Dead and Company come to ATL... and yes, Jerry Garcia is still dead

? Three members of the Grateful Dead performed at Philips Arena on November 17, just a few months after declaring the end of the Grateful Dead with the group’s much hyped “Fare the Well” shows in San Francisco and Chicago. These shows included the band’s core four surviving members, with the exception of bassist Phil Lesh, who performs with his own group, Phil and Friends. The other three surviving members were joined by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, basist Oteil Burbridge and formerly Atlanta-based heartthrob John Mayer playing the role of the Dead’s beloved singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia. And while the show did not reach Grateful Dead heights, it was satisfying on its own terms, which is perhaps the best thing you could say about it 20 years after Garcia’s death.
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? To open the show, the group stretched out on “Feel Like a Stranger,” a Bob Weir/John Barlow-penned number from the Grateful Dead’s 1980 LP Go To Heaven. Perhaps Weir’s choice for an opener alluded to the hassle he got when entering the venue. Just moments before the group was to go onstage, a security guard stopped him from entering. He left angrily, but the situation was sorted out within a few minutes. Soon, he was onstage performing for a crowd of over 12,000, and lit into the chorus like a man possessed: “Well, I feel like a stranger.”
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? It is understandable that Weir get stopped at the door. At 68 years old he no longer possesses the beauty of his youth which propelled him as the stud of the band, which is discussed in the recent Weir Documentary, The Other One. These days he looks a little like the 1990’s era Garcia, with his grey hair and beard, and statuesque presence on stage. But just as Garcia appeared like Buddha, Weir looks like a mad scientist, occasionally waving his arms in the middle of songs and seemingly directing audience members onstage. All four Grateful Dead alumni are getting elderly, however: percussionist Mickey Hart is 72, drummer Billy Kerutzmann is now 69, and Phil Lesh, who recently announced he has cancer, is 75. On this night, Weir was strong right out of the gate, putting to rest concerns about his health ever since he collapsed on stage in 2013 with Further - a band he co-founded with Lesh - and cancelled shows in 2014 with his band Ratdog.
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? But the big story Tuesday night was John Mayer, the 38 year old, who moved to Atlanta to try to make it in 1997 and is known as much for his his number 1 albums as his TMZ stalking-worthy good looks. A recent innocuous Instagram post about the weather in Nashville had nearly 17,000 likes and 370 comments within 30 minutes of posting (he has 1.3 million Instagram followers). With all the gossip that surrounds him, it’s easy to miss the fact that he has recorded and played with many guitar legends, amongst them Eric Clapton who called him a “master” guitar player. Obviously, the Dead and Company made a wise business move choosing Mayer to play the role of Jerry.
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? Tuesday night’s first set chugged along with Col. Bruce watching from the soundboard area, as his former Aquarium Rescue Unit protégé and Allman Brothers bassist Oteil Burbridge impressively filled the shoes of Lesh. On tunes such as “Cold Rain and Snow”, Burbridge’s bass drove the song, as Mayer’s bluesy, honey-tinged voice seductively drew listeners in with its sweetness — suddenly, “Cold Rain and Snow” felt like a great pop song. The first set bounced along from there, with slightly dark Dead classics turned into poppy, feel-good celebrations. Tunes like “Bertha” felt fresh, with a wondrous extended guitar solo from Mayer. However, this first set did not evoke the life-and-death mind trips that many Grateful Dead shows in the past could. Mayer’s pretty looks, sweet vocals, and masterful guitar playing are quite a package, but the far more rough Garcia he was not. Because inside Garcia’s roughness lived his whimsical ways, emotional depth, and eternal suffering, and are what truly made the Grateful Dead special — a genre unto themselves. As the first set came to a close with a slow and boring version of  Weir’s “Cassidy”, one wondered if this band could, even for a moment, reach the ensemble feel which made the Grateful Dead singular — the group’s ability to harness each of its members’ freak energies and combine them to create something that could be both joyful and scary moments apart. 
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? As if to directly address this question, the second set of the night opened with a 20-minute run through “St. Stephen”, a tune which took the band to some interesting territory. In a jam highlighting each part of the ensemble, members complemented each others’ solos and played against each other to create a friction that evoked what the Grateful Dead once was. Led by Weir’s counterintuitive rhythmic style - which, in the past, provided Garcia a template over which to play his solos - “St. Stephen” went to a lot of unexpected places. The group then gently flowed into one of their most melodic classics, “Uncle John’s Band”, with Mayer stepping up to the mic: “Well the first days are the hardest days/don’t you worry anymore,” he sang.
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? What the crowd lacked in racial diversity, (it reminded me of the Donald Trump rally this writer recently covered in Norcross) it made up in age diversity. The scene was made up of an array of people, some so old you wondered how they put on their tie-dyes sitting in their seats near younger woman dancing freely topless.
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? The celebration that was “Uncle John’s Band” preceded the opening chords of “Help on the Way,” which was sung by Weir in one of his better Garcia impersonations. The band went to some fantastic primal places in the transitional instrumental tune “Slipknot” before bursting into the reggae infused “Franklin’s Tower.” Here, it felt for the first time that Mayer was claiming some Dead songs as his own as he repeated the lyric “If you plant ice you are going to harvest wind” several times, staking a new climax to a song played hundreds of times before.
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? From there, the Dead and Company went into “Drums” and “Space,” a tribal dance of sacred sounds and avant-garde, instrumental improvisation. The highlight came when Mayer and Burbridge played together on a strange bass and guitar jam. Weir fumbled through a crowd-killing “I Need a Miracle” with Mayer on the side almost mocking him as he mouthed the lyrics. This song then led into the opening chords of the classic Dead ballad “Morning Dew.”
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? On a good night back in the day, Garcia could capture all of the emotional ups and downs of an entire lifetime in about 15 minutes of performance of Morning Dew. On this night, Weir delivered this tune impressively but it still hinted at the missing ingredient: Garcia. The second set closed with a sing-and-clap-along take on the Buddy Holly song “Not Fade Away,” which brought the crowd into the light yet again. The show ended with a soulful “Brokedown Palace,” with Weir and Mayer trading lyrics and showcasing their contrasting vocal styles, bringing new life to this long-time Grateful Dead encore.
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? Nearly four hours after Dead and Company took the stage, it was over. The crowd filtered out into the streets. A scene developed on a side street near the Ferris Wheel, and countless nitrous balloons where being sold and inhaled, so much so that traffic was blocked.  A camper opened up to an impromptu stage and a band on drums and violins performed. Twentysomethings in dreadlocks, who, hours before, roamed outside the arena searching for free tickets with their fingers in the air now opened up coolers filled with water and beer and displayed handmade art work to sell, trying to get to the next show and the next one after that. And the Grateful Dead continues …