Both Bob Weir and John Mayer celebrate their birthday today, October 16th. These days, most music fans wouldn’t think twice about naming the two musicians in the same breath; for nearly a decade, the two have been the unlikely pair at the core of Dead & Company, the arena- and stadium-scale, latter-day spinoff of Weir’s iconic Grateful Dead. Before that connection came to be, however, you would have been hard-pressed to find a unifying thread between the hit-making early-aughts pop star and the living counter-culture legend.
With the status of their next collaboration hovering in a state of optimistic uncertainty following Dead & Company’s 30-show Sphere residency this past summer, we figured we’d mark the joint birthday celebration with a look back at the first entry in the story of Bobby and Johnny’s unlikely attachment: an episode of The Late Late Show on CBS in early 2015.
While Mayer has noted on various occasions that he began his trip down the Golden Road when he happened to hear “Althea” on a Pandora radio station while swimming, his musical connection with the Grateful Dead began when he was trying his hand at a non-musical side hustle. Following the departure of Craig Ferguson as the host of The Late Late Show in 2015, CBS gave a rotating cast of hopefuls a shot at leading the talk show. Among the list of stand-ins were veteran comics and TV personalities like Wayne Brady, Drew Carey, Jim Gaffigan, and Thomas Lennon—and, somewhat surprisingly, John Mayer.
On his second of three nights guest-hosting The Late Late Show, John Mayer welcomed three guests on the program: Bob Saget, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and—you guessed it—Bob Weir, who at the time was promoting Fare Thee Well. From Weir’s first moments onscreen, Mayer’s newfound enthusiasm about the Grateful Dead and Weir’s elder wisdom about the nature of the band’s legacy seemed to mesh in endearing fashion: When John showed off his hand-decorated Fare Thee Well mail-order ticket request envelope, Bobby called out his forged postage stamp with a sly grin. When John brought up the notion of re-forming “the Grateful Dead” 20 years after Jerry Garcia‘s passing for the 50th-anniversary shows, Bobby affably slowed his roll: “When half of those guys are pushing up daisies,” Weir responded, “you can’t call it that anymore.”
Mayer would take that guidance to heart when he coined Dead & Company’s name later that year: “There are only so many iterations of Dead,” Mayer explained in a 2017 Relix interview. “I brought it up and it seemed right because it lives just between new and of course.”
But beyond the first bits of banter between birthday buddies Bob Weir and John Mayer, the most significant moments of the night came when they grabbed their guitars and plugged in alongside house drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Sean Hurley for a take on Dead favorite “Truckin’”, then offered an “encore” rendition of “Althea” at the tail end of the broadcast.
The two televised songs marked Mayer and Weir’s first-ever performances in front of a live audience. Within weeks, they were talking about going on tour. By the year’s end, Dead & Company had hit the road.
In truth, as Weir told Relix in 2017, the connection took root during that day’s soundcheck. “We had decided, more or less, which tunes we were going to do,” he explained. “So we rehearsed them but, two hours later, we were still playing. We had run the tunes and were still going at it. They finally just told us we were done and unplugged us.” He added that “the whole thing seemed like too much fun to run away from.”
Celebrate 77 years of Bob Weir, 47 years of John Mayer, and (almost) ten years of Bob Weir with John Mayer by revisiting clips from that fateful episode of The Late Late Show below.
John Mayer Interviews Bob Weir, “Truckin’”, “Althea” – The Late Late Show – February 2015
Bob Weir & John Mayer – “Althea” (Better Quality) – The Late Late Show – February 2015
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