Complete List Of Dead And Company Band Members

Feature Photo: Sterling Munksgard / Shutterstock.com

In the expansive universe of rock and roll, few entities have demonstrated the cultural and musical endurance of the Grateful Dead. Following the 2015 “Fare Thee Well” concerts, which were billed as the final time the four surviving core members would perform together, a new chapter unexpectedly began. Dead & Company was formed in August of that year, uniting Grateful Dead founders Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann with a new generation of collaborators: Grammy-winning guitarist John Mayer, Allman Brothers Band bassist Oteil Burbridge, and veteran keyboardist Jeff Chimenti.

The project’s genesis can be traced to a chance musical encounter between Mayer and Weir on The Late Late Show in February 2015, a performance that ignited a powerful chemistry and inspired Mayer to immerse himself in the Dead’s vast songbook. The band’s name itself was a clear signal of intent; this was not a reunion, but a continuation, an entity honoring the legacy (“The Dead”) while explicitly acknowledging its new partners (“& Company”).

From their inaugural show at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York, on October 29, 2015, Dead & Company quickly became one of the most successful touring acts of the decade. The band embarked on a consistent schedule of summer and fall tours, selling out stadiums and arenas across the country, including iconic venues like Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and the Hollywood Bowl. Their 2021 tour alone grossed over $50 million, a testament to their immense drawing power.

In 2023, the band launched what it called “The Final Tour,” a coast-to-coast run that drew over 840,000 fans and was widely perceived as the group’s swan song. However, this marked not an end, but a strategic evolution. Faced with the physical rigors of cross-country travel, the band transitioned from traditional touring to a residency model, performing a 30-show engagement at Sphere in Las Vegas in 2024 and an 18-show return residency there in 2025.

Dead & Company then returned to San Francisco for three sold-out concerts at Golden Gate Park on August 1, 2, and 3, 2025, celebrating 60 years of Grateful Dead music. The lineup featured Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti, and Jay Lane. Those concerts became Weir’s final public performances before his death on January 10, 2026, at age 78.

The band’s lineup remained remarkably stable, with one significant change before the 2023 Final Tour. The core sextet performed together for eight years before founding drummer Bill Kreutzmann stepped away in 2023, with Jay Lane taking over the drum chair. Unlike its predecessor, Dead & Company did not release any studio albums; its official discography became a living document comprised of high-quality live recordings of nearly every concert, made available to fans through digital downloads and streaming platforms.

This practice solidified the group’s primary legacy: introducing the Grateful Dead’s songbook to a new, younger audience and ensuring that the music’s unique improvisational spirit continued to thrive in the 21st century. As of October 2026, Dead & Company had not announced another performance or a new touring lineup following Weir’s death. John Mayer said in August 2026 that he was stepping back for the time being, but he later clarified that he was not ruling out future performances connected to the music.

Bob Weir

As a founding member of both the Grateful Dead and Dead & Company, guitarist and vocalist Bob Weir was the central pillar of Dead & Company’s musical universe from its inception in August 2015 through the band’s final 2025 performances. The journey toward Dead & Company was sparked by his televised performance of “Althea” and “Truckin'” with John Mayer in February 2015, a collaboration that revealed an undeniable musical connection and set the stage for the new project. In his role as rhythm guitarist and a primary vocalist, Weir functioned as the band’s musical director, his intricate and unconventional chord voicings providing the harmonic foundation upon which the improvisations were built.

He carried the vocal duties for a large portion of the catalog, including signature songs he co-wrote, such as “Playing in the Band,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Jack Straw.” Weir’s career outside of Dead & Company demonstrated his unwavering commitment to keeping the Grateful Dead’s music in live circulation. Following Jerry Garcia’s passing in 1995, he was the most active and consistent of the original members in forming new ensembles to perform the songbook.

He led a variety of bands, including Kingfish and Bobby and the Midnites, but his most significant post-Dead projects were RatDog, which he formed in 1995, and Furthur, which he co-led with bassist Phil Lesh from 2009 to 2014. These bands served as crucial incubators, bringing musicians like Jeff Chimenti and Jay Lane into the extended Grateful Dead family. Weir also released solo albums, including the 1972 classic Ace, essentially a Grateful Dead album in all but name, and the critically lauded 2016 album of original material, Blue Mountain.

In his later years, Weir toured with Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, which also featured Dead & Company members Jay Lane and Jeff Chimenti at various points. Beyond music, Weir was a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador and a recipient of the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. His final performances took place with Dead & Company at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on August 1 through 3, 2025.

Weir had been diagnosed with cancer in July 2025 and began treatment only weeks before those final concerts. His family announced that he died on January 10, 2026, after beating the cancer but succumbing to underlying lung issues. His death transformed the Golden Gate Park run into the closing chapter of his six-decade performing career and left Dead & Company’s future uncertain.

Mickey Hart

Mickey Hart, a member of the Grateful Dead since 1967, was a founding member of Dead & Company and remained one of its primary percussionists through the band’s 2025 Golden Gate Park performances. Along with Bill Kreutzmann in the Grateful Dead and during Dead & Company’s first eight years, he formed one half of the percussive duo famously known as the “Rhythm Devils.” When Jay Lane took over the second drum chair, Hart continued to provide the more exploratory side of the band’s percussion.

Hart’s most significant contributions to the live show were the “Drums” and “Space” segments, a nightly ritual of free-form, textural improvisation that had been a hallmark of the Dead’s concerts for decades. During these segments, he employed a vast and eclectic collection of world percussion instruments and custom-made sound sculptures, most notably “The Beam,” an eight-foot-long monochord that produces deep, resonant tones. This part of the show was a direct reflection of his lifelong passion for exploring rhythm, allowing him to push the music beyond traditional rock into more experimental and avant-garde territories.

Hart’s work outside of the band is extensive and academically significant. He is a celebrated ethnomusicologist, author, and archivist dedicated to the preservation of global musical traditions. His solo project, Planet Drum, won the first-ever Grammy Award for Best World Music Album in 1991, and he earned a second Grammy in the same category for Global Drum Project in 2009.

He has collaborated extensively with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution on the “Endangered Music Project,” a mission to record and archive at-risk soundscapes from around the world. Hart has authored four books on the history and spiritual power of drumming and has been a pioneer in studying the therapeutic and neurological benefits of rhythm, work that was inspired by seeing his grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s, respond to his drumming. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as a member of the Grateful Dead.

John Mayer

John Mayer, an acclaimed, multi-Grammy-winning artist, was a founding member of Dead & Company and served as its lead guitarist and one of its primary vocalists from 2015 through the 2025 Golden Gate Park concerts. His path to the band was born of genuine fandom; after discovering the Grateful Dead’s song “Althea” on the streaming service Pandora in 2011, he developed a deep appreciation for their music. This passion led directly to him inviting Bob Weir to perform with him during a guest-hosting stint on The Late Late Show in 2015, an event that served as the direct catalyst for the band’s formation.

Mayer’s role in the band was pivotal, as he was tasked with the monumental challenge of interpreting the lead guitar parts of the late Jerry Garcia. He was widely praised for his approach, which involved a deep and reverent study of Garcia’s phrasing and improvisational style without resorting to simple imitation. Mayer artfully blended his own blues-rooted sensibilities with the Dead’s unique brand of psychedelic exploration.

Before joining Dead & Company, Mayer was already a multi-platinum solo artist with seven Grammy Awards to his name, known for major hits like “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and “Gravity.” His musical direction had already begun to shift toward a more roots-oriented sound on his albums Born and Raised (2012) and Paradise Valley (2013), which featured folk and Americana influences that foreshadowed his work with the Dead. His involvement in Dead & Company became a key factor in the band’s massive commercial success, as his mainstream stardom created a bridge that introduced the Grateful Dead’s music to a vast, younger audience.

Following Bob Weir’s death, Mayer began engaging with the Grateful Dead catalog from a different perspective, including through his SiriusXM “Grateful Dead Listening Party.” In August 2026, he described himself as stepping back from the stage and returning to his solo work. He later clarified that the statement was part of his grieving process and that he was not swearing off future performances of the music, leaving the door open even though no new Dead & Company dates had been announced.

Oteil Burbridge

Oteil Burbridge joined Dead & Company as a founding member in 2015 and served as the band’s bassist and a contributing vocalist through its final performances with Bob Weir in 2025. He was recruited for the project based on his extensive experience and stellar reputation in the American jam band scene. In his role, Burbridge provided the deep, fluid, and funky low-end that anchored the band’s improvisations.

His style, rooted in jazz, funk, and R&B, offered a distinct rhythmic feel that was different from, yet complementary to, the approach of original Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. This reinterpretation of the bass role gave Dead & Company its own unique rhythmic signature. In addition to his bass playing, Burbridge contributed backing vocals and became beloved by fans for his soulful lead vocal performances on Grateful Dead ballads like “High Time” and “China Doll.”

Burbridge is a two-time Grammy Award-winning musician whose career connects two great pillars of American jam music. Prior to Dead & Company, he was a member of the Allman Brothers Band from 1997 until their retirement in 2014, a 17-year tenure that made him their longest-serving bassist. He was also a founding member of Colonel Bruce Hampton’s avant-garde Aquarium Rescue Unit, a band that was highly influential in the 1990s jam scene, and the Tedeschi Trucks Band, with whom he won a Grammy for Best Blues Album.

Burbridge has also led his own band, Oteil & the Peacemakers, and since 2020 has co-hosted the podcast Comes a Time. His work outside Dead & Company continued after the Golden Gate Park shows, maintaining his prominent place in the American jam-band community.

Jeff Chimenti

Jeff Chimenti served as the keyboardist for Dead & Company from its formation in 2015 through the band’s 2025 Golden Gate Park performances, bringing with him a long and storied history of playing with members of the Grateful Dead. His role was to provide the rich harmonic and melodic textures essential to the Dead’s sound, from the swirling Hammond B3 organ that defined songs like “Wharf Rat” to the grand piano that drives tunes like “Cassidy.” Having played alongside Bob Weir in various projects since 1997, Chimenti possessed a deep understanding of the music’s complex structures and improvisational pathways.

Chimenti’s career has been inextricably linked to the Grateful Dead’s legacy for nearly three decades. He first joined Bob Weir’s band RatDog in 1997, a remarkable feat given that he admitted to not knowing a single Grateful Dead song at the time. He learned the catalog not from records, but by playing it night after night with the band’s leader.

This deep immersion made him the go-to keyboardist for subsequent projects, and he went on to play in The Other Ones, The Dead, and Furthur before becoming a founding member of Dead & Company. His non-Dead related work includes playing with Primus frontman Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade and the supergroup Golden Gate Wingmen. This extensive experience made him an indispensable musical weaver of Dead & Company, providing the stable and intuitive foundation that allowed the other members the freedom to explore.

Bill Kreutzmann

Bill Kreutzmann was a founding member of both the Grateful Dead and Dead & Company, serving as one of the band’s two drummers from its inception in 2015 until he stepped away from the group in 2023. For eight years, he was one half of the “Rhythm Devils,” and his distinctive, swinging, jazz-inflected drumming style was a fundamental part of the band’s sound. His rhythmic interplay with Mickey Hart was a direct continuation of the percussive partnership that had propelled the Grateful Dead for nearly 30 years.

Kreutzmann’s departure came just before the band’s 2023 “Final Tour.” An official statement from the band explained the decision as the culmination of a shift in creative direction. This announcement followed several tours in 2021 and 2022 during which Kreutzmann had to miss a number of shows due to health-related issues, with Jay Lane filling in. His final performance with Dead & Company was at the “Playing in the Sand” destination event in Mexico in January 2023.

Kreutzmann was the Grateful Dead’s sole drummer from their formation in 1965 until Hart joined in 1967, and he remained for their entire 30-year career. After 1995, he participated in reunion projects like The Other Ones and The Dead and led his own groups, including Backbone, 7 Walkers, and Billy & the Kids. He is also an accomplished visual artist and the author of the 2015 memoir, Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreaming, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead.

Jay Lane

Jay Lane became Dead & Company’s regular drummer in 2023, taking over the drum chair for the band’s “Final Tour” after he had already served as the substitute drummer for Bill Kreutzmann on multiple occasions during the 2021 and 2022 tours. His integration into the lineup was a natural and seamless transition because of his decades-long history of playing with Bob Weir. Lane provided a powerful and precise backbeat that anchored the rhythm section and complemented Mickey Hart’s more exploratory percussive work.

Lane remained in the lineup for Dead & Company’s 2024 and 2025 Sphere residencies and the three Golden Gate Park concerts in August 2025. Those San Francisco performances became Bob Weir’s final concerts. As of October 2026, no new Dead & Company performance had been announced following Weir’s death.

Lane is a highly respected and versatile veteran of the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. His career was deeply intertwined with Weir’s, as he was a founding member of RatDog in the 1990s and later played in Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros. This long-standing musical relationship positioned him as the clear successor when a permanent change in the Dead & Company drum chair was needed.

Outside of the Grateful Dead world, Lane’s extensive resume includes two stints as the drummer for the influential funk-rock band Primus, as well as being a member of the Charlie Hunter Trio, the hip-hop/jazz collective Alphabet Soup, and Furthur, the band co-led by Weir and Phil Lesh. His addition to Dead & Company ensured a smooth rhythmic transition with a musician who was already a long-standing member of the extended Grateful Dead family.