SPOTLIGHT: What Jaime Wyatt Sees in The Grateful Dead’s ‘Althea’ [VIDEO]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jaime Wyatt is No Depression’s Spotlight artist for November 2023. Learn more about her and her new album, Feel Good, in our interview, and look for more later in the month.

While many of the songs on Jaime Wyatt’s third studio album, Feel Good, reflect how far she’s come in life, there’s one that takes her right back to some of her deepest roots.

Her cover of The Grateful Dead’s “Althea” stems from her father’s love for the band, which was a sonic and literal presence in her childhood.

Growing up, Bob Weir was a friend of her father’s, and he’d come to the house to jam in their living room. Wyatt’s parents also took her to Dead shows.

“Getting back into The Dead, and finally learning their catalog, began as a way to connect to my late father,” Wyatt says in press materials for the song’s release as a single. Wyatt’s manager, Don Strasburg, is also a fan, and their conversations led her to want to record a Dead song on Feel Good.

She worked up a few songs, including “Loser” and “Friend of the Devil,” on the road, but “Althea,” which she calls “such a sexy and soulful song,” made the cut.

“I was always taken with the lyrics, and it has been quite satisfying and cathartic to sing the lines, ‘Self-centered to the extreme,’” Wyatt explains. “The story feels like turmoil, confusion and conspiracy, a sentiment which is universal to us humans, but if you’ve ever been on drugs or been addicted to a person, you really understand these words.”

Check out her interpretation of “Althea” in this video for No Depression readers, recorded at Electric Deluxe Recorders in Austin, where Feel Good came to life.