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Written by KZYR
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Monday, 13 April 2009 |
The remaining members of Grateful Dead embark on tour which they hope leads to new music and album for The Dead.
"I would think that if we stay on this path that's inevitable,"
percussionist Mickey Hart tells Billboard.com. "I think this could
be a serious attempt at new Grateful Dead music."
But Hart and his bandmates agree that "you have to be able to play
(old) Grateful Dead music in order to make new Grateful Dead music"
first, which is what the group will be doing starting on tonight
(April 12) in Greensboro, N.C.
"Right now I think we're trying to make the canon our own again and
make it a really sumptuous feast as opposed to little hors
d'oeuvres and stuff," Hart explains. "You gotta learn the musical
ropeadope and be able to have conversations on an intuitive level
with the other musicians, things that just take time."
But singer-guitarist Bob Weir is confident this version of The Dead
-- which also includes founding members Phil Lesh on bass and Bill
Kreutzmann on percussion, along with guitarist Warren Haynes and
keyboardist Jeff Chimenti -- will have no trouble capturing that
spirit.
"It's an organic kind of situation," Weir says. "We speak a
language that no one else speaks. It comes from all those years on
the road; if you piled up the time that we've spent just on stage
together, playing, it's be years. Relationships develop. Feelings
develop that I don't think can be found any other ways."
Some of those feelings -- what Hart says were "musical, personal,
business and political differences" -- kept The Dead apart for four
years. But those largely disappeared when the group came back
together in 2008 to play a couple of benefit shows for the Barack
Obama campaign.
"When it got right down to it, we really didn't have that many
differences," Hart notes. "To lay a few of them aside in the name
of good music was no big thing, because it was overwhelmingly
apparent that we have to do this. The vibe is good."
Weir adds that The Dead plans to "really dig in" to its catalog at
the spring shows, as well as during some planned summer festival
appearances. He says the group prepared more than 150 songs at two
separate rehearsal sessions, and more may be added during the
course of the tour.
"We're on fire," Kreutzmann reports. "When we rehearsed...the music
just got better and better every day. The music started playing
[i]us.[/i] We didn't have to play the music. That's when I knew it
was going to be good."
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