Steely Dead has been blending the repertoires of the Grateful Dead and Steely Dan for seven years. Photo courtesy Scott Tuchman

Longtime fans of the Grateful Dead, Colorado-based musicians Dave Abear and Dylan Teifer had an idea: What would it be like to fuse the Grateful Dead’s songs with Steely Dan classics?

The result was Steely Dead, which will perform Friday at Mulligans on the Blue.

“We all play Grateful Dead music, and we’re all very big Steely Dan lovers,” Abear explained. “We just started playing around with ‘Reeling in Years,’ and one night we were playing ‘Deal,’ and ‘Reeling in Years’ snuck into the end of ‘Deal.’ People in the small bar we were playing went crazy. They just loved it.”

After the gig, Teifer and Abear spent some time wondering if they should learn a couple more Steely Dan songs. The next thing you know, they were having rehearsals.

A unique hybrid of songs from the Grateful Dead and Steely Dan, Steely Dead has been fusing the two bands’ repertoires for seven years. The band features Dave Abear on guitar, Matt Abear on bass, Chris Sheldon on drums and Teifer on keyboards.

A recent Tahoe Onstage review noted: “They kicked things off with a rocking ‘Truckin” by the Grateful Dead, jamming into ‘Black Friday’ by Steely Dan and back into ‘Truckin’,’ demonstrating right off the bat the group’s ability to jump back and forth between the two bands’ catalogues without stopping playing.”

While the Dead’s live shows emphasized long jams with stretched-out songs, Steely Dan’s music was more structured and sophisticated, emphasizing meticulous studio perfection.

“I’ve read somewhere that Steely Dan is obviously jazz-rock,” Dave Abear said. “It’s pop-rock music with jazz chords and voicings and harmonies — and it’s a little more complex. The Grateful Dead is rock-jazz. They play rock songs, but they use all the sensibility of jazz improvisation inside their music. That’s why I think that the opposites can really live together.”

In a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone, Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen said he and Walter Becker both liked the Grateful Dead’s music. “We particularly liked some of their tunes and the way they played together,” he said, and he suggested Steely Dan might have adopted a more improvisational style like the Dead if their own approach to music hadn’t worked.

In 1997, Steely Dan published a famous “Deadhead to Danfan” conversion chart on their website with examples like Deadheads reading “beat poetry” converts to “MacMall catalogue” (Danfan).

Besides playing with Steely Dead, Dave Abear has toured as the lead guitarist with Melvin Seals and JGB, and he performs with the bluegrass Dead band Working Man’s Grass, and the Dead cover band Terrapin Flyer. Drummer Sheldon previously played in the DeadPhish Orchestra.

“We know all the Dead songs, and we’re doing upwards of 40 Steely Dan songs that are in our rotation,” he said. “A good example is ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Truckin’.’ They both are kind of a shuffle in E, so they magically fit together. But we also can introduce ‘Black Friday’ and ‘The Other One’ or ‘Black Friday’ and ‘New Minglewood Blues.’ In the last two or three years, we’ve been like trapeze artists with no net underneath us, and we don’t really need a set list.”

Diving into Steely Dan’s repertoire has deepened Dave Abear’s appreciation for jazz and rhythm and blues.

“Looking at Donald Fagen and Jerry Garcia, Jerry was a musicologist,” he noted. “He was well versed with quite a wide palette, and Donald Fagen was very knowledgeable in a certain era of jazz. Because I worked on Steely Dan so much in the last seven years, I understand Jerry’s guitar playing and Bob Weir’s guitar playing, and Phil Lesh’s bass playing so much better. Steely Dan has really opened my ears and my musical palate.”

Steely Dead will play at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Mulligans on the Blue. Slack Twang Thang will open. Tickets are $57 in advance at MulligansOnTheBlue.com and $65 at the door.