Last week John Mayer released “Love on the Weekend,” the first single from his upcoming album, The Search for Everything. While Mayer hasn’t put out new music in a few years, he hasn’t exactly been laying low. For the past year or so he’s been touring with Dead & Company, the band formed by former members of the Grateful Dead. Through the world of Deadhead culture, Mayer became acquainted with the designer Jeremy Dean, who’s built cult following of his own making Grateful Dead x Black Flag bootleg t-shirts. Their initial conversations about design soon lead to the creative direction for Mayer’s new music and the merch that goes with it. This past weekend the first t-shirt designed by the two was released—and quickly sold out—and we’re told there’s more on the way. We tracked down Dean to hear about how the two met, what it’s like to work with the Visvim God, and how he feels about music merch being the latest fashion trend.

GQ Style: Tell me a little bit about what you do?

Jeremy Dean: I’m based outside of Philadelphia, and I am a creative director in retail—I won’t mention the company. I’ve been doing that for the past 18 years or so. And I’ve always done work with bands and been doing my t-shirts, and I’ve had a couple different clothing lines here and there. I worked for a design company called House Industries with a few friends and we had a line called House 33 that doesn’t necessarily function now.

What sort of bands have you worked with?

My life has been mostly in the hardcore world—I did a lot of work for Jade Tree. I did stuff for Kid Dynamite, Turing Machine, The Explosion, Saves the Day. I’ve done tons of record covers and merch for a lot of those bands. And a bunch of other bands nobody has ever heard of. I was heavy in the late ‘90s early 2000s for a few years there.

You do your own line, too, which combines Grateful Dead and Black Flag imagery, sold mostly through Instagram. Tell me about that.

I loosely refer to it as DES, which could stand for a couple things. Double Edge Sword was an offshoot I did at House 33. But now it doesn’t really have a name, and because it doesn’t have a name and exists kind of in this nebulous world I’m still interested in it. When I try to make something “real” I get bored of it fast or I put too much pressure on myself to have a season and come up with designs. This is just me repeating myself, but at the same time I feel like it’s a challenge to keep interpreting this one thing in a weird way. In that way it’s really fun because I don’t put any parameters on myself. It’s still really fun for me and its taken me places that and put me in touch with people that I never thought I’d deal with.