Dead & Company bassist Oteil Burbridge hosted an “Ask Me Anything” session on the Grateful Dead subreddit on May 25, answering fan queries about a range of topics.

The top-rated question was about Oteil’s place in the Dead & Co. soundboard mix, and the bassist answered honestly.

“You have been consistently low in the mix, since the beginning. I assume partly due to your desired tone, but partly due to probably the others behind the board,” the fan asked. “When you play with a pick it certainly helps, but that’s a small percentage of the time. What can we do to turn you up in the mix? As a bassist, it is really disappointing to consistently struggle to hear you at concerts and in recordings. I mean this not as a criticism, but I really want to hear you more, as do many others. Can we get something done about this?”

Oteil answered, “Since this has been ‘upvoted’ to be the number one question, let’s address this. First of all, I have absolutely no control of my volume in the PA that the audience hears. As some of you may know (or may be able to see if you are close up), I use inner-ear monitors so I can hear myself just fine and am not able to tell what you guys are hearing because I have my own mix. I talked with the sound man about it last fall because we saw lots of fan comments about it back then and he’s constantly adjusting to a situation that is always in flux. Maybe you guys should try trading the ‘Let Oteil Sing’ shirts for ‘Turn Oteil Up’ shirts! Haha.”

Oteil described his audition process for Dead & Company as pretty mellow and “really just me going to jam with them just to feel the actual chemistry between the core 3, Chimenti, Mayer and myself. No matter how good it looks on paper, the proof is in the jam.”

He also teased some new material in the chamber for summer tour: “We definitely have some new (old) tunes that we’re going to break out this summer. I feel it’s really important that we continually add more songs from the Grateful Dead catalog. There are so many great ones to choose from and so many that I know the fans are dying to hear.”

Read the entire AMA here.