What Is In the Deluxe Edition and How to Get It

Vault Outtakes From the Original Blue Mountain Sessions, Including “The Ground Don’t Want Me” Featuring John Mayer

The first component of the Deluxe Edition surfaces unheard outtakes and material recorded during the original 2015 studio sessions for Blue Mountain. The focal point is “The Ground Don’t Want Me,” written by acclaimed singer-songwriter Josh Ritter and featuring John Mayer on acoustic lead guitar — now confirmed as the only official studio recording of Weir and Mayer together in either artist’s catalog. While Mayer was heavily touring with Weir in Dead and Company at the time of the sessions, his studio contributions never made the final 2016 record, making the Deluxe Edition their official debut.

The tracks feature the core studio band assembled by producer Josh Kaufman, who worked closely with Weir across the sessions to build the spare, acoustic seriousness that made Blue Mountain one of his most critically praised solo works. The studio configuration brought together a tight ensemble of musicians whose individual credentials were substantial and whose combined approach gave the album and its outtakes a consistent, intentional sound.

The Studio Band · Blue Mountain Sessions · Producer: Josh Kaufman

Live Cuts From the Campfire Tour Show How the “Metaphysical Cowboy” Studio Songs Became Long-Form Atmospheric Stage Jams

The second component of the Deluxe Edition features live soundboard recordings from Weir’s supporting fall 2016 Campfire Tour, the acoustic touring configuration that brought him to intimate theaters across the country in support of Blue Mountain. These shows were remembered by everyone who attended them with a specific kind of intensity that Weir’s larger-scale Dead and Company performances could not replicate — a Bob Weir acoustic theater performance in 2016 was a different emotional object entirely, and the Campfire Tour produced moments that longtime fans still describe as among the most affecting of his later career.

For the tour Weir assembled a unique backing band distinct from the studio ensemble, built around an unusual combination of longtime collaborators and members of the National, the indie rock band whose own musical sensibility — austere, literary, emotionally weighted — was a surprisingly natural fit for the Blue Mountain material. Aaron Dessner of the National joined for select dates, adding another layer of the band’s specific aesthetic to shows that were already operating at an unusual emotional register for a Weir solo performance.

Blue Mountain Was Bob Weir’s Most Sustained and Ambitious Solo Statement in Decades — and His Last

Blue Mountain arrived in 2016 as a cowboy-themed acoustic record that demonstrated something many listeners may have taken for granted: that Bob Weir, then in his late sixties, was still fully capable of making music that operated on its own terms rather than as an extension of the Grateful Dead legacy. The album was spare, serious, and rooted in a mythic American West imagery that felt both personal and genuinely felt rather than adopted as a theme. The critical praise it received was specific and deserved.

The record was also, as it turned out, his last solo studio album. Blue Mountain now carries that weight alongside everything else it carries — the weight of a final statement, even if it was not conceived as one, by one of the most distinctive rhythmic voices in American music history. The 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition treats it with the archival seriousness that final statements deserve: not sentimentally, but thoroughly, surfacing everything the sessions produced and everything the tour captured so that the full scope of the project can be heard for the first time.