“Sorry, I Don’t Really Get Grateful Dead.”

When I was ten years old, all I had in my head were the songs I wished I could play on the guitar, and songs I knew I couldn’t play on the guitar. Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, and Metallica’s songs were most of the songs I was getting my hands on at the time, and I was confident that I would learn the weird natural harmonic on You Give Love a Bad Name, the legatos on Layla, and the fast downpicking on Master of Puppets with just a little bit of practice. And then there were Pink Floyd songs: songs I knew, even if I created a group of musicians of the highest caliber, we would still be unable to play them because of their technicality, experimental, and mysterious sound. Pink Floyd presented itself to me as innovators of sound rather than music, however. Now, the first band that I think of when someone asks me, “What is your favorite band?” still remains to be Pink Floyd, but it hit harder as a ten-year-old. The sounds that Floyd’s guitarist David Gilmour could create from just ten fingers still blow my mind to this day, but as a beginner guitarist, this feat seemed impossible. 

One day in the car ride to school, my mother showed me a band that, according to her ears, sounded just like Pink Floyd. I listened intently, expecting a wave of familiarity and beautiful orchestration. Instead, I was hit with, at least what I could feel with my ten-year-old ears, a group of thoughtless people making sporadic, toy-like noises which were barely loud enough to hear. This group of people was called Dead & Company. 

I was irritated because it was nothing like Pink Floyd. It had none of the grandeur, sophistication, and rhythmical complexity that they provided. Instead, it sounded like generic country music trying to make a name for itself with a piano and three guitars. And plus, the song was 15 minutes long. 15 minutes of dragging, sleepy, and boring music. Now, at this point in my musical journey, I was acquainted with jam tracks and the music of the American South, but 15 minutes of the same old tune seemed off to me. 

I was so irritated, in fact, that I felt that a Google search was necessary to look into what these people were thinking. The band Dead & Company was composed of six people: John Mayer, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Oteil Burbridge, and Jeff Chimenti. The latter five members of the group were part of a retired rock band called Grateful Dead, which had been active since 1965, all the way to 2015. As the fifteen-minute track came to an end, so did my car ride. I stepped away from the car, and Dead and Company no longer occupied any space in my head. I was thinking more about the other, better songs I could have listened to on my way to school. 

As the years went by, so did my journey in music. As I grew more skilled at the guitar, I found that improvisation, rather than perfect semitone bends and fast playing, was interesting to me. So, the songs I was learning gradually shifted from hard rock and metal to blues. I was learning the minor pentatonic scale (see Week 2 for more details) and how to articulate my notes with “the blues feel”, just like my idols had done on my favorite records. I hoped to be at a stage where I would just jump into a solo without knowing how to start or stop, and get even more applause than I would jumping into a planned solo. But starting out, my soloing skills were limited to what my idols had already played. I would still look and sound cool, but I had no originality whatsoever. And when I tried to compose a solo myself, my sonic range was confined by the only pentatonic box I knew (again, check Week 2 for more details), making my lines sound repetitive and redundant. As I began to listen to more and more blues, I began to realize something that did not sit right with me, regardless of my playing ability. It was that when I began to dive deeper into one guitarist’s sound, I would just end up sounding like them. 

Although this would not be a problem for adults, as a child, my knowledge of music was still limited, and I was unable to digest multiple styles of music at the same time. Stevie Ray Vaughan was known for his fast and rhythmical licks, while B.B. King was known for making his guitar sound like a female singer’s voice. While I liked both guitarists very much, I could not balance their two sounds. These were two sounds of completely different eras and styles, and my child brain could not incorporate both into my playing that would truly sound like me. Thus began the “hopeless wanderer” era in my guitar playing journey: not knowing what to practice and dipping my fingers in and out of multiple artists’ playing across many different time periods of the blues. As I ventured through this period of purposeless exploration, I began to dream of a solution: if only there were a guitarist who could blend all of my favorite guitarists’ sounds together, that would satisfy my needs. And that person was John Mayer. 

I found out about John Mayer when I came across a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Bold as Love that he had done for his third album, Continuum. As I began listening to Continuum, a eureka moment lit up in my head. I had found a guitarist who had the furious playing of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the melodic phrasing of BB and Albert King, and the harmonic complexity of a Berklee student. His blues trio album, Try!, reinforced this idea for me, and I ended up playing a cover of his cover of Wait Until Tomorrow, a Jimi Hendrix song, at my school’s annual talent show just three days ago (May 7th, 2025). 

Unlike artists from the 70s and 80s who were pioneers in blues technique and had to open the gateway for new guitarists, being an artist from the 2000s, Mayer had already stepped into that gateway and had studied the guitarists of old along the way. By the time I had discovered him, he had cemented his legacy as a modern guitar hero. 

I was getting into Mayer’s music, and I loved playing John Mayer songs, but there was still a lingering doubt in my mind. Now I was deep into a Mayer rabbit hole, once again assimilated by the artist I loved copying. Regardless of how diverse its roots were, Mayer’s techniques placed a box around my playing, and my state of wandering slowly began again. 

But this time, I was certain that there was absolutely no way of solving this problem. Having played guitar for five years, I knew that if I began to step into the realm of one guitar player, I would inevitably be limited by their techniques and standards. And I knew parting from this was not easy. While I was doing some research, I came across a collaboration John Mayer had done with five other musicians: Dead and Company.

By the time I had discovered Dead and Company, I was unaware of the fact that I had encountered them once before. In a video I watched, they were performing at the Sphere in Los Angeles. Looking back, my mother was right. Dead and Company’s rich sound did remind me of Pink Floyd. And so did Grateful Dead. 

Grateful Dead was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. They were a leading musical group in the hippie movement, a counterculture faction that rejected mainstream values and norms and protested for more peace, love, and freedom. Grateful Dead, like Pink Floyd, is a psychedelic rock band, featuring many songs in their discography created through the effects of substances such as LSD. However, there is a different vibe to Grateful Dead. Unlike their popular association with hippies, they do not sound hippie or counterculture. In fact, I can’t get my finger on it. They sound like blues mixed with country, with a bit more fun. That is probably why their live shows are so accessible. About 2000 of their shows are recorded on tapes that Deadheads brought with them. 

Although there are more videos on Dead and Company’s performances, and John Mayer is a very accomplished guitarist, there is something about Jerry Garcia as a guitar player that surprises me every time I listen to him. Unlike most guitarists who treat a solo as a story, with ups and downs depending on the chord changes, Garcia treats his solos as bursts of energy. He rarely pauses in his playing and swims through the track. His will to improvise and to keep up with the song is constant. Although modern guitarists might criticize him for a lack of emphasis and prominence of the guitar, I think this is Garcia’s greatest asset. He does not overdo things. Instead, he makes room for the other instruments in the band to shine, creating a fuller and spacious sound. He focuses on vibe and ambience rather than placing the guitar at the forefront. But it is challenging. Some assume that his thin, somewhat wispy tone and playing style are simple and easy to replicate. I’ve tried to cover one of the Dead’s songs, and it is definitely a challenge playing continuously for 4 to 5 minutes at a time. It’s really hard. But the vibe of the band is relatable and attractive.

I am just starting to get into the “vibe” of Grateful Dead. I get the vibe, but I don’t get the band itself. It gets me thinking on my feet and formulating rough ideas about what they are all about. But as of right now, I still don’t get Grateful Dead music. I probably won’t for a while.