Dead & Company Wraps Up Final Tour With Electric Shows In San Francisco

Ben Blanchet
·2 min read
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Dead & Company, a band that featured Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, concluded its final tour with a three-night stop at San Francisco’s Oracle Park this weekend.

The band, which began in 2015, performed a two-set show to close out the weekend as Deadheads flocked to the baseball stadium to experience iconic Grateful Dead songs and covers on Sunday.

The trio of sold-out shows on the tour marks the close of another chapter for the Grateful Dead, a band that has seen members reunite and form several touring projects since the death of lead guitarist and songwriter Jerry Garcia in 1995.

Dead & Company, the latest touring group of Grateful Dead members, notably featured the guitar and vocals of John Mayer. The band embarked on its final tour without Bill Kreutzmann after the founding member of the Dead backed out of the tour in April because of a “shift in creative direction.”

The band cruised through songs such as “Bertha,” “Althea” and “Loser” in its first set before “becoming stuck exclusively to Grateful Dead material” in the second set of Sunday’s show, Ultimate Classic Rock reported.

The San Francisco stop featured the usual pre-concert Shakedown Street, a nod to the Dead’s 1978 song, where fans gathered outside the venue “to share food, acquire handcrafts and drugs, and swap stories about kismet encounters with friends made at previous shows,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Outside the Bay Area, the Empire State Building lit up in “tie dye” on Sunday night to honor the band’s last stop on its last tour.

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Deadheads who dropped by Oracle Park this weekend told San Francisco’s Fox affiliate that the fan base feels “connected” and assured the station that the band has been “growing and changing and evolving” in its music.

“It’s a party that won’t stop and people keep wanting to go to,” said Joel Selvin, a former San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic, in an interview with the news station.

Check out clips from this weekend of Dead & Company shows below.

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