John Mayer made his long-awaited appearance on Tales From the Golden Road with Gary Lambert on SiriusXM, the same place Mayer says sparked his love for the Dead’s music. 

“This music hits me on the same level that everything that ever hit me the most at that time did,” Mayer gushed to Lambert. He admitted that he “knew the news of this would throw people off” but promised that it would “validate itself” in the end. “The band and I were both pretty sure there was something substantial happening musically,” he added.

The guitarist also talked about studying Jerry Garcia during his preparation for Dead & Company as well as his nightly approach. “What you have to do at the end of the night is put the notes back in the bag,” he said. “And say, tomorrow is a new night and when you take out something tomorrow, nobody heard last night’s notes. All those notes return themselves to pristineness.”

Mayer also dished on some of his plans for next year, saying he has most of his next record finished and plans to go back to that at some point. Listen to the segment below.