They say you never forget your first Grateful Dead show. Mine was November 11, 1985. They opened the first set with “Walking the Dog.”
I was seventeen years old, stoned and drunk, sitting in a section high in the 300s among a sea of tie-dye, breathing in the sweet smoke of possibility, and watching Jerry Garcia‘s fingers dance across the strings like he was having a conversation with the universe. I didn’t know it then, but that night would shape the next four decades of my life.
I had joined the circus.
I started listening to the Dead in 1983. By the time I saw them live, I was already deep into the culture: trading tapes, learning the mythology, understanding that no two shows were ever the same, chasing set lists, selling oranges, and buying grilled cheeses after the show in “the lot,” before there was such a thing.
Over the years, I amassed over 1,000 Grateful Dead tapes. They’re still here, stacked in boxes, too precious to ever dispose of. Each one is a moment in time, a sonic photograph of a band that never played the same song the same way twice.
The songs on those tapes are old friends. Friends that I always look forward to hearing from.
Now I’m 57, and something unexpected has happened. I find myself listening to Dead & Company more than the Grateful Dead.
This isn’t a comparison. This isn’t about saying one is better than the other. This is my truth.
The Grateful Dead were lightning in a bottle: Jerry, Phil, Bobby, Billy, Mickey, Pigpen, Brent, Keith and everyone who passed through those cosmic halls. They created something that had never existed before, and will never exist again.
That’s not up for debate.
The Evolution of Need
What Dead & Co. does for me now, at this stage of my life, is different from what the Grateful Dead gave me when I was young. In 1985, I needed the chaos, the risk, the sense that anything could happen — accentuated by a macro, rather than micro, dose. I needed the raw edge of Jerry’s guitar cutting through the night, the way shows could veer into musical territories that felt dangerous and transcendent. I needed to dance to Bobby’s cosmic explorations. I needed to contemplate life during Jerry’s ballads.
At 57, I need something else. I need the warmth. I need the joy. I need music that honors the past while evolving to live fully in the present. Yes, I’m “slightly” biased. But, Dead & Co. gives me that.
John Mayer‘s guitar work is pristine, passionate, deep, dirty, magical. John doesn’t try to be Jerry. Never did. He couldn’t be, and he knows it. Instead, he brings his own voice to these songs, and in doing so, he helps them breathe new life. Jeff’s playing is deep and funky, grounding the music in a groove that makes you move. Mickey’s permissions are a sense of wonder and comfortable exploration. And Bob Fucking Weir. Bob, who was there from the beginning, still commands the stage with the same fire he had when we were both young(er).
The Magic of the Sphere
If you had told that 17-year-old kid slightly comatose at his first Dead show that one day he’d play a role in helping thousands of fans, myself onboard, watch this music performed inside a massive sphere with visuals that seemed to warp reality itself, he wouldn’t have believed you. But there I was, at the Sphere in Las Vegas, watching Dead Forever come to life in ways that felt both impossibly futuristic and deeply connected to everything the Grateful Dead had always been about. Ever exploring. Ever pushing boundaries.
The Sphere shows weren’t just concerts, they were experiences. The technology didn’t overwhelm the music; it enhanced it. During “Dark Star,” the visuals took us into deep space. During “Terrapin Station,” we seemed to float through mythological landscapes. “Hell In A Bucket” took us on a full-on rollercoaster ride. The band played with a precision and energy that felt both polished and simultaneously spontaneous, a difficult balance that Dead & Co. has mastered.
The residency drew 477,000 people across 48 shows and grossed nearly $200 million. But numbers don’t capture what it felt like to be inside that space, surrounded by generations of Deadheads, all of us caught up in something bigger than ourselves. Rolling Stone called it the most dazzling visual show in Grateful Dead history, but they were wrong. They were the most dazzling shows in all of history.
Red Rocks, Cornell, and Everything In Between
Dead & Co. has given us moments that stand on their own. Parts of a tapestry that is warm and comfy.
Red Rocks has always been sacred ground for this music, and watching them play there shivering under the stars, with the ancient rocks rising around us, felt like communion. The acoustics are perfect, the setting is perfect, and the band rised to meet nirvana night after night.
Then there was Cornell. The rebirth.
The Grateful Dead’s 5/8/77 Barton Hall show is considered by many to be the greatest concert recording in rock history. When Dead & Co. returned to Cornell, they weren’t trying to recreate that magic — they were honoring it. They played with reverence and with freedom, reminding everyone that this music is alive, powerful, penetrating, and that it continues to evolve.
Over their 10-year run, Dead & Co. played more than 350 shows. I’ve been to my share of them, and each one has given me something different. Sometimes it’s a perfect “Scarlet Begonias” into “Fire on the Mountain.” Sometimes it’s “Brown-Eyed Women” that brings you to tears. Sometimes it’s Bobby delivering a version of “Days Between” that undeoubtedly had Garcia proudly smiling from above. Sometimes it’s just the feeling of being in a room with thousands of other people who understand that this music is a language we all speak. It’s under our skin. It’s not going anywhere.
Kraig Fox and Bob Weir
McCory James/Courtesy of Kraig Fox
The Final Tour and What Remains
The 2023 final tour was bittersweet.
Following a mind blowing unofficial start at Cornell, Dead & Co. wrapped their run with three sold-out shows at Oracle Park in San Francisco, playing to 120,000 fans shaking their bones.
Maybe some of the psychedelics and kind bud was replaced by Advil, Pepto and Ben Gay. But that’s ok.
What remains is the music. The stories. The flow.
What remains are the beautiful memories. The magic.
What remains is the knowledge that for 10 years, this band gave us a gift: the continuation of something we thought might have died with Jerry but instead found new life, new expression, new meaning, new life.
I still have my 1,000 Grateful Dead tapes. I still listen to them (digitally and on vinyl), and 5/8/77 still gives me chills. The European tour of 1972 still transports me. I get lost in the ’73 jams. I ride my Peloton blasting shows from 1990.
But when I want to embrace the joy of this music in the present tense, when I need a fix, when I want to remember that the river keeps flowing, I find myself putting on Dead & Co. more often than not.
Not the Dark Side — Just Another Part of the Journey
To say that Dead & Co. represents “the dark side” is tongue-and-cheek, of course. There is no dark side in loving music that moves you. There is no betrayal in finding that Dead & Co. fills a space in your life that the Grateful Dead once filled, and still fills in a different way.
The Grateful Dead taught us that music is a living thing, that it changes and grows, that it meets you where you are. And they built a safe traveling circus tent that you could live as long as you wanted.
Dead & Co. embodies that lesson. They took the songs we love and played them with their own hearts, their own hands, their own vision. Some songs, I would argue, are now Dead & Company’s.
At 57, I’m so grateful for both. The Grateful Dead gave me my musical spirit, my understanding that a concert could be a religious experience, that a song could heal you, that a band and an audience could create something together that transcended performance.
Dead & Co. gave me the gift of understanding that this music isn’t locked in amber like a museum piece to be studied but not touched. It’s alive. It’s growing. It’s changing. It’s as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Or as Bobby was fond of saying, more fun than a frog in a glass of milk.
So yes, I admit here, openly and honestly, that I listen to Dead & Co more than the Grateful Dead these days. Not because they’re better. They’re different. Not because I’ve forgotten where this all started — those 1,000 tapes remind me every day — but because right now, at this moment in my life, Dead & Co. is the musical aide that I need.
And isn’t that what the Grateful Dead taught us all along? To be present. To be open. To let the music meet you where you are.
The music will never stop.
Full disclosure: I’m one of Bobby’s managers. One of this friends. But I was a young Deadhead long before that. I miss him dearly already.
