IN January 2024, Simpson made only his second significant live appearance Isince losing his voice in 2021, at the Dead Ahead Festival in Cancún, Mexico, playing with Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and various Dead compadres.
“I wasn’t doing anything and I was asked, did I want to go to Mexico for a couple of days and play guitar for the Grateful Dead?” he recalls. “I wasn’t really familiar with them, because in my early twenties in Kentucky there was a jam band scene which I dismissed as unstructured noodling, and I lumped the Dead into that. Then when Bob sent me 60 songs I had to learn, I thought, why is this so easy? It’s almost like I could anticipate where Jerry was going. And it was because Jerry played folk, country, bluegrass and blues, the same way I play guitar! He is now my favourite guitar player. “And after I got home from those shows, all I could think about was playing guitar for 10 hours a day again. I called my booking agent and said, ‘I wanna go on tour.’” After years of music-free depression and inactivity, a key had been turned. “Jerry Garcia, I hate to say it, might have saved my life!”
“Myfavourite guitarplayer”:
JerryGarcia, NYC, 1975