The Grateful Dead spoke with Mayer about playing together as early as January 2015, but first waited until they'd completed their Fare Thee Well tour, which Phish's Trey Anastasio joined them for, before they began booking actual dates.

Once the tour logistics were in the bag, Mayer began immersing himself in what he calls "Dead University." He spoke with Rolling Stone, saying, "I was in isolation, learning these songs, and the first thing you have to do is have heard it long enough to be able to anticipate it in a certain way. You have to understand that particular song's flow. And then I pick up the guitar and find out kind of where it lives on the fretboard, and then I sort of go a little deeper. Each song gets that layered thing, so that by the time I really know it, I know how the song goes, what the sort of guitar approach is, but then also what the sort of ethic of the song is."