Jerry Garcia

RY: Jerry Garcia's guitar playing was different from yours and obviously you’re not trying to replace him. I'd love to hear more about your approach to his sound and his playing, as he was an exceptional improviser with a deep-rooted knowledge of scales.

JM: It would take six guitar players to cover a show to come even close to being able to cover all of the influences that Jerry Garcia was drawing from. There’s nothing else like it. 

I think the way I can approach it so that I don’t completely panic is to find the balance between where the guitar lives under my hands, what these songs dictate, and where Jerry Garcia’s playing melded into the composition of the songs. I’ve tried more than a couple of times to play stock “me” over these songs and it doesn’t work. They sort of die on the vine. 

I’m doing this with the utmost respect also because this is a respect thing and not just a science. It’s a very spiritual thing where I’m respecting these notes because they won’t ever die. That’s Jerry Garcia’s genetic code in all of these songs and in all of that playing. It’s really interesting how his music can do that. It’s so expressive.

I’m learning how he thought and how he felt and where he was coming from, so I want to deeply respect that and also not hyperextend myself to try to go for something I can’t get. 

It’s a lot of playing and listening. Because I want to be authentic, I want to sound alive and organic but I also want to respect what those compositions were and that guitar playing has so much to do with the feeling that it gives the audience. I’m learning new things about it all of the time. 

It’s one of the most intense pursuits musically I’ve ever been on, maybe the most because there’s so much to look at and there’s so much to dissect.

How do I build using the pieces that I have here and some pieces that I can build based on practice and study? How do I put together this thing that in its own way is vital but respectful and authentic and true to what that music is?

So it absolutely is one of the most fascinating, frightening, rewarding experiences of my life. I am 100% online as a musician right now. All of my brainpower and soul power is devoted to music.

What I’m trying to do and what Jerry was so brilliant at – I told Bobby one time, “Man, I was watching [footage of] Jerry playing ‘Bird Song’ last night. This guy hung out in the same part of the [guitar] neck for so long.” Jerry would set up camp for the night in one part of the neck, cooked the meal, took his tent down, put out the fire – and then moved on to the next part of the neck.

Yes, Jerry is the most alive dead person that's ever lived and died. I mean, I get the sense that—they are keeping him alive. They keep him alive. He is just behind the veil.

How is your playing similar to Jerry's and how is it different?

Oh boy, that's a great question. There's a blues mentality that's similar. I think I was able to enter it that way. But, at the same time, it's very different because he was more a major key player. I was weaned on Stevie Ray, Hendrix and Clapton, who all played primarily in minor pentatonic scales and Jerry played in the major pentatonic. The Grateful Dead music is so lush, sweet and sad-but it's a different kind of sadness. Blues is this guttural thing and the Dead is more whimsical and wistful. But I'm making a gross generalization. Garcia's ability to blend minor and major at the same time is stunning.

I would also say the challenge of playing with Dead & Company is that you have to always be aware of the big picture. You have to think about what the song is, what the message is, where the sadness is, where the hope is, and how to flow with all of those things. You've got to learn how to create on the fly, and how to make a mistake with grace while keeping calm.

JM: [Laughs] So it's like, the thing about it for me as a guitar player is that it's an ever elusive rule book. Just when you think you've figured it out there's a version from 1970-X that comes out and you go “you can do it that way.” Oh, you know what I was thinking the other day? I’ll say two things. Number one:

Jerry's only—I feel like it's weird saying Jerry—Jerry Garcia's only way of thinking was like play the chords, but you could play the chords any way you want. So just as long as you play the letter of that chord you could play it any inversion anywhere up and down the neck. So I'll just keep hearing ways of playing songs—it was like, Oh he never had a set way of playing any song.

DD: That's wild. 

JM: Sometimes he would just play like "Fire on the Mountain" the way a beginner guitar player would playing an A chord and a B chord, instead of some inversion up the neck. What that day made him go “I'm just gonna play this like a Mel Bay book B chord and an A chord?” And I listen to it I go “that's right you could be that simple if you want it to be.” Right?

The only question that I have that continues to elude me as an answer is: how was Jerry Garcia able to play that much guitar for throngs of people who didn't play guitar and have them join him for every second of that ride? 

DD: Yeah.

JM: Well, a big part of it is that he wasn't playing in a muscular way. 

DD: No. It's not an Angus Young [sings metal guitar riff]. It’s just melodic.

JM: You know I think he looked at it like a pedal steel. I started going, Oh I think he's thought of it like a pedal steel, because he played pedal steel.

DD: And he was into bluegrass.

JM: He was looking to getting an electric guitar to be like a pedal steel. And he was playing it with a certain pressure that wasn't like a guitar player. You and I play guitar, we squeeze it.