\n<\/p>\n
\n\tBack in 2016, Bob Weir<\/a> had a sudden out-of-body experience as John Mayer<\/a>, Oteil Burbridge, and the rest of Dead & Company were gearing up to play a set one night. \u201cSuddenly I was 20 feet behind my own head, looking at this and kind of happy with the way the song was shaping up,\u201d Weir told Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2018s David Fricke.<\/a> \u201cI started looking around, and it was 20 years later. John\u2019s hair had turned gray. Oteil\u2019s had turned white. I looked back at the drummers, and it was a couple of new guys. I looked back at myself, the back of my head, and it was a new guy. It changed my entire perception of what it is we\u2019re up to.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn other words, he envisioned Dead & Company carrying on after Mickey Hart<\/a>, Bill Kreutzmann, and himself were no longer in the band. It was just a theoretical future at the time, but Kreutzmann retired in 2023,<\/a> Weir\u2019s death was announced<\/a> this weekend, and the future of Dead & Co. \u2014 along with the wider universe of Dead-related bands \u2014 is at a major inflection point.<\/p>\n \n\tThe only real parallel is back in 1995 when Jerry Garcia died, the Grateful Dead<\/a> forever split as a touring entity, and the scene splintered. Still, the \u201ccore four\u201d of Phil Lesh, Weir, Hart, and Kreutzmann were around to carry the torch. Today, Hart is the only active member of that unit. Nobody knows exactly where things will go from here, but we\u2019ve considered six plausible scenarios.<\/p>\n