Sam Briger

But, you know, there's also there was a lot of tragedy around drugs and alcohol in the Grateful Dead.

Band members, you know, either died from overdose like like Brent Midland or from drug or alcohol related illnesses like Pigpen.

And of course, Jerry Garcia.

And I'm not really sure what my question is, but I guess I was thinking about all that history and we'll listen to that song.

And I was wondering how it might have informed the way you wrote it.

When The Grateful Dead started playing, you were 17 years old and you lived on Ashbury Street at the height of the counterculture in San Francisco.

And The Grateful Dead and its music was really at the heart of that movement in a lot of ways.

You know, at 17, were you prepared for that?

It seems like such a young age to have all that thrust upon you.

You were adopted when you were born and you met your birth parents pretty late in life when you were around 50 years old.

And I guess you had a close relationship with your father until he died last year.

What did you learn about yourself from finally getting to meet him?

So over the years, you must've imagined, um, what your birth parents were like.

How did that compare to actually meeting them?

There's a touching story that one of his sons, I think, died of spinal cancer.

Yeah.

But he was a musician too.

Yeah.

And the family gave you that guitar.

And for a long time, you would play that guitar on stage, right?