Having cut my teeth with hardcore, punk, and experimental music, the Dead were sort of a no-go zone for a while. I discovered them late in high school, although I was of course aware of their iconography—all the skulls and roses—way before that. Actually, when I first listened to their music, I had to check the tape after the first song to make sure I was listening to the right thing, because all the skeletons had me believing that they were going to sound much more menacing.

At this point, I consider their music among the most important in my life. It's been such a constant companion for so many years now. As someone who started out playing wild music on the fringes and was gradually drawn towards traditional American music, I see my own journey in theirs. Their music from 1972 speaks to me because you feel them growing up and deciding what they can use from the canon of American music in a way that feels genuine and specific to them. The songs are so moving and serious, but not precious. And their devotion to the road, for better or worse, is something that speaks to me, too. They pledged themselves to an existence on the margins. It's amazing that they became as hugely successful as they did.

The Grateful Dead were not about perfection. There was a great article about them a few years back in The New Yorker—an article praising them, mind you—that described their sound in the 1980s as "sneakers in a dryer." And for sure, the Dead can be a pretty obvious punching bag in a lot of ways. But to me, they managed to always keep the kernel of truth intact in their music—the bittersweetness that comes from being an outsider in love with the world and with music. They were totally on their own trip. They created their own magpie universe because they had to.

Over the years various friends tried to get me into the Dead, and I eventually buckled when I saw the TV series “Freaks and Geeks.” There are all sorts of hidden Dead references in the show, and it sold me on them—I had to see what it was all about. I chose to do the song “Attics of My Life” because it wasn’t like many others. It was more choir-like and more about the words. I wanted to turn it into a gospel-style song.

There were Deadheads in my high school and they seemed ghostly but content. Which was intriguing because I was looking for a logo to attach myself to as I hadn’t yet fully found out who I was. Like, maybe my rite of passage was a Steal Your Face logo shirt. The music seemed really dark and really light at the same time. A dungeon with great natural light. Or being hungover but about to go swimming. In contrast to the punk stuff I was hearing at the time—the rebelliousness of which I only had a modicum of use for—the Dead sounded tragic and broken but enduring, ageless.