Oteil Burbridge on Dead & Co: "I’ve never felt anything so strong coming from a crowd outside of the black church."

In 2016, as he settled into Dead and Company, the bass great reflected on the differences between the Dead and the Allman Brothers Band, how he learned to listen to lyrics and much more.

“Low Down & Dirty is a one-man music magazine!” -Ted Drozdowski, Premier Guitar

This interview with Oteil was conducted, mostly in my car, during the 2016 Peach Music Festival. It began when I drove Oteil around Scranton searching for some very specific items for his then-baby son. I think he needed bananas and organic rice cereal or something.

Dead and Company was a pretty new venture and we dug into his experience with the band,

A version of this story originally ran in the now defunct Music Aficionado website.

Me and Oteil on stage at The Cutting Room. 2018 Backstory interview. Photo by Derek McCabe

Do you have more freedom in Dead and Company because it was the start of a new band, with you and John coming in together, as opposed to a continuation of an institution like the Allman Brothers?

Yes but I think in general there is more freedom because of the band’s origins and because Phil’s approach is so completely exploratory. The beginning of the Grateful Dead was jamming at acid tests, where there were no expectations about how to play – or even to play at all. That level of zero expectations allows for a complete universe of choices with no fear for what someone else is going to think. They were exploring together and that has carried over all these years through all their projects.

A lot more was set in stone entering a band like the Allman Brothers Band. And you always had the tension that Gregg just does not like long jams. There is none of that in the Dead.

When Dead and Company started, did you discuss how to approach every song, or did you just start playing and exploring together?

There was not too much discussion and I didn’t realize until I had learned a lot of tunes that I should have been listening to the 90s versions. Bob wanted my starting point to be right before Jerry died. The catalogue included all the changes in form or content that had evolved up to that point. Obviously it evolves from that point onward but with so many eras of the same song to choose from I could missing things by learning the 70's versions. But there’s always reassessment, even night by night. Everyone expresses their ideas and we try them. John has as many good ideas as anyone.  

We’re all trying to find each other and our sound and we jam quite a bit at soundcheck. Bob, Mickey and Bill – and Chimenti– have played these tunes for a long time. And it was different in each grouping. Today is a new day. We’ll just jam on “Franklin’s Tower” or any song or groove and see how this band handles it and where we are going to take it. There’s an implicit understanding that it will be different.

You didn’t have much background in the Dead’s music. What did you learn once you got deep into the weeds?

The biggest thing I didn’t understand was how deep the songwriting was and that was something I would definitely miss as a kid because all we were worried about was being a bad ass on your instrument. I was learning jazz and following the guys who played electric music with Miles and I never even thought about lyrics.

When I was in TTB, Herbie Hancock came down to Derek’s place and recorded with us and he said he had only recently begun listening to lyrics – he was in his 60s! That’s the gig we were doing. It wasn’t until much later that I started trying to write my own songs and they were terrible that I realized this other universe exists. The only exception for me was Joni Mitchell, who was such a beautiful singer and great musician that it made me listen to the words. I couldn’t do Dylan. I thought it sounded terrible, which blocked me from: “Dude, just read the lyrics.” I’m ashamed to say that. Now I love his voice because instead of listening for what I wanted to hear as a 16 year old, I’m listening for what his story is.

Are there particular Dead songs you love to play?

Oh my God. I have 50 or 70 favorites. There are 30 that have completely changed my life - all the ballads. “Stella Blue,” “China Doll,” “Standing on the Moon,” “He’s Gone,” “The Days Between,” ”Looks Like Rain,” “Black Throated Wind” and all the rest. They are amazing songs. There’s just a touching, human, gentle urgency. And how do you have gentle urgency? The broken fragility of Jerry’s voice and the pleading of Bobby’s voice and those incredibly deep lyrics and the music that accompanies them and how it all connects with everything that goes with it… it’s just incredible.

The jazz fusion guy in me loves the long complicated songs that merge jazz, classical, folk and rock, like “Terrapin Station,” “Help/Slip,” “St. Stephen” and “Lost Sailor/Saint of Circumstance.” I just wish someone had said to me when I was 16, “Learn these 8 songs.” Then I would have gotten it – because the songs are so heavy regardless of how well or not well they played them on any given night. But how do you sift through all the nights? It’s a lot when you’re outside the world. But learning them makes you understand, because those songs are really hard! I worked for a long time to get them.

Are they hard because they are non-linear or are they physically hard to execute?
Both! “Help/Slip” is physically hard to pull off. [Sings the entire, extended riff.] And you have to know the subtleties. Other stuff is conceptually hard. They throw these crazy things at you, like they’ve seeded the field with land mines. It can be the simplest song but this one time one thing happens 15 minutes into the song: “We do it this way every time, except this one time.” You can not take anything for granted and you are gonna get tripped up.

Is the audience looking for the trip-ups? Or do they not care?

They don’t care, but they know them all and are looking for them. And they laugh, then Bobby laughs and we all laugh. It used to really bug me and then I finally got it. They’ve been telling me since the beginning that it’s not about the execution, it’s about “Are you gonna find something new?” The bible says, “love covers a multitude of sins” and a really good jam where you went somewhere you’ve never gone before will erase whatever mistake you made before. Then everyone will say, “We’ve never seen that before! And we’ve been watching them for 50 years!” It’s a wonderful environment to just go for it.

How have you found playing with John?
Oh, it’s been so great, man!  He’s deep and he’s having so much fun. The reason John won the fans over is because he truly fell in love with the music. It’s love. It’s the same thing you get from the fans. I’ve never felt anything so strong coming from a crowd outside of the black church. It’s so much love coming at you that it’s not a concert or entertainment anymore. It’s a spiritual ritual that everybody is participating in and it is truly grounded in love.

Oteil in Dead and Company. Photo - Jay Blakesberg

I think the feeling is compounded for the fans because it’s the old love compounded by the joy that they are experiencing something they didn’t think could ever return.

Yes! That’s what I keep hearing from people: “I didn’t think I would ever see this again or feel this again.” I keep hearing things like, “My boss better not say one thing because I will quit right now and go on Dead your in a second.” And it’s incredible to feel that love and devotion and to be in the middle of it.

Does that affect you as a musician?
Hell yeah! And another thing that impacted me tremendously was the one night I did some Owsley [LSD] at the Gorge. Listen to how different that night sounds, because that music and Owsley go together and I found that out. I never liked to play tripping. I did all that as a teenager and even then I didn’t like to play. My friends wanted to jam and I just wanted to keep it separate.

Were you scared to do it now?

Oh no. The whole point was to see what they were seeing and boy did I! The first thing I realized was the stuff I was doing as a kid was absolute garbage and this was completely different experience. Playing that music with them on it was eye opening. And I finally caught John, because I don’t know his playing wit the same intimacy I know Jimmy Herring, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, whom I’ve played with for many years.

I’ve been chasing John and I caught his ass that night and he knew it. Afterwards, he sat me and Bill down and was like, “What happened? What is this all about?” It was hilarious. I was like, “Yeah I got you.” And I connected to the audience. I felt like an octopus with tentacles connecting to each person in the band – and each person on that vibe in the audience. And it was heavy.

You are the only bassist to play with both of the great rock and roll drumming duos- Jaimoe and Butch Trucks in the Allman Brothers and Billy and Mickey in the Dead. What are the similarities and differences between them?

I think it’s more about the differences in the bands than the drummers. Bill is really more like Jaimoe. He’s very limber and funky. There’s way more jazz , avant garde jazz and even modern classical influence in the Dead than in the Allman Brothers. If we start going out- like Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler out - in the Allman Brothers that’s not gonna fly for very long – though I think Butch and Jaimoe are fine with that. Gregg was pretty much gonna shut that down. There’s that much wider scope built into the Dead. And the Dead will play so much quieter for so much longer.

Check out Oteil’s 2017 solo album Water in the Desert. >

The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.