John Mayer has clarified comments that read like a retirement from Grateful Dead music, and the correction is narrower than it sounds. He is not done with the songs. He is grieving, and he does not want to think about the songs while he does it. JamBase's Scott Bernstein reported the exchange on August 27.
The conversation happened on a Wednesday with Andy Cohen, recorded for SiriusXM's Radio Andy ahead of Mayer's small show at Stephen Talkhouse in the Hamptons. That gig was his first full-band performance of 2026 and his only concert of the summer.
The remarks he was correcting had gone to USA Today, where he said he had gone back to his corner and was now in the crowd with everybody rather than on stage playing the material. "I think part of the grieving process is to hang it up," he told Cohen, before making the limits of that clear: "I'm not swearing it off."
What he would not do is set a date or describe a route back. He does not know yet how a return would work, he said, and he does not want to start planning one. He asked for room to sit with it instead, framing the pause as necessary rather than final and saying he would like to hang up the jersey for a while.
The weight behind all of it is ten years of work. Mayer played alongside Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann in Dead & Company, which formed in 2015 and toured through 2023, with Jay Lane replacing Kreutzmann for the final run. The band went on to play Sphere residencies in Las Vegas in 2024 and 2025 and three shows at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in August 2025.
Weir died on January 10, 2026, aged 78, and the audience that grew up around that catalogue is working out what happens to it next. Mayer's answer, for now, is that he has no specific plan and hopes people understand that. Cohen's full pre-show interview aired on Radio Andy on August 28, with the Hamptons set following on the Life with John Mayer channel a day later. Other acts have come back from long silences this year, among them New Radicals after 28 years and Shane Hawkins reviving his father's Chevy Metal. More sits on the rock hub.
The facts
- Mayer spoke to Andy Cohen for SiriusXM's Radio Andy
- He said hanging it up is part of the grieving process
- Bob Weir died on January 10, 2026 at the age of 78
- Mayer spent ten years in Dead & Company with Weir
- The interview came before his Stephen Talkhouse show in the Hamptons
- That gig was his first full-band performance of 2026
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