build the whole motion of the song just around that one idea.

“Again, if you listen to a tape of your band playing, you can find out if there's anyone else playing any of the notes in your inversion. If I'm playing an A chord and somebody else is playing my root, perhaps I'll build my inversion on the third or fifth of the chord. I might just leave out the note A, which is the simplest thing to do. And often times the simplest thing is the best.”

4. Time

“There's a wonderful little machine called the Trinome, which you can order from music stores. The Trinome will play polyrhythms. It has a bell and two clicks.

“Let's say you set the bells at one, one click at eight and the other at three. Then you have three against eight. If you want to learn seven, set the bell at one so it will signal every new bar. Set one click at seven and one at four.

“Times like three, five, six, and seven are not all that common in music but they're all real neat. Seven is a favorite of mine because you get the best of four and the best of three.”

5. Overtones

“Given the nature of electric instruments, there's often a fair bit of distortion involved. The nature of that distortion will generally supply additional notes of the chord you're playing.

“If you're playing the root and fifth and getting a lot of distortion and overtones, a subharmonic will supply the missing third of the chord. That's psycho-acoustics.

“Often times it's just the physics of acoustics. When you go to a root and sixth the subharmonic goes to a fourth below, which will also give you your chord. This is dense harmonic stuff, and given the nature of electric instruments, all of this is always happening anyway.”

6. Tone

“Timbre is real important. If your tone is too fat for a given section it's gonna make everything too thick. Of course if your tone is too thin for a section the whole thing will sound too thin. The rhythm guitar in this regard is very important. In terms of texture for the whole song, it's the most important instrument in the band.

“As everybody knows, guitarists get tired of one sound and go to another. If you start out, as I did, with double-coil pickups, you almost necessarily end up playing a single-coil pickup guitar. Then in another six or seven years you'll probably go back to the double-coil sound.”

Weir is currently playing his own autograph model Ibanez guitar with a coil-tapped humbucker in the bridge position and two single-coil pickups in the middle and neck spots.

He describes his amp setup as being a “huge montage of things.” Weir is thinking of asking Peavey to make him a compact system. He puts all of these elements into practice when the band's on stage.

Summing it all up for Guitar World he said, “Things are going to emerge under fire. That way you know damn well they're going to work. We play three to four hours a night, sometimes more. I study in real time, 100 gigs a year. That comes out to be a great deal of practice.”

• This article first appeared in the May 1982 issue of Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

A myriad of guitarists from different walks of life have paid tribute to Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, who has died aged 78, underscoring the scope of his influence and impact on American culture.

He co-founded the band, whose genre-fusing exploits earned them a status as one of America's greatest, amidst the burgeoning counterculture movement of the 1960s, and never slowed down. Just last year, his GD-adjacent group, Dead & Company, completed the longest residency at Las Vegas' immersive Sphere venue. There was also a cameo with Sammy Hagar’s band across town.

Weir was diagnosed with lung cancer in July, and continued to perform in light of the news, with his Dead & Company co-guitarist John Mayer leading the tributes.

“Okay, Bob. I’ll do it your way. Fkn’ A…” he writes on Instagram. “Thanks for letting me ride alongside you. It sure was a pleasure. If you say it’s not the end, then I’ll believe you. I’ll meet you in the music. Come find me anytime.”

Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, meanwhile, has reflected on his interactions with the man and what his passing means.

“There were times when I was talking to him when I thought he was the last actual hippie,” he says (via the Guardian). “Bobby was completely allergic to compliments in the most endearing way. I’d say, ‘Man, that guitar riff you were doing on that song sounded really killer,’ and he’d respond, ‘Well, I’m sure I’ll fuck it up next time.’ I loved that about him.”

Steve Vai, who had the “great fortune” of playing with Weir at a 2017 charity concert, says, “for a few sublime hours we just sat around and jammed backstage, earthy and inspired, opening up my ears in ways I’ll never forget.

“Bob was a sharp listener, and his choice of chords, melodies, and tempos created an aura that was at once cosmic and playful…where the lines between sound and spirit blur in the best possible way,” he adds. “It was an absolute honor to share these moments with him, and I’m grateful for every note of light he gave this world.”

Country star Margo Price, meanwhile, who has grown close to Weir over the past decade, compared him to one of Dr. Seuss’s most famous creations.

“He always had a twinkle in his eye,” she says. “Like a barefoot philosopher or the Lorax, he was mystical. The records he made with the Grateful Dead are woven into the tapestry of American music forever.”

The Eagles’ Don Felder says he was “blessed” to have him sing on his solo track, Rock You, and Brandi Carlisle wrote that “Bob had time for all of us. He came to our shows, helped us write songs, and got so many of us out on stage to jam and just stand in his light.”

In a move indicative of Weir’s widespread influence, a truly vast cross section of guitar talent including, Warren Haynes, Joe Bonamassa, Molly Tuttle, Alex Skolnick, Robb Flynn, Duane Betts, Scott Ian, Lee Ranaldo and Aaron Dessner have also expressed their love for Weir and his playing.

“I along with my friend James helped him find a bigsby equipped all gold parts 1956 Les Paul,” relays Bonamassa. “The guitar had a very old sticker of two aces on the original pick guard. He politely reminded me that his most successful solo album was called "Ace". Sometimes things are meant to be and the world works in mysterious ways.”

Meanwhile Bob Dylan simply posted a captionless image of the pair performing together, bluegrass virtuoso Billy Strings looked back on his interactions with the guitar hero.

“I’ll always cherish the memories I have of Bob,” he says. “Of hanging out in his hotel room and him showing me his record collection and mobile recording rig. Sitting there listening to Kind of Blue in silence. Soaking in the frequencies. Of him busting into When I Paint my Masterpiece at my wedding, and in an instant, he turned the place into a joyous musical celebration.”

Bob Weir is survived by his wife, Natascha, two children, Shala Monet and Chloe, and a sprawling discography that has forever changed the face of American music.

Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist Bob Weir has passed away aged 78, according to a post on his social media channels.

The announcement, made on Saturday evening (January 10), says: “It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir. He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”

Weir was a founding member of the Grateful Dead, joining forces with his bandmates Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, in the mid-’60s. The band initially went by the name The Warlocks, before settling on The Grateful Dead after Garcia found the reference in a folklore dictionary.

The group’s transition from a folksier outfit into a psychedelic juggernaut was a reaction to the rich soup of countercultural influences that swirled around their San Francisco base. (A recently electrified) Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Lovin’ Spoonful provided the musical impetus, while their association with Ken Kesey, as the in-house band during the Acid Test period, brought in the chemical stimulus.

Weir was initially the rhythm guitarist, the youngest of the group and known for his role as a vocalist on many of the band’s rock and country numbers, including probably their best-known song Truckin’.

Across a period of 30 years, the group defined the jam band movement and became a byword for ’60s counterculture and the hippie scene, before Garcia passed away in 1995.

Across that time, Weir became a formidable guitarist and musician, renowned for what Phil Lesh termed his “quirky, whimsical” ear and ability to produce complex, piano-like chord voicings on the fretboard.

Dead historians will point to key moments in which is playing is said to have evolved significantly: notably, the early 1970s – when a creative spark was said to have been ignited by Garcia and Lesh’s decision to jam with other players in the late-’60s – or, again, toward the end of the decade, when he started to incorporate slide guitar parts, drawing on the likes of John Coltrane’s horn playing to influence his phrasing.

In truth, though, and in keeping with the spirit of the Grateful Dead, he never stopped evolving – in his playing, his gear choices, or his songwriting.

“I just keep changing,” Weir told Guitar World last year. “I wake up in the morning and I’m kind of different. You take all those mornings that I woke up kind of different and you add ’em together, and after a while, you start amounting to a different guy.”

Weir remained active following Garcia’s death, performing in various Grateful Dead offshoot groups, including the Others, The Dead and Furthur, plus his group Ratdog.

Despite playing thousands of gigs to enormous crowds across a period of 60 years, Weir once confessed to Guitar World that he still battled stage fright most nights.

“It’s the anticipation, the time before walking out. There is a moment onstage when I think, ‘Thank God, I’m out of here,’” he explained. “I can forget myself, leave the building and let the characters in the songs have my body, my spirit and everything else.”

In 2015, Weir joined forces with his remaining bandmates and John Mayer to form Dead and Company – across the group’s 10-year run he forged a significant playing relationship with Mayer.

“The thing I’ve learned from Bob is to let it breathe,” Mayer told GW last year. “And that’s changed my playing a lot. The two of us now have a very deep relationship. Almost like a telepathic relationship.

“I know where I stand with him in the best of ways. He knows where he stands with me in the best of ways. And we don’t have to talk about it.”

In July 2025, Weir was diagnosed with cancer, but continued to perform as much as possible around his treatment, continuing to play, to evolve, and to keep moving forward.

“There is no final curtain here, not really,” reads the statement following his death. “Only the sense of someone setting off again... we send him off the way he sent so many of us on our way: with a farewell that isn’t an ending, but a blessing. A reward for a life worth livin’.”

Weir is survived by his wife Natascha and daughters Monet and Chloe.

John Mayer named his favorite Grateful Dead tune to solo over during a recent Q&A on his radio show – and took the opportunity to play it live on air.

Since its inception back in November 2023, Life with John Mayer – the Sob Rock electric guitar star’s own exclusive year-round radio program on SiriusXM – has been a hotbed of insight, offering unique behind-the-scenes glimpses of Mayer’s creative activities.

Not only has he openly discussed his approach to songwriting, and named his favorite album from his own repertoire, in the past, he’s also used the channel to shine a light on emerging players, praising the likes of George Collins.

Now, in an on-air Q&A, he’s named his favorite Grateful Dead song to solo over.

“Well, I happen to have a guitar here. Do you know this song?” Mayer says in the studio in response to the question, before riffing through China Cat Sunflower – a track lifted from the band’s 1969 studio record, Aoxomoxoa.

Mayer takes a beat to explain why he likes China Cat Sunflower so much. Moving around the fretboard and flicking between rhythm and lead, he pulls out some of his go-to licks, including some tasty descending chromatic runs, which lead directly back into the main hook.

With some helpful narrative, it’s a useful insight into what goes through Mayer’s mind when he’s constructing a solo.

China Cat Sunflower is a particularly interesting ‘case study’ – Mayer always has his mind on Weir’s vocal melodies, and is aware of what’s going on around him, shaping the parts he plays in service of the song.

He's still completely in the zone, though. When he finishes the solo, he admits, “I step back and I’m like, ‘Don’t think about it. Maybe you nailed it, maybe you didn’t.’”

It helps that his phrasing is characteristically top notch, and that his tone and feel is impeccable. He could riff a rubber band over China Cat Sunflower and it would still sound good.

The best part of the clip? Funnily enough, it’s not Mayer’s playing. It’s the fact the person asking the question filmed their reaction to his answer – and the look they give when Mayer starts to solo away is priceless.

Mayer has spent the past 10 years playing with Bob Weir in Dead & Company, having formed the supergroup back in 2015. In that time, they’ve been honoring the music of Grateful Dead, but during an interview with Guitar World earlier this the pair hinted at the possibility of releasing new music together.

Bassist Oteil Burbridge is as in-demand to his fanbase as he is professionally. There's the muso crowd that laid early claim to him for his jazz and fusion-informed fingerboard feats and straight-to-the-heart, scat-'n'-play bass solos with Col. Bruce Hampton & the Aquarium Rescue Unit, followed by uber-respectable credits with the Jaco Pastorius Big Band, and Herbie Hancock.

There are the jam-band devotees who view him as a native son for his deep-grooving tenure with the Allman Brothers Band, and satellite projects with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Vida Blue, Frogswings, BK3, Gov't Mule, members of Phish, and his own Peacemakers.

And now there are the adoring Deadheads, fit to be tie-dyed over their singing bass guitar hero in Dead & Company.

It was in 2015 that Burbridge was given the unenviable task of replacing Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh in a new incarnation of the band called Dead & Company.

“It’s so hard when you come in to bands like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band where the fans actually care who the bassist is,” Burbridge told Billboard. “You don’t want to copy the original guy, but you feel obligated to honor what bass melodies the founding bass player crafted for the song.”

Lesh’s distinctive playing style defined many Grateful Dead songs, enabling the original lineup to roam freely from rock, blues and country through sprawling jams.

“Considering how brilliant Phil is and where he comes from conceptually, when you take that out of the mix, in a sense you don't have the Dead anymore,” said Burbridge in the February 2018 issue of Bass Player. “He's that big a part of their sound and feeling, and neither I nor anyone else can really replace him.”

How did you get the bass chair in Dead & Company, and how did you prepare?

I got a call from Bob Weir's manager, Matt Busch, asking me to come and play with the guys, because they were thinking about continuing on after their final show in summer 2015.

I had done BK3 with drummer Bill Kreutzmann and Scott Murawski, so Bill and I had developed a chemistry, and I had already played with Bob, Phil Lesh, and Jeff Chimenti, so it went well. Then I saw photos of Mike Gordon at the Dead's rehearsal space, so I figured he got the gig.

A couple of months later Matt called and said, ‘You're up.’ Apparently, Mike had to pass on the gig due to Phish and his solo album. I knew about 20 Dead songs from various projects I'd done, and I picked my favorite 50 out of what they seemed to be playing a lot. Then I called John Mayer, who was already onboard.

He knew 70 songs, so we compared lists, and I learned the extras, as well. By the end of rehearsals, we were up to 80 or 90 songs.

You've called the gig a revelation for you.

For sure. Friends have been trying to get me into the Dead since high school, but I had to be older and more mature, having attempted to write lyrics and sing, to fully appreciate their music.

There are two key elements. First, the gig is very challenging, because the music is quite intricate. As Bob said to me, ‘Oteil, we were not dabblers!’ It's like architecture the way the songs are crafted, between the lyrics, the melodies, the chords, the grooves, the odd meters, and the wide variety of influences.

There are tunes that seem like a jam, and all of a sudden, 15 minutes in, the first verse starts! Or a bridge will happen three-quarters of the way in, and never again. Or each verse of a song will switch one chord.

Like Box of Rain – you wouldn't believe how hard that song is. At the same time, you're under absolutely no obligation to execute the songs correctly.

Musically, I'm using everything I've ever learned; it's the ultimate gig for me. We cover as many styles as we did in the Allman Brothers, but with a wider scope of harmony, and the lyrics are farther out as well; these guys are poets.

The other key is that from their start, this is a band that rejected preconceptions. There were no rules, which connects them to my biggest influences, like Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, P-Funk, and Col. Bruce.

I keep asking myself, Why didn't I recognize this sooner? In a way it feels like it was all supposed to happen for me.

How have you approached replacing Phil Lesh?

Phil's approach was to do the opposite of what the expectation was. As a result, there really aren't a lot of set basslines in the Dead's music. Truckin' has one, as does Shakedown Street and Dancin' in the Streets, but most tunes don't. So I got a clean slate, in a way.

I come from a more traditional way of bass playing, which is rooted in the African tradition of the groove. But what I didn't realize is a lot of the Dead's music comes out of the same tradition. Bob hears a lot of reggae and funky halftime bass grooves in his head. For example, on Estimated Prophet, Bob always wanted Phil to play that kind of bassline, and Phil wouldn't do it!

With my roots, I naturally played it that way, and Bob dug it. He's encouraged me to take that approach on everything – play what you are. As a result, I always say I won over the crowds‘ asses before I won over their ears.

On the other hand, your improvisational abilities seem to mesh with the Lesh template.

Absolutely. There's so much I relate to in Phil's playing. I try to cop his style on Bertha, but in my voice. In some ways he's like a rock 'n' roll James Jamerson, playing counterpoint melodies on the bass, and it's all improvised. Those are the areas where I can connect with him.

Plus, I get a solo spot on Eyes of the World, which I really don't need because there's so much improvising on the gig, but it does allow me to try some chord-melody ideas. So I'm playing the most stretched-out stuff I can think of... in stadiums! Are you kidding me?

And you're singing lead on some songs, as well.

“Can you believe it? I sing in stadiums and people dig it. It blows my mind. That's another part of my personal growth from this gig, thanks to the guys’ insistence that I sing some songs. I'm doing Comes a Time, China Doll, and If I Had the World to Give, and I'm sharing lead with John on Ship of Fools.”

How do you reflect on your time with the Allman Brothers?

The greatest gift from that experience was learning about rock 'n' roll and other genres from the people who created them. I learned so much that I didn't know about Black music, from a long-haired white guy who looked like a biker, in Gregg Allman.

He'd play me amazing recordings of old soul artists I had never heard. Like the Dead, the Allmans are a unique gumbo of styles, with the influences of jazz, blues, R&B, British Invasion rock, folk, country, bluegrass, New Orleans, and Latin music; it was all stirred together.

Plus, I got to play with an insane number of greats at our Beacon shows – Roy Haynes, Stanley Clarke, Taj Mahal, Levon Helm, Hubert Sumlin, Little Milton, Dr. John, and Billy Gibbons. I stepped into history with that band. Musically, it made me feel so patriotic. The Allman Brothers taught me to love America!

How about your Tedeschi Trucks Band stint?

For years, I thought Derek Trucks and his wife should have a band together, and for it to happen and to get to be in it with my brother Kofi was a blast. But when you have an 11-piece band like TTB, you have to gig a lot to keep it going.

I didn't want to be on the road that much, so I stepped away after two years and two albums. But all the miles and the hard work we put in, you can hear it in the music. The live album we did really captures the band firing on all pistons.

Like most teenagers, Bella Rayne holds strong opinions, particularly strong opinions about music. She was into punk rock and grunge, cutting her teeth on a Squier Stratocaster as she caught the guitar playing bug during the pandemic.

When her mom and dad played Grateful Dead albums in the house, Rayne would… Well, she would tell her folks exactly what she thought. She was in the Anthony Bourdain school of thought when it came to the Grateful Dead. i.e. hard no – not today, not ever.

But like all teenagers, she would soon learn that life comes at you fast. There was a plot twist incoming.

Fast forward a few years and next thing you know she is now playing a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Reissue, and it is all thanks to the generosity of the Grateful Dead Foundation – who stepped in when some no-good thief stepped out with her Bourbon Burst Les Paul after a hometown gig in San Francisco.

Jack Barton from the foundation had caught wind of Rayne’s predicament after she put the word out online.

“The next morning, I got an email from the Grateful Guitars Foundation that had a receipt for a 1957 Custom Goldtop,” she remembers in the new issue of Guitar World. The foundation had a replacement

Watching Billy Gibbons demo one of these doozies, we’d also say arguably an upgrade too, sentimental value of the original notwithstanding. Rayne was mortified. But Barton was quite insistent. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“I called Jack Barton from the Foundation and said, ‘I can’t accept this. I haven’t earned it.’ He was like, ‘You need to go pick it up,’” says Rayne.

And she is glad she did. Her old Les Paul “lives on” through the new Goldtop. But it has been quite the journey. After telling her mom, “There’s no way I am ever going to like the Grateful Dead”, she later joined a Dead cover band, learned to improvise, and learned to love the Dead.

And it was with them she developed the musical vocabulary you can hear when she is out with her Southern rock and blues guitar project, Bella Rayne and Friends, who have toured with the likes of Melvin Seals and JGB, and the Allman Betts Family Revival.

Their debut EP has been tracked by Narada Michael, whose credits include Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.

For Bella Rayne's full interview, pick up the new issue of Guitar World at Magazines Direct.

D’Angelico has launched a collection of Grateful Dead-inspired electric and acoustic guitars to celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary.

The band – whose legacy lives on today in the hands of D’Angelico signature artist Bob Weir, John Mayer, and Dead & Company – has been working closely with the New York firm since 2015, a relationship that kickstarted when the band donated hand-painted guitars for a charity drive.

Notably, those guitars featured a Lightning Bolt finish that paid homage to the Grateful Dead's trademark iconography, which has been used sparingly across the years for a handful of special-edition launches.

Now, that none-more-Grateful Dead finish is back, but this time it's branched out into three distinct models.

The collection takes in two semi-hollow electrics and one acoustic, each of which are emblazoned with the band’s unmistakable Red, White, and Blue colorway, and iced with D’Angelico’s signature, art deco-esque headstock design.

Headlined by a fresh take on D’Angelico’s flagship double-cutaway, the Premier Grateful Dead DC ($999.99) doffs its cap to the first collaborative build launched in 2017. It offers a laminated maple body, “a highly playable slim C-shape neck,” rosewood fingerboard, and medium jumbo frets.

Tonally, D'Angelico boasts distinction through “balanced harmonics” and own-brand humbuckers. It's rounded out by a Gold Tune-O-Matic bridge, Stairstep tuners, and a custom Steal Your Face headstock inlay.

Elsewhere, the Premier Grateful Dead SS ($999.99) is a single-cutaway with “Jazz Age-inspired looks, exceptional tonal warmth, and crystal clear sustain,” thanks to a pair of nickel-covered humbuckers.

Tonewoods include a laminated flame maple body with five-ply binding, a set maple C-shape neck, and rosewood fingerboard with White Pearloid block inlays and 22 medium jumbo frets.

Gold hardware is again the aesthetic of choice, with another TOM bridge and sidestep tuners completing the look alongside that all-important Steal Your Face headstock inlay.

The Premier Grateful Dead Tammany ($549.99), meanwhile, is “an easy-playing orchestra model, boasting a solid spruce top with layered sapele back and sides.” Its neck is crafted from mahogany scarf and capped with a rosewood fingerboard with 20 frets and Small Acrylic Diamond inlays.

D'Angelico's take on the OM shape is built with a shallower body depth than usual, aiding playability. It also comes equipped with an onboard Fishman Presys VT preamp system.

One of each of the three models made will be hand-painted, featuring commemorative artwork to celebrate Dead & Company’s upcoming shows at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

They’ll be exhibited at the shows before heading to auction, with funds raised going towards D’Angelico’s charity partner, HeadCount, which works to promote participation in democracy in the United States.

Head to D’Angelico for more.

In related news, John Mayer hasn't ruled out Dead & Company recording new material, and has championed his telepathic tandem with Wier.

CORRECTION 6/18/25: A previous version of this article used a headline that incorrectly described Tom Lieber as a co-designer of Jerry Garcia's Wolf guitar, when the sole designer and builder was Doug Irwin. GuitarWorld.com is happy to apologize for the mistake.

Every gear company will have a pedigree of talent that it’s most associated with, though in the case of Lieber Guitars, it boils down to one band above all others – rock ’n’ roll originals the Grateful Dead.

Lieber Guitars owner Tom Lieber got his big break in 1974, when he was hired as an apprentice to Northern California luthier Doug Irwin, who had already made several instruments for the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia.

Those instruments included Wolf, the first custom guitar Irwin built for the ’Dead guitarist. When Lieber came on board, he helped Irwin create Tiger, a unique build that became Garcia’s most-played guitar. He also made a custom bass for Pete Sears of Jefferson Starship.

Lieber parted ways with Irwin in 1977 and went on to develop the Spider Grinder bass, which Stanley Clarke adopted in 1979. Clarke then requested an all-graphite bass, a project that awarded Lieber four patents and led him to form the Spellbinder Corporation with Clarke in 1980.

Other designs – including the Lieber Speedneck, the custom Gigerstein and the Butternut – followed, and since then, Lieber's instruments have been seen in the hands of Paul McCartney, Victor Wooten, Blondie’s Chris Stein and many other professionals.

Around the turn of the millennium, Lieber was asked to build a Tiger six-string for a client and decided to revisit his past as a full-time pursuit – producing top-of-the-line, custom-made instruments. He now oversees a range of Garcia-centric favorites, from limited-edition models to the Coco series, as well as basses connected to giants like John Entwistle, Clarke and Sears.

Below, the builder gives us a look into the business he’s running today.

How did you first get into guitar building?

“It helps to be a player first. That was the driving force for me to find a more refined tool in my hands. Around 1970, Alembic Inc. started a revolution with Jack Casady’s $4,000 bass. I was into what [Alembic co-founder] Rick Turner was talking about, but I couldn’t afford one. The only way to get one was to build it myself.

“I moved to California to find an apprenticeship and went to Alembic with some instruments I’d been modding, but they told me there was no room at the inn. I ended up getting put in touch with Doug Irwin, who worked for Jerry Garcia.

“I found Doug working out of a small chicken shack and convinced him to take me on. He needed nobody; Jerry was his only customer. I told him, ‘Dude, I’ve come a long way to learn. I’m going nowhere!’ I basically forced myself upon him.”

What are the most important things to remember about making these instruments?

“You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Everyone always says it must be nice building guitars, and I tell them, ‘Yeah, but the knowledge you need is broad; it goes well beyond what you think!’ I never expected I’d have to be a machinist and know how to take everything apart, repair whatever went wrong and then put it all back together. If you can’t do that, you’ll never be a boutique builder.”

Which of the Grateful Dead models did you end up making first?

“I began with the Pendulous bass, which was one of three models Doug and I did back in 1975. What became the Tiger was the ‘Garcia.’ And there was the Firedrake, which was a combination of the Pendulous and the Tiger.”

What was Jerry Garcia looking for?

“Jerry’s guitars were always a working platform. He liked to try different stuff, which was great for us. Not all of it worked. As a builder, your ego can get in the way if you’re not paying attention. For the player, the guitar should be comfortable like an old pair of shoes. There should be nothing foreign about it.

“As much as players say they want the Holy Grail, they usually want what they already have. Alembic were building all sorts of guitars for the Dead, who owned a portion of the company at one point. Bless Rick Turner, but he couldn’t get Jerry to play his guitars.

“On his own time, Doug got to use the Alembic shop to build. He made the Eagle, but he couldn’t afford to put the Alembic electronics, so he threw in some passive stuff. Jerry picked it up and loved it.”

And the rest was history?

“Pretty much. Jerry then contracted Doug to build the Wolf. At the time, Jerry was playing a modified Strat called the Alligator. Doug decided to make something similar. In a genius way, Jerry ended up thinking Doug was the greatest builder on the planet because he did the one thing Alembic refused to do.

“He’d been given loads of great guitars; he just didn’t know because he never liked the electronics. With those Fender pickups inside, Jerry was happy. That’s what sold him to Doug. It was just a case of paying attention.

“There was Gibson spacing for the strings at the bridge and nut, but with the Fender scale. It was one of the first long-scale Gibsons. I don’t care what anyone says, what Paul Reed Smith builds today is what Doug and I made back then.”

Your guitars were quite experimental for the time, featuring exotic woods and brass lines.

“Nobody was doing that kind of stuff. A lot of the exotic woods came from Doug’s time at Alembic. We were using purpleheart and padauk, plus other woods you probably shouldn’t use.

“We were always experimenting. We got the Wolf back for repair and had no idea what to do next. There was a Travis Bean [guitar] on the bench. Nobody was happy because Jerry had been playing that instead.

“I inspected the thing and noticed it weighed a lot. So we decided to stop worrying about weight and put together a hardwood laminate design. That’s how the Tiger came to be. Doug’s vision was a laminate sandwich with the brass going around the side. The only thing I had to do was bleed out the woods before assembly. The design and shape of the guitar was also mine. It took off – 40 years later!”

Which guitar is your best seller?

“Last year I sold more Garcias, which are high-end. Before that, I was selling one a year and then tons of the Coco models. The Spellcaster basses were going out the door for a while. For me, the Garcia stuff sells more than other stuff like the Butternut guitar. I’ve only ever made one Gigerstein and don’t plan to do any more, but it was amazing to work with [Swiss artist] H.R. Giger.”

What makes your guitars different from everything else out there?

“Lots of people build, but not many of them instill themselves into everything they make. With my creations, I can promise you that’s what happens. A piece of me goes into every guitar. I haven’t built a single guitar where I didn’t shed a drop of blood. I will cut myself or get a splinter or prick my finger at some point.

“I only make one of each guitar. There were 53 Spellbinder basses from 1980, and I did 24 Garcias for the Grateful Dead’s 50th [anniversary] – 12 Tigers and 12 Wolf models, all made out of sustainable materials. Other than that, it’s always one of everything. The way I look at it, there are other people doing replicas of this stuff. Mine are all originals.”

• See Lieber Guitars for more details of these incredible guitars.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

After 10 years of playing electric guitar together, John Mayer and Bob Weir have forged a truly formidable guitar partnership in Dead & Company – and they’ve learned a lot about one another in the process, too.

Now, as the dust on their second mega-selling Las Vegas Sphere residency settles, an interview clip of Don Was has resurfaced, with the revered producer and musician revealing how Mayer got the gig in the first place – and how he helped facilitate the group's formation.

Was' musical network stretches far and wide, and in 2015 he proved to be the missing link between Mayer and a band he grew up adoring.

Mayer and Was worked on two records prior to the onset of the Dead & Company days: 2012's Born and Raised and Paradise Valley, which arrived a year later. A third album together, Was says, was in the works, but ultimately got kicked to the curb when the opportunity of working with the Grateful Dead’s surviving members arose.

“He was a huge fan,” Was tells the Go with Elmo podcast. “I'd get in the car and drive him to the studio and stuff, and he always had the Grateful Dead channel and Sirius on. He could identify, ‘No, that's not ’78 because Jerry's playing through this pedal,’ or something like that.

“He'd locked out Capitol Studios with an eye towards making a new record, and Bobby and Mickey [Hart, drums] came to see me,” he continues. “So I called him up. I said, ‘You better come up here.’

“He was very eloquent about how much he loved the Grateful Dead and why. They were kind of taken aback, so they invited him to come on up and play sometime. When the opportunity cemented itself for him to go play with those guys, three months later, he shut down the record, cleared out all his stuff, went home, and cracked the code on the Grateful Dead.”

Anyone vaguely familiar with John Mayer’s work will know just how exacting a man he is. Just ask esteemed guitarist and educator Tomo Fujita, who had told him to quit Berklee and come back when he'd written a hit record. He took that advice to heart and carried it out to the letter.

To Mayer, this wasn’t just a chance to kick back and jam with his idols, it was a job interview, and he didn’t waste a moment preparing for it.

“Particularly,” Was says of Mayer's tone-cracking mission, “what was behind what Jerry [Garcia] was doing.

“He knew not to do karaoke. He really studied. I drove up there with him; we got a couple of airstreams, parked in the parking lot of Bobby’s studio, and we stayed about four days. At the end of the fourth day, they came in and said, ‘All right, let's do this. You'll be a partner. You'll be in the thing.

“That’s something I learned from John,” he concludes. “Don't go in unprepared.”

Dead & Company had played what was billed as their final-ever show back in 2023, but the prospect of a stint at Las Vegas’ ultra-futuristic Sphere venue brought the band out of retirement. Now, it seems those two residencies may serve as a prelude to a new era for the band, rather than a final swan song.

Bob Weir and John Mayer are leaving the door open to recording music together, and more gigs don’t seem out of the question either.

“The mission statement has always been forward-facing,” Mayer ascertains. “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.”

A decade earlier, the prospect of him playing with an incarnation of the Grateful Dead would have sounded like wild fancy to Mayer. Was changed the course of the guitarist’s career by connecting them, but nailing the gig lay solely on his shoulders.

His tireless work ethic was shown again as he came towards the end of the first Sphere run. With a finger broken, he spent every day practicing guitar using the other three fingers as he looked to reconfigure his playing style.

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.

This year marks a decade since John Mayer teamed up with Grateful Dead singer and guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann to breathe new life into the band’s iconic catalog under the Dead & Company moniker.

At the time, it felt like a curious, if intriguing combination – a guitar prodigy with pop chops pairing with the legendary Dead members. But what has unfolded over the past 10 years is nothing short of remarkable.

The band, rounded out by bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and, more recently, drummer Jay Lane (who stepped in full time for Kreutzmann in 2023), has transcended its incongruous origins and become a genuine force in its own right, establishing itself as a must-see summer stadium draw – one that’s kept the Grateful Dead’s exploratory, improvisatory and highly musical spirit alive while forging a path forward with an energy all its own.

In 2023, Dead & Company embarked on what was billed as the “Final Tour,” capping a years-long run that saw the group play to an estimated four million-plus fans since those first 2015 shows. But while it seemed like the ’23 outing was it for this other one, Dead & Company soon set out to explore a new frontier: a residency at Sphere, the cutting-edge Las Vegas venue known for its state-of-the-art technology.

Among its many innovations is a massive 160,000-square-foot LED screen that encircles both the audience and the band, along with an unparalleled sound system – the largest concert-grade audio setup in the world – featuring spatial audio, haptic technology and more than 167,000 individual speaker drivers.

At first glance, this ultra-modern setting might seem a mismatch for a legacy band with deep roots in traditional music. But it’s actually a perfect pairing. “We were doing liquid projections on screens and stuff like that, where the visuals could move in time with the music, back in the ‘Acid Test’ days,” Weir points out. Those days, it’s worth noting, were more than a half-century ago.

The Sphere residency, titled “Dead Forever,” spanned 30 shows from May to August in 2024. Mayer was the driving creative force behind the production, and the singer and guitarist skillfully balanced tradition and innovation, staying true to the band’s roots while embracing the futuristic nature of Sphere’s immersive visuals and sonics.

As he puts it to Guitar World, the goal was to find a sweet spot “between Monster Mash and 2001: A Space Odyssey.” It’s a fine line, but one he and the band navigated expertly. Sphere’s technology allowed Dead & Company to create breathtaking, dynamic visuals that amplified their performances, but Mayer and the band ensured the feeling stayed grounded – warm, human and connected to the core of their music.

Dead & Company’s run at Sphere was an incredible success, and it’s possible that of the handful of bands who have appeared there, they may have been the most effective at weaving the venue’s unique features into the fabric of their performance. So it wasn’t surprising that they decided to return.

In March of this year, the band launched a second Dead Forever residency, scheduled to run until May. This time, they’re coming in as Sphere veterans. “So we’ve already learned what we can get away with and what we can’t get away with,” Weir says.

For Mayer, it’s an opportunity to further the blend of “heritage and futurism” they explored last year. Sphere, he says, “really wants to be futuristic, so it’s cool to also pull the storytelling back into something really human.

”This run has even more beautiful, situational places to hang out under the Sphere; there’s a lot more feeling like you’re somewhere organic and warm. It’s an opportunity to make more worlds out of the ones we liked a lot and really fell in love with during the shows last year, where you go, ‘Ahh, here it is…’”

Ultimately, the Sphere shows are a natural extension of what Dead & Company is all about. “With this band, we’re able to open a portal,” Mayer says. “And if it’s not a portal to go back in time, it’s a portal to enter those feelings that you didn’t think you could go back and feel again.” Those feelings, much like the music, clearly still strike a deep chord with fans.

Prior to the kickoff of the current residency, Mayer and Weir sat down with Guitar World to discuss a range of topics, including adjusting to the audio and visual demands of the Sphere experience, their guitar playing and gear, and how their musical partnership has evolved over the past decade together.

They also touched on the possibility of, for the first time, bringing Dead & Company’s music from the stage to the studio. Two years after the Final Tour, it’s clear that the phrase “Dead Forever” continues to ring true.”

You’re back for Round 2 at Sphere. I can imagine that building and pulling off the shows last year was a massive undertaking. Did any lessons or insights from that experience shape how you approached this one?

John Mayer: “I suppose one thing I learned was that in terms of sensory experience, the audience can handle more. The first time through, I was being very careful about not disorienting anybody with what the Sphere does or can do.

“But I think I learned that having your senses pushed a little further, but not to the breaking point, the audience can handle it – and wants a little more of it. In terms of motion [of the visuals], you do have to keep it under a certain threshold. But as far as what kind of motion, I feel like people want a little bit of a thrill ride. So we’ll push that just a little bit more this time.”

The concert experience at Sphere is often looked at from the fan’s perspective, but I’m curious – what’s it like for you onstage, especially in comparison to a regular Dead & Company show?

Bob Weir: “As far as the experience of playing, I expect it is different, but I can’t really quantify or qualify how it’s different. We still have our sight lines. John and I still look at each other, we still take each other’s facial expressions into consideration when we’re playing something, all that stuff.

“For what it’s worth, I can’t see what everybody else is seeing of John, which is, you know, his head 30-feet wide on the screen behind me. [Laughs] That particular camera angle, that’s not how I’m seeing him. But that would be great if I could watch him like that, if I could see what everybody else is seeing…”

Is there anything unique about how you interact with the audience, or with the visuals?

Mayer: “The first show, I remember we played Mississippi Half-Step and the crowd was roaring. The energy really hyped us up – so much so that I think we kind of had a hard time putting the song where we wanted to put the song. But over the next two shows we began to learn that the Sphere is our friend. It’s our colleague.

“We know the crowd’s going to ooh and aah, so we don’t have to – we can continue to keep our energy where we want it. Then the Sphere becomes kind of like this big elephant at the circus that we work with. I think that’s a pretty fair metaphor. It’s this massive thing you have to respect, but it’s a part of our show. You almost want to pat the side of the Sphere and go, ‘Good girl, good girl.’

“So it took us about one weekend to learn how to keep our breathing slow, keep our tempo right, even though we know that what’s happening out there is incredibly dynamic. We had to learn to separate the musical dynamic from the visual dynamic.

“But when we figured that out, then things got sensational, because we could continue to make the music at our own tempo, in our own dynamic, knowing that it was merging with what was happening out there.”

Did you have a favorite moment in the show during the first run?

Mayer: “There are only a couple of times where I will let myself be a part of the experience the fans are having. One particular part that I was just so mesmerized by was when we return back to Earth [toward the end of the show], and we move through this particle field.

“I look up and feel it come over my head, and I take that time every night to be swept away by it. It’s like, for one moment I get high on my own supply. [Laughs] And then I go back to the thing.”

How about you, Bob? Are there times when you find yourself getting caught up in the visuals?

Weir: “Yes… but really, when I walk onstage, I walk into a hallucinogenic realm. I’m gone. I’m as out-there as a fellow gets, and I’m not sure I’m even going to notice the tech. We do have to watch the visuals at the beginning and the end of the show, because we have to time everything.

“But the visuals probably hit anybody else in that place harder than they do the people onstage, because the average guy onstage is in a hallucinogenic realm to begin with. That’s the nature of our business.”

What has been your experience from an audio perspective?

Weir: “Well, the sound is real good in there. But I did have to make my peace with in-ears. We have to use them, because the Sphere is basically the world’s largest hard, parabolic, reflective surface, and it’s all pointed directly back at you.

“And with that comes a report that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of a second that’s every bit as loud as anything that happens onstage. And it’s almost always out of time with the song you’re playing. So there’s various things you can do.

“Overhead microphones, for instance, will hear nothing but slapback. And if you have them in your [onstage] mix, if you’re listening to the drums, for instance, you’re getting at least half slapback. And that’s not what you want to hear, because that slapback is almost always out of time with the song. So we went to electronic cymbals, and we didn’t have to deal with overhead microphones. And we went to in-ears.”

Other guitarists who’ve performed at Sphere, like the Edge and Phish’s Trey Anastasio, have noted that the venue’s unique design makes it challenging, and also somewhat unnecessary, to use traditional amps onstage. The Edge, in particular, mentioned switching from tube amps to Universal Audio amp sim pedals for his setup.

Weir: “Well, you know, at first I had all this stuff with me – an iso chamber with a guitar amp in it, all of that. But very quickly, I was done with it. It was just not necessary.

“Instead, I’ve been using the Universal Audio Ruby, which is basically a [Vox] AC30 in a stompbox. I couldn’t have imagined when I first walked in there that that was going to be pretty much all I’d need. It turns out it was pretty much all I needed. [Laughs]”

Was that a big change from, say, your rig on Dead & Company’s 2023 stadium tour?

Weir: “Actually, on that tour I was using the UA Ruby pretty predominantly, too. In fact, I might have been using it pretty much exclusively. Now, I use a little bit of signal processing, but not much.

“With the amount of high-end that I use on that Ruby, I find that signal processing in general is not a good idea, because I can articulate all the information from the string better if I just let the string speak.

“Other than that, I used compression – I have UA’s 1176 [Studio Compressor pedal], a tiny bit of reverb, and that’s pretty much it.”

John, you actually still had tube amps onstage with you during the first run at Sphere.

Mayer: “I grew up playing tube amps. I grew up feeling the combustion. I really like the UA Enigmatic [’82 Overdrive Special Amp] pedal, and I think if you’re a young guitar player, that’s money well spent. But my style of playing relies on a certain amount of pushback. I need shocks on the tires. And I think that can only come from the ignition inside of a tube.”

During last year’s residency, you shared a video on your socials that gained a lot of attention, showing your guitar sound coming from speaker cabinets inside a shipping crate on the loading dock of the Sphere, which was mic’d up so that the audience heard it as part of the band performance.

Mayer: “This is going to kind of merge into a very hot topic among guitar players – something they like to call ‘pushing air’. The Pushing Air Debate.

“For me, I know for a fact that I need a larger space for soundwaves to come out of a guitar amp and be caught a little bit further away than an iso box allows. There has to be more of a comet tail so that the note can bloom a little bit.

“So we had to devise a system that would give a little more space to the speakers. And what we decided to do was use shipping crates as much larger iso boxes – kind of a ‘mini room’. In fact, Jeremy Nielsen, my guitar tech, decorated the inside of the box as if it were a small-scale studio, because that’s how much of a genius he is.

“That gave us some dimension so that while I was playing, there was just that extra little bit of space for the note to grow. So my amps were onstage, but the speakers were in these boxes on the loading dock of the Sphere.”

It looked like you had a few Dumble amps onstage, as well as a Fender Twin Reverb.

Mayer: “Yeah. I really like the Small Special, and then there was an Overdrive Special and maybe a Dumble-modded Bandmaster, I believe. And the [Fender] Twin. Those are onstage, and the speaker cabinets are in the crates on the loading dock.

“Which… if you deduce from one more level of reasoning, the cabs onstage, let’s just say they’re there to help raise the heads of the amps so that I can reach them with my hand. [Laughs] Otherwise they’d be sitting on the ground.

“But if you walk through the back of the loading dock of the Sphere while the show is happening, you will hear my guitar blaring out of a pile of road cases. That’s what Derek [Featherstone, Dead & Company tour director/FOH engineer] is mic’ing up to use in the room.”

Bob, your main guitar lately has been a Fender Stratocaster. But back in the Grateful Dead days, you weren’t really known as a Strat player. What drew you to the Strat?

Weir: “The one I’m using is a ’64. As for what drew me to playing a Strat, I can’t really say. Every day your tastes change. And it was just one morning, I sort of woke up and I didn’t want to hear the double-coil sound anymore.

“I’d been playing humbucker guitars for a while, and then I woke up and I wanted to play on a single coil. And you know, single coils, they get interfered with and all that kind of stuff, but they are richer [sounding].”

At The Sphere you alternated the Strat with a few other guitars – your signature D’Angelico semi-hollowbody, for one, and several Gibson Les Pauls, including a goldtop and a Black Beauty.

Weir: “My D’Angelico – it’s rich, too. The pickups get good high end, and it’s pretty versatile. There’s a lot you can do with it, a lot of sounds you can pull out. And I’ve actually got three old goldtops and a few more black ones. The goldtops, Joe Bonamassa found one, maybe two of them, for me.

“And then the other one, I was talking to my luthier and he was touting the praises of Gibson’s reissue of the ’50s goldtop. And I just said to myself, ‘Okay, I’ve gotta see what this is all about.’ That was my first one. And I was smitten by the goldtop, especially with the P90s in it. So now I have that one and the two older ones.”

John, you pulled out several unique guitars during the first Sphere residency, including a Fender Custom Shop replica of Jerry Garcia’s famous modded “Alligator” Stratocaster and a white Custom Shop Strat that had previously belonged to Jeff Beck. But you stuck primarily to two trusty PRS models – a McCarty 594 and, mostly, the “Dead Spec” version of your signature Silver Sky.

Mayer: “Yes. Basically 90 percent of the show is handled by the Dead Spec, and then there’s particular cases for the 594. That guitar, I call it the blowtorch.

“When I want to do late-’60s-Fillmore-acid-test Grateful Dead, kind of SG/Les Paul-burning stuff, the 594 is perfect for that. It also has probably the best humbucker neck pickup I’ve ever played on a guitar. So when I want to do that barrelhouse thing, I pick up that guitar.”

The Dead Spec, of course, is a customized take on your signature guitar, drawing inspiration from Jerry’s original Alligator. Your model has several modifications, including an Alembic Blaster preamp that boosts the signal with 3-14 dB of gain, along with brass hardware to enhance brightness and resonance. Jerry’s tone is not an easy thing to approximate, but I imagine having this guitar helps.

Mayer: “There are certain inalienable details in Jerry’s playing that are part of the music. It’s like if you were going to play Miles Davis music you have to have a mute for your trumpet.

“You could say that’s just a gear thing, but it’s part of the vocabulary. So if you’re playing Jerry’s stuff, you’ve got to push the front end of the amp a little bit more than you normally would.

“And then you’ve got to get a little more accent on the high end so that you can really pick those notes. Because there’s so much nuance in what Jerry was doing; he would use dynamics as a way to create motifs, almost like a horn player. So what you have to do is put a certain amount of boost in your signal so that you’re giving the amp slightly more in the front end than the makers intended.

“If you play at, like, a five out of a 10, then the amp is happy. That’s where you get that 'steel drum' thing. And if you hit it a little hard, you’re pushing the amp more than it wants to be pushed. If you can get certain notes to hit the red, that’s the magic, man. That’s where you can really have a blast.”

I assume the Alembic boost helps with that.

Mayer: “Yes, but that little trim pot in there, it’s pretty low. Lower than you might think. You wouldn’t get your money’s worth if that was a boost pedal, because it’s very, very subtle. But it’s just enough to feed the amp a certain amount of level so that it kind of stays on its toes.

“And another thing is that, of course, Jerry’s guitar had so much brass on it. That’s why the Dead Spec has a brass nut, a brass retainer bar over the strings. It’s trying to get that string to pass over as much brass surface as possible to get that ring out. Because we started to learn that that brassiness in the tone comes from… brass. [Laughs]”

In a way, the Dead Spec Silver Sky represents a fusion of your guitar design with Jerry’s. There’s a similar balance you have to achieve in your playing – respecting Jerry’s legacy while still putting your own stamp on it.

My observation is that over the years with Dead & Company you’ve become more comfortable in this space, and now we hear more moments that break from what people might expect – guitar tapping in Slipknot! or St. Stephen, genuine shredding in All Along the Watchtower. Maybe you wouldn’t have done these things in 2015 or 2016.

Mayer: “That’s a really interesting observation. And the answer is very complicated because there are so many variables that were changing from year to year. Let me try to take you on a tour through them. Number one, my understanding of the music in terms of its arrangement, right?

“These song arrangements, early on I would start playing what I thought was the main full solo in a song. And then when I got to the end of that solo, I would realize, that’s the mini solo. [Laughs] Then Bob would go back and sing and I would go, ‘Oh, no, Bob thinks I wanted to take the mini solo and go that long on it. There’s still another solo to go, and that’s the big one.’ So that’s one of the things – understanding the arrangements.”

“Another thing is understanding the totality of the show in terms of the balance of what can be done. On a good night, I can earn myself the right to take one song, leave the [Grateful Dead] philosophy behind and go, you know, pure Jimi Hendrix on Watchtower. Because that’s a cover anyway, right?

“I definitely feel more latitude to do what I want to do on covers, because the main contributor to the style of that song isn’t Jerry Garcia. So I can step up and be me thinking about Jimi, which is, I think, the right thing to do. And it’s probably a good moment of release for the audience as well, because it opens up the vocabulary.

“Then you’ve got my interpretation of Jerry’s playing style, which took me at least four years to figure out how much was enough and how much was too much. When it came to subdividing the notes. When it came to how fast to play. This happens when you’re studying someone’s music and that music has existed for a period of time where there’s different approaches to that music.”

“The way Jerry played in ’69 is totally different than ’74. And ’74 is completely different from ’81. And ’81 is completely different from ’90. And then to add to that, there is the way in which his music, his guitar playing, has been interpreted since his passing. You have to take all of that into a ball, and then you go, ‘I’m gonna do my best.’

“And the constant here is that every tour I’ve ever done from 2015 on was the best I could have done at that moment. It was only after each tour was over that I would get back in the car and listen to more Grateful Dead recordings and realize I hadn’t come close.

“But the only way to realize you hadn’t come close is to have grown somewhere along the line, where you realize you now know better. So to me, every tour up until the Final Tour in ’23 was an opportunity to try to get it right, based on everything I had learned previously.”

Bob, has your guitar playing changed over the past 10 years with Dead & Company? And do you think having John as your guitar partner has led you to approach the music differently?

Weir: “Yes, but I always do that. And that, I think, is more on account of the fact that I just keep changing. I wake up in the morning and I’m kind of different. You take all those mornings that I woke up kind of different and you add ’em together, and after a while, you start amounting to a different guy. That’s kind of where I am now.

“So I’d be reluctant to say that anybody, whether it be Jerry or John or whoever, drew anything out of me that didn’t already want to come out. But one thing I will say about John is that he’s one of those deep blues guys.

“He can listen to a blues tune on a boombox and tell you who it is, who’s in the band, what era it’s from, who wrote the song, all that kind of stuff, just on a quick listen. He can dissect the music, the various styles of playing. That’s somewhere we haven’t been yet that I find very interesting.”

John, what is something that you’ve learned from Bob over the years?

Mayer: “That’s a good question. And don’t think my taking a while to answer it means I have to fight to come up with something. It’s just that there’s so much. But the thing I’ve learned from Bob is to let it breathe. And that’s changed my playing a lot.

“I feel like the two of us now have a very deep relationship, almost like a telepathic relationship. I know where I stand with him in the best of ways. He knows where he stands with me in the best of ways. And we don’t have to talk about it.”

Bob, what have you learned from John?

Weir: “‘Don’t sweat the small stuff.’ I don’t know if there’s more to it than that. I’m constantly evolving, and so is he. And I can’t tell if it’s on account of what I’m getting from him, or if it’s something he’s getting from me, but we sort of make room, make allowances, for those kinds of developments.

“And you know, he is a legendary guitarist. So I might be inclined to be a little bit under-spoken about what I express through my instrument. [pauses] But probably not.

“Because I remember the first night I played with him, when we were on TV. [In 2015, Mayer guest-hosted several episodes of The Late Late Show. During one of them, Weir, who was promoting the Grateful Dead’s upcoming Fare Thee Well concerts, appeared as a guest. Following an interview, the two performed a pair of Grateful Dead songs, Truckin’ and Althea together – a moment often credited with sparking the formation of Dead & Company.]

“I was surprised at how easy and how natural it was, right from the start. He had already mastered the kind of vocabulary I was used to on the instrument, to the point where we readily interacted. I don’t remember any moments where I was thinking to myself, what the hell is he trying to get at here?”

John, did you feel that in the moment?

Mayer: “Maybe with that song [Althea]. But there’s only about 140 other ones! [Laughs] I think anyone who plays Grateful Dead music could tell you, you may have one that you can make it through the gauntlet on. But then there’s another one waiting right around the corner that might take you another two years to get your head around. But I absolutely love the challenge.

“Before every show you will see me pacing my dressing room with Spotify open, with some version of some song I think is helpful for me to listen to before I go up to play the whole show, to just remind myself, ‘This is all it takes.’ Because I can overthink. You can hear me overthinking on the guitar sometimes.

“But every night I get to go onstage is a shot at pitching a perfect game. And I can tell you, when I try to pitch a perfect game, I lose my shutout in about the beginning of the second song. And I just love that moment where I go, ‘Whoops, not a perfect game. Have fun!’”

Up until now, Dead & Company has been strictly a live entity. But back in the early days of the band, 2016 or so, I recall interviews where Bob would talk about maybe going into the studio, either to record new material or to revisit songs that had only ever been played onstage by the Grateful Dead. Is this still a possibility?

Weir: “Oh, it’s something I would still love to do. We’ve got our best guys on it…”

Mayer: “It hasn’t been discussed in a while, but I have a boilerplate response to ideas like that. Which is, ‘If Bobby and Mickey want to do it, I want to do it.’ You know what I mean? 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.”

Clearly, you’re still up for anything. You did the Final Tour in 2023, and just a year later, reimagined the Dead & Company experience for the Sphere residency. Is there anything you’d still like to explore with this band?

Weir: “I wouldn’t mind taking it across the seas. This is a 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.”

What about you, John? As the guy who took the lead in helping to manifest the Sphere experience, what’s the next frontier for Dead & Company?

Mayer: “Well, right now someone somewhere is coming up with an idea that’s so ahead of its time, I couldn’t think of it. But I like that they think of, and for the last 60 years have thought of, Grateful Dead – even though we’re not Grateful Dead, but Bob and Mickey represent that – as one of the first bands you would think to ask to be a part of these ideas.

“Because 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.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Photographer Amelia Davis is the former assistant to the legendary Jim Marshall, best-known for capturing shots of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and many others.

In the late ’60s, Marshall lived in San Francisco, where he was part of the creative family around the Grateful Dead.

To celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary, Davis and band historian David Gans have curated a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book – The Grateful Dead by Jim Marshall: Photos and Stories from the Formative Years, 1966-1977 – which is out this summer via Chronicle Books.

Below, Davis breaks down Marshall’s relationship with the band – and what makes his photos so indispensable.

Jim Marshall shot more than 10,000 photos of the Dead. How did you choose which to include in the book?

“We chose a mix of iconic images that everybody’s seen, along with other photos that people haven’t. We wanted to show the Grateful Dead as individuals, in their surroundings.

“Also, we wanted to include a lot of color. Jim is known for his black-and-white photos, but that Kodachrome slide film is so vibrant. We hope that all these photos together give an intimate sense of who they were and what they were surrounded by.”

How did Jim become part of the Grateful Dead’s inner circle?

“In 1965, he was well-established as a photographer. They’d seen his album covers and his photos in different magazines. So they had a lot of respect for Jim. They knew that if he took their photographs, they’d be getting top-quality shots. Over time, he befriended them and became part of the family.

“They knew he’d never betray their trust. That trust was such an important part of how Jim built relationships with artists. You look at some of these shots, and Jim’s right there, really close to Jerry [Garcia] and Pigpen [Ron McKernan] and Bob [Weir]. But you’d never know he was there!”

What else comes through for you in these photos?

“Diversity, integration. Haight-Ashbury was predominantly a Black family neighborhood before the Grateful Dead and the hippies moved in. But they embraced that difference. It was a community of people joining together to listen to music and experiment with culture and acceptance.

“Also, in the performance shots, I see that they were the inspiration for jam bands. They were improvisational. You get that feeling when you look at the audience and how they’re interacting with the musicians. You can almost hear the music in your head when looking at these photos.”

Jim seemed well-suited for that improvisational situation.

“It was very much capturing the moment as it happened. He had to be ready to improvise with his cameras and what he was seeing. Also, Jim loved music, and you can tell that in these photos. He really was feeling and listening to the music as he was photographing.”

What do you hope people get from this book?

“I hope they see the humanity in the band, and what was happening in that time period. I also hope they see that photography, when done well, tells its own story.

“Maybe Jim can inspire a younger generation to push the limits of not just photographing somebody standing in front of a microphone, but telling the story of what else is going on around them.”

• The Grateful Dead by Jim Marshall: Photos and Stories from the Formative Years, 1966-1977 is available to pre-order, out August 5 through Chronicle Publishing.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

It's been 10 years since John Mayer teamed up with Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann – a curious pairing that many would perhaps have thought unlikely.

However, what transpired was a decade during which the Dead's repertoire was introduced to a whole new generation of fans – while also serving as an opportunity for the band to keep up with its experimental and exploratory ethos through their younger collaborator.

With the journey culminating in last year's spectacular residency at The Sphere, Las Vegas' cutting-edge venue, we wondered – what did the two guitarists who spearheaded this ambitious project learn from each other?

“It’s just that there's so much,” Mayer says in a new interview with Guitar World. “But the thing I've learned from Bob is to let it breathe. And that's changed my playing a lot.

“I feel like the two of us now have a very deep relationship, almost like a telepathic relationship. I know where I stand with him in the best of ways. He knows where he stands with me in the best of ways. And we don't have to talk about it.”

As for Weir? “‘Don't sweat the small stuff,’” he says matter-of-factly. “I don't know if there's more to it than that. I'm constantly evolving, and so is he. And I can't tell if it's on account of what I'm getting from him, or if it's something he's getting from me, but we sort of make room, make allowances, for those kinds of developments.”

And whether we can expect an actual studio album from Dead & Company, the two tease that it's definitely not off the table.

“It's something I would still love to do. We've got our best guys on it…” hints Weir.

“It hasn't been discussed in a while,” Mayer clarifies. “But I have a boilerplate response to ideas like that. Which is, ‘If Bobby and Mickey 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.”

In other Dead & Company news, Mayer has recently opened up about his much-discussed amp setup at The Sphere – and how he still managed to crank his Dumble and Fender combos in the notoriously amp-hostile venue.

The late Jerry Garcia played a key role in cementing the Grateful Dead’s legacy as the behemoth it is today, serving as the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist. His influence was so profound that the rest of the band doubted whether the group could continue without him after his passing in 1995.

“I didn’t think it would [go on], because when Jerry left, that was the end of the Grateful Dead. Period,” drummer Bill Kreutzmann tells CBS Mornings. “There’s just no way that you can replace Jerry Garcia.

He continues, “There’s great, wonderful players out there that can sit in, but Jerry had this thing. He took over the whole stage. He had everybody’s attention. He had all the musicians’ attention, and we followed him very closely. He would hold the rhythm down, sometimes a lot. It was a way of not ever getting lost when he was on stage.”

The band did indeed disband a few month’s after Garcia death. However, since then, there have been a number of reunions by the surviving members and combinations of different musicians – and guitarist Bob Weir insists that Garcia still very much serves as a source of inspiration, even visiting him in his dreams.

“I had a dream not long ago. In the dream, Jerry comes to me and he says, ‘Listen, I’m going to invite a song in to meet you,’” he explains. “‘I want you to meet this song,’ and then he goes and does that.”

He continues, “[The dream] solidified in me the notion that, yes, these characters that we evoke when we sing the songs, and these lines that we play, they're living things. They come and visit our world and they come through us.”

Earlier this month, the Grateful Dead received this year's Kennedy Center Honors alongside Bonnie Raitt, Francis Ford Coppola, and Arturo Sandoval.

The 47th Kennedy Center Honors – celebrating the best of American performing arts – recognized legendary rockers the Grateful Dead and genre-hopping guitarist and singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt, alongside New Hollywood filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and jazz trumpeter, composer, and pianist Arturo Sandoval.

For the first time in its history, the Honors also inducted a venue: Harlem's history-defining Apollo Theater. The event was hosted by Queen Latifah and taped on December 8, before airing on CBS on December 22.

The 2024 event also saw outgoing President Biden attend the ceremony and deliver remarks about the honorees.

He called the Grateful Dead – whose original members, guitarist Bobby Weir, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, were in attendance – “technical virtuosos fiercely dedicated to their craft,” adding that “they fused decades and dozens of musical styles to create a whole new American sound: experimental, innovative, and brave.”

“This honor, to me, is not just to the band members, it's also to the audience, our Deadheads,” Kreutzmann told CBS Mornings when commenting on the induction. “It's to all the people that have really enjoyed our band and kept us going. It's a creative honor for all.”

As a nod to Bonnie Raitt's immense legacy, Brandi Carlile delivered a rendition of I Can’t Make You Love Me [from Raitt's 1991 album Luck of the Draw], accompanied by Sheryl Crow on piano, while Emmylou Harris and Dave Matthews delighted audiences with their own spin on the John Prine-penned Angel From Montgomery, which Raitt popularized with her version on the 1974 album Streetlights.

“As you get older you reflect on how you got where you got and that’s not just in your career but life, and I attribute a lot to Bonnie,” Crow told Billboard before the show.

“When you’re a 17-year-old girl and you play piano, and you go see Bonnie Raitt and she’s ripping and she’s fronting a guy band and she’s singing truth… I would never have picked up a guitar or seen myself being out front had it not been for her.”

Carlile added, “I was maybe 17 years old at a Bonnie Raitt concert when a ‘No Nukes’ guitar pick landed on the toe of my shoe, and I picked that up and I found out what she meant by that. I carry all of her messages forward.”

Musical and non-musical guests came out in full force, including guitarists Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, and Jackson Browne; singer-songwriters Leon Bridges and Maggie Rogers; filmmaker Martin Scorsese; actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino; and television host David Letterman, to name but a few.

The 47th Kennedy Center Honors can now be streamed in full on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

This feature was first published in the August 2002 issue of Bass Player magazine.

The offbeat meanderings of bassist Phil Lesh were crucial to the Grateful Dead's sound, so it came as no surprise that after disbanding in 1995 following Jerry Garcia’s death, Lesh kept the group’s adventurous spirit alive through his solo project, Phil Lesh and Friends.

“As a band, we surf on a current through the sea of chaos,” said Lesh in the August 2002 issue of Bass Player. “Sometimes we find little whirlpools of order that pull us in and spit us out. Eventually we find an island, a song, and we ‘go ashore’ as it were and inhabit that island for a while.

“Then we push off into the current again and find the route that takes us to the next island. The series of islands tells a story in some way.”

There and Back Again, the quintet's 2002 studio effort, rolled out originals written mostly by Lesh or guitarist Warren Haynes with contributions by Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. “I'm still continuing in directions I established in the Grateful Dead, but I was never satisfied with my studio work.

“I wanted to find out what we could do. And I must say, this band has surpassed my wildest dreams with what we can do in the studio.”

The subsequent live shows harkened back to the Dead's early years, when the sets were looser and more likely to dissolve into open, harmonically shifting jams. Lesh, Haynes, and keyboardist Rob Barraco recreated the Dead’s vocal-harmony sound, much to the delight of the band's followers.

Lesh played only one bass onstage: his Modulus 6-string with EMG pickups and 3-band EQ. “I really changed the approach to my sound, so I'm now using less active EQ on the instrument, and instead of boosting certain frequencies I'm now cutting others. I find you get a more coherent sound when you don't boost.”

An X-Wire wireless fed his signal into a CAE Sound distribution system, which allowed tech Robbie Taylor to send the signal anywhere onstage. Rob Barraco had an SWR Redhead combo that served as a monitor, so he could hear as much of Lesh as he needed without relying on a monitor mixer.

An Eden WT-800 head sent a post-preamp signal to a Meyer Sound CP-10 EQ, which split Lesh's signal. The highs went to two Meyer Sound UPA-IP 1x12s, and the lows to two Meyer 750-PL 2x18s. The Meyer speakers were powered – Lesh didn't use the Eden's power amp. A pre-Eden direct signal went to the house PA.

Lesh saw the tour as just the beginning for Lesh & Friends. “I had so much fun making There and Back Again, I can't wait to get together enough material that we have an excuse to go back into the studio!”

Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead’s innovative bass giant, has died aged 84.

The news was announced on the bassist’s Instagram page with a statement that reads, “Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and full of love.

“Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love. We request that you respect the Lesh family’s privacy at this time.”

Following the news, the surviving core members of the Grateful Dead – Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann – posted their own tribute, stating, “Today we lost a brother.”

“Phil Lesh was irreplaceable,” the post reads. “In one note from the Phil Zone, you could hear and feel the world being born. His bass flowed like a river would flow. It went where the muse took it. He was an explorer of inner and outer space who just happened to play bass. He was a circumnavigator of formerly unknown musical worlds. And more.

“We can count on the fingers of one hand the people we can say had as profound an influence on our development – in every sense. And there have been even less people who did so continuously over the decades and will continue to for as long as we live. What a gift he was for us. We won’t say he will be missed, as in any given moment, nothing we do will be without the lessons he taught us – and the lessons that are yet to come, as the conversations will go on.

“Phil was so much more than a virtuoso bass player, a composer, a family man, a cultural icon… We’ve spent a lifetime making music with Phil Lesh and the music has a way of saying it all. So listen to the Grateful Dead and, in that way, we’ll all take a little bit of Phil with us, forever.”

Born on March 15 1940 in Berkley, California, Lesh was a student of classical music, and developed an interest in avant-garde styles, including free jazz. He played violin and trumpet, before he was recruited by Jerry Garcia to play bass in his new band, then called The Warlocks.

Lesh, however, had never played bass before. His trial by fire resulted in a unique style that wasn’t indebted to the instrument’s typical role of emphasizing the root note, instead taking influence from Bach counterpoint, as well as more adventurous bass players such as Jack Casady and Jack Bruce.

“Phil is an iconoclast by nature and to some degree I think he actually disdains the traditional role of the bass player,” Bob Weir told Guitar World in 2016.

That improvisatory style pioneered a lead approach that put bass front and center with Jerry Garcia’s guitar, and Lesh’s solos were often a highlight of the Grateful Dead’s best live performances.

In 2017, he told Classic Rock that their shows were about “the moment and collective improvisation. When we were really on it, we could open the valve. And if the company didn’t like it, we didn’t give a shit. Fire us. We don’t care.”

The bassist was also a pioneer in the gear realm. His custom Alembic bass, known to Deadheads as ‘Mission Control’, paved the way for the modern boutique bass movement.

Lesh performed with the Grateful Dead throughout its original tenure from 1966 to 1995, and was responsible for writing some of the band’s most iconic tracks, including Truckin’, Box of Rain and Unbroken Chain.

He would continue to perform with offshoots The Other Ones and The Dead and his own band, Phil Lesh and Friends, alongside Furthur with fellow Dead member Bob Weir. He retired from touring full time in 2014, but continued to play occasional concerts.

Lesh underwent a liver transplant in 1998, and treatment for prostate cancer in 2006 and bladder cancer in 2015. He was inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead in 1994.

D’Angelico has rekindled its relationship with Grateful Dead legend Bobby Weir for a new signature guitar that has been dubbed the pair’s finest collaborative creation yet.

Officially named the Deluxe Bobby Weir 3, the supremely classy electric guitar is the direct result of years of development and rigorous road-testing, having already seen action onstage during Dead & Company’s ongoing Sphere residency.

The semi-hollow stunner has also been tested in various iterations throughout the years, with Weir putting D’Angelico’s creations through their paces on various tours with Wolf Brothers.

Now, the fruits of their labor has been released, with the Deluxe Weir 3 serving as D’Angelico’s “best work yet”.

Available in Satin Trans Wine and Matte Stone, the single-cut sports a laminated maple body with five-ply binding, and a C-shape maple/walnut/maple neck that’s topped with a 16”-radius ebony fingerboard.

There are a pair of TV Jones DA-Tron pickups which, thanks to four push-pull pots, can produce a huge array of sounds. Among them is “Weir’s notoriously slinky tones”.

These four pots – two volume and two tone knobs – are joined by a three-way selector switch and a master volume control located on the upper bout.

“I’ve been on an endless quest to find a tone that makes me really sit up and beg,” Weir says of his newest D’Angelico. “I don’t remember where it was, but I was on stage at a soundcheck. I plugged it in, cranked it up, and said ‘This is it –this is what I’m looking for.’ I knew it.”

Weir’s new signature guitar also looks as good as it apparently sounds. The thing is dripping in gold hardware, flashing a D’Angelico Shield tremolo, locking Grover Super Rotomatic tuners and a Skyscraper truss rod cover.

There’s also a Graph Tech Tusq nut, Mother of Pearl Split Block inlays, 22 Jescar frets and a five-ply Tortoise Scalini five-ply pickguard.

“Bobby is forever driven to go deeper and deeper into the mystery that is great guitar tone,” says Ryan Kershaw, EVP of Product Development. “Over the years, we’ve been incredibly fortunate to join him on his never-ending journey.

“I’m thrilled with the results that we got this time around. There’s no doubt that this is our best work yet – I hope it’s an inspiration to many players.”

A limited run of 10 hand-signed models will be launched to celebrate the release. Furthermore, two examples will be auctioned for Headcount – a nonpartisan organization that promotes democratic participation through music.

The D’Angelico Deluxe Bobby Weir 3 is available now for $2,199.

Head over to D’Angelico for more info.

John Mayer has revealed that he has injured one of his fingers, forcing him to shift his guitar-playing approach. This announcement came amid his shows with Dead & Company for their Las Vegas residency.

“Last Thursday, I injured my left index finger (truck door), and the first thing that went through my mind was ‘I really need that finger in a week,’” he confessed on social media.

“I need all my fingers, but the left index is the team captain of my fretting hand. It will heal just fine but will be out of commission for a while. In the meantime, I have spent every day practicing guitar using the other three fingers and I think I have it sounding pretty good!

“I’ve always felt like every part of me belongs to these shows, and it’s my responsibility to return to the stage each night without screwing up the equipment, and I’m sorry for the misadventure here. The power of the music and the love for these shows will prevail! See ya tonight.”

Mayer has been involved with Grateful Dead tribute Dead & Company since 2015. The band's current lineup includes Grateful Dead members Bob Weir (on vocals and guitar) and Mickey Hart (drums), alongside Otel Burbridge (bass, vocals and percussion), Jay Lane (drums) and Jeff Chimenti (keyboards).

The Dead Forever Live at Sphere Las Vegas is a months-long residency and immersive experience that celebrates the legacy of the Grateful Dead's music, enhanced by the Sphere's next-level technical capabilities.

Speaking about the Vegas shows to GQ, Mayer said, “To me, I wanted a message of metaphysical hope and optimism. And the show is called Dead Forever, and the end of the show [depicts] the beginning of the Grateful Dead. And there's a very interdimensional optimism that somewhere, somehow, this is all just getting started, and we got to visit for just one second at the very end.”

In other John Mayer news, the PRS guitar star recently divulged that all the amps he's using for the residency are being housed off-stage.

John Mayer quoted the Grateful Dead’s track Throwing Stones as he announced that Dead & Company will return to the stage for a six-week residency at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas. 

A total of 18 shows between May 16 and June 22 will see John Mayer and former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart return to the stage. The news, which will be a delightful shock to many, comes despite the band having previously stated that 2023's extensive run of dates would be their last.

“Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free. Dizzy with eternity,” Mayer's post begins, announcing the residency at the ultra-futuristic, 18,600-capacity arena. The band follows in the steps of U2, who called the venue home for a 40-show residency celebrating Achtung Baby last year.

Reacting to the post, once commenter claimed: “This is the Super Bowl of trips for the lifelong Dead Heads.” 

The Grateful Dead offshoot had made its 'final' show a major spectacle last year, with a 22-song set including classics Truckin' and Brokedown Palace, as well as a passionate performance of Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away. Under the immersive 360-degree experience of the MSG Sphere, which is the largest spherical structure on the planet, the band will surely leave that extravaganza paling in comparison.

John Mayer formed Dead & Company back in 2015, with the band’s touring line-up completed by Oteil Burbridge, Jay Lane, and Jeff Chimenti. Mayer had become obsessed with the Grateful Dead back in 2011 after discovering the song Althea on Pandora. His 2012 album, Born and Raised carried that obsession, with a "subtle but abundant" array of 'Dead influences.

After just shy of a decade of success, the band had supposedly played its swan song at that San Francisco date last summer, which capped off a tour that entertained 840,000 Grateful Dead and Mayer fans.

As such, it's shaping up to be another busy year for Mayer, who had an especially action-packed 2023. Last year saw the guitarist embark on an acoustic tour, which saw him test-drive new material, and reprise his blues power trio for the first time in six years. 

The MSG Sphere, meanwhile, is doing its best to become the eighth wonder of the modern world. Officially opened in September 2023 after a four-year construction, beneath its dome fans are treated to an immersive 16k experience delivered by its wraparound LED screens, space-age audio tech and 4D physical effects.

Screenings of Director Darren Aronofsky's docu-film, Postcard from Earth, followed U2's grand opening residency, for which the Edge revealed he'd ditched tube amps. Instead, he opted for Universal Audio amp emulator pedals, with the chosen trio replicating the characteristics of a ‘55 Fender 5E3 Deluxe Tweed, Vox AC30 and AC30 Top Boost, and ‘65 Fender Deluxe Reverb.

Advance presale registration for the Dead & Company residency is now available. Tickets go on general sale February 9 at 10am PT.  

For more information, head to DeadandCompany.com.

Jerry Garcia is revered almost as much for his guitar tinkering as his guitar talent. Now the immense custom guitar rig he used throughout his 1992-1995 dates with The Grateful Dead is up for auction.

Expected to fetch a final price of between $500,000 to $750,000 the rig has several remarkable features. Fortunately, the auction site Analogr has shared some decent pictures and we can get a closer look at the setup.

“Jerry's most sophisticated guitar setup was the culmination of decades of experimentation with state of the art gear and fine tuning,” says Analogr’s listing. 

“Needing the flexibility of working with a speaker-less stage setup with the Dead, and his more traditional three- and four-speaker cabinets with the Garcia band, this rig could perform in both contexts and meet Jerry's lofty sonic requirements.”

Central to the build is a Groove Tubes Trio preamp [the brown unit], which is an interesting model from the firm’s pre-Fender era. 

The triple channel tube amp is designed to replicate the cleans of a classic black panel Fender amp, while the ‘Mean’ channel covers cranked Tweed tones to Marshall’s 2203 circuit and ‘Scream’ brings it into shred-friendly modded-Marshall territory.

Moving down, you can see Garcia’s unique vertical rack-mounted pedalboard. 

Admittedly, with prices of $400+ for each, that vintage script logo MXR Phase 100 and Mu-Tron III wah (said to date back to 1976) are not exactly cheap on the used market.

However, elsewhere it’s inspiring to see how much off-the-shelf gear is included here, with Garcia otherwise favoring a bevy of Boss pedals, including the OD-1 and OD-2 (each paired with a GE-7 EQ) and an OC-2 octave pedal.

The most notable element of the rig, though, is the McIntosh MC-2300 power amp, which was used by Garcia’s bandmate Bob Weir in the Grateful Dead’s iconic 1974 Wall of Sound setup – and favored by Garcia as far back as ’73. 

McIntosh is a name usually associated with high-end hifi products, but the fastidious Garcia insisted on using them for the ’Dead’s power amp requirements. 

The name will also have piqued the interest of the auctioneers as Garcia’s famous Budman McIntosh 2300 sold at auction for $378,000 in 2021 – despite carrying a guide price of just $5,000 – $7,000.

Will the trick be repeated? Well, we’ll have to wait until the auction closes to find out, but at the time of writing, it’s already fetched bids of $75,000. 

For more information and to take part in the bidding on Jerry Garcia’s final tour rig, head to Analogr.

It’s been a busy news day when it comes to the Grateful Dead’s guitarists, as Bob Weir recently teamed up with Jason Isbell to cover Johnny B. Goode at Michael J. Fox’s recent fundraising event.

And in other Grateful Dead gear news, PRS has launched the ‘Dead Spec’ Silver Sky, a new take on John Mayer’s signature model inspired by Jerry Garcia’s Alligator Stratocaster.

“What happened was, I recorded a bunch of tracks with my buddies. We had a lot of songs and we just recorded all of them and it turned out to be a lot of music.” John Scofield is musing about releasing a new double-CD package during our Zoom interview.

“And then Manfred Eicher [head of the ECM label] said, ‘Well, we’ll just put it all out.’ I still think maybe I should have gone back and just selected the best ones, but, hey, put it all out there. Maybe some of it will float!” 

The result is Uncle John’s Band, the title of which is drawn from a Grateful Dead song – not a band you’d immediately associate with cutting-edge jazz improvisation. 

How did the title track come about?

“It’s a Grateful Dead tune and it’s just a song that I liked. I thought, ‘When in my life am I gonna have a chance to call an album something with my own name in it?’ It’s not supposed to be a Grateful Dead tribute album. But I just thought, ‘Hey, Uncle John’s Band, that’s gonna work, you know: I’m John and it’s my band. So here we go.”

Were you ever a fan of the Grateful Dead? 

“I was aware of them. In the back of my head I would hear a couple of their songs I would like – I would like the melody and the chords – but I wasn’t really aware of them. I was certainly not a Deadhead! But then, 15 years ago or something, I was recommended to Phil Lesh, the bass player from the Grateful Dead. 

“He has this band, they play all Grateful Dead tunes, and they’re really popular in the States. Different players play with him all the time, so over the years I’ve played a bunch of gigs with him and had to learn Grateful Dead tunes. 

“I would write my little lead sheets up, sit there with my music stand like the old jazz guy and play with them – and we became friends. And this is, I guess, my favourite of the Grateful Dead songs and it just happens to be named after me.”

You’ve also covered Neil Young’s Old Man and Bob Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man – what’s the story there?

“Before I heard the Grateful Dead, Mr Tambourine Man was a hit by The Byrds on the radio. This is when I had just got my guitar; I was a kid and I was looking for tunes that I could play. I always liked the song and I liked their three-part harmony. And I always liked Neil Young. 

“That song has a vamp that I liked, that’s part of the song: six bars, two chords, so you’re playing on Fmaj7 for three bars to Dmaj7 for three bars, which is a nice little thing to just blow over. And it feels like jazz to me. So, again, it’s quite different from what Neil Young did. I guess I’m enough of a rocker that I can play these songs.”

Coming closer to home, you’ve done Budo by Miles Davis and say in the album liner notes that you’ve modelled it on Miles’ quintet version.

“Yeah, Miles did a lot of different versions. It was first the Birth of the Cool band and they play slightly different changes, which are closer to the Bud Powell song that it was taken from. Miles put a different bridge on it; it’s [based on] Hallucinations by Bud Powell.”

Everyone we interview who played with Miles has stories about working with him. Is this the case with you?

“He could be very cocky. But he could also be really modest when he was talking to people about improvising and jazz. I remember that some nights he would listen to a tape of himself and say, ‘I played like shit…’ He could be really self-effacing. There’s a lot of funny stuff, too; he was hilarious. 

“One time he invited me to come up to his apartment to listen to some music. So I did and he left me alone in the room and went and called my wife and said, ‘Where’s John?’ She knew he was bullshitting, luckily, because Miles didn’t care. He was a mischief-maker, you know? But I treasure the time I got to spend with a giant and learn from him.”

What guitar is featured on the new album?

“I have two Ibanez AS200 guitars that I’ve had for many years – since the ’80s. One is black and one sunburst. I’m pretty sure this is the black one. Although I’ve been using the sunburst one again lately, they have different pickups on them. And it’s a little different neck size.

“I was originally given an Ibanez guitar in 1981, I think it was, when I was in Japan. There was a period when the Ibanez company was trying to get American artists to switch over and play their guitars. 

“So I was there in Japan with my Gibson ES-335. I have one that is now considered to be from the classic era of 1963, although somebody changed the fretboard so it’s not exactly original, but that was before I bought it. So I had my Gibson but the neck had warped because it was summertime and the neck really had a bow in it. 

“At that point I was still chicken to do neck adjustments with a truss rod, so I was just getting through on my Gibson, just playing it anyway. Ibanez gave me this AS200 and I loved it and started playing it. It just played great. So I played it for a month on the tour and I’ve never stopped playing it.”

How does the AS differ from your 335? 

“Well, I’ve gotten my old Gibson out and people have said, ‘Oh, man, you gotta play the Gibson, that’s the real deal.’ And they’re different, but there’s something about the Ibanez that I am really used to, and I prefer the evenness of it that’s not there on the Gibson. 

“When they asked to make a John Scofield model, the AS200 had evolved – it was like 20 years later or more – and they weren’t making them the same. I didn’t like it as much and I said, ‘Could you guys go back and figure out how to make it like you used to make it?’ And they said, ‘Well, we can try.’

“But then they got back to me and said, ‘We’ve lost the schematics to that original guitar, [so] when you come to Japan would you let us take that guitar and scan it to figure out the exact dimensions?’ Which they did. They tried to get the pickups to sound like they’re from ’80/’81 and they were successful. I’m not a guitar tech and I don’t know that much about the guitar. I tend to just play guitar and it either feels good or it doesn’t.”

Which guitar amp are you using now?

“It’s a Magnatone. I actually had one when I was a kid. It was the famous Lonnie Mack amp he played on the tune Memphis [1963] and had this wild vibrato. The company started up again – somebody bought the name – and they’re really good. Great amp, man. I just liked it. I don’t even know if it’s the same as the old Magnatones, but it has a beautiful sound and that’s what I used. It’s their combo, you know? 50-watt combo, one 12-inch speaker.”

What about pedals? 

“I think I used almost no pedals on this one. I did use this looper that I used on my solo record [John Scofield, ECM, 2022] on two tunes, but I didn’t use it to create an actual play along, metric loop like I do on the solo record. I just did some weird backwards stuff.

“On Mr Tambourine Man, I had a weird Indian-like loop that I played over that’s just a drone. It’s a Boomerang Looper Phrase Sampler, an old one. I have a really good distortion pedal that I like, it’s a Klon. They’re pretty famous now, and I have an old one that this really great guitarist in Las Vegas, Jimmy McIntosh, gave me. He invited me to play on his record years ago and then he gave it to me. Now it turns out it’s become very in-demand. But I don’t think I used it on any tunes on the record. 

“I’m using distortion from the amp, just by jacking it up a little bit, which you can do nicely with the Magnatone.”

Do you find composing new tunes easy?

“I don’t. I find that’s not as much fun as playing the guitar. I love to just sit there, and I’ve gotten good enough so I can play through standards and progressions and swing on my own. I just love doing that and it’s fun. 

“Writing music is arduous. It’s like you write something that sucks. Then the next day you write something else that sucks. Then the next day you write something else and, ‘Oh, that’s possible.’ And then you have to wait another day to go back and see if it’s any good. And I’m talking about a two-bar phrase or something. Then you start connecting things.

“But when you do come up with a song that works, there’s nothing like it. Because I hold composition in the highest esteem and everything. Well, I hold jazz improvising in the highest esteem, too. But when you play an original tune, it’s so great because you make it your own. You don’t have to compare it with the great versions by other people and wonder about that. You just have some music that’s yours. And I love that.”

• Uncle John's Band is out now via ECM.

Bob Weir is ridiculously busy at age 74. The founding member and rhythm guitarist of the Grateful Dead now spends his summers touring stadiums with Dead & Company, the group that also features Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, guitarist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge and pianist Jeff Chimenti. 

Since 2018, he’s also toured with Bobby Weir and Wolf Bros, a group that began as a trio with bassist Don Was – best known as a producer of the Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan and many others – and Primus drummer Jay Lane, a longtime Weir collaborator. The band has slowly expanded into a 10-piece juggernaut.

They are captured on their first album, Live in Colorado, which features highlights from a 2021 tour of the Centennial State, which represented their first live performances in front of an audience in almost a year, due to the pandemic. 

It’s a very strong collection of Dead and Weir tunes, all of which take on a different form in the group, with his distinctive rhythm playing and vocals center stage atop slinky, swirling textures. In October, the group will play four shows with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., performing a concerto of mostly Grateful Dead music, something they’re still hammering out onstage and off. 

Weir also has been working with Taj Mahal on a stage musical about Negro League baseball icon Satchel Paige, as well as an opera and a memoir. He’s also become an unlikely workout icon, posting his daily exercise routines on social media to the delight of fans. We caught up with him on the phone as he was preparing for Wolf Bros’ spring tour.

Your endless activity is inspiring, and the familiar songs on the new live album sound totally renewed. How did Bobby Weir and Wolf Bros come about?

“I started a little trio, the Wolf Bros, and it’s become a… I guess the word is dectet. There’s 10 of us! It can operate in various configurations from three to 10. And now I’m working with a symphony orchestra, which God knows is fairly rewarding. It took a lifetime to crowbar the door open to do all this stuff, and here it is – all the stuff that makes life worth living. 

“I woke up one morning with this dream in my head; I was playing in a trio with Don and Jay. I just rolled over, picked up the phone and called Don and asked him if he wanted to do this and he said sure. As the band has grown, parts of our show still focus on the trio because we really can do something.” 

Then you added pianist Jeff Chimenti, who you’ve played with for years, and pedal steel player Greg Leisz, an absolute master as a soloist and at chordal coloring. How did he come into your orbit?

“Don suggested we give him a try. I halfway grew up on country music, so I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for pedal steel. The instrument is pretty much relegated to country music, but it’s capable of so much more than that. I think you should find it everywhere, but it’s so complicated and there are so few pedal steel players. We don’t have Greg all the time. Sometimes we use Barry Sless, who’s also great.”

Then you added the horn section and some strings. Is this all in preparation for playing with the orchestra?

“Sort of. We still gotta workshop this, but we selected the guys to tour with us with the idea that they’d develop a library of riffs they would then use to lead their instrumental groupings; the violinist would lead the violins and feed them a line, for instance. 

“We have about six months to figure out exactly how we’re going to do this. They’ll be reading, but the section leader will be improvising; we’ll be feeding them lines to play and they’ll never be interpreted the same.” 

Is this an effort to merge the symphonic tradition with your love of improvisation?

“Yeah, that’s what we’re up to. The rehearsals we’ve had with the Marin and Stanford Symphony orchestras have been pretty amazing. It works. Bach was famous for making enormous classical pieces out of folk tunes, which is more or less what we’re up to here with Grateful Dead songs. We’re taking music that’s drawn from the folk traditions and bringing them to full classical orchestration.” 

20 years ago, when I was interviewing you for Guitar World, you said, “I never had too much of an idea of what I’m doing.” Do you still feel that way about your playing? 

“I think that through dogged persistence, I’ve found ways to pull an awful lot of variety out of the sounds an electric guitar can produce. I feel like I’m starting to get a handle on how to bring it all together and make music. 

“I’ve discovered that certain configurations of instrument design and pickup design will give me a broader spectrum to work with, so I’ve pretty much abandoned signal processing. The guitar itself has such variety to offer and it’s so much more elemental. I don’t use delays or envelope filters much anymore because the guitar itself tells me all I want to hear.” 

You’ve talked before about how much your style developed by playing with Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, who had such distinct approaches to their instruments. [Dead & Company bassist] Oteil [Burbridge] and John [Mayer] are very different players. Do you continue to evolve playing with different people, or do they have to fit in with you at this point? 

“No, no. We fit in together as best we can, which is essential to our kind of music. We just find the center and go for that. The adaptation has gone both ways. When Oteil is at his best for our music is when he’s framing the songs with a bass line that some of them really have never had, because Phil was playing lead bass – a different deal. Some of those songs never really had a traditional bass line. Oteil is able to find that, and I think the songs are thankful and have grown from that.”

Live in Colorado is a great example of how you can play the same catalog differently in different settings. One great example is your riff that kicks off Big River, which is quite different from the type of thing you usually play. 

“Yeah. It’s more of a traditional lead guitar riff that I found, but it’s actually something I got from what Jerry used to play on the song, and then it sat with me for a couple of decades after he checked out. It’s my interpretation of that. All this comes from our mutual understanding of what Johnny Cash really wanted with that song.”

Are there other songs where Jerry’s stuff seeped into you and came out without you really consciously doing it?

“That was actually happening even when Jerry was still alive. Like the riff that I do in Wharf Rat, which I think I pulled out of Jerry’s psyche one day when we were rehearsing. When I got that right, I could click with it and he started answering and started framing that, so I stuck with it, and it’s stayed with the song for five decades now.”

You’ve said you still have stage fright, which seems amazing. You’ve probably performed in front of as many people as anyone ever has. Can you describe that?

“It’s the anticipation, the time before walking out. There is a moment onstage when I think, ‘Thank God, I’m out of here.’ I can forget myself, leave the building and let the characters in the songs have my body, my spirit and everything else. I can take a breather and not have to worry about it. As far as the size of the crowd, a living room is the toughest for me. Oftentimes the larger the crowd, the way easier it is for me.” 

It’s less personal. I’ve heard Jerry had stage fright, too.

“Oh yeah. And you could make the case that that’s what killed him, because he used those drugs to dull the stage fright, to dull the pain of it, because it physically hurt. We talked about it a fair bit. We compared notes on how we dealt with stage fright. It wasn’t an ongoing conversation, because there wasn’t much new to add to it after the first six months that I’d known him. 

“After we realized we were in the same boat, there wasn’t much more to say about it, but we would sometimes give each other looks that said, ‘It’s okay, I got past it. How are you doing?’” 

Gregg Allman also had stage fright, and to look from the outside it’s impossible to imagine that could be possible for the three of you. 

“People think we can’t wait to get on stage. I want to play, yes, but those last few steps on stage are like walking into a torture chamber every time. It’s not easy.”

• Live in Colorado is out now via Third Man.

2022 would have marked the 80th birthday of the late Jerry Garcia, and to honor the occasion the Fender Custom Shop has unveiled an ultra-limited replica of the Grateful Dead guitarist’s iconic Alligator Stratocaster.

Limited to only 100 units, the Masterbuilt recreation is a meticulously crafted ode to Garcia, and pays tribute to the “nature of collaboration and community that Garcia nurtured throughout his storied career”.

Austin MacNutt was the Fender Master Builder tasked with recreating the historic Alligator Strat, and worked to replicate every single scratch, modification and sticker that could be found on Garcia’s original axe with “staggering accuracy”.

The build was unveiled with the aid of longtime Garcia guitar tech Steve Parish, who had first-hand experience in the guitar’s extensive and illustrious modding history, including the small brass plate pickguard that houses the control layout.

“There’s a lot I can tell you about this guitar,” Parish said. “Jerry played a lot of guitars and a lot of Strats but he never had a favorite. He played Fender Twin Reverb because he loved it, and we collected every Fender we could buy. But this guitar quickly became his favorite.”

Fender’s replica aims to tell the story of Garcia’s Alligator Strat, which began in 1970 when Graham Nash gifted Garcia a 1955 swamp ash Stratocaster for his efforts while helping him record Songs for Beginners.

A love for the ‘55 soon blossomed, though a year later Garcia’s prized possession would undergo one of its first major mods: halfway through a gig at Boston Symphony Hall, the cold weather caused the Alligator’s pickguard to crack. A temporary fix was soon replaced with a Masonite and later a brass plate, with more modifications following suit.

By 1972, Garcia and Parish had introduced so many tweaks the Alligator had become an entirely different beast altogether, and was unrecognizable from the ‘55 that Nash had given him just two years earlier.

Further mods include a custom brass bridge with rosewood base plate, Schaller tuners, a retainer bar and the three iconic stickers, including the Alligator decal that gave the guitar its name.

All of these touches can be found on the new Alligator replica. Thanks to Garcia Guitars Foundation’s Andy Logan – who bought the original at auction in 2019 – MacNutt was able to consult the original Alligator up close. 

Not only did he take meticulous measurements and reference photographs, MacNutt was also able to confirm the Alligator as a ‘55 Strat, despite popular speculation that it was a ‘57 / ‘58 model.

Build-wise, the Alligator boasts a swamp ash body and one-piece rift sawn maple neck that was fabricated from a digital scan of the original, and comes equipped with the hammered brass control plate, custom brass bridge and Schaller M6 tuners.

In the electronic department, it features Josefina custom wound ‘55-style single-coils, which promise cutting highs, bell-like tones and a singing mid-range. These are wired to a custom clean boost output jack, as well as a five-way selector switch, master volume knob and two tone parameters.

Other appointments include a 7.25” radius, 1.625” brass nut, 21 medium vintage frets and a birdseye maple back plate. The Alligator, Harley-Davidson and Police Helper stickers also feature on the body.

“This guitar is a piece of American history,” said MacNutt. “There is so much history behind each alteration and modification made to the guitar; to have the opportunity to have the original for a day, take it apart, look inside and replicate it has been an honor.”

“Having the opportunity to replicate an iconic guitar from such a legendary artist is a Masterbuilders dream,” added Mike Lewis, VP of Product Development, Fender Custom Shop. “Recounting how each scratch was made, the stories behind each sticker and every modification made on the guitar felt almost like we were there with Jerry Garcia rocking on stage in the '70s. 

“We are so grateful to Steve, Andy Logan/Grateful Guitars Foundation, and the Jerry Garcia Family for their trust in us,” he continued. “Now 100 others will have the opportunity to carry on the Garcia Alligator Strat legacy.”

Of the build, Parish concluded, “When I see that, it’s a tribute to everything that we stood for and everything that we did and the achievement of Jerry’s playing. It also represents to me a slight shot at all the technical ways that we went so deeply into everything.”

The Alligator Stratocaster will be built to order, and carries a price tag of $20,000.

For more information, head over to the Fender Custom Shop.

John Mayer and Grateful Dead founder Bob Weir brought the house down on Monday (Aug 8) when they took to the state at Pine Creek Lodge, in Livingston, Montana for an intimate open air acoustic guitar set.

The duo are more commonly found packing out ballparks and stadia across the country with Dead & Company, but this performance under the trees was a special occasion. 

It was the first of a trio of Rise for the River benefit shows scheduled by Mayer to raise money for those affected by June 13 flooding of the Yellowstone River, which damaged homes and impacted jobs across Park County, where Mayer has called home for over a decade. 

The flooding closed the entrance to the park, devastating an economy that is reliant on tourism, with hotels reporting that between 50 and 70 per cent of reservations have been canceled. 

Mayer and Weir opened with Friend of the Devil, taken from the Grateful Dead’s 1970 album American Beauty, and played 13 tracks in total, including Dead classics such as Bertha, Uncle John’s Band, Jack Straw, Terrapin Station, Eye of the World and a bravura run-through of Brown-Eyed Women.

• John Mayer’s 2021 Dead & Company pedalboard has been revealed – but what’s that mystery pedal?

All of these tracks are firmly in both players’ wheelhouses, but there was something about the stripped-down acoustic arrangements that afforded Mayer a little extra room, setting the tone for what was a special evening – a Dead & Company show of sorts, albeit with a difference.

There were a few firsts, with Mayer performing Jerry Garcia’s Loser and Marty Robbins’s classic western ballad El Paso for the first time. The pair rounded out the set with a cover of the Crickets' seminal rock 'n' roll hit Not Fade Away.

Mayer and Weir’s performance was livestreamed on the on the PPV Nugs platform, with highlights from their performance on both artists’ YouTube channels. The fundraising efforts were supported by a range of John and Bobby merch items.

You can watch highlights of Mayer and Weir’s set above (and on fan-shot video below), and the full performance is currently on demand via Rise for the River on Nugs.net, priced $20, where it will be available until Aug 28. 

Mayer will next take to the stage with the comedian Dave Chapelle, before playing a headline set on August 21. That solo headline performance will also be available on the Nugs platform for a similar price.

Donate to the Southwest Montana Flood Relief Fund.

Rick Turner, the influential luthier who helped shape the sound of ‘60s and ‘70s rock, has passed away at the age of 78.

The news was confirmed by Jason Kostal, owner of Kostal Guitars, in a statement posted to Instagram. In his message, Kostal confirmed Turner had died on April 17 due to “congestive heart failure and stroke”.

He wrote, “The guitar community lost a truly remarkable man yesterday. Rick Turner (Warwick Lancelot Armstrong Turner III) passed away peacefully last night of complications from congestive heart failure and stroke. 

“Rick has been an icon within the lutherie community since the 1960s and has been an incredible friend, mentor and sounding board to so many over the years,” Kostal continued. “I truly believe he has forgotten more about guitar making than I will ever know, and he was always so willing to share his insight and advice. 

“He loved to make people laugh and was great at helping people realize their mistakes were not as catastrophic as we usually believe. He and I spent a few summers together cutting wood, and a few weeks together teaching mandolin and ukulele building classes years ago, and I still reflect on those days often. 

“Most of all he was always there for a late night phone call when I needed help. He will be deeply missed and his legacy will continue on for generations to come.“

Kostal went on to highlight some of Turner’s key contributions to the world of music, citing his work on Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound in the ‘70s and creation of Lindsey Buckingham’s Turner Model 1 electric guitar, as well as his co-founding of Alembic instruments, as his most notable works.

As per Premier Guitar, Turner had early experience of music-making, having moved to New York in 1966 to play in a number of different groups, including psychedelic outfit Autosalvage by the end of the decade.

It was his luthiery activities, though, that cemented his legacy in the music world. Throughout his playing years, Turner established and continued to operate a side hustle of doing guitar repairs, having apprenticed for a group of luthiers during his Boston days back in 1963.

In the late ‘60s, Turner began working with Grateful Dead, inlaying one of Phil Lesh’s bass guitars and creating a crop of custom pickup for the band. With fellow luthier Ron Wickersham, Turner founded Alembic Instruments, and went on to help create the band’s Wall of Sound PA system in the early '70s.

The monstrous sound system – the largest sound system at the time – towered three stories high, and was noted for its engineering breakthroughs that promised to project an acceptable quality of sound for up to 400 meters.

Turner would later be introduced to Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham through the Alembic-playing John McVie, and would often serve as Buckingham’s guitar tech during the band’s Rumours sessions.

In 1978, Turner began work on the Model 1 – an instrument that has become synonymous with Buckingham and his trademark fingerpicking style of playing. After appraising the initial plans, Buckingham registered his interest to buy the first one off the line, and a year later had one in his possession.

The innovative guitar – seen slung over Buckingham’s shoulder on tours all round the world – was noted for its forward-thinking design, which incorporated a single rotating humbucking pickup that provided a range of tonal offerings.

Later in his career, Turner had a four-year stint as the president of Gibson’s West Coach Research and Development branch starting in 1988, then turned his attention to the acoustic guitar realm to develop piezo pickups.

He co-founded Highlander Musical Audio to pursue his piezo passion, and would continue to operate his other guitar brands – Renaissance Guitars, Compass Rose Guitars and Rick Turner Guitars – at the same time.

John Mayer’s discovery of the Grateful Dead happened by chance. In 2011, while listening to random suggestions on Pandora, he heard the Dead classic Althea, and with that he fell hard and fast. Taking a deep-dive into the band’s vast back catalogue, he became a committed ‘Deadhead’, leading to a remarkable chapter in his career. 

The first evidence of the Dead’s influence on Mayer came with his 2012 album Born And Raised and 2013 follow-up Paradise Valley. Both albums marked incrementally intensifying departures from polished pop, with Mayer doing and playing exactly what he pleased. And both contained subtle but abundant Grateful Dead influences.

Queen Of California, the opening track from Born And Raised, was in tune with the folksy, acoustic numbers that abound on the Dead’s two albums from 1970, American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead.  

In the second verse from Queen Of California, Mayer also made a reference to Neil Young’s After The Goldrush, before a lengthy pedal steel-driven outro took hold over a bedrock of Dead-esque repeating chords.

Another connection was made in this album’s title track. Jerry Garcia – the founding member and de facto leader of the Grateful Dead as vocalist, lead guitarist and principal songwriter – had played pedal steel on the song Teach Your Children from Déjà Vu, the first album featuring Neil Young in the '70s supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. For the song Born And Raised, Mayer had David Crosby and Graham Nash on backing vocals.

And in Wildfire, the first track on Paradise Valley, a comparatively jam-based number with an outdoorsy feel, Mayer sang: “We can dance with the dead/You can rest your head.” Which – depending on how deeply you like to read into things – may well be a reference to the band. 

Fast-forward to 2015, and while appearing as a guest host on The Late Late Show, Mayer was presented with the opportunity to perform with another founding member of the Dead, rhythm guitarist Bob Weir.

The song they played together was Althea. A bond was formed between them, and by the end of that year, Mayer was invited to join Weir in Dead & Company, a touring outfit also featuring Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, two drummers who played together in the Dead for many years. 

For all Mayer’s success, this was a challenge – not only to step out of his pop-meets-blues box into the realm of the jam band, but also to take the place of Jerry Garcia, the talismanic figure who died in 1995 at the age of 53.

With a vast repertoire to learn and a comparatively unstructured style of playing to get to grips with, Mayer entered a bootcamp for the role with all the reverence and sincerity a Deadhead could hope for. 

He wrote on Instagram, alongside a 1970s era photo of Garcia: “I’m only here as an interpreter of a master. I play in constant emotional, psychological and musical deference to Jerry Garcia.”

This being said, long-time Deadheads could be forgiven for reacting with some scepticism to the news that the man behind hits such as Daughters and Waiting On The World To Change could be right for the job – especially as more likely jam band candidates such as Warren Haynes and Phish’s Trey Anastasio had already tried out and then withdrawn from the position.

But Mayer was nothing if not thorough about taking on the role. As he stated in a 2016 SiriusXM Radio interview regarding his training for playing one of rock’s most expansive repertoires: “I’m naturally obsessive anyway, so it suited my way of life.”

Further to the material itself, Mayer went all-in on gear to make his transition to fronting Dead & Company as seamless as possible. 

Jerry Garcia’s tone was made unique by the pioneering addition of in-built pre-amps and effects loops to his custom-made Doug Irwin ‘Wolf’ and ‘Tiger’ guitars. Mayer teamed up with PRS to create the Super Eagle II – a guitar which became his main touring instrument with Dead & Company - and which comes in a super duper trippy hemp green finish.

The Super Eagle II features specially-wound 58/15 JM treble and bass pickups with a Narrowfield JM pickup in the middle position (with three individual coil-tap mini-switches), and a JCF Audio preamp – a layout and design very similar to Garcia’s instruments.

When it comes to playing live, the jam band environment seems to bring out the team-player in Mayer. After-all, Dead & Company is the first band he’s played in where the songs and the spotlight are not all his. Certain songs have bluesy in-roads and Mayer employs his well-honed chops to bring flamboyant interpretations to the music.

Elsewhere, the more psychedelic material leaves room for wandering melodic noodles where the destination may be predetermined, but the route to finding it is a little (or a lot) more flexible. Embracing simple, scale-based melodies without the large leaps and bends associated with blues soloing, Mayer is able to meander rather than race and, with trademark chromatic passages, channels Garcia effectively and respectfully.

On stage, Bob Weir looks like a cross between a wise mentor and a proud father figure as he and Mayer trade looks and licks. Back in 2016, alongside a snap of the band, Mayer posted on Instagram, “I grew up a lone wolf in my bedroom practicing my guitar, and all I ever really craved was a community.”

This is perhaps what best sums up the effect that joining Dead & Company has had on Mayer’s musical outlook. As a band who were able to draw the same crowd night after night in a country-wide “long strange trip”, the idea of community will not be alien to any long-serving Deadhead. Thanks to Mayer, the live experience that captivated fans for decades is far from dead.

Just about any Deadhead is familiar with the Phil Lesh bass known as ‘Mission Control’. What is hazy are many of the details, as this bass guitar seemed to simply disappear over 40 years ago. 

This astounding custom Alembic bass, with serial number 74 00008, was played by Lesh on stage with the Grateful Dead from June 16, 1974 until July 1, 1979, and was hand-built at Alembic by luthier Rick Turner. 

Only the eighth instrument built by Alembic, Turner started it in 1972 and completed it in mid-1974. ‘Osiris’, aka ‘Mission Control’, ‘Osage Orange’ or ‘The Omega’, was built not just for, but as part of, the band’s historic Wall Of Sound. The significance of the Wall Of Sound, another brainchild of Alembic co-founder Owsley ‘Bear’ Stanley III, cannot be overstated. 

This grand audio experiment spawned the modern PA system, and set a standard still unmatched today. However, that is only part of the story of this bass and its builders at Alembic. This instrument and a handful of its contemporaries set the stage for the modern ‘boutique’ instrument.

Consider the construction of this bass, beyond its exotic inlays and electronics. When this instrument was built, you could count on two hands the number of instruments built this way. It featured laminated neck-thru construction, coupled with sandwiched, exotic tone wood wings known as ‘The Hippie Sandwich’.

These techniques, pioneered by the builders at Alembic, have paved the way for countless luthiers and instruments that now use these elements as the standard for today’s boutique instrument. Jerry Garcia’s Wolf guitar, built by Luthier Doug Irwin in 1972 to 1973, featured the same type of construction, and was also used with the Wall Of Sound.

Irwin also came from the Alembic tree of luthiers. Used by Lesh at over 250 Grateful Dead shows in that five-year period, the Mission Control bass became iconic in its own right, with Rolling Stone magazine featuring the instrument in an Alembic article in September 1973. It was also featured in its own scene in The Grateful Dead Movie the following year.

It was used at the hiatus comeback show at the Great American Music Hall in 1975, and the Day On The Green show in 1976, as well as the May 8, 1977 gig at Cornell University – possibly their best-known performance.

Osiris even visited the Great Pyramid in Egypt, where it was played during the lunar eclipse, in September 1978; it also closed down the famous Winterland Ballroom not once, but twice, in 1974 and 1978.

The bass was also used to track Mars Hotel (1974), Blues For Allah (1975), Terrapin Station (1977), and the Shakedown Street (1978) studio albums, as well as countless live releases.

Its specifications are extravagant, with red and green LED dot markers in the neck – quite a rarity back then. In fact, they were only the third set ever installed, after David Crosby’s set in 1970 and a set in Alembic 72 01 for Jack Casady in 1972 – all three sets still work.

Turner carved the top and back from Hawaiian koa wood, which is prized for its tone, and formed the wings from mahogany core and maple and walnut veneers.

The ebony fingerboard is covered in 11 different exotic inlays. For the record, these are:

• Mother-of-pearl lightning bolts striking lapis lazuli An abalone serpent eating its own tail 
• A mother-of-pearl crescent moon 
• An abalone lizard 
• An abalone Darkstar Mother-of-pearl and abalone stars 
• An abalone bat 
• An abalone infinity symbol 
• A mother-of-pearl and abalone Saturn 
• Abalone kissing fish, as Lesh is a Pisces 
• More mother-of-pearl lightning bolts striking lapis lazuli

The headstock is overlaid with Brazilian rosewood on both sides, and the inlays are made of mother-of-pearl, abalone, brass, opal, lapis lazuli, and even hashish.

Rick Turner crafted the neck-thru portion from seven laminates of three different types of lumber – walnut, maple, and Osage orange wood, a Midwestern US tree that is hard as a rock. Luthiers regard it as a fabulous building material for necks.

The mother-of-pearl fingerboard inlays are a series of mystical symbols. The design on the headstock incorporates the Alembic logo and the Dead’s ‘Steal Your Face’ skull and lightning bolt, both designed by Owsley ‘Bear’ Stanley III.

In the light, the ‘Hand Of Man’ portion of the Alembic logo sends a beam of light or energy into the ‘Steal Your Face’ skull portion – a remarkable display of Turner’s handiwork. The cloud portion of the logo representing the Universe even has a natural phantom skull hiding deep within the mother-of-pearl.

Two abalone and mother-of-pearl stars are inlaid on the lower half of the bass, each surrounded by five knobs controlling various tone settings and filters. There is a fantastic mother-of-pearl and abalone ‘Osiris’ inlay on the back of the headstock, revealing where this bass gets one of its names.

There were also 10 small push-button switches under ivory discs, which Turner says were mostly for the ability to send each string to four separate stacks of nine 15” speaker cabinets, each powered by a stack of McIntosh amps in the Wall Of Sound.

The original groundbreaking electronics were made by Lesh’s colleague George Mundy, as an early version of the Alembic Super Filter, designed by Ron Wickersham, and have now been upgraded to the current SF-2 version for less noise and weight. Each knob still does exactly what it did in 1974. Mundy was tracked down for consultation, and gave his blessing on the updates.

Rick Turner tells us: “George got deeply into it; he really put a lot into that instrument. I think his side of that bass probably cost like $30,000 [around $200,000 in 2021] back then. 

“You could buy a house with what Phil paid for that bass. Les Paul once came to a Grateful Dead show to check out the electronics – the crew thought his name was on the guest list as a joke until he showed up. We popped the back off the bass and showed him the insides. He loved it.”

There are low impedance-wide aperture neck and bridge pickups, as well as a thin ‘quad’ pickup placed between the bridge and bridge pickup for maximum string separation, each with dedicated outputs.

During the restoration, Jason Scheuner, the bass’s current owner, tracked down the original neck and bridge pickups over 40 years after they were removed from the bass, while accurate replicas of the quad unit, hum-cancelling coils and batwing tailpiece have been built and installed by Turner in 2020.

The red LED indicator lights have been restored next to the ivoroid buttons by Turner as well. As a final touch, Turner also provided an era-correct Alembic ‘U-channel’ bridge that came off one of Stanley Clarke’s personal basses from 1973-75.

The aim has been to undo some radical modifications which the bass underwent in 1980 by an overzealous roadie, before it was misplaced for over 40 years, and to make it as close to the original as possible, as well as to create a detailed timeline of the history of Mission Control.

After the roadie had removed the original pickups and electronics, he returned the bass and associated items to Equipment Room #4 at the Dead’s studio in San Rafael.

Following frontman Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995, the bass was moved to a storage locker, which was subsequently defaulted and bought by a salvage company in 2014.

They sold it to Gruhn Guitars in Nashville, who performed the structural repairs, installed the new Alembic Super Filter, and then sold it to Scheuner in December 2019, who completed the restoration with Turner in 2020. Given its provenance, and the spectacular restorations that have gone into it, what does the future hold for the Mission Control bass?

As Scheuner says, “The last couple of details to wrap up are to combine the two five-pin outputs currently on the bass to a 50-year-old NOS LEMO 3 connector provided by George Mundy, and to return the plate where the five-pin output for the Quad pickup currently resides to a historically accurate brass and koa plate, housing the fine adjust for the pickup volumes. 

“Nobody really owns a treasure like this – my family is just its custodian for a while. As long as it remains in the hands of a Deadhead, I’ll be happy.”

Just before this issue of Bass Player went to print, there was a development. Doug Irwin, the builder of Jerry Garcia’s most famous guitars – the Wolf, Tiger and Rosebud – reached out to Scheuner with a never-before-seen photo of the bass from 1975 with a gorgeous koa and abalone triple pickup ring.

Irwin explained that he had built the ring for Phil Lesh, and that he had put it on the bass in 1975. It was subsequently replaced with a brass ring in 1976, but Scheuner and Irwin agreed that Osiris would look best with a duplicate of the koa and abalone ring.

As Irwin still had the same piece of koa and the same bag of shell which he had used to make the original in 1975, a historically accurate duplicate was made and installed. This is a fitting final touch for what we feel is one of history’s most beautiful and significant bass guitars.

Deadheads rejoice: D’Angelico has announced a special Premier SS semi-hollow to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s landmark album, American Beauty.

The new model features a Satin Walnut finish with custom artwork on the front and back, as well as a custom headstock inlay, all inspired by the classic record.

Otherwise, the guitar is spec’d as per other Premier SS models, with a 15-inch-wide laminated-maple semi-hollow build.

Pickups are Seymour Duncan Designed humbuckers with gold covers, which promise tones spanning “clean country to gritty rock”.

Other features include Grover Super Rotomatic tuners, an ovangkol fingerboard, and tune-o-matic bridge with D’Angelico stopbar tailpiece.

The Premier Grateful Dead SS is available next month for $1,149 – head on over to D’Angelico Guitars for more info.

It marks the latest Grateful Dead guitar to arrive from the New York guitar co, which has partnered with Bob Weir for a number of signature models in recent years, including his own SS and Deluxe Bedford.

D’Angelico’s relationship with Grateful Dead legend Bob Weir has yielded a variety of wild signature guitars, but none are quite so eye-catching as this Dead lightning bolt-adorned Premier DC semi-hollow, now offered at half-price - down from $999 to $499 - at Sweetwater.

Available for a limited time only ahead of the Black Friday guitar deals bonanza, this electric is kitted out with a red, white and blue finish across the top of its all-maple body, while the back is all blue.

It also features a crowd-pleasing C-shaped neck and a set of classic-voiced humbuckers, while the guitar’s center block limits any pesky feedback at high volumes.

This open-box deal is available for a limited time only, with several of Sweetwater’s Black Friday deals already selling out, so don’t wait around...

Back in 2017, Jerry Garcia’s custom 'Wolf' sold at auction for $1.9 million. Now another of Garcia’s famed electric guitars, 'Alligator', is going on the block.

The guitar is the headline item at Bonham’s Alligator!: A San Francisco Rock Star’s Guitars, Art & More auction, which is being held December 10 in Los Angeles.

Alligator, a Fender Stratocaster with a build date of 1955, was gifted to Garcia by singer Graham Nash in 1970. It became Garcia’s primary instrument between 1971 and 1973 and can be heard on the beloved Grateful Dead triple live album, Europe '72.

In addition to a swamp ash body, maple neck and natural finish, it features several stickers on its body, including the dancing alligator holding a knife and fork that gave the guitar its nickname.

Like virtually all of Garcia’s instruments, Alligator had numerous external and internal modifications done to it over the years, carried out largely by Alembic’s Frank Fuller and Rick Turner. Among them were replacement Schaller tuners, a customized brass control plate and a brass sustain block mounted on wood riser.

Bonham’s also reports that Alligator was originally fitted with a custom-made blaster preamp, which is no longer present, and that some of the wiring has been altered since Alembic's work on the guitar in the '70s, with all of the subsequent modifications made to the guitar while it was still in Garcia's possession.

Alligator is being sold in a red plush-lined hard case containing a "Manny's / Heavy" guitar pick, with a "Good Ol' Grateful Dead" sticker to the outside. 

The guitar is expected to fetch between $250,000 and $400,000.

For more information on Alligator – and also on Alligator!: A San Francisco Rock Star’s Guitars, Art & More – head to Bonham’s.

On an overcast Tuesday evening in March, Bob Weir and I settled into a few balcony seats at the Manhattan Center Ballroom in New York City to talk about our latest co-design, the new Deluxe Bob Weir Bedford model, which had debuted three months prior at the 2019 Winter NAMM show, and two years after our first project, the Deluxe Bob Weir SS. 

Bob had come straight from another shoot — an in-depth interview and portrait session with GQ. He sat down, slipped off his Birkenstocks and cracked a Yerba Mate, seemingly relieved to now have the chance to talk solely about his greatest love and lifelong pursuit, the guitar. 

What has a lifetime of performance on the guitar taught you about the instrument itself?

If there’s anything my instrument has taught me to do over the years, it’s to listen to the instrument. The more I listen, the more it tells me what I want to be doing. It seems to me if you go into playing something with a notion of how it's supposed to sound, you might get there — you might get it how you thought it was supposed to sound. But if you listen to the instrument, you often times are going to find way more spectacular stuff. The instrument will tell you what it wants to be. What it wants to have done with it. 

So that sounds more like a conversation with the instrument rather than using it as a tool.

Right. I just take my orders. 

I think there’s a tendency for a lot of masters of the craft, like yourself, to know exactly what they want out of the instrument because they have such a defined sound. They tend not to change it. You have an incredibly identifiable sound, but I also know you to be someone who is constantly changing and evolving. Do you think that's due to your listening to the instrument? 

Yeah. The more I listen to the instrument, the more it tells me, “Okay. The next time you design me, for instance, let's try a different winding on the pickups so that I can get a little more high end. Because you're playing these heavy strings, and the overtone series is shading a little sharp, which gives the sound the unmistakable clang of steel, and let’s lean into that for a bit — turn up the treble.” Like I say, I just take my orders from the instrument.

You've probably logged more hours onstage than any living musician, including more than 3,000 shows with the Grateful Dead alone. Has live performance particularly impacted that listening for you? And if so, how? 

That’s an interesting question. Over the years, I've learned to sort of step aside and let the characters in the songs tell their stories. And along with that, they seem to call for certain sounds or soundscapes to accompany them, so that they sort of fill out the coloration. And oftentimes, that'll tell me what kind of sound I'm looking for. 

And then, at the same time, if I'm playing and it's time for me to step out or something like that — I'll just sometimes switch pickups to something I wouldn't have thought of. Just to see what that pickup has to say about the story that's going on. And when that works, it's really, really interesting. When it doesn't work — you know, you’d rather be anywhere on Earth than there. But you live through that stuff, too. 

So you kind of give the instrument autonomy — that’s interesting. Because I know you demand a fair bit of control over the on-stage sound, but it sounds like you still want to give the instrument the opportunity to speak, independent of you. 

Surprise me! It’s nice to do that because the different pickups are sampling the strings in different places, so the overtone series is going to be different. The girth of the note is going to be different. All that kind of stuff. You can play the same thing, but it's going to have certain harmonics ringing, and that's going to take you in this direction or that direction and take you up the neck or down the neck. 

In regards to the storytelling you were referencing earlier — often your sets and songs have these very long arcs to them. You'll leave a song and come back to it much, much later. And the same goes for your playing style. When you first hear it, you can’t quite grasp it. But when you dig in, you can hear that you’re crafting a much longer story than was previously apparent, and it helps illustrate the larger motion of the set. Do you think making room for both your voice and your instrument’s voice is what creates such a long arc? 

Given that there's a big arc that we're describing with our story and leaving a little of it to chance... If I discover something early on that seems like it might be potentially kind of thematic, I'll bring that back sometimes just to see what that little theme has to say under this light, under this part of the storytelling, and that kind of tightens the story up a little bit. It gives it believability, if you can follow me there. It’s also fun. 

Right. So it's something less manufactured. 

Yeah! 

So for your new signature model — do you think part of the intention behind the new Bedford was making sure that it had the room to create some magic? 

That's the whole idea! The more different sounds you can get out of that one instrument — it's a matter of learning what skills that instrument is housing and learning where to go to get them, but really the more different kinds of sounds that the instrument has, the more colors you have on your palette, and that's what you're looking for when you're painting. 

How did you specifically identify a need for a guitar like this one? 

Well, I was playing with Dead and Company, and the on-stage volume was kind of loud. My original signature model — the semi-hollow — was doing half the job perfectly, but it occurred to me that, okay, maybe it's time to develop a solid body to complete the picture. So we got to work on a solid body and it's been a lot of joy of discovery — we’re just scratching the surface. What we can get from this particular kind of instrument has been a lot of fun, and continues to be. 

What do you think the Bedford offers that nothing else you have offers? 

Well, the new Bedford can get really bright, and I like that because when you're playing chordal stuff, the harmonic structure of the melody you’re describing is in there. You're ringing a certain number of lofty bells, if you will, with the harmonic structure that you develop through your chordal stuff. Then those become, once again, the colors on your palette. Those are the notes that you're gonna be using, giving you more choices for your melodies. That's what we're getting from this instrument. 

In regards to that responsiveness — if you pack enough tonal options into the design, you're creating an opportunity to multiply the effect of applying different techniques to the instrument. Is that versatility something that you were really hoping to establish? 

Designing a semi-hollow guitar that has acoustical resonance is going to necessarily limit what kind of tonal variety you can get out of it. Its body resonance is going to be everywhere — all the pickups are going to hear it because it's fed back into the string. With a solid body instrument, those resonances aren't there. And so the actual variety of tonal responses you get from the various pickups and in approaches to getting sound out of your strings is wider. It doesn't have quite the woody charm of a semi-hollow instrument, but the trade-off there is you just get more stuff and more places to go. It's going to be years before I really think that I've got a handle on this instrument. 

Is part of the intention designing an instrument that is worth the challenge of learning? 

I mean, that's the whole deal. What we're trying to design is an instrument that's going to keep me amused and flabbergasted for years to come so that I've got stuff to work on. You know — “Oh, here's a new sound. Holy Jesus. How are we going to use that? I'm just going to have to sleep on it for a while.” And it'll come back around and sooner or later I'll find a use for it. 

And when you're not sleeping on it, you're waking up in the middle of the night thinking about it.

Yep! 

You played a show at our NAMM booth this past January, and you had an experience with that specific Bedford that was powerful enough to make you request that exact one. Even if it's the same model, made at the exact same time, etc., do you believe in the black magic of each individual instrument? What is that bond that you feel with an instrument when something just works? 

Well, you know, in that particular case, that Bedford was bright and broad and it was exactly what I was looking for. We designed the pickups and had them wound to be bright. Not very hot, but very bright, and you just drop the gain a little bit. Eventually you develop an ability to have a variety of colors — you know, this note wants to be muted, this one wants to be full-spectrum loud, this one we can lean into the harmonics, this one wants to be muted again, etc. You can do all that with this. You know, it takes a little bit of work and a little bit of practice, and you have to love what you're doing, because otherwise it will be confounding. But that challenge was what we were going for with the new Bedford, and by God we're getting there. 

More emotionally, the guitar is telling me stuff that I didn't know about the notes that I play. If you play it right, it's going to take you somewhere else. It's going to lead you somewhere else. It's going to lead to this figure or this color, but I know that if I stick with it for a while I'm going to grow on my own — knowing that if I just sit with the instrument for a while, I’m going to grow. It is going to stretch my soul. That's what it's about.

So if the Bedford is enough to keep you flabbergasted and challenged, what do you hope it does for other players? 

I would hope that folks who play this instrument are going to find it as challenging and as engaging as I do, because we've tried to design an instrument that's really got a huge variety of sounds, and of course that means it’s going to take a while to learn what it does for you and with your hands — because everybody is going to have a different touch and what they pull out of it is going to be very different. But you know, I just hope it keeps you amused and it keeps you moving forward. Discovering new harmonic or textural possibilities. The whole idea is to create an instrument that's really dynamic and flexible. 

Last time we spoke, you had told me about a personification of tone that came up in the studio a long while ago, where someone referred to a guitar sounding like a porcupine blowing kisses. I’m curious whether you’ve come up with a personification for the new Bedford. 

Right, that was when we were recording “Tennessee Jed.” We were playing and my bass player took a big hit of pot and then he leaned over to me and says your guitar sounds like a porcupine blowing kisses — it was kind of spiky in the tone. I’m getting way spikier tones now with the Bedford. But I don't smoke that much pot, so those kinds of personifications don't occur to me all that often. 

But you know when you get a tone that's going to be a signature tone for a given song — thematic for a given song. It adds character to the story that you're telling. And like I say, it fills out the colors of the story. You know, if you're painting the sky, you might get a deeper blue than real life has to offer. That's the kind of stuff that we're looking to be able to do with the sound. You're painting a picture that couldn't be painted visually, but you can do it with sound because you can go places sonically that are impossible with any sort of visual. 

That's like adding to the adage of music accesses what’s beyond words. Music accesses what’s beyond visuals, too. 

Bob picks up the Bedford and begins playing. 

What are you responding to and what are you listening for? 

I'm listening to the higher order in the harmonic series because that tells me where I want to go. And then something that just recently happened to me that may change a whole lot of stuff... if I can get a collection of these. Somebody gave me a stone pick. It's made out of Montana agate, and it puts a little tip on the note. If I use that, and I finger pick a note, then they blend together into something that's a third entity. Hard to describe because there is no name for it. 

Bob goes quiet and continues playing the guitar.

Could you describe the electronic configuration that creates all the versatility? 

So on the new Bedford, we have a five-way switch, volume and tone knobs, and then a blender knob, which blends in the odd-man-out pickup — the one that isn’t naturally a part of the position you’ve selected. You can just play a note, and roll the blender knob off, and it'll change color because it will be bringing in the odd-man-out. 

For example, on position 2 — which is the bridge and middle pickup — if you roll off the blender knob, you’ll bring in some of the neck pickup, as well. Which is, you know, a very different sound — much thicker, much more low end so the harmonic content is going to be real rich. Once you play it, you get a feel for it. 

For the pickups, you get the Seymour Duncan Stacked P-90s in the neck and bridge positions. And then you get to blend those with the middle pickup—that Lollar Blonde that’s brighter than a thousand suns, which helps you step out when you need to. There's no end to places you can go with this guitar. 

And what about the volume and tone knobs? 

Right. They’re push/pull. The volume knob is for the neck pickup, and the tone knob is for the bridge pickup. So in the “pull” position, they are standard single-coil P-90’s and they are manically rich. You push it in and they become humbucking pickups. They're thicker. They don't have quite as much harmonic information, but they’re quiet and thicker. Pair that with using the blender knob however you like and what we’re getting at here is just an immense variety of tones. And with that blender knob, if you hit a chord, and then roll the pot — you're going to hear the fundamentals change color right before your eyes. Lots of fun. 

When people see the new Bedford, even before they know it’s a UFO, tonally speaking, they are usually floored by the aesthetics. How did you settle on this look? 

Well the Matte Stone finish, you know, I love it because it draws you in rather than demanding your attention. It has this elegance about it — it’s not shiny and it doesn’t need to be. I've always been real fond of the color grey because you can read whatever color you want into it. Depending on the lights you’re bathed in, this will become a blue, or a muted red, because it takes on the light show. And then we just sort of stumbled upon this pickguard. It’s just a nice contrast with the Matte Stone. It ties in with the abalone in the fingerboard and everything sort of falls together. It's a nice looking guitar. 

I remember you telling me that you played a few shows at Citi Field recently where traditional single-coil pickups just weren’t cutting it on one of your guitars, and that’s what began our exploration towards the stacked P-90s, right? 

I've played numerous shows where you can't get away with a single coil pickup. You just can't do it at Citi Field. You know it's gonna be all hum and buzz. You need a humbucking pickup. And so we went to some lengths to design a Duncan pickup that got bright like a single coil, but that still defeats that hum. And I think we got pretty successful with that. 

In the past, I’ve called you the most restlessly creative person I know. But do you think that the projects you’re working on now, and in particular this signature model project, is in some way a manifestation of all you’ve learned over the years? 

Well, everybody is the sum total of their experiences and what they've gathered along the way. That's what you carry with you. That's your wealth. And I put my wealth of experience into this design here with the Bedford. Somebody had to do it! Somebody had to make a guitar that has these features. You know it really has more variety of tones than any guitar I can think of. And you know, like I say, it's going to be a challenge to learn how to use that. But that's kind of what I live for. 

I’m always so honored to work with you on these things, and D’Angelico is so good about encouraging these projects, which at their inception are purely artistic. How do you envision the next chapter of D’Angelico and your work with us? 

I'm looking forward to working with D’Angelico long term. There are a number of ideas I have that we haven't even kicked around much yet. But the D’Angelico folks understand that there are new archetypes for the electric guitar that have yet to be defined. Of course, D’Angelico has a reputation for making really fine jazz instruments, but this new thrust is a new vision for the company. They seem less tied to what has been done on previous models and more into exploration than any company I can think of. And that appeals to me greatly. 

Well thank you, Bob. It’s always an honor. You know, before we started this interview, someone told me that the Grateful Dead played this stage in 1971. Do you remember that? 

[Bob turns around to see the stage.] What’s the name of this place? 

Ryan Kershaw is the VP of Product Development for D’Angelico Guitars.

D’Angelico has announced the Deluxe Bob Weir Bedford, the company’s first solid body signature model. The guitar features an all-basswood body, a C-shape maple/walnut/maple neck with a natural satin finish and a pau ferro fingerboard with mother of pearl/abalone split block inlays.

Pickups are Seymour Duncan D-90 STK P-90-style single coils in the neck and bridge positions, and a Lollar Blonde single coil in the middle, controlled via a five-way toggle and a blend pot for mixing in whichever pickup isn’t selected.

Other features include a gold Tune-O-Matic bridge, a gold 6-point Wilkinson tremolo and Grover locking tuners.

The Deluxe Bob Weir Bedford is the Dead & Company guitarist’s second signature model with D’Angelico, following the semi-hollow Premier Bob Weir SS in 2017.

The D'Angelico Deluxe Bob Weir Bedford is being offered in a Matte Stone finish for $1,999. 

For more information, head to D’Angelico. 

Two years removed from the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary celebration and the triumphant “Fare Thee Well” stadium concerts in their native San Francisco Bay Area and in Chicago, the surprising, resurgent Deadmania has not subsided.

Indeed, the events of that year seem to have both rekindled the ardor for the group’s music in many Deadheads who dropped off the psychedelic bus following Jerry Garcia’s death in the summer of 1995, and also brought in many new fans who never had a chance to see the band but are attracted by the Dead’s amazingly diverse and appealing songbook, and the colorful, upbeat, Sixties glow that will forever surround the group.

The ongoing success of the many Phil Lesh & Friends lineups and, more recently, Dead and Company, featuring newish Dead convert John Mayer (playing with Bob Weir and Grateful Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart), show that the Dead’s legacy is very much intact and that the music is continuing to evolve.

The individual musicians in the Grateful Dead were never poll winners in music magazines, yet you would be hard-pressed to find a rock group with a core so adept at playing so many different styles—and always in an improvisational context.

They drew from electric and country blues, oldtime and bluegrass, jazz, rock and roll, soul, funk, Indian, New Orleans R&B, electronic and classical music; nothing was off-limits. Each of the musicians brought in different influences and forged his individual style. Nobody sounded quite like Garcia (often imitated, never duplicated), and the same could be said of Bob Weir, whose designation as a “rhythm guitarist” is hopelessly inadequate given the sophistication and depth of his playing.

Their styles couldn’t be more different, but they were completely sympathetic players, tightly enmeshed and equally in sync with bassist Lesh (another utterly unconventional player) and the drummers.

They brought it all together in a unique mélange that took them from the fire-breathing psychedelia of the late Sixties, to the Dead Americana of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, and far beyond. Along the way they built the most loyal fan base the music world had ever seen

What follows is a selection of the best live versions of 50 songs by the Grateful Dead (and a few cover tunes) spanning their history.

Why live performances? Because that’s where the magic happened with this band. Everyone, including band members, will tell you that studio albums never quite captured the Dead’s mystical X-factor. So, live recordings it is. Fortunately, the Dead had the largest archive of live tapes of any band ever, so there is much to draw from. The difficulty, of course, is narrowing it down to just 50. After all, hardcore Deadheads would argue that 50 versions of “Dark Star”—each different as can be—could be a list in itself.

And the fact is, this does go beyond 50: As you’ll see, for a number of tunes, there are second and third picks based on eras—songs such as “Dark Star,” “Playing in the Band,” “The Other One” and a few others changed radically from one period to the next (influenced by the change in keyboardists and other factors), so versions from each epoch get a nod.

As for the criteria for the choice of songs—most are ones that, over time, were most variable night to night either because of the jamming in them or the intensity of the vocal delivery, or some other elevating force. So why not have “Sugar Magnolia” here? Or “Deal”? Or “Touch of Gray”? Surely there are multiple versions of each that fit those categories. Of course there are, and so it is with nearly any tune you’d care to mention that is not here. Such are the cruel realities of list-making.

A couple of final notes: The songs are listed in chronological order by performance date. For the main picks, we’ve listed where they can be found on Grateful Dead–sanctioned releases (where applicable), most of which can be accessed through Apple Music and Spotify. But here’s the cool news: There’s a fantastic web site called headyversion.com that is the ultimate resource for listening to the “best” versions of Grateful Dead songs.

Not only do they appear in order of popularity according to hundreds of folks who have weighed in on their favorite versions of just about every song in the Dead cannon—280 versions of “Eyes of the World,” 27 versions of “Liberty,” 59 versions of “Jackaroe,” etc.—but the site also provides direct links to archive.org’s immense vault of Dead performances, so you can hear them all in just a couple of mouse-clicks.

Of course, there is no true consensus on any of this, but it is fair to say that there is widespread agreement that certain versions of certain songs would probably make most discerning Deadheads’ lists. Similarly there is general agreement on the Dead’s peak performance periods: 1968–1974, 1977, 1981–'82, 1988–'90; you’ll find a heavy concentration of Seventies performances here. In the end, though, opinions about “best” anything are always going to be completely subjective and also probably change over time.

50. “Victim or the Crime”
March 21, 1990; Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, Ontario

Call it jagged, gnarly, noisy or unpleasant, the fact is this dissonant late Eighties Weir song was a darkly powerful force to be reckoned with, and almost featured a harrowing jam, as its ascending lines crashed and clashed. This first-set version shows all its bludgeoning brute force (and sophistication), then dissolves into Garcia’s late-Eighties ballad tour de force, “Standing on the Moon”—which, truthfully, deserves to be on this list, too, so listen to both! Available on the Spring 1990 (The Other One) box.

49. “Foolish Heart”
July 19, 1989; Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, Wisconsin

Introduced two days after “Victim” in 1988, this melodic Hunter-Garcia number (occasionally paired with “Victim”) provided a bouncy contrast, somewhat in the tradition of “Franklin’s Tower.” This version, as presented as a bonus track on the remastered Built to Last CD, is mixed so that every instrument is clear and loud—you can really feast on Weir’s imaginative rhythm lines and Brent’s synth washes. And this is easily Garcia’s best-ever vocal on the song.

48. “The Music Never Stopped”
July 17, 1989; Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, Wisconsin

The best Eighties versions of this Weir tune, also from 1975’s Blues for Allah, have a ragged majesty and intensity that is unmatched by earlier ones. The song part is fairly similar one to the next, but the two jams at the end are where the fireworks occur. Chosen by Phil for his Fallout from the Phil Zone compilation.

47. “Dear Mr. Fantasy”
July 2, 1989; Sullivan Stadium, Foxboro, Massachusetts

From its introduction in the summer of 1984 until Brent’s demise in summer 1990, this relatively rare Traffic cover was a real crowd favorite. Brent would sing the first verse alone, Garcia would go wild between verses, and then sing the second verse as a duet, followed by more fiery leads, and in some cases—as in this incendiary version from 1989 (one of the Dead’s best years), go into the “Na-na-na” coda of “Hey Jude,” with Brent singing “Mr. Fantasy” in between the “na-nas.” Truly electric; Jerry goes off!

46. “Shakedown Street”
June 30, 1985; Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, Maryland

This song was Garcia’s great contribution to late Seventies funk, and this colossal version has been the deserving winner of every poll on the subject. The interplay between Garcia (again with the envelope-wah) and Weir (who artfully employs a phase-pedal wah and octave divider in the middle of the jam) is deliciously rhythmic, and Brent adds much with his keyboards as well. If spacey/strange is more your thing, look no further than this Seventies pick: Egypt 9-16-78 (no third verse or vocal coda, but jamming galore).

45. “Cassidy”
March 28, 1985; Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York

First on Weir’s solo Ace album in 1972, but not played regularly until 1976, this is another one that fully matured in the Brent era, thanks to his solid duet vocals and the more variegated jam near the end. This one hits all its marks beautifully, including a nice “landing” after the jam. Look for the “SteveSW” soundboard recording on archive.org.

44. “Uncle John’s Band”
October 12, 1984; Augusta Civic Center, Maine

Speedy and adventurous, this one has a searing middle jam and then a really long ride before the final vocal reprise—which doesn’t materialize! Instead, the boys drift into an unconnected spacey jam, then “Drums,” “Space,” a fantastic “Playing in the Band” reprise, and then back to the “Uncle John’s” vocal reprise; stunning! Available on the 30 Trips Around the Sun box. For an acoustic rendering closer to the Workingman’s Dead version, check out Harpur College 5-2-70.

43. “Lost Sailor” > “Saint of Circumstance”
October 10, 1982; Frost Amphitheatre, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California

These two Weir-written nuggets, which date back to the summer of ’79 and were paired until mid 1986, show two sides of Bob’s writing. “Lost Sailor” is drifty and floaty, with a slightly odd structure (that works!); and “Saint of Circumstance” is a riff-heavy and ultimately anthemic rocker, which also has some unpredictable components. From December ’86 on, “Saint” appeared alone; usually not quite as potent as it was with the then-departed “Sailor.” (Still, check out this excellent Hornsby-era solo “Saint” pick: Giants Stadium 6-17-91.)

42. “Feel Like a Stranger”
August 10, 1982; Fieldhouse, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

When this wonderful Weir funk number—introduced in 1979, less than a year after “Shakedown”— appeared as an opener, it promised a “long, long, crazy, crazy night!” and laid the groundwork for exactly that. As with “Shakedown,” its success hinged on the meshing of different rhythmic lines from everyone in the band, with Jerry’s clucking envelope-wah dancing above Bob’s slashing chords.

41. “The Wheel”
December 14, 1980; Long Beach Arena, California

What a great moment it was at any show when the first golden notes of “The Wheel” would emerge, float into the air, and point the way to that rousing sing-along. It was best in the early Eighties, once Brent solidified the harmonies that were often rough in the late Seventies, and Garcia took more time getting into and out of the song. This one comes out of a fantastic “Estimated Prophet” and quickly rolls up to cruising speed and becomes very powerful; and the post-song jam is a thing of beauty, with Weir on tasteful background slide for some of it, before it eases into “Drums” (featuring Brazilian jazzers Flora Purim and Airto).

40. “Jack Straw”
January 11, 1979; Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York

Overall, my preference is for Brent-era versions, but there are many, many great ones from 1972 to 1979, and I have to concur with popular opinion that this one from the close of the Keith and Donna [Godchaux, singer] era smokes from beginning (“We used to play for acid/Now we play for Clive”) to the blistering ending jam. One of my longtime favorite Eighties versions is from Oakland Stadium 7-24-87, found on View from the Vault IV.

39. “Stella Blue”
October 21, 1978; Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco

It could be argued that this heavy, affecting ballad, introduced in the summer of 1972, is the single most perfect work that Garcia and [lyricist] Robert Hunter ever wrote, its power never diminishing through the years. This rightly revered version is, alas, cut near the end on the soundboard recording, but when it was officially released on Road Trips Vol. 1 No. 4, a patch from an audience-made recording was added, and it’s still the best there is.

38. “Estimated Prophet”
July 8, 1978; Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado

Year after year one of the most dependable tunes in the Dead’s second sets, Weir’s moody reggae number, with Garcia employing a wah-ish envelope filter, was played at most shows in ’77-’78 and was common for the rest of their history. The “song” part was reliable over time; it’s what happened in the jam that followed that Deadheads lived for. Here, it drifts evenly for a while, then picks up steam and rides high, before settling back down and eventually chiming into “The Other One.” Available on Red Rocks: 7/8/78.

Brent-era pick: Oakland 12-26-79 (major “clam” notwithstanding).

Nineties pick: Nassau 3-29-90, with [saxophonist] Branford Marsalis.

37. “Wharf Rat”
April 22, 1978; Nashville Municipal Auditorium, Tennessee

I’ve rarely encountered a “Wharf Rat” I didn’t love—which is good, because they played it a lot. Though I generally prefer the harmony vocals on the bridge in the Brent-era, the late Seventies versions have a distinctive haunting quality and some crushingly powerful jams. Here, the harmonies are fine, Garcia’s lead vocals are deep, and his playing outrageous and spectacular on the two concluding jams. Available on Dave’s Picks Volume 15.

36. “Black Peter”
October 29, 1977; Evans Field House, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois

Dark, passionately sung, with a wonderful, if brief, slide guitar solo, and then a completely rip-roaring finale that keeps on building to a sustained climax before it lurches into “Sugar Magnolia.” Look for the soundboard recording on archive.org.

35. “Terrapin Station”
September 3, 1977; Raceway Park, Englishtown, New Jersey

Introduced in March ’77, this multi-layered Hunter-Garcia epic was always solid during its first year, with this version—played as the encore of what to this point was their biggest show as a headliner—notable for both its precision and power; just about perfect. It combines a folk sensibility with its famous baroque-ish contrapuntal coda and crunching rock power. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 15.

34. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo”
September 3, 1977; Raceway Park, Englishtown, New Jersey

This perky little number took the Dead’s Americana thrust in a slightly new direction, with its nod to old-time jazz, as well as country flavors. It always built to a couple of nice peaks—the first instrumental and then the vocal coda (“Across the Rio Grande-o…”) and ending solo. This is another winner from the dynamite Englishtown show. Available on Dicks Pick’s Vol. 15.

33-32. “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Franklin’s Tower”
June 9, 1977; Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco

This powerful and diverse triumvirate had three distinct incarnations: ’75–’77, ’83–’85, and ’89–’95, while the bouncy “Franklin’s Tower” also enjoyed solo spins during the in-between periods. This titanic 31-minute marvel from ’77 crackles with electricity, with a booming “Help,” an intricate then relentlessly building “Slipknot!” jam, all resolved with a triumphal “Franklin’s Tower.” Available on Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings.

Eighties pick: Santa Fe 9-10-83 (“Slipknot!”).

Nineties pick: RFK Stadium 6-14-91 (with Bruce Hornsby and MIDI Jerry) “Franklin’s Tower” alone: Cape Cod 10-27-79.

31. “Sugaree”
May 22, 1977; The Sporatorium, Pembroke Pines, Florida

Again, lots of great choices from 1977. This one was vaultkeeper Dick Latvala’s favorite, a big reason he chose the show as Dick’s Picks Vol. 3, and it’s hard to argue against its greatness. It’s big, loping and jammed to the max between verses with everything from fast, intricate runs to powerful fanning to gentle guitar etchings. As the saying goes in the Dead universe: “All killer, no filler!”

30. “Comes a Time”
May 9, 1977; War Memorial, Buffalo, New York

The voters at headyversion.com get it right again. With this song, it’s all about Garcia’s vocal delivery and swelling, crying solo after the verses, and this one delivers in spades! My favorites are from ’76-’77, with Donna on sweet harmony vocals and Keith adding little piano touches to the spare arrangement. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 29.

It was still powerful when it was revived in the mid Eighties, and from that era I’d recommend checking out Richmond Coliseum 11-1-85, which has a fragile but committed Jerry really baring his soul. It almost falls apart, but the recovery is great!

29-28. “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”
May 8, 1977; Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

After a couple of years of “Scarlet” enlivening any set it appeared in, in March 1977 it was paired with the new “Fire on the Mountain” to become perhaps the most popular combo of songs in Dead history—it was played around 240 times. My own preferences run toward the driving, high-energy Brent-era versions ’79–’90 (I loved what Brent’s B-3 and backup vocals added), but it’s hard to argue with the primacy of Cornell ’77, which has the unbeatable ending “Fire on the Mountain” jam (but the best-ever “Scarlet” is the amazing Giants Stadium 9-2-78 version).

Eighties pick: Atlanta 11-30-80.

Nineties pick: Hamilton 4-22-90 (tight, great MIDI Jerry). “Scarlet” alone pick: Fresno 7-19-74.

27. “Morning Dew”
May 8, 1977; Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

This song was great in all eras, always a highlight when it appeared. The subtext of the Bonnie Dobson–penned folk ballad could not be more dire—the last man and woman on earth after a nuclear holocaust!—but in the Dead’s hands it was both delicate and filled with heavy pathos. At this show, it closes an incredible second set, with Garcia and company reducing the place to rubble with the ending buildup—the mark of a truly great “Dew.” A pre-hiatus version to check out is Winterland (San Francisco) 10-18-74.

From the Eighties, it’s hard to top Augusta, Maine 10-12-84.

26. “Crazy Fingers”
June 9, 1976; Boston Music Hall, Boston, Massachusetts

Played briefly in the mid Seventies and then from ’82 on, the ’76 versions capture the spirit of the jewel-like Blues for Allah version, with this one a particularly satisfying rendition, with its breezy, reggae lightness. Available on Road Trips Vol. 4 No. 5.

Eighties pick: Frost Amphitheatre 10-10-82.

25. “Eyes of the World”
August 6, 1974; Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City, NJ

So many contenders! Even though this is another tune that was great in every period, only versions from ’73 and ’74 included the amazing, still-unnamed jam that would materialize after a few minutes after the final verse (and following Phil’s dependably monstrous bass solo), in which the group bopped through an intricate series of key and tempo changes, jazzy intricate unison lines that were miles away from the song, and then soared on the “Eyes” groove for several minutes.

I love the relaxed-but-still intense vibe of Seventies “Eyes”; by the early Eighties the tempo had increased and the tune sometimes lacked that liquid-sunshine flow the song begs for. This one, clocking in at 19 minutes, is just about flawless in every respect. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 31.

Eighties pick: Greek Theatre 5-13-83; Seventies tempo, lots of jamming, nice work by Brent; look for the soundboard version on archive.org.

Nineties pick: Nassau Coliseum 3-27-90; gotta give some love to the magnificent first show where saxophonist Branford Marsalis sat in with the Dead, and fit in perfectly!

24-23. “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”
June 26, 1974; Providence Civic Center, Providence, Rhode Island

This was a tough one. The version 10 days earlier from Des Moines, Iowa, (6-16-74) has a slightly better “China Cat” and a cooler between-songs jam, but Providence has a fantastic long intro to “China Cat” and better “I Know You Rider,” so we’re going with that choice. Both are wonderful (as are most of these loping ’74s), filled with excellent interplay. Available on on Dick's Picks Vol. 12.

Eighties pick: Madison Square Garden, New York; 3-9-81. I really love all the peppy [keyboardist] Brent Mydland–era “China-Riders,” too. This one is over-the-top spectacular, with super high-energy jamming all the way through its generous length; one of several highlights in an amazing show from an underrated year.

Nineties pick: Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, California; 6-16-90. Strong late Brent-era version with hot extended jam (including MIDI flights) between tunes and solid “Rider.” Available on View from the Vault III.

22. “Truckin’ ”
May 19, 1974; Portland Memorial Coliseum, Oregon

Another nearly impossible choice, with more than 500 versions to pick from! Again, we lean early: ’72–’74, when Keith was in the band, Phil was at his most prominent musically, and the jams following the song typically opened up the widest and wildest. Like on this one—talk about the Group Mind in action! This one bounces and grooves forward with so much vigor and purpose before it falls into a funky jam and eventually ends up at “Not Fade Away.”

21. “Here Comes Sunshine”
November 30, 1973; Boston Music Hall, Boston, Massachusetts

It’s difficult to fathom why this lilting, bopping tune was only played during 1973 (and once in ’74), then dropped until 1992. Yes, the Beatles-ish harmonies were a challenge, but the jams were varied and often tremendous. Phil really shines on this version, but everyone is on-point. The harmonies were better in the Nineties, but the jams not nearly as interesting. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 14.

20. “Weather Report Suite”/“Let It Grow”
August 4, 1974; Philadelphia Civic Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Weir’s three-part “Weather Report Suite” (“Prelude” > “Part One” > “Let It Grow”) was an important part of many shows only in ’73-’74; then “Let It Grow” alone was a fast-paced, multi-textured spin-off from ’76–’95. This version of the suite is spectacular, and leads to a long jam where Billy Kreutzmann takes the “Let It Grow” pulse and drives it frenetically in jazzy directions, with Garcia’s wah-wah and Keith’s Rhodes sounding like electric Miles Davis. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 31.

Eighties pick: “Let It Grow”: Alpine Valley 8-7-82.

Nineties pick: Capital Centre 3-14-90.

19. “He’s Gone”
May 26, 1973; Kezar Stadium, San Francisco

Always a winner pre-hiatus (i.e. ’72-’74), this particular version has a perfect tempo, a top-notch lead vocal, Keith seemingly channeling country piano great Floyd Cramer throughout, a soulful stroll through the “Nothin’s gonna bring him back” coda, and then an extremely tasty melodic jam that’s as pretty as anything you’ll hear from this group. Don’t miss it! In the Eighties, the trio of Jerry, Bobby and Brent always did a nice job on that vocal coda.

18. “Cumberland Blues”
September 27, 1972; Stanley Theatre, Jersey City, New Jersey

This song was always much more rockin’ and intense in a live setting than you might expect, and many versions in the early Seventies stretched out nicely under that fast, shuffling beat. At this show it comes out of 30-minute “Dark Star,” so it feels like it has a little extra juice and sparkle to it. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 11.

17. “Bird Song”
August 27, 1972; Old Renaissance Faire Grounds, Veneta, Oregon

Are you picking up a trend here? Yes the ’72 Veneta show, put on by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, is as good as its reputation. No collection should be without the superb 2013 set called Sunshine Daydream, which includes the full concert and also a DVD of the trippy, long-bootlegged-but-now-restored film of (some of) the event that gives the box its name. This was the year that “Bird Song” really blossomed; from here on out it was a cherished jamming vehicle (usually) in GD first-sets; not as common as some, but always welcome when it flew in.

Eighties pick: Greek Theatre 7-15-84; cool and jazzy.

Nineties pick: Greensboro Coliseum 4-1-91; strong Bruce Hornsby and [keyboardist] Vince Welnick contributions, and some great peaks over its 17 minutes.

16. “Playing in the Band”
August 27, 1972; Old Renaissance Faire Grounds, Veneta, Oregon

You can’t lose with any ’72 “Playing in the Band” (it was featured every night on the European tour), but this justifiably famous version has an acid-drenched, edge-of-chaos vibe that that makes it completely gripping for every second of its 23 minutes. There are longer and spacier versions, but this has everything it needs. Available on Sunshine Daydream.

Eighties pick: Laguna Seca 7-29-88; a rare later version that includes the “reprise.”

Nineties pick: Cal Expo 5-26-93—one of the band’s last truly great jams; the “reprise” comes later in the set.

15. “Good Lovin’ ”
January 2, 1972; Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco

As Pigpen’s raps on this tend to be fairly similar one to the next, with a few notable exceptions (such as Princeton 4-17-71 with the famous “Brooklyn Bridge” rap), I tend to judge them by what the band does behind him. This one, from the first show of their greatest year, is smokin’ and amazingly varied, even tucking in a bouncing “China Cat” at around the 18-minute mark, before bringing “Good Lovin’ ” to a close. Weir revived the song in earnest in 1977, and many fine versions of that more compact, but still energetic, showstopper abound.

14-13. “Not Fade Away” > “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad”
November 15, 1971; Austin Municipal Auditorium, Texas

If you’re looking for a song to play for non-Deadheads, go with this one. The jam in between the two songs is completely magical, quoting “China Cat,” dipping in to a “Dark Star”–ish space briefly, and flitting into all sorts of other interesting realms. For a stand-alone “Not Fade Away,” try Englishtown 9-3-77. For “Goin’ Down the Road” it’s gotta be Fillmore East 4-29-71, coming out of an exquisitely constructed jam that has “China Cat” and “St. Stephen” teases in it. Available on Road Trips Vol. 3 No. 2.

12. “Hard to Handle”
August 6, 1971; Hollywood Palladium, California

Pigpen and the band really kicked out the jams on this Otis Redding tune, an explosive element in so many Dead sets in 1969 and ’70. This version is one that could reasonably be called a consensus choice—almost everyone thinks it’s easily the best they played. With its churning rhythms, slashing guitar, crunching bass and high-octane build-up during the jam, it’s a gripping rock/R&B tour de force. Available on the bonus disc of Road Trips Vol. 1 No. 3.

11. “New Speedway Boogie”
May 14, 1970; Meramec Community College, Kirkwood, Missouri

The Dead played this only in late 1969–70, and then again from ’91 (at the outset of the first Gulf War) until ’95. We’re going with this 1970 version because of Jerry’s emotional vocal delivery and the snaky, all-too-rare, slide solo that leans heavily on the old country blues lament “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.”

For a Nineties pick, let’s go with Giants Stadium 6-17-91, which really shows what pianist Bruce Hornsby brought to the mix in that era. Collected on the bonus disc of Road Trips Vol. 3 No. 3.

10. “Dancing in the Street”
May 2, 1970; Harpur College, Binghamton, New York

This Motown nugget [originally released by Martha and the Vandellas] was still relatively new when the Dead started covering it in 1966. By 1969–70, it had expanded to a big jamming number, with all sorts of great R&B riffing (a quote from Archie Bell & the Drells’ “Tighten Up”!) and sinewy threads. This version is the titan of them all! Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 8.

The song came back in an exciting, if vocally challenged, disco-influenced arrangement—also very jam-heavy—in 1976. My favorite version in that style is the long, ultra-funky one from Cape Cod Coliseum, 10-27-79, just the second time Brent played it live. Dig that clavinet!

9. “That’s It for the Other One”
May 2, 1970; Harpur College, Binghamton, New York

The mini-suite from Anthem of the Sun, incorporating “Cryptical Envelopment” sandwiching “The Other One,” was at its best from 1968–70, with ’69 its best year, but this one is my longtime favorite, for its many incredible mood swings, peaks and valleys; just an amazing ride. By ’72, “The Other One” had been cut loose completely from its original moorings, but it still careened across the Dead landscape as a compelling and constantly changing blast of trippy energy for the rest of the group’s career.

While it would be impossible to choose the best Seventies version of “The Other One,” the one I’ve enjoyed most often the past few years is from May 7, 1972, at the Bickershaw Festival in Wigan, England). Churning, sweetness, Phil bombs, space; it’s all here. Available on Europe ’72 Vol. 2.

For an Eighties pick, try April 23, 1983, at Veteran’s Coliseum in New Haven, Connecticut. The first hints come during a tremendously strange and ominous “Space,” then a long build-up (guitars and talking drum!), a full-band jam around the main riff, and more than 13 minutes in, Phil leaps forward with the classic entrance. Not as wildly explosive as some (8-19-89!), but consistently fine for more than 20 minutes.

8. “Saint Stephen”
February 27, 1969; Fillmore West, San Francisco

This performance, which is the Live Dead version, is what hooked me on the Dead back in November 1969, and though there are many other killer versions, this one still resonates most strongly with me. It’s big, bold and has both punch and crunch. Sad to say, I never got to see them sing the “High green chilly winds” bridge into “The Eleven.”

Seventies pick: Boston Music Hall, 6-9-76. When “Stephen” came back after a five-year break at this show, it was slower, more delicate and had its “Ladyfinger dipped in moonlight…” bridge turned into a waltz, but it also opened up in ways it never had before. This very spacey extended version is unlike any other they ever played. Available on Road Trips Vol. 4 No. 5.

7. “Dark Star”
February 27, 1969; Fillmore West (San Francisco)

The Big Kahuna of the entire Dead repertoire, utterly different from era to era, “Dark Star” evolved into the band’s most open and exploratory jamming tune, living up to its name night after night. I’ve probably listened to the 2-27-69 version immortalized on Live Dead, more than any other piece of music, so I am hopelessly biased about its greatness—the worlds it visits, its elastic rhythmic pulse, the riffs that were perfected this night, the overall flow of the thing.

Seventies pick: County Fairgrounds, Veneta, Oregon, 8-27-72. After about 11 minutes of floaty, drifty goodness leading up to the first verse, the jam gradually accelerates and starts to go more “out,” as Phil signals a shift to a mid-tempo cruising altitude, then does it again a few minutes later for a long spacey stretch. Major dissonance/weirdness ensues at around 30 minutes and hits some frightening (but cool!) meltdown moments along the way; 32 minutes in all and truly epic! (Available on Sunshine Daydream).

Eighties pick: Greek Theatre, Berkeley, July 13, 1984. Played for the first time in two-and-a-half years, this is more in the vein of ’69 versions (even dropping in a couple of actual riffs from that era) and surprisingly self-assured—more to my taste than the best late-Eighties or early-Nineties versions, which relied so heavily on MIDI textures.

Nineties pick: Greensboro (North Carolina) Coliseum, 4-1-91. [Keyboardist] Bruce Hornsby loved playing (and teasing) “Dark Star” during his tenure, and this is my favorite with him—long, weird and noisy pre-“Drums” with lots of Garcia MIDI, a totally hypnotic “Drums,” and then a short, tasteful reprise (second verse).

6. “Turn on Your Love Light”
January 26, 1969; Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco

Admittedly, my favorite “Love Light” is the one from Frankfurt, Germany, 4-26-72 (first released on Hundred Year Hall), on which the band is unflaggingly spectacular—go Keith! [Godchaux keyboards]—but it has almost no Pigpen verbal riffing on it, so it’s not fair to choose it as the version. So I go back to Live Dead again and pluck this one, which has all the cornerstones I love—the crazy double-drumming, Pig at his most confident, band members chiming in on backups, and a crowd going appropriately nuts throughout. Not too short, not too long, this one feels juuust right.

5. "The Eleven"
August 24, 1968; Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA

This song/jam was only around for about two years, but what a glorious run it had! Nearly every version is a blazing psychedelic swirl. The one on Live Dead (from 1-26-69) is the most famous (and also great!), but this one from a few months earlier is even more exciting and expansive. It just won’t quit—until it drops down into a devastating “Death Don’t Have No Mercy.” Available on Two from the Vault.

4-3. “Alligator” > “Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)”
August 23, 1968; Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA

With these two Pigpen numbers, it was less about the songs than the jams they spurred. “Alligator” always led to a mesmerizing rare-for-the time double-drum duel between Mickey and Bill, and the jam after would usually build from a Jerry-plus-drummers noodle to a ferocious full-band boil before dropping eventually into the locomotive rhythm and big crescendos that lace together Pig’s visit to the mysterious Gypsy Woman in “Caution.”

Available on Anthem of the Sun expanded edition. And don’t miss the primal, acid-drenched version from the Carousel Ballroom 2-14-68, and for a “Caution” alone, Fillmore Auditorium 11-8-69.

2. "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl"
February 14, 1968; Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, CA

The slinky, Pigpen-sung “Schoolgirl” gave the early Dead a chance to stretch out on an easy shuffling blues groove, with Garcia and Pig trading licks on guitar and harmonica, and Phil always dancing on top with what was already a formidable bass assault. Available onRoad Trips Vol. 2 No. 2.

1. "Viola Lee Blues"
November 10, 1967; Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA

The longest and perhaps most intense versions are from the late period of the song’s relatively brief existence in the repertoire (such as Chicago 4-26-69 and Harpur College 5-2-70), but this one from 1967 really encapsulates what made this song such an important part of the Dead’s first years—it was the biggest jamming vehicle for the early group, capturing that era’s feral intensity, with all the parts interlocking, more by kismet than by calculation, Phil completely monstrous on the bass, and [Ron] Pigpen [McKernan’s] swirling organ still such a fundamental part of the sound. Available on30 Trips Around the Sun.

The Grateful Dead's first official career-spanning documentary, Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead, will make its DVD and Blu-ray debuts this fall. In addition, a new Deluxe Edition featuring unreleased bonus content will be available exclusively from Dead.net. Both versions arrive more than a year after the acclaimed four-hour documentary premiered at Sundance, followed by its exclusive release on Amazon Prime.

Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev (Happy Valley, The Tillman Story) with Martin Scorsese serving as executive producer, Long Strange Trip brings together never-before-seen performance footage, vintage interviews, and other candid moments unearthed from the Grateful Dead's vast vaults. The film also includes newly captured conversations with surviving members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir, as well as many other characters and pranksters from the Dead universe.

The documentary, which was nominated for the "Best Music Film" Grammy Award last year, was widely praised by fans and the critics alike, including the Los Angeles Times, which called it: "One of the most engrossing rock docs ever made."

Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead will be available on November 9 as a double-DVD ($24.98) and single Blu-ray ($27.98). The Deluxe Edition will be available the same day exclusively from Dead.net on three DVDs ($26.98) and two Blu-rays ($30.98). Production of the Deluxe Edition is limited to 6,500 copies each on DVD and Blu-ray.

All versions include the original documentary in stereo, as well as a new 5.1 surround mix. They also feature a new commentary track with director Bar-Lev and editor John Walter. The Deluxe Edition boasts a previously unreleased, six-song live performance from the band's first show overseas, recorded on May 24, 1970 in England at the Hollywood Festival, along with backstage footage from the band's first trip over the pond. The Deluxe Edition also includes two live performances from 1989 ("Dear Mr. Fantasy" and "Death Don't Have No Mercy"). Snippets of all the bonus content were used in the film, but this marks the first time they will be released in their entirety.  

"Around 2003, while winding through the 16mm film outtakes for The Grateful Dead Movie in preparation for its DVD release, I came across a couple of unlabeled cans of 16mm film. I loaded the first reel onto the Steenbeck film viewing/editing table and was amazed by what I saw," says band archivist David Lemieux. "Not only rare, exceptional quality material from the performance at the Hollywood Festival, but loads of other terrific footage, showing the band at a Warner Bros. Records party in London (Pigpen surrounded by suits!), at a photo shoot ('that's one uncooperative bunch of musicians!'), at a rehearsal hall performing 'Candyman' vocal harmonies and, most exciting of all, backstage at the festival. This is truly some of the most remarkable, candid, and interesting footage in existence of the Grateful Dead and we're thrilled to be releasing the entirety of this wonderful historical document."

For more details on Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead, as well as pre-order information, check out Dead.net.

Last year, in honor of the late Jerry Garcia's would-be 75th birthday (August 1), the wonderful lads and lasses over at Reverb.com came up with a few new lessons in honor of the late Grateful Dead frontman and guitarist.

The first video, which you can (obviously) check out below, focuses on a much-loved Grateful Dead medley—"Help on the Way" and the intricate and relentlessly building"Slipknot!"

As Joe at Reverb explains in his lesson, "Nearly everything that is played in this section is a 7th chord arpeggio, so if you are familiar with your 7th chord arpeggio shapes, access them. If you have never learned 7th chord arpeggio shapes, then this is a wonderful exercise for you."

Up next, Joe tackles the infectious country-rock anthem “Casey Jones.”

As Blair Jackson wrote in Guitar World in 2013, although Garcia’s original acoustic guitar-voice demo is strikingly similar to the way it ended up on Workingman’s Dead, the first several Grateful Dead versions in early summer 1969 have a different vibe. The main rhythm has an almost Motown feel to it (think 'I Second That Emotion'), and there are a couple of fairly lengthy guitar extrapolations. It wouldn’t be too long, however, before the song found its finished form."

The song is full of simple riffs, but that doesn't make them any less interesting or intriguing.

Up next, it's "Althea."

Back to Joe from Reverb: "I heard 'Althea,' I felt that a whole new sonic landscape of playing was unlocked for me. Not only did I love the riff, but I also thought I could pick it up pretty easily. B minor, A, E. Got it. Now, what’s the other stuff in there that makes it sound like Jerry? Similar to the "Casey Jones" lesson, this is simplicity."

If you're in the mood for another Garcia lesson, complete with tabs, check out The Acoustic Stylings of the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. And while you're at it, be sure to read Plastic-Free "Ocean" Guitar Unveiled in Honor of Jerry Garcia's 75th Birthday and The Grateful Dead's 50 Best Live Performances. And let's not forget How 1970's 'Workingman’s Dead' Changed the Grateful Dead Forever.

For more information about this lesson, head here.

A 19-disc live Grateful Dead box set—Pacific Northwest '73-'74: The Complete Recordings—will be available September 7, Rhino announced today.

The box set—which, for the less fanatical among you, will also be available in 3-CD and 6-LP formats—contains recordings of the band's shows at the P.N.E. Coliseum in Vancouver, B.C. (6/22/73), Portland Memorial Coliseum in Portland, OR (6/24/73), Seattle Center Arena in Seattle, WA (6/26/73), the P.N.E. Coliseum (5/17/74), Portland Memorial Coliseum (5/19/74) and Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA (5/21/74). Each show was mastered in HDCD from the original master tapes by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering. The transfers from the masters were transferred and restored by Plangent Processes.

You can listen to the set's first single—an epic, 26-minute medley including "Truckin'" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" recorded at the May 1974 show at the Portland Memorial Coliseum—below.

"This is a boxed set that's a long time coming," said David Lemieux, Grateful Dead archivist and the set's producer. "A couple of the shows have come very, very close to being released on their own through the Grateful Dead's archival release programs of the past 20 years, but we always held off in the hopes and expectations that they'd make a better boxed set."

"The music at each and every one of these six shows is unique, special, inspired, and at times transcendent," Lemieux continued. "The shows contain some of the most famous moments in Grateful Dead live history, including the 'Bird Song' from Vancouver '73, the Portland '74 'Truckin'' jam and the 47-minute 'Playing In The Band' from Seattle '74. Each of these six shows has a distinct musical personality, and we're excited that you can get to know all of them in their entirety, sounding better than we've ever heard them."

The set is available now for pre-order and will be shipped to arrive on September 7. Production of the set is limited to 15,000 individually numbered copies and available exclusively from dead.net for $189.98. The set will also be available in its entirety as a digital download in Apple Lossless ($119.99) and FLAC 192/24 ($149.99) exclusively at dead.net beginning on September 7.

Rhino is also releasing a compilation highlighting the best performances from the box set. Pacific Northwest '73-'74: Believe It If You Need It will will be available as a three-CD set ($24.98) and on digital download and streaming services. The complete Portland Memorial Coliseum show from 5/19/74 will also be released on 180-gram vinyl as a limited edition (7,500 copies) six-LP set ($129.98).

You can preorder the set over at dead.net.

Pacific Northwest '73-'74: Believe It If You Need It

Disc One

"China Cat Sunflower" (5/19/74)

"I Know You Rider" (5/19/74)

"Bird Song" (6/22/73)

"Box Of Rain" (6/24/73)

"Brown-Eyed Women" (5/21/74)

"Truckin'" (5/19/74)

Jam (5/19/74)

"Not Fade Away" (5/19/74)

"Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad" (5/19/74)

"One More Saturday Night" (5/19/74)

Disc Two

"Here Comes Sunshine" (6/22/73)

"Eyes Of The World" (5/17/74)

"China Doll" (5/21/74)

"Playing In The Band" (5/21/74)

Disc Three

"Sugaree" (5/17/74)

"He's Gone" (6/22/73)

"Truckin'" (6/22/73)

"The Other One" (6/22/73)

"Wharf Rat" (6/22/73)

"Sugar Magnolia" (6/22/73)

Earlier this week, Sammy Hagar teamed up with former Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir to host the fifth annual Acoustic-4-a-Cure concert at the Fillmore in San Francisco. During the show, Hagar was joined by his bandmates in Chickenfoot—Joe Satriani, former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith—for an all-star cover of Otis Redding's "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay" that also featured Taj Mahal and REO Speedwagon's Kevin Cronin.

This pro-shot video of the cover opens with an on-stage cameo from Guy Fieri, him of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives fame, presenting Mahal (who turns 76 today) with a birthday cake. The all-star group—with Hagar and Mahal sharing lead vocals, Satriani on acoustic guitar, Weir on electric and Anthony on electric bass—then proceeds to jam on the Otis Redding classic. You can watch the performance above.

"I was a fan of Taj Mahal long before I had a record deal in Montrose 1973," Hagar said of Mahal in a statement. "He's become a dear friend over the years and without a doubt, is one of the few living blues legends left on this planet!"

For more on Chickenfoot, follow along on Facebook.

Legacy Recordings has announced its Record Store Day offerings for 2018. This year's lineup of goodies, the label's most extensive yet, includes reissues and exclusive releases from Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers Band, Bob Dylan and more.

AC/DC's 1980 blockbuster, Back in Black, will be reissued on cassette, while Pink Floyd's 1967 debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, will be available—in its original mono mix—on vinyl for the first time in 50 years.

Bob Dylan's 1987 live album with the Grateful Dead, Dylan & the Dead, will be available on red and blue tie-dye vinyl, while Jimi Hendrix's April 1969 recording of Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy" with the nascent Band of Gypsys will be issued as a 7" single, backed with the Jimi Hendrix Experience's April 1969 recording of "Trash Man."

The Allman Brothers Band's live album, Live at the Atlanta Pop Festival, July 3 & 5, 1970, will be available on vinyl for the first time as a limited edition, 4LP, individually numbered box set, packaged in an oversize slipcase with an eight-page booklet of photos and liner notes.

For the full list of Record Store Day exclusives, and a list of all participating stores, head on over to recordstoreday.com.