Actually Hunter wrote the lyrics for Touch of Grey. I thought he was an excellent lyricist and complemented Garcia well. Barlow referred to himself as the "junior varsity" songwriter for the Dead and I think he may have been overly kind to himself. For me there is a deep quality chasm between the Garcia/ Hunter compositions and the Weir/ Barlow output, it almost sounds like a different band at times when Weir is performing his songs. IMO the most noteworthy aspect of the band's songwriting is, by far, all the wonderful music that Jerry created. Just my 2 cents.