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Grateful Dead

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9 Oct, 2015

Rolling Stone interview

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Mayer and Weir are interviewed by Rolling Stone, about their upcoming tour together as Dead & Company. The band started discussing the tour with Mayer in January but did not book it until after the Grateful Dead’s highly successful Fare Thee Well gigs with Phish in Santa Clara, California and Chicago. Mayer:

I remember writing Bob afterward going, ‘Hey, enjoy the afterglow. To be quite honest, those [Dead & Company] dates came out in groupings not because we were trying to stage this really high-energy, suspenseful plot of dates — we were putting them together as they were coming out.

Mayer says he has been practicing nonstop, attending what he calls “Grateful Dead University.”

You have to understand that particular song’s flow. And then I pick up the guitar and find out kind of where it lives on the fretboard, and then I sort of go a little deeper. Each song gets that layered thing, so that by the time I really know it, I know how the song goes, what the sort of guitar approach is, but then also what the sort of ethic of the song is…Grateful Dead songs are so much fun to play. And some of them are as fun as they are hard to play. Part of the challenge is not disappearing into how much fun it is — [where] you forget that this is actually a highly complex composition.

Weir:

John’s enthusiasm for this is amazing — I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “He learned the songs, has great enthusiasm, and he’s a great guitar player. So he fits in perfectly.

26 Jul, 2015

Sets pay-per-view record

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The Grateful Dead’s five-night Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead farewell concerts breaks pay-per-view records with 400,000 subscriptions, grossing $52.2 million in ticket sales. The PPV package included footage from the band’s Levi Stadium shows (attended by a total of 151,650 fans) and the Soldier Field shows (attended by 210,283 people). The collection of live broadcasts now holds the record for the largest syndication of a live music event ever.

4 May, 2015

Confirms Grateful Dead influence

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Martin confirms he has been influenced by Grateful Dead, including naming Weirwood trees after Bob Weir.

My wife, Paris, is perhaps more of a fan of the Grateful Dead than I am…I have Grateful Dead lyrics rattling around in my head all the time. Ripple’ is one of my favorite songs of all time… [quoting the song] ‘There is a road, no simple highway.’