How Jim James and Jeff Tweedy learned to love the Grateful Dead

During this year's Days Between — from Aug. 1 to 9 — NPR Music is publishing a series of stories about what keeps drawing people to the Grateful Dead and how they plan to carry the band's legacy forward.

When Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the Grateful Dead officially came to an end. But the surviving members — Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart — spent the next three decades playing songs with each other, and with a myriad of younger musicians.

The Dead's influence, as a result, spread to new generations and new communities. In the world of indie rock, My Morning Jacket and Wilco were two bands who dipped their toes into the Grateful Dead extended universe through a singular experience: by sharing the stage with Weir.

Both bands went on to develop a deep relationship with Weir and, in turn, with the strange and psychedelic musicianship of the Grateful Dead. Wilco and My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James both eventually recorded covers of Dead songs for a 2016 tribute album called Day of the Dead.

NPR Music's resident Deadheads spoke with James and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco about their evolving appreciation for the Grateful Dead.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Jim James

Isabella Gomez Sarmiento: What's your relationship to the Grateful Dead's music?

Jim James: As a younger person, all of the kids who liked the Grateful Dead in high school were such a******* that I hated the Grateful Dead. So I went through most of my early life like that. Then, when I was in my mid-20s, or so, I heard American Beauty for the first time and fell in love with songs like "Candyman" and with Workingman's Dead. So that was my first entry, the more song-based, acoustic side of the Dead. Then as time rolled on, different songs have spoken to me here and there.

We got to have so many amazing experiences with Bobby [Weir]. It's so funny because when we played with him, I was so deeply honored and so unbelievably moved that we were getting to play with him. But I wasn't yet a superfan, so I wasn't flabbergasted, you know what I mean? I got to experience some beautiful one-on-one time with Bob, talking about songs or playing songs together and learning to love him that way. As time has gone on, My Morning Jacket [has played] "One More Saturday Night" a lot, which is a Bobby song, and that rockin' side of the Dead — once I started to get into their live shows, particularly the Veneta, Ore. show from 1972 — is phenomenal.

Just in the last couple of months, a buddy of mine sent me the Grateful Dead in 1974 playing here in Louisville, Ky. at Freedom Hall, which I had never heard that show before. On that show, they played the song "Row Jimmy," which I had never heard. It is blowing my mind.

Gomez Sarmiento: How did you meet Bobby and how did that come to happen, when you played with him? What did you learn from sharing the stage with him and getting to know him in that way?

Just to try and be fearless. Bobby was fearless. He was always ready to play. The most hilarious thing about meeting Bobby was that we did this tour with Bob Dylan. The reason we did the tour was they told us that Bob Dylan wanted to play with other people. We're like, "Jesus, this is going to be insane." We pictured ourselves sitting around the campfire at night with Bob Dylan being like, "Let's play all of Desire tomorrow."

So we get on tour with Dylan. You don't see Dylan, you don't talk to him. He's never there. But the person that is there is Bob Weir, and Bob Weir is hanging out with everybody. Bob Weir's got his guitar out in the dressing room and he wanders over to our dressing room. Bob doesn't give a s*** what he looks like. He doesn't give a s*** if the notes are wrong or right. He's just there in the moment with the spirit, playing his heart out, making the most beautiful sounds. It makes me tear up even thinking about it.

I've really tried to remember that when I'm feeling insecure or when I'm playing a show and I feel like it's not going that well, or we're trying to jam or explore a space and it's not working out. I try to summon his spirit and just think about how he would wander in there. If you're in there trying, that's all that counts. I'm just so grateful I got to spend some time with him because he really did embody that effortless spirit of the Dead. I feel like the reason people love the Dead so much is because they make you feel how you wish you could feel all the time. They make you feel what it is to be human in a peaceful way, in a beautiful way.

Felix Contreras: As you get to know the songs, is there something from your musician's hat, your composer's hat, that you are paying attention to? What is your impression now of doing a deep dive into something like that?

I think for my Morning Jacket — as a band that has always been into jazz, and we've always been into jamming and exploring — I think that there's part of us that always wants to do a good job. I put that in quotes, as I say that: "We always want to really do a good job and make sure it really hits home."

I think there's a beautiful bravery and freedom in the Dead, because you can tell they didn't give a s*** if they did a good job or not. They were just trying to find what was there. Sometimes they don't do a good job. Sometimes it's a mess, and then they find it again. That's life, you know?

Gomez Sarmiento: The Grateful Dead has such a unique relationship to the fans and to the way they approached the community. My Morning Jacket has something similar — has seeing the band impacted the way that you view that relationship, between the people onstage and the people off stage?

Absolutely. Every band dreams of having that relationship with their fans. We think about that so much because we want to build a community of love and friendship and peace — a place where people can come not only because they like the music, but because they know there's going to be a lot of great people there. I think the Dead really understood that and gave people a place to come be themselves, to be free and not feel judged.

Jeff Tweedy 

Gomez Sarmiento: What's your relationship to the Grateful Dead's music?

Jeff Tweedy: The first music I really responded to was punk rock, so there were lines in the sand about the Grateful Dead and punk rock. Neil Young wasn't even approved yet by a lot of people. But I do remember there was a day where it seemed like overnight, punks started wearing some Dead shirts in St. Louis, at least where I was. For a long, long time, I have to be honest, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty were my main connections to the Dead. Most of my appreciation came from the songs and the recordings on those records.

But I think I've always kind of understood that there's a communal element that is noble, righteous, about how they treated their fans. As I've grown and have [had] my own band for a long period of time, a similar type of community has grown up around Wilco. I've appreciated it more and more. It's sort of the way it should be. You'd think that almost every rock band that [has] stuck around a long time would have a unique community, because rock and roll is so much about invention and liberty and freedom. But [the Grateful Dead] seem to be the ones that gave it back to the fans with the most openness.

Gomez Sarmiento: One of the reasons we wanted to talk to you for this series is because Wilco is a modern example of a band that has shepherded that kind of community through touring, through festivals. I'm curious if, as you've developed a greater appreciation for [the Grateful Dead], that has impacted the way you view those spaces and the way Wilco has been very intentional about focusing on that community aspect of the music?

I've tried to figure out exactly what we did right. We allowed taping early on and I think we've worked within the framework of a similar philosophy in that if they put the music together in their consciousness, it's hard to argue that that doesn't belong to them — that that's not something that they creatively constructed also. So there's a collaboration being honored when you treat an audience like collaborators. There's a responsibility that comes with recognizing that you have provided a place — especially in this world, in the current environment that we live in — where there's a place to congregate and a place for communion.

Felix Contreras: Talk a little bit about your appreciation of the Grateful Dead from the perspective of a musician. How does your musician's brain appreciate the band?

They were an evolving band to wrap your head around because coming at their earlier music many, many years later, there's a lot of entry points that can be kind of confusing because there's different phases in the band. At this point in time, I've spent a lot of time with their music and have a firmer grasp on what was really unique about their musicianship. It really is kind of a free miracle that it would work — that a bass player not consistently interested in the root note would work with a guy that cut his teeth playing bluegrass, and a young kid that seems to know every chord voicing.

Just the lack of preciousness about keeping arrangements exactly the same, or allowing it to be a platform for improvisation. But at the same time, the songs are really highly considered and elaborate, especially lyrically. Having this lyricist as a part of the band for so long — that was one of the things I don't think I really understood until I started learning some material to play with Bob, and then I played a show with Phil where I learned a lot of their songs. The lyrics are really elaborate and there's through composition on some of the songs; there's a chord progression that happens for four minutes and then a different one for four minutes. It's interesting and inspiring because it existed outside of fashion and outside of the tropes of other genres of music. It became its own genre of music, really.

Gomez Sarmiento: How did you meet Bob and Phil, and what did you learn from getting to play with each of them?

The first time I met Bob, we didn't really meet. We were playing a festival at the same time, and we were in one of the trailer dressing rooms. Our door swung open and Bob Weir was standing there looking a little bit confused. He was looking around and then he said, "Oh, I'm in the wrong dressing room. Carry on." And he laughed.

Then I really got to love and know Bob more on the Americanarama tour [in 2013]. We played with him almost every day, and he sat in with us almost every day. As a person who just wants to do this my whole life, it was an affirmation that you can do that — meeting an older musician who's just as up for it as we all were to bring his guitar into our dressing room and start playing. It's weird, there are a lot of musicians that don't play much off the stage, and I don't really understand that. It's hard to argue that Bob would've been doing that whether he had been in an extremely famous band or not — he would still be Bob Weir, wanting to come over to your house to play guitar and hang out and have that be part of how you communicate with each other.

Phil, when I met him, was a little bit older than when I made contact with Bob. But [a] really amazing musician and really welcoming, and the ethos was the same: whatever happens, it's going to be great. What we're here to do is find out what happens.

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