Mic Drop - Dead & Company

Mike takes a look at Dead & Company and the Grateful Dead legacy as they complete another long run of shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Mic Drop
• 0:42 Dead & Company Today
• 2:14 John Mayer's Role
• 4:20 The Dead's Musical Legacy
• 6:41 The Sphere Experience & Final Thoughts
• 8:49 Joey's Song Charity Connection

Transcript

Mike Gomoll: 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Mic Drop. Mike Gomoll, I am , founder of Joey's Song. This is my little forum to talk about the stuff I want to talk about, and today's topic is Dead Company and the Grateful Dead. So stick around for more of Mic Drop. Hey everybody, it's Mike. As I mentioned, this is Mic Drop, a chance for me to talk to you about music, stuff that's of interest to me behind the scenes of Joey's song, lots of other stuff. We're really ramping up the effort right now to get the January 2026 Joey song in place, so this gives me a chance to kind of wax poetic on other topics that are important to me. Today's topic is dead and company.

Mike Gomoll: 0:45

Now, most people that are into music are at least aware of the Grateful Dead. They have a picture in their head of dead heads and tie dyes and maybe some pharmaceuticals and long, extensive jams, and the Grateful Dead were all of those things. They're not that so much anymore. It's gotten a little more corporate, a little more high end, a little more not structured, because the Grateful Dead will never be called structured, but it is certainly more on time. Corporate, I guess, is the only way to say it and that's fine because their audience has aged with them. It's a lot different when you're full of a bunch of 27 year olds and the people on stage are 27. That's not the case anymore. So the dead were icons. They were breakthrough artists back in the late 60s, early 70s with that San Francisco Haydash very scene. I probably don't need to tell you a whole lot about that history and if you really do want to know it, there's an excellent six-part special on Netflix, produced by Bill Kreutzman's son, that has interviews with all of the then living members Phil Lesch recently died but was interviewed for that as well as archive footage of Jerry Garcia, and it's really fascinating. It tells you more about the story and the ethos, right, which is really important. We'll talk about that a little bit later here in Mic Drop about why it is important.

Mike Gomoll: 2:02

I'm not saying you have to do homework to understand the Grateful Dead, but it does help to understand what's going on and what all the buzz is about. No pun intended on that type of stuff. So Dead Company are two of the three remaining live members. It's Bobby Weir and Mickey Hart. Bill Kreutzman was a part on the final tour but I've heard Bill's health is failing. It's now Jay Lane, our pal Jay Lane, who has, let's just say, hinted at coming to play Joey's songs. He's on drums as well.

Mike Gomoll: 2:30

And of course there's John Mayer who has taken the Jerry Garcia role, both on guitar and a lot of the vocals, and John is just spectacular in that role. I know it took a while for Deadheads to kind of understand what John brought to the table and there was some pushback, let's just say, on John. Not everybody was super excited about having John. Nobody could replace Jerry. But I think over the last 10 years of Dead and Company that people have come to accept John for what he is and I think they kind of realized that if it wasn't for John the Dead wouldn't be on the road. And from my standpoint I only saw them once. With Jerry John's spectacular. He has turned a lot of those songs into his own, while paying homage to Jerry, while, you know, helping people still relive those memories, and not turning it into a John Mayer show.

Mike Gomoll: 3:34

As a matter of fact, at Dead Company they do all dead songs, either Grateful Dead songs or old songs that the Dead would have covered. There's no John Mayer material in any of these shows, with 30-plus shows in 2024 at the Sphere and so they just did another run of shows and you can't get tickets to them. They're all sold out. They do three nights in a row. For those of you that don't know if you go see the Dead in the same city in a run, they never play the same song twice. So for six weeks they did Thursday, friday, saturday never repeated a song on any of those runs in there. So got to kind of go to all the shows if you want to hear all your favorites. That's what makes it, I think you know, truly, truly spectacular.

Mike Gomoll: 4:20

You know, to understand the Dead's place in history, you've got to kind of understand when they came through right. It was in the 60s and the 70s when there was a lot of experimenting going on, just not in music. And the Dead certainly took those thoughts, if you will, in play. I guess, if you really want to talk about their place in music, I can think of no bigger compliment than this one. I'm a huge Beatles fan. They're the alpha and the omega for me. Somebody once asked Paul McCartney what it was like to be in the greatest band ever and McCartney's response was I don't know. I was never in the Grateful Dead. There's a reason that Paul would say that Because the dead are one of a kind. Yes, there's jam bands that have followed them right, there's Phish and there's Goose, and there's a lot of these jam bands and they're all great in their own way, but the Grateful Dead really invented the genre and really created the whole jam band vibe. And I really again, I have no stake in this.

Mike Gomoll: 5:19

Netflix documentary brings the deadheads in and why they come back and why you would go see three nights in a row or 18 shows in a year. That will help you understand, because no two shows are the same, not only the same set, but the songs are never played the same. And I'm not talking about for those of you that know a Bob Dylan version it's not that they don't, you know they'll play the songs slower or faster or on piano or kind of the stuff that Dylan's doing these days. It's that they're about being improviser and improvisational band and they go where the music takes us. Some nights, a song, the same song, will be six minutes. Other times it'll be 12 minutes because inspiration strikes or they're onto something.

Mike Gomoll: 5:59

And once you know their music and you know their catalog, that's really where the magic happens and there's something about the Dead always said they were a live band. They weren't really a studio band and they kind of proved it with some of their early records. Some of those are a little bit of a tougher listen to than the later records Once the band got used to being in the studio and how to do it and they moved away from experimental in the music and more as experimental in the arrangements, if that makes any sense. If you look at the live verses, what they did on record, they didn't do long stretches of improvisational stuff on the record but they absolutely did it live. And then now when they're out on the road they certainly do those same things. But you never know where the songs are going to lead, where they're going to start, what's going to meld into one or another.

Mike Gomoll: 6:46

And if you're curious about the styles of the Grateful Dead, any style there is they will play, whether it's country, whether it's psychedelic, whether it's rock. I don't think I've ever heard him play death metal, but there's some elements of jazz in it. There's a lot of stuff in there as well that you will find for your taste and they can go in and out of those styles. You know, in a single show. That's not uncommon for them to go ahead and do. I think you'll really understand the reference point if you think about some of the covers that they play during the night. One of the things that they'll do is cover Dylan or the Beatles or some old blues song or something. That kind of gives you their touchstones, their musical reference points, the kinds of things that they like to do and has influenced their music. So I really encourage you if you're not a deadhead, if you are not never been into it and don't think you would like it, give it a try. There's probably not many years left for Bobby to go out on the road.

Mike Gomoll: 7:47

I don't know if they're going to do more of these sphere shows or not, but it's worth a weekend in Vegas, trust me. With the setting alone, right? If you don't know what the sphere is, google it. It's the setting alone with the graphics. If you can imagine if there was ever a band that was meant for wall-to-ceiling 360-degree graphics, it's the Grateful Dead, and the music in that context I think will convert you as well.

Mike Gomoll: 8:11

So I just wanted to recognize the fact that, at 80 years old, bobby and Mickey are out there still doing their thing. I wanted to recognize the fact that they're, you know, still wowing audiences, still bringing that music out there and still worthwhile seeing. They really are. And I would just really encourage you, if you have never witnessed a Grateful Dead show or a Dead Company show, now to give it a try. If not, just put on one of the records or go to your music platform. They release almost all the shows, the audio of all the shows on iTunes and Spotify and everything, so you can hear what I'm talking about. So that's it. It's another mic. Drop Dead Company is the topic. Drop Dead Company is the topic and I encourage you, if you're hearing us for the first time, to stop by joeysongorg to find out what the charity is about, to find out what our vibe is and to really understand how you can be a part of us helping fight epilepsy with music. So thanks everybody. No-transcript.