Oteil Burbridge, formerly of The Allman Brothers Band, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and Dead & Company, takes us through his album Lovely View Of Heaven, a collection of songs written by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia.

Choosing Songs For Lovely View Of Heaven

This will be a theme probably in all the questions, but that lyric, "Let your life proceed by its own design" [from "Cassidy" by the Grateful Dead], is something that just comes up over and over again. So, literally, right up until the very last song I was recording, it kept changing. So, "we ran out of time" is the short answer. That defined what we put out because the second-to-last song was "To Lay Me Down," which is a song that I've done a bunch with my band. It was the second-to-last song we were doing and it just wasn't working. Songs that I hadn't sung hardly at all, comparatively, were coming out just fine. Maybe I felt overconfident about it, like, "I got this one, let's knock it out." But it wouldn't work. Fortunately, at my age, I was like, "Abandon this. Come back to it. If there's time, come back. Just stop. Don't beat your head against this wall trying to even get one verse out. Just stop and go on to 'Mission In The Rain.'"

So "To Lay Me Down" didn't make it on the record because my voice was starting to give and we ran out of time.

Making The Album And Multitasking Bass

We did all the music first, so I demoed everything at home: piano, bass, lead vocal, background vocals, and a click track. We cut to that. I sent all that to all the musicians, because everybody's out on the road with all these different gigs, and I'm doing whatever I'm doing. I sent it out to everyone, and they did their homework, and when we got there, we cut to those tracks. We just took away the bass and the keyboards so I wouldn't have to sing it at the same time that I was playing the bass. I could be free to interpret it on bass the way I wanted to separately from me singing it.

When you have to multitask, the bass suffers immediately - it just goes into automatic pilot, and I'm not going to take any chances on anything like that. It sounded complete because we had those lead vocals and background vocals in it while I'm cutting the track.

The last two days, I replaced all the lead vocals. We ended up keeping all the background vocals that I did at home, which surprised me, but the producer was like, "These are fine. Why spend more time re-cutting them?"

It's the first time I'm ever singing lead for the whole record, and it's all ballads. I'm doing eight tunes the last two days, so I think it was supposed to work out that way because my voice was starting to go on "Mission In The Rain" and it actually helped the track. You can hear me having to reach for it, you know. You can't tell, but you can feel it, like I'm in prayer the whole time, like, "Help me hit this note. Please, please let me hit it." I think it actually helped the song.

I think in retrospect, that's why "To Lay Me Down" is not on there. You just have to let it proceed by its own design. You have to let life play out the way it wants to. You're old enough to know you can make all the plans in the world, but the current goes somewhere else.

Recording In Iceland

This is a go-with-the-flow thing. I live in South Florida on purpose because it never gets cold, and I love that. My manager was like, "Hey man, we should really think about recording this record at the studio in Iceland." I was like, "Hard no."

Now, I had seen Floki Studios because a bunch of my friends recorded there: Joe Russo, MonoNeon, George Porter, Nikki Glaspie... a bunch of people. I had done this gig in the Bahamas with this billionaire guy that has all these properties everywhere, and they were talking about building the studio. I was like, "Can we do it in the Bahamas instead of Iceland?" But everybody that recorded there had such good things to say, so I said, "Well, when are we talking about?"

It ended up being December... December in Iceland. OK.

My wife's birthday is December 9th, and she had never been to Iceland, and I had never been to Iceland. It's not like it was super high up, like in Colorado where I can't breathe and I'm also cold. We were like, "Let's just embrace it. It looks magical. Let's make it a birthday trip."

Man, as soon as we got there, it was very apparent. The Arctic Ocean is right outside the studio. You could go run into it from the front door of the studio. Those crazy guys, they surf out there. They have dry suits. There's a bunch of surfboards in the slaughterhouse.

"High Time"

This was an interesting tune because when I started singing "China Doll" and "Comes A Time," a bunch of people - friends, fans - would suggest songs for me to sing, so I made this huge playlist on YouTube. I would play it around the house, and whatever hit me the strongest, I would work on that next. I got so many songs from people, I was up to my eyeballs.

You know, I'm still new to the catalog, and a bunch of people said "High Time." I listened to it and it didn't really hit me. A year or two later, Jeff Chimenti came to me and he said, "Man, I really think you should check out 'High Time.' I can hear your voice doing that song."

So I made a note to learn it, because this has been the secret for me with the Grateful Dead. All of us, to a certain extent, have preferences, and my preferences are my dad's, so that colors everything. So if I don't hear A, B, C, and D, I move on. And I used to be kind of snobby about it, like it's not worth my time, but some songs you have to learn to know, because if you're only looking for your preferences, you're going to miss a lot. So when I learned "High Time," I learned the music part and then I learned the vocal, and I could not get that song out of my head for months. Every morning waking up, [sings] "I told you..."

I'm like, "Enough already!" Next time I saw Chimenti, I was like, "Bro, you were so right about that song."

Jazz Influence

These songs and this catalog are very much like jazz in that over a long period of time something will clobber you over the head that you've known about for a long time, but it just didn't strike you that hard yet, and then you have a love affair with it. So now I try to be open to everything, and that's hard because the older I get, if it's a really loud volume, I don't last as long. I need some rise and fall, some ebb and flow, some contrast.

But "China Doll" was the first one that really grabbed me, and I was like, "These are jazz songs." "High Time" is a jazz tune. I mean, really, it's a country song, but as far as structurally, like the chord changes, like to solo over that, you have to know how to play changes. It's not like playing over a blues form or a one-chord jam or a two-chord jam. These things twist and turn. It's a very unusual structure for a verse or a solo.

This is why you have this amazing, magical non-coincidence of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter meeting, because you put those two things together and whoa, over and over and over and over again.

Oteil's Podcast

Our podcast is called Comes A Time and it's on the Pantheon Network. We're really excited about it, we just signed up for them. We took about a six-month break and, man, it's been so much fun to get back into it. It was a real gift of the pandemic - so many people were home to talk to and we got addicted to being able to have conversations like this.

It doesn't need to be anyone famous. Technically we're a music podcast, but we talk about professional wrestling, aliens, UFOs, a lot of psychedelic stuff, lots of mental health. Everything comes back to mental health no matter what subject it is. And we do music and comedy, because my podcast partner, Mike Finoia, is a standup comedian and a producer for Impractical Jokers.

When we started out, we did mostly musicians and comedians because that's who we had in our phone the easiest. Then we started reaching out to other people. We ended up having Avi Loeb, who is the head of the astronomy department at Harvard, talking about aliens.

So yeah, we had some doosies. Paul Stamets, who is one of my heroes - the Mycelium expert. We had Diamond Dallas Page, the professional wrestler, talking about his yoga program. So we got a professional wrestler talking about yoga, and we're all into mental health - I love it. The podcast is like my church.

Podcasting Vs. Performing

Maybe it's a yin-yang, because it's just about connection. A stadium is obviously a huge number and this is just two, but it's the same connection. I feel just as great afterwards.

Dead Ahead Festival

Oteil is booked at the Dead Ahead festival in Cancun, January 12-15, 2024.

I think it will be an example of what to expect in the future, which is something different every time. I just found out about it recently myself, like really recently, and I was like, "OK, cool, I haven't booked anything in January yet."

So I hope that whatever the lineup is, we end up doing something, but we'll have to see. This was a surprise to me, so anything after it will be a further surprise. I'm going to be there, I'm pretty sure Chimenti and Jay Lane are going to be there.

Dead & Company

If Bob and Mick call us, we're going to come, that's how it goes. Yeah, it's just that easy. Like, you guys want to do it, let's do it. I'll be out here doing it with my band or we can do it together.

October 2, 2023

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More from Oteil at oteilburbridge.com

Also check out our episode with Donna Jean Godchaux, and the Grateful Dead Songfacts entries.

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