Bob Weir

SJ: I know that you've really gleaned a lot of cool stuff from Bob Weir. I mean I've seen it as far as loosening up and doing your thing. What's that been like? I mean, because it's been really successful. Everybody I know, first of all, that has seen Dead & Company with you are like really so happy about the whole situation.

JM: We made the leap. We landed on the other side of the chasm and it was like, Oh you made the jump. And we all did it together over I think a period of three tours, you know, to get where we we're at now. For me personally it's sort of like a hands-on boots-on-the-ground stage thing for me, experience-wise. Bob has taught me the glory of asymmetry.

SJ: Mm-hmm.

JM: I think that's the best overall way to say it. Four times, they should just call me "four times Johnny." Four times nice and square, good. Split in half, still the same thing, great. Bob comes at it from a different way. He's not counting like that. He's feeling it from a whole different place. So even as we're trying to arrange songs at soundcheck and we're trying to like—cause these arrangements are so bendable. You come up with a new arrangement for something at soundcheck. My suggestion is always like do it four times and then "bop!" And we're out.

It's like no, three times and then go into that thing that happens, we'll do that three times and then end and begin on five and a half. Or we do this once. And then go over—There's this thing called "new one," which I'd never heard before.

Have you ever have you heard this?

SJ: [Laughs] No, but this is good. 

JM: So in their planes of the good so basically "a new one" means on whatever hit that's usually a well-known part of the song you just start counting again. There you just start counting again from that instead of calling it a bar of three or a bar five, you go, Oh that's "a new one" right there! Which means forget about counting and just start again when you get it. And I get it now. And I think if you watch, if you have like a hubble telescope on Oteil, the bass player, and my mouth you might see counting from time to time.

DD: It's bizarre to me. And there's Bob Weir remembering it no problem. 

JM: Oh, it is in his bones. It is—remember, these guys didn't have teleprompters. We had prompters up on stage for the lyrics because I'm not an alien. I’m not an alien. I mean I can learn music pretty fast, I wouldn't know how to sing 150 songs lyrically. But these guys—the Grateful Dead were touring without teleprompters.

JM: The other thing I was gonna say—for those who are completists and were listening to me and go “what's the second thing you were gonna say after Jerry”—I had this idea and I'm gonna do it; I want to listen to a whole show and just listen to Bobby play the guitar. I’ve never done it. It's the most fascinating guitar playing.
 
DD: I never understood it. Even when I watched The Other One, and he said I had to find places to stick in there. It was crazy. And I actually liked The Other One more than the Grateful Dead documentary because it was so deep on this one guy. What was it like to be this guy with the giant dude next to you.
 
JM: Key in on Bobby for a whole show and your life will change. I just realized it, I was on the way somewhere yesterday, two days ago, and I heard—I forgot what song I was listening to—and I started listening to Bobby I went: “who could figure that out?” Like, who makes those choices?

And his inversions are upside down. And the hammer on he's hitting—so you and I would go [sings guitar melody phrase]. He's hammering on something else underneath. So almost like "Weather Report Suite" is kind of his playing, but you know it's just backwards but so necessary to let everyone else do what they're doing. Jerry's trampoline-like [makes trampoline sound] just catapults him with that guitar playing.

“John is a musician’s musician,” says original Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist Bob Weir, who is also Mr. Mayer’s band mate in Dead & Company. “That’s where his sensibilities lead him and that’s what you get from him.”