"Inspiration, move me brightly. Light the song with sense and color, hold away despair"
My thoughts on Dead and Company's show in Atlanta, GA on May 28th, 2023.
On May 28th, 2023, I found myself back in Atlanta for another highlight anticipated concert. While the last time it was for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s concert at State Farm Arena, this time I was at the Lakewood Amphitheater for Dead and Company, the latest iteration of post-Grateful Dead bands taking up the mantle of the Dead (featuring founding Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart along with John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge, Jay Lane, and Jeff Chimenti) mounting their final tour.
Even before I moved into my Deadhead-ness, I’d heard good things about this group and the shows they put on. Since I’d become a member of the Dead tribe, I’d been chomping at the bit to see this group in concert. All this to say, I was really looking forward to seeing what they had to offer. And they did not disappoint.
The tone for this show was set, in my mind at least, with the second song of the first set—”Deal.” That’s one of the Dead songs that is more straight forward (maybe not… Workingman’s Dead or American Beauty straight forward, but in that vein). Yet the group transformed the song into an extended jam all while never getting too far away from the essence of the song itself.
The launching pad for this was John Mayer’s guitar work. Mayer is someone I could talk about a lot in this post because he was so great and does so much to bring these songs alive, but I’ll try to restrain myself and focus on him here to avoid repetition.
Mayer is something of a punching bag, dating back to the start of his career. Lightweight popular songs that became unescapable and thus annoying, extremely poorly considered and inappropriate comments in interviews, seemingly being both too earnest AND too fake, Mayer was an easy and frequent target for derision.
I think this is unfair. As a solo musician, he’s very good in his lane. I’m not the first nor the last to compare him to Eric Clapton (particularly post-Derek and the Dominoes Clapton), but I think that’s the perfect comp. Clinical and professional but so much so that it might put off some listeners even as there’s some great guitar work on his songs. Even if the songs themselves, at least lyrically, are fairly innocuous, the melodies and the guitar work are quite good.
Like Clapton, Mayer has also said some unfortunate and unpleasant things (though, unlike Clapton, he’s acknowledged the error of his ways there). He was never going to be a musician with a 100% approval rating, but the swing towards near-universal ridicule seemed a bit ridiculous to me.
But as part of Dead and Company, Mayer both plays the Jerry Garcia “role.” He does so in a way that’s both faithful but also you still know it’s John Mayer bringing his own style to the performance. There were stretches where his guitar playing really had a modern Jerry sound to it, times when he tapped into that blues guitar legacy in which he is so fluent, and times where it was his own amalgam or combination of all those sounds. It’s a difficult line to walk but he walks it so well. I went in poised to enjoy and appreciate Mayer’s redemption and reinvention as part of the Dead world, and yet his play during this concert exceeded my expectations.
Jeff Chimenti’s keyboard and piano work, on “Deal” and throughout the show, was also stellar. Chimenti’s play was probably the biggest revelation of this performance, given that I already knew Mayer was a great guitarist. The keyboard/piano/organ sound is the proverbial “special sauce” for the Dead’s music, so you need to make sure you’re strong if you want to faithfully perform those tunes. Chimenti is a worthy figure in the line of great Dead keyboardists/piano players.
That version of “Deal” was an early highlight but was certainly not the only one, even in the first set. There was a strong version of “Samson and Delilah” and hearing bassist Burbridge beautifully sing on “If I had the World to Give” was a bit of a treat as was closing out that first set with “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad.” I also enjoyed opening the show with “Cassidy,” a favorite of mine given that it is (in part) about Neal Cassady.
The second set is what made this show such a special one. Starting off with “Althea,” the song that led John Mayer to Deadhead-dom and eventually playing in this group, was an inspired and surprising choice.
Though I would’ve preferred a “Scarlet > Fire,” the band put together an electric “China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider” that then led into an amazing “Eyes of the World.”
While I haven’t talked about Bob Weir’s play yet, do not think that is saying anything about him and his performance. Much like his role within the Grateful Dead, Bobby’s job is to be the unsung hero who holds everything together while bigger personalities and sounds are allowed to shine. That’s exactly what he does in Dead and Company and he plays that part so well. This whole thing doesn’t work without not only him there but the specific things he brings to the table as a musician.
Appropriately for someone who sang so many of the country songs in the Grateful Dead’s repertoire, Weir’s voice reminds me of Willie Nelson’s now. There’s a weathered quality to it, but this group needs that earthy and weathered component lest things get to slick. The same thing goes for his guitar playing and the steady rhythm work he provides that allows Mayer and Chimenti to go off in different directions (though Bobby can still shred on the guitar too, make no mistake). The work Bobby does in Dead and Company is exactly why he’s my favorite member of the Dead.
I was bracing myself for the “Drums > Space” combo and worried that it would not hold my attention and yet I found it captivating and mesmerizing in its way. The notion of two drummers in a band is something I’ve always had a tough time wrapping my head around, but the combination of Jay Lane and Mickey Hart made that pairing feel needed and not extraneous. Burbridge even participated in the “Drums” section as well, as Dead and Company’s rhythm section really had a chance to shine.
The band closed the night with “Terrapin Station” followed by an amazing rendition of “Morning Dew” that allowed Mayer to once again shine. Though they might have wanted to keep playing, the combination of the noise ordinances in Atlanta and the sheer high experienced after that great version of “Morning Dew” meant it was the perfect place to end the night.
In the name of being honest and comprehensive, there were some things that didn’t really work for me. I just don’t enjoy the slowed down “Friend of the Devil” that you get during a live performance and I thought some of the improvisation on “Tennessee Jed” got a bit far afield from the song itself.
But any other “complaints” about the show really might come down to song preferences. For example, ”Estimated Prophet” was good but it’s really not one of my favorites so I might have liked to hear a song of which I’m a bigger fan. Honestly, “Morning Dew” isn’t a song I revisit a ton, but the heights reached in the version made me glad they played it.
That was the thing that surprised me—it definitely wasn’t a setlist FULL of my personal favorites. Yet I still had an amazing time and thoroughly enjoyed the concert.
I can also understand why people go to so many Dead and Company (and why they went to so many Grateful Dead) shows. The setlist at a different show will be just as filled with great songs and yet it will be a completely different show with completely different songs. As I drove back to my hotel, I wondered if I could swing a trip to catch another of Dead and Company’s shows on this final tour. I’d been hooked at perhaps the worst time!
Dead and Company is certainly a worthy heir to the Grateful Dead title. Though this will be the last tour in this form, I sincerely hope there is another group like Dead and Company (and that maybe uses some of the same musicians to go with Bobby and Mickey) out their performing Dead songs “to fill the air,” to quote “Ripple.” It’s perhaps unlikely, but I can still hope.