Dead & Company kick off their batch of summer tour dates tonight at Xfinity Center in Mansfield, MA, and last night, guitarist John Mayer—a self-admitted relatively new Deadhead—took to Instagram to continue his online reflections about his place in Dead & Co., which features three of the original members of the Grateful Dead, and the storied universe around the legendary band as it stands today.

“The night before a new Dead&Co tour is always deeply felt,” Mayer begins, captioning a photo of Jerry Garcia onstage, lost in the music. “I wish I was going to a Grateful Dead concert tomorrow. I wish I was dancing with my friends while we listened to Jerry and the band play. But it’s the honor of a lifetime to convert my love for this music into the further telling of this beautiful, timeless story with some of its brilliant authors.”

No matter what you may think of Mayer’s solo work, his quick adoption of the Dead’s music or his subsequent acceptance into the sphere of Bob Weir and company—there are fans and detractors, for sure—it’s getting increasingly difficult, impossible even, to question his dedication to the spirit of the music he’s playing and the musicians who played it before and continue to play it today. 

“I’m like anyone else who was ever moved by this music, who was discovered by it, and not the other way around,” Mayer continues. “My love for the Grateful Dead is immense, but not extraordinary. I am in that crowd, just represented from the stage. And I think of Jerry Garcia and his intentions with every song we play. I’m only there so that on my best of nights, you might get to him.”

This last bit echoes a similar statement Mayer made before Dead & Co.’s fall tour, when the guitarist posted another Garcia photo and wrote, “I’m only here as an interpreter of a master. This band has developed a soul all its own, but I play in constant emotional, psychological and musical deference to Jerry Garcia.”

Mayer then closed his pre-tour Instagram post with an apropos quote taken from Robert Hunter’s lyrics in “Terrapin Station”: “The storyteller makes no choice/ Soon you will not hear his voice/ His job is to shed light/ And not to master.”

Catch a free stream of Dead & Co.’s summer tour opener tonight via 
nugs.tv, who are also offering webcasts of the full tour and currently giving away an Unlimited Devotion package of webcasts from every night.