The Grateful Dead – or at least a version of the group – has been resurrected after tour plans were announced less than a month after the conclusion of the band’s Fare Thee Well tour.
Dead & Company, which features guitarist Bob Weir plus drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, will be joined by John Mayer when they play Madison Square Garden on 31 October.
Speaking about the U-turn with Billboard, Weir said the band had unfinished business.
“Those songs weren’t done with us. It was a matter of who wanted to get back out on the road and keep doing it,” Weir said.
Speaking about Mayer’s enthusiasm and involvement, he called it “the cherry on the sundae that made this project look like a good idea”.
“It’s gratifying to see somebody discover our work and it’s also fun to have someone who’s cranked up about it – a new initiate into our way of doing things,” he added.
Mayer said that the Dead & Company plans weren’t finalised until after the Fare Thee Well tour was over: “It was all on hold until those guys could honor those shows and also see if they liked them.”
But he said when he was on stage with the group – Mayer played with the band during their not-quite final tour – he realised those dates shouldn’t be the last.
He recalled: “I went: ‘Oh, this has to happen’. They’re too good still, they’re too great to roll this back in the shop and call it a day.”
When asked if Weir expected a backlash from fans, some of whom paid $109.95 for pay-per-view TV packages, he said the band never confirmed they weren’t interested in playing live again.
He added: “Making plans is something we found out over the years is kind of a waste of time. The music tells us what it wants, where it wants to go, what it wants to do.”
