John Mayer is killing it right now. Just passing his one-year anniversary of joining up with Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti as the “Company” to original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart‘s “Dead”, the bluesy guitarist and singer seems to be having an amazing time on stage. The positive energy that follows The Dead and their related projects seems to have signaled a shift in Mayer’s attitude, as he seems to have toned down his focus on his celebrity and turned up his focus on his musicianship.

Mayer sat down with Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke to talk about his first summer tour with Dead & Company, his acceptance into “Dead” culture, his desire for Phil Lesh to sit in with the band, and the advice that Phish‘s Trey Anastasio gave him backstage at last summer’s Fare Thee Well concerts.

See below for a few choice quotes from the interview.

On expanding the setlist to include more Grateful Dead songs this summer:

I’m really keen to check out “Dire Wolf” and “High Time”. Bob mentioned “Box of Rain”, and I said, “Do I need to reach out to Phil, get his blessing?” And he said, “Absolutely not. Phil would love it.” The great thing is that its one of those rock-solid core songs that happens to be in my range vocally – but also in my range metaphysically.

On how the band members pick who sings each song:

Bobby is singing “Dark Star.” The delegating of songs falls into two rules. If Bobby sang it originally, Bobby is still singing it. If Jerry sang it, if my vocal range can get it, I usually go for that song. And it’s really sweet. There are a couple of songs Bob wants to hold on to half of the blanket with, so there are some songs that we share.

Discussing his interaction with Trey Anastasio backstage at Fare Thee Well:

[Trey told me that] “this doesn’t belong to anybody. It doesn’t belong to you or me or anyone else.” It was loud backstage. There was a drum solo happening [laughs]. But what a sweet guy, who in the middle of his break during one of the most intensive concerts anyone has played, when I asked him about his guitar, he takes it off, puts it around my neck and says, “Check it out.”

It’s the pay-it-forward thing. Someone instilled that in him. He helped instill that in me. And when there’s another guy coming up, I’ll be putting the guitar around his neck.

Click here to read the full interview between John Mayer and Rolling Stone!