A Strange Trip

Dead & Co. will play its first-ever Jazz Fest show

BY CREE MCCREE

The Grateful Dead goes on forever. The Jerry Garcia-led band played its final show at Chicago’s Soldier Field on July 9, 1995, just weeks before Garcia died, and has continued in various incarnations ever since.

Formed in 2015, Dead & Co. carries the odyssey well into the 21st century with three original members—drummer/percussionists

Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann and guitarist Bob Weir. They are joined by bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and young blues artist John Mayer, who stepped in as lead guitarist after proving himself worthy by jamming with Bob Weir.

As we speak, Deadheads from all across the country are set to converge at the New Orleans

Jazz Fest on Saturday, May 6, for what promises to be an epic (for Jazz Fest) set: two-and-a-half official hours, which are likely to stretch well into the early evening. The date was added as a sneak preview of what’s being billed as The Final Tour this summer.

To whet my appetite for what promises to be an epic show, I spoke to Hart via Zoom at his sprawling compound in California’s Sonoma Country. As the following conversation reveals, New Orleans is the rhythmic motherlode for Hart, who will be at top of his game at Jazz Fest, along with the rest of Dead & Co.

How do you connect with the clave rhythm of New Orleans? The clave means key, and it’s the key to almost all rhythms. This rhythm came from Africa, went up through Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and then after the Free Slave Revolution in the 1700s, it all went to New Orleans. And mutated into what we know now as rock and roll or jazz. It’s the sonic signpost, the basis of all that music.

Congo Square in New Orleans is where American music became American music. It came out of Congo Square in the 1800s, along with voodoo, and the practice of African religions. All the saints, when they came to America, they just catholicized it and turned it into different names, but it’s the same guy.

They tried to pull a fast one. Right on. [laughs] So, New Orleans is special, besides being busted there.

Which leads me to the next question: Are you gonna play “Truckin’” at Jazz Fest? We haven’t decided what we’re gonna play, but that’s an interesting connection I never really thought of.

The line “Busted down on Bourbon St.” is gonna have a lot of local resonance here. “Truckin’” would be a good choice. But New Orleans holds much more for me than going to jail there. [laughs] That parish prison was not my favorite place, I’ll tell you.

Oh my god! You went to the OPP? Yeah, that was a nice place to visit, but a good place to leave. But New Orleans holds a special place in my heart because of Congo Square, where the slaves were able to practice their religion openly. And once the Whites saw these Black people moving in and out of trance, it freaked them out. When the loa is riding you, you forget about everything else. Congo Square was the turning point of American music, along with Storyville, and all that music went up the Mississippi river to spread to all parts of America.

Do you see a direct line from Congo Square to contemporary New Orleans drummers, like Mean Willie Green? Oh yes. Mean Willie Green is one of my favorites. He plays without shoes so he can feel the pedals. He’s right on the top of the pile.

“Drums/Space,” which you have been doing for decades, is a highlight of any show. Well, it started in the sixties, ’67 I think, with bacon frying. We cooked the bacon in an electric frying pan and ate the bacon on the stage.

Hysterical. Maybe you could revive that tradition. I doubt it. I retired it years ago; it was retired for me. Bacon grease didn’t work really well with the amplifiers. But that’s where “Drums/Space” really started. It’s the most played section of Grateful Dead repertoire, we’ve played it thousands of thousands of times. I look forward to that because the only law is that there is no law. And we keep it like that, It’s spontaneous. It’s in the moment, in the now.

Do you expect any surprises in New Orleans for “Drums/Space”? Oh yes, but I can’t tell you about them or it will spoil the surprise. That is to be revealed.

You’ve played in town, but you’ve never played the New Orleans Jazz Fest before. We were supposed to, but COVID stopped us.

It stopped us all. Well, we are sure glad that you’re coming back, and people are super excited about seeing you. You’ll have The Beam with you, right? Oh yeah. Never leave home without the mono chord. Thank you very much, Pythagoras. He figured out the revolutions of the spheres, the mathematical equations of the revolving orbs, the whole vibrating universe. And he conjured the mono chord, which is The Beam: 12 strings, all the same note, and very low.

How has RAMU developed over the years? Your “Random Access Musical Universe,” which lets you access every instrument you ever played? Not every, but most. Whenever an instrument comes into my collection, I sample it. And that sample goes to RAMU which is my memory bank, my digital workstation. And I can call up any of those instruments and add processing to ’em at any time during the performance. It started back in the eighties, and it’s grown to incredible proportions. It’s very easy to operate and has an enormous range of variations.

This is your first Jazz Fest appearance, which is also being billed as The Final Tour of Dead & Co. Is that actually true; or is that just a teaser? That is no teaser. [laughs] We don’t tease. That’s what it says it is. We won’t tour as this unit anymore. It’s run its course, and we’re going to end it and move on. Now no one knows what “on” means.

Probably not even you. No, we don’t know. And we don’t care to know. All we’re interested in right now is finishing Dead & Co. really well and having a wonderful time. Make people dance.

Well, we’ll see what happens next. I suspect there will be another chapter. Hey, I’m not gonna retire. We’ll figure it out. O