Credit: Danny ClinchShortly after The Grateful Dead played a series of farewell shows last summer, three of the band’s four surviving core members regrouped in a new musical collective called Dead & Company that also features pop-blues star John Mayer. In an interview that airs this weekend on CBS Sunday Morning, founding Dead singer/guitarist Bob Weir says he had no intention of retiring from music following his old group’s final gigs.
“I’m nowhere done playing,” the 68-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer declares. “And you know, there were some folks who were expecting, okay, after the Chicago shows, I was going to work on my golf game or something.”
Weir tells CBS Sunday Morning that his collaboration with Mayer came about after the two musicians jammed together on a late night talk show. Bob recalls that after that performance, “I knew we were going to have something to say.”
Over the years, Mayer has played alongside many other famous musicians, including Eric Clapton, B.B. King and Buddy Guy, but he tells CBS This Morning that getting to perform with Weir on that program “was the only time I ever got nauseous with excitement.”
Mayer likens the experience of playing with Dead & Company to an actor getting to work with Al Pacino.
“The reason I wanted to be in this band was to be able to interact with it live,” John notes. “It would be what I imagine an actor saying, ‘I really want to be in a scene with Pacino.'”
CBS Sunday Morning airs Sunday at 9 a.m. ET/PT. Dead & Company kick off a new U.S. tour tonight in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the band will help close out the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, on Sunday. Their performance will be streaming on RedBull.tv starting at 9:20 p.m. ET.
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