Tyler Childers alongside the Grateful Dead? Now THAT I can get behind.
Now to be clear, this video from 2022 is actually Childers alongside surviving Dead (oxymoron) band member Bob Weir, along with his band the Wolf Bros. Some iteration of the Grateful Dead has toured pretty much every year since 1965, and Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros are one of those iterations.
The most popular version of the band, at least in the past decade, has been Dead and Company. It consists of surviving Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart (drums) and Bill Kreutzmann (drums). John Mayer has stepped into a role that honors (not replaces) the late Jerry Garcia, and bass player Oteil Burbridge and keys player Jeff Chimenti round out the group that’s currently in the middle of a Las Vegas residency at the Sphere.
But enough about the Dead, let’s get into this video of Tyler Childers bringing to life the song “Greatest Story Ever Told,” which was included in Bob Weir’s 1972 solo album. Obviously, the song has existed for a very long time as a part of Weir’s catalogue, but the legendary artist was more than happy to hand the vocals over to Tyler Childers when he joined Bob and the Wolf Bros up on stage.
Needless to say, Childers absolutely brought it with the performance:
I’m starting to think Tyler Childers has the “Chris Stapleton Effect,” where basically any song that he touches turns into pure gold.
That theory is further proven true by some of the other songs that Childers sang with Bob Weir. The dynamic vocal duo and the band backing them also played a cover of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” and the Grateful Dead’s 1977 hit “Terrapin Station.” Both of those songs stay in the regular setlist rotation of the Grateful Dead, and something tells me that they wouldn’t mind having Childers in their regular rotation as well.
Check it out:
