Robert Hunter, the lyricist who wrote the lyrics for many of the Grateful Dead’s best songs will be touring for the first time in years (starting later this week in New York), according to Rolling Stone.

Hunter collaborated with Jerry Garcia beginning in the ’60s and the two of them wrote such Dead classics as “Dark Star,” St. Stephen” and “Box of Rain.”

Hunter says he’s touring to pay off hospital bills.

“When I was in my sixties, it seemed like a good time to retire, and I didn’t have a financial reason,” Hunter told David Browne. “But I’ve got medical bills to pay, so I’m a working man again. Last year I managed to have a nice hospitalization that should have been fatal. I had a spinal abscess. It was a honey. They had me on morphine for about a month. I had never had the distinction of being involved with that [drug] before. It was the strangest world. I couldn’t tell delusions from reality. I was calling my mom in the middle of the night saying they were going to execute me.”

To read an interview with Hunter, head to Rolling Stone.