With me today is a musician classical musician conductor and composer Lee Johnson.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

Mr. Johnson.

I appreciate it very much.

I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and I guess why you're talking

to us on a Grateful Dead music show.

Well, of course, as a composer, classical music is my thing.

Orchestra is pretty much the cream of the crop for a guy like me.

But I had the opportunity to meet someone whose cream of the crop is the Grateful Dead and his name is Mike Adams and out of Atlanta

And he approached approached me in 95 just after Jerry's death and said I got this idea you want to hear about it and

so it went from an idea and to the recording but the intervening time was a lot of listening a lot of

talking and a lot of studying because I had I had to learn all about the

grateful dead in order to be to even feel remotely qualified to be the guy to do this.

Well I imagine it took quite a bit of listening and what kind of music did you listen to the whole

Ava or I mean the whole recorded output or did

you also listen to live tapes or?

All kinds of live of course I bought everything that was published and had a whole shopping bag full of stuff that was my library. I towed

around everywhere. And then lots of deadhead friends of Mike Adams became new friends of mine.

And so it would would you know gather up and listen and

tell stories about what happened at this and that concert what they heard what

happened and it's just so that I could get that opportunity to be there

as much as possible because you know I grew up with other composers other dead composers but

...