Dead & Company’s Oteil Burbridge Brings Musical Friends And New Jerry Garcia-Inspired Album To The Cap

October 8, 2024

By W.B. King–

When conceiving his introspective album, A Lovely View of Heaven, a heartfelt tribute to the musical legacy of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, Oteil Burbridge thoughtfully contemplated what ballads to include from the songwriters’ celebrated collection.

As a founding member of Dead & Company, which was formed in 2015 by original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, along with John Mayer and Jeff Chimenti, Burbridge has been lauded for his live interpretations of Garcia songs like “China Doll” and “Comes a Time.” But since the album was being pressed on vinyl, thus providing space restrictions, he was limited to selecting just nine songs.

After speaking with former Grateful Dead publicist and historian Dennis McNally about the project, Burbridge learned that Garcia had to be in a “fortified state” to perform the somber tune “Mission in the Rain,” a spirited ode to his hometown of San Francisco. “Someone called my name you know I turned around to see. It was midnight in the Mission and the bells were not for me,” the lyrics read, in part. On certain nights, McNally said Garcia struggled to get through the song because the poignant imagery and relativity hit him so hard that his gregarious constitution softened.  “That conversation made me change my mind. I really wanted to do Mission in the Rain because it just hit me so hard,” Burbridge told The Hudson Independent. “Maybe the songs pick me?”

Recorded in December 2022 in Haganesvik, Iceland surrounded by snow laden landscapes and the enchanting Aurora Borealis overhead, Floki Studios became a cozy respite for Burbridge and the top tier musicians he tapped to play on the record: Jason Crosby (piano, organ, and strings), Tom Guarna (guitar), Pete Lavezzoli (drums), Steve Kimock (guitar), John Kimock (drums), Adam Tenenbaum (guitar sounds) and posthumously, his brother Kofi Burbridge (flute).

The sudden passing of Kofi in 2019, a musician well-known for his enduring work with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, was but one of several heartbreaking losses Burbridge endured in succession. His father had also recently passed as did his theology mentor, Dr. Jim Barnette. Longtime collaborator and influence Colonel Bruce Hampton also tragically died while performing “Turn on Your Lovelight” during his 70^th birthday celebration at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. The sensibilities of the Garcia/Hunter songs were healing agents for Burbridge, so much so that he wanted to share these curative powers with others mourning the loss of loved ones.

“I do it for them, and I hope it helps them move their pain the way the music moves mine out of me,” he said of the songs on the album that include fan favorites such as “Stella Blue,” “High Time,” “So Many Roads,” and “Standing on the Moon.” “It has to be in motion. You got to move it through you and then it’s passing through. It comes in and then it goes out—it’s just like how we go through seasons.”

Born to Wander

Growing up in Washington, D.C., Burbridge was enveloped by the alluring music his father cultivated—a vast record collection providing portals into dimensions he was keen to explore.

“My dad wasn’t a professional one, but he was very much a musicologist; that was his passion,” Burbridge said.  “He was into jazz, primarily, but had a wide variety of music and an extremely big record collection—everything you can think of.”

Encouraged to study music at a young age by his parents, Burbridge began his musical journey learning classical and jazz standards on a wide array of instruments—from bass clarinet to violin, trumpet, piano and drums. His older brother Kofi, who also became an acclaimed musician, was his earliest collaborator. By the time he was a teenager, Burbridge was playing in local bands, gravitating to the bass guitar.

But true to the meaning of his Egyptian forename, Burbridge was born to wander. So, he set off on a lifelong musical walkabout that eventually brought him to Atlanta in the late 1980s. Here he met avant-garde musician Colonel Bruce Hampton—a life-altering occurrence.

“When I got down to Georgia, Bruce really turned me on to the folk music that I was not giving the same priority. He really helped me with a lot of the missing [musical] pieces that I didn’t have as a young buck,” he shared. “Delta blues and bluegrass and really old gospel, which then immediately ties into jazz and rock and roll, R&B, funk and soul music—all that stuff comes from gospel and blues.”

Since the 1960s, Hampton was known for mixing jazz, folk, blues fusion and southern rock—a musical concoction that caught Burbridge’s attention. Hampton was also a mystic of sorts, which intrigued Burbridge who is naturally drawn to magical and otherwise unexplainable occurrences.  “I got blindsided with the Colonel. When he meets somebody, he would guess your birthday. He didn’t even know my last name. We probably talked for maybe 20 minutes, and he goes, ‘August 24 at two in the morning.’ I was born on August 24 at 1:57 in the morning. How did he do that? And I saw him do it to over 100 people,” Burbridge shared.  “I heard he was strange, but I needed to figure this all out.”

Western Swing

This quest to better understand Hampton and his sensibilities resulted in the formation of The Aquarium Rescue Unit, a band that featured Hampton, Burbridge, Jimmy Herring and Jeff Sipe, among others. The group curiously mixed the genres of bluegrass, rock, Latin, blues, jazz and funk. By the early 1990s, these minstrels were sharing bills with Widespread Panic, The Samples, the Spin Doctors, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and Phish. With the seminal 1992 H.O.R.D.E festival, these harmonious cohorts created the second-generation jam band scene that was organically established by groups like The Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers 20-plus years earlier.

A student of music history, Burbridge began to better understand how early black blues and gospel music informed so many American music genres that followed—creating seemingly disparate pairings along the way.

“A lot of people don’t know that Jimmy Rogers and Louis Armstrong did an album together [Blue Yodel #9; 1930] and Bill Monroe was really influenced by this old black blues player, Arnold Schultz,” Burbridge said. “He took that stuff that he learned from Schultz and mixed it with the Celtic tunes he learned from his grandmother and created bluegrass. So, that black influence is there. It’s just an American thing. Period.”

Burbridge further explained that while playing with The Aquarium Rescue Unit, he was showing Matt Mundy, the group’s mandolin player who hailed from North Georgia, songs that were written in the 1930s by Charlie Christian, a black swing and jazz guitarist. Mundy said he knew some of the tunes, not from Christian but from Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys. Mundy didn’t know Christian’s work and Burbridge didn’t know Bob Wills music, but by sharing these influences, they connected important historical dots.

“Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson were listening to that stuff,” he said of the country music legends. “All those guys were listening to black musicians, and I wonder if they weren’t even playing with them on the down low, because they certainly were playing the same tunes in the same style. They call it western swing—the swing part is black.”

Musical Brothers

Burbridge’s understanding and appreciation of these derivative musical genres came in handy when the Allman Brothers Band needed help on bass in 1997. Founded in Jacksonville, Fla. in 1969, the band was unique for its masterful ability to mix blues, rock, folk and psychedelia. Additionally, the otherwise all white southern band bucked convention by proudly featuring a black drummer, Jai Johnny “Jaimoe” Johnson who grew up in Mississippi.  “Jaimoe was the one who turned Duane [Allman] onto the long jams by playing him Miles Davis and [John] Coltrane,” said Burbridge. “Duane and Gregg were crossing the tracks and seeing these black bands on the Chitlin Circuit—the only two skinny white kids in the back of the club.”

Burbridge respected the rich history of the Allman Brothers Band and understood he was tasked with the privilege of filling the shoes of founding member Berry Oakley and later Lamar Williams and lastly, Allen Woody. Winning the gig, he began a 17-year run with the group that formally disbanded in 2014. In recognition of his impressive work with the Brothers, Burbridge received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Throughout these same years, no grass grew under his feet. In 1998, he founded Oteil & the Peacemakers. Three years later he formed Vida Blue with Page McConnel from Phish and Russell Batiste from the Funky Meters. He later played in BK3 with Bill Kreutzmann and Scott Murawski of Max Creek and was a founding member of the Tedeschi Trucks Band. When he approaches writing new material, the two-time Grammy nominated songwriter finds inspiration playing drums, bass, keyboards, guitar or banjo—although the muse can be allusive.

“It usually starts with hearing something in my head or just exploring on whatever instrument I happen to be on, so it can come all kinds of ways, and I don’t restrict it,” he told The Hudson Independent, adding that ideas don’t only come during waking hours.

“I’ve had a couple of ideas where I woke up with something very strong and definitive in my head,” he shared. “Duane Allman said he had a dream where Jimi Hendrix showed him the song ‘Little Martha’ and he woke up and figured it out—that’s’ crazy.”

For Burbridge, manifestations like these are welcome. Referencing his 88-year-old mother who he noted is a psychic, he has always believed in the supernatural—not unlike the bewilderments Hampton often wielded.

“I’m psychic with my dreams. Some people would consider people like me and my mom, and other people who live in the magical world, that our regular everyday state is a psychedelic state,” he shared. “I would argue that everyone’s state is a psychedelic state…if they would only open their eyes.”

Gumbo Time

When Burbridge was tapped to join Dead & Company on bass and vocals, he represented a longstanding bridge between the Allman Brothers Band and the Grateful Dead that began in the late 1960s when they began sharing bills—most famously at the Summer Jam at Watkins Glenn in 1973, which also featured The Band.

“Bruce [Hampton] really got me prepared to actually even be able to do the Allman Brothers gig or the Dead & Company gig because the Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead are just rock and roll guys playing folk music electric, but they also wanted to jam. They wanted the improvisational part that you get from black music,” he continued. “Jerry [Garcia] was into all that stuff…old gospel and soul music and funk, reggae, R&B, bluegrass and country, just like Gregg Allman, Dickie Betts, Jaimoe and Butch Trucks.”

When Dead & Company announced its last tour in 2023, Burbridge had mixed emotions, but learned a valuable lesson as the band crisscrossed the country. “I think that it was really a blessing in hindsight, because it made me play different—when you know it’s going to be the last of it,” he continued. “The key to the whole thing is to make every day that way.”

True to the poignant Hunter penned Grateful Dead lyric, “What a long strange trip it’s been,” the offshoot band surprised dead heads by announcing a 30-day residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas during the summer of 2024. Billed as the most technologically advanced entertainment venue ever built, Burbridge said the experience—both audio and visual—was surreal.

“It was absolutely next level. It’s something you just have to experience. It’s such a psychedelic experience that you can fully have there, especially at a Dead show or I imagine Phish was a pretty brilliant psychedelic show—but if you don’t want to do psychedelics, you’re going to know exactly what it feels like and then it will all be over when the show is over.”

When asked if Dead & Company has plans to play again at The Sphere, or elsewhere, Burbridge said he has not heard any news but reiterated that every show they have played is special because each performance, as The Rolling Stones sang, “could be the last time.” He added with a chuckle, “You know, Bob [Weir] could be abducted by aliens and it’s all over.” He did confirm that a second installment of Garcia/Hunter tunes is in the works. “Comes a Time” and other fan favorites will likely land on his forthcoming album.

When Burbridge returns to the Capitol Theatre on October 19, he will be flanked by his high caliber friends Jaimoe, Melvin Seals, Steve Kimock, Johnny Kimock, Lamar Williams Jr., Tom Guarna and Jason Crosby. These seasoned, soulful players will dutifully explore space and time, taking risks for the greater good—seeking musical mysticism.

“Improvisation is spontaneous composition,” Burbridge said. “It’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, but it’s also forcing yourself into the unknown, which is where all the magic is… throwing yourself off the cliff directly into the magic makes living through all the bad stuff that happens worth it.”

Along with select tracks from A Lovely View of Heaven, he said the evening will be filled with songs that encompass his career to date as well as avenues not yet explored. “We’re going to mix it all up. I’m starting to do some more tunes by the guys in the band by Johnny Kimock and Jason Crosby and bringing more of my originals into it. We’re doing some Jerry Garcia Band, some Allman Brothers, some Grateful Dead,” Burbridge shared. “We’re just having fun, man—it’s gumbo time.”

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