You’re touring with Dylan. Comment on the influence the Dead has had on Dylan. He used to tour sporadically, but since he played with you guys in ’95, he’s been on this never-ending tour.
It seems to me that he’s found a groove, what he wants to do. I don’t think he likes to sit at home and just go in the studio every so often. I don’t know if being on the road inspires him, but it certainly gives him grist for his mill. He can make things up from the experiences that he has on the road.
Since ’95, he’s really strived to tap into the Dead’s audience, particularly the young fans by playing colleges.
He really connected with Jerry when we played together in ’87 and again when we toured together in ’95. And he really misses Jerry even though they probably didn’t spend a lot of time together. I notice in his set list, he’s doing Jerry’s songs. He does practically one every show. There’s a couple that they wrote with Hunter. ‘Silvio’ is one of them. I think that he has a certain kind of rapport or empathy with what we were doing. He connected a little better with it later on.
My personal feeling is that those kinds of things come from within one. External circumstances are only valuable in that they stimulate some sort of inner growth. That’s probably what happened to Bob.
You’re touring at the same time that Bob Weir is out with Ratdog and Mickey Hart is on a book tour. Is it coincidental that three-fifths of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead are out on the road at the same time?
Entirely. There’s no master plan and guiding hand that is laying all this stuff out. I’m totally independent of Bob and Mickey and they’re totally independent of me.
Well, it sure is great that all this stuff is going on at once, especially since there was no Further this year. In a way, it’s better, because we get to check out three different events instead of one. Any chance that you guys will jam together soon?
I’m on a pretty tight schedule, and I know that they are too, but there’s always that possibility.
Any plans for The Other Ones or another Further Festival?
No.
So that might be the end of it?
It could well be, yeah.
You were executive producer of “So Many Roads (1965-1995),” the Grateful Dead’s first box set. Tell me about it.
It’s going all the way back to the first Warlocks stuff and all the way up to the last year, the last batch of material. It’s rehearsal versions of material that we took into the studio but never got to put out. There was a committee of folks involved, like Steve Silberman, Blair Jackson, Dick Latvala (also David Gans). I had the final say, but I approved everything. There was stuff that came up and we all agreed, ‘Woops, maybe that one’s not right.’ It was generally a pretty good consensus.
There was an awful lot of stuff. We were talking about a 30-disc set. But this is a better way to do it, because it’s within reason for people.
It seems like a no-brainer to have a box of Dead. What took so long?
Inertia. Everybody doing different things. The record company has been asking us for it for years. We’re just lazy and slow.
And busy. You were the only member of the band that was that involved?
It was pretty much by default.
Dick Latvala, the Dead’s archivist, died nearly four years to the day that Jerry passed. Comment on his contribution to the band, particularly the Dick’s Picks series of live recordings.
I miss Dick. Talk about the right man in the right place. He was the guy.
The Dick’s Picks have turned so people on who never got to see the band, particularly those who were just too young. Compounded with that, this whole jam band scene has exploded with hundreds of new bands. How does that feel, to have been in an act that’s had such an enormous impact on young musicians and music fans?
To me, it’s really astounding and wonderful that there’s so many musicians out there who have picked up on what we were doing. It’s not on a superstar level. It’s right at the grassroots, which is where real music comes from. It’s really a wonderful phenomenon to see all these different bands. A lot of them start out playing Grateful Dead material and then they branch off and grow into doing their own stuff. Yet, it all seems to have that approach built into it, that open-ended, let’s-let-it-happen approach that we had so much fun with. It’s really delightful, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
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