Catching Up With… Bill Kreutzmann Fifty years after the birth of the Grateful Dead, the band’s founding drummer reflects on a long career. Then, after one last big fling with his old group, it’s back to business as usual: “playing a lot and loving it.” When MD caught up with Bill Kreutzmann to discuss his 2015 book, Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs With the Grateful Dead, the drummer was in New Orleans to play a couple of gigs during JazzFest. But the jam-happy Kreutzmann couldn’t help adding stops to his itinerary. First he blew the minds of an unsuspecting young band that was playing the Dead’s “Scarlet Begonias” in the empty backroom of a bar, by jumping in on the tune and only later revealing his identity. And then, the night before our interview, he played half an hour of double drums with Adam Deitch during […]

October 2015 Issue