On October 28, 2014, at the Beacon Theatre, the Allman Brothers Band performed their final concert. Nearly 11 years later, and almost 3,000 miles west at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Dead & Company, the highest-profile Grateful Dead reunion project since the passing of Jerry Garcia, also played its final notes.
Performing with both groups on those momentous occasions was Oteil Burbridge on bass, the multi-instrumental virtuoso who got his first big break in the 1990s with the eccentric but influential Col. Bruce Hampton’s Aquarium Rescue Unit before landing gigs with two of the most important bands in rock history.
“I realized that my karma for my mission for this life, in addition to having my prayers answered and making a lot more money than I would have made playing fusion, was to walk these bands home,” Burbridge says in a recent interview. “To give them the last half of their hourglass from 50 and Bob [Weir’s] case 60, or maybe he was a little older [when Dead & Company formed]. It was the last 17 years of the Allman Brothers. But the last 10 years of playing for Bill [Grateful Dead and Deadco drummer Kreutzmann] and Bob, that’s kind of a sacred thing.”
Weir, the Dead’s rhythm guitarist and vocalist, died this January after a private battle with lung cancer.
Burbridge, who just released a duet album with Lamar Williams Jr, is touring with his band Oteil & Friends, which will play a pair of shows at Brooklyn Bowl this week. Most of his “friends” should be well-known to jam band fans: Williams on vocals; organist Melvin Seals, known for his work with the Jerry Garcia Band; keyboardist Jason Crosby (Jackson Browne, Phil Lesh); guitarists Steve Kimock (The Other Ones, Ratdog, Weir’s Campfire Band) and Tom Guarna (Blood Sweat & Tears, Branford Marsalis, Stanley Clarke); and drummer John Morgan Kimock (Mike Gordon).
Now that Burbridge has helped guide the Allmans and Deadco to their finales, the Boca Raton resident has shifted his focus to nurturing a new generation of musicians.
“I love pro wrestling,” he says. “It took me a long time to get into it. But one of the things that I love about it is that at all times, everybody in the company is all working to put one person over, and they’re going to get to be the star at that point. But you’re going to get your chance. We’re all in it to put this one person over, and that’s how it continues.”
Burbridge mentions Roots Rock Revival, the camp in the Catskills he cofounded in 2013. “You know, we had [original Allmans bassist] Berry Oakley’s grandson and [The Band drummer and singer] Levon Helm’s grandson doing double drums. So when you talk about legacy and going for it, we’re doing it literally, but also spiritually like Taz [Niederauer] and his brother Dylan that plays. Dylan is such a badass, man. So these are kids that were coming to our camp for 10 years.”
He also points out another camper, the young guitarist, singer and bandleader Lara Cwass, who he says has been coming there since she was 15. “And I got her to sit in at The Capital Theatre. Now she’s gigging with Grahame Lesh, right?
“They have the talent. I’m just putting a spotlight on it, and then they’re running to the end zone. They’re up and at it, man. It’s so beautiful.”
It is a “pay it forward” approach borne from his formative days with Hampton in Atlanta.
“For me, that’s what the Colonel did for me. I met him when I was 24. … And then Widespread Panic and Phish and Blues Traveler put our whole band over, because they loved Aquarium Rescue Unit and took us out on the Horde tour. And then when my opportunity came for the Allman Brothers Band, that’s how they knew about me.”
Nearly 40 years later, Burbridge is allowing himself to think about his legacy in practical terms, like who is going to run Roots Rock Revival when he no longer can? “You get more conscious after you pass 50. Definitely after you pass 60, you’re like, yo, when I joined the Allman Brothers, I looked it up. I think Butch [drummer Trucks] was 52. Now I’m 61. So you get conscious of like, yo, I’m on my way out of here.”
Does he think there will be more shows for the surviving members of Deadco, minus Kreutzmann, who he said is fully retired from playing?
“I have no idea, man. I never was told that kind of stuff,” he says. “You know, we did the final tour like years before that, right? So I don’t know, man. And I have been told nothing about any future plans.”
When Burbridge walked off the stage at Golden Gate Park on Sunday, August 3, finality wasn’t on his mind, because he had already mentally laid the band to rest after the final tour in 2023.
“They made jackets and shirts and all kinds of stuff,” Burbridge says. “I still like go in the closet and I pull out final tour stuff, and I’m like … So when that happened, that was it for me, right? I was like, because I walked the Allman Brothers home, and we said, this is it. And that was it. So when I got the jacket, I got the T-shirt, it was over. And then we did more. Now Bob’s gone. Now Bill is not playing anymore. It’s just like, you know, it’s done. So if something happens in some form, great. But you know, that’s done. We are very lucky. We got 10 years. They did Grateful Dead 50 and we got another decade out of it, even with the pandemic.”
As he waxes philosophical, he reaches for a line by lyricist John Perry Barlow in the Weir-sung Dead tune “Cassidy.”
“I kind of live by that Grateful Dead line. ‘Let your life proceed by its own design.’ And now I’m living the whole thing, you know? ‘Fare thee well now/ Let your life proceed by its own design/ Nothing to tell now/ Let the words be yours, I’m done with mine.'”
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