John Mayer is 'preparing like a boxer' for Dead tour

For John Mayer, being a Grateful Dead fan is a full-time hobby.

"It's a bit like bird-watching, when you get into Grateful Dead," says Mayer, 38, who joins the newly formed Dead & Company on tour starting Thursday in Albany, N.Y. "It's really about the ways in which you identify something, like, 'Oh, I know this song, this is He's Gone. Oh OK, that's the one I like, I can call it by name now.' You learn more and more as you keep listening, and for me, that's what's so fun.' "

The Grammy-winning singer/guitarist is a relative newcomer to the psychedelic rockers' music. In fact, it was only in 2011 that he heard their classic Althea on a Pandora radio station, which fueled his fascination. But after Mayer met Dead co-founder Bob Weir through a mutual friend in January and "waxed philosophic" about music, he invited Weir to perform with him on The Late Late Show a couple weeks later and started hosting jam sessions in March.

"We had a great time — it seemed like too much fun to just walk away from," Weir, 68, says. What sold him on Mayer was that he's "been a solo act for a long time and really wants to get into the group thing, the mind meld, whatever you want to call it. Rather than driving the music, he wants to let the music drive him as it does the rest of us."

Although they discussed touring together back then, Mayer and Weir put conversations on the back-burner until after the Grateful Dead's 50th anniversary Fare Thee Well shows, held over five nights in Chicago and Santa Clara, Calif., this summer, and thought to be the band's "last ever." Many fans shelled out thousands of dollars for scalped tickets, which drummer Mickey Hart says is "very unfortunate," but ultimately out of their control.

"We didn't realize half the world wanted to get it on it, and when that happens, it's a tsunami," Hart, 72, says. "The story created its own life and we were just holding on and trying to make the best of it for the fans. The money-grab thing, it really hurt to see that kind of desecration, but that's commerce." And ultimately, those "five nights amplified our hunger to play the music again."

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Many tickets are still available for Dead & Company's 16-city U.S. jaunt, which includes two shows at New York's Madison Square Garden this weekend (plus a free one on Nov. 7) and wraps at Los Angeles' The Forum on New Year's Eve. The group's newest lineup includes Weir, Hart, Mayer (filling in for late guitarist Jerry Garcia), and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, as well as bassist Oteil Burbridge (The Allman Brothers Band) and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti (past Dead incarnations).

There's a chance Dead bassist Phil Lesh could appear at some shows if he's not busy, Weir says, although he is currently being treated for bladder cancer. (Lesh seems to be doing "fine," Weir adds. "From what I understand, it was more an inconvenience than a major concern.")

Dead & Company started rehearsing for the tour last month, running through close to 100 songs from Grateful Dead's expansive catalog for set lists that will vary nightly. Working with Mayer over the last four weeks, "he's really gathered the material into his soul; he's taking it to bed at night, basically," Kreutzmann, 69, says. "He really has a lot of fun playing and brings a lot of great energy into it," with rehearsal standouts including Franklin's Tower and Row Jimmy, which "he sings and it's really beautiful."

Mayer anticipates singing in one way or another on roughly 80% of the songs, and lead vocals on a "little less than half," he says. (Weir will take the reins on others.) Accompanying his new bandmates on guitar, Mayer says he constantly needs to remind himself to slow it down — not musically, but mentally. "'We'll get there when we get there' is the sort of mantra of this whole thing,' " he says. "The solo artist in me wants to make sure I'm toeing the line correctly, (but) that can only be great for me to just let the line go a little bit."

In the days leading up to the tour kickoff, Mayer says he is feeling suspense more so than nervousness. "I've been preparing for it like a boxer, like 'I've got to be in tip-top shape for that thing, and that thing is a Dead concert, more or less.' Playing that music with those guys, it becomes cosmically, culturally a Dead concert."

As for potentially mixed reactions from Deadheads, Mayer tries to take it all in stride.

"It's the Internet and you're going to get a range of absolutely every kind of opinion, and all of them are valid in one way or another, based on somebody's perception or knowledge of what I do," Mayer says. "I've become so Zen about all that stuff. My thinking is, 'Who knows what's going to happen? But how cool would it be if I pulled it off?' "