What a long, strange trip it’s been. The Grateful Dead have performed thousands of shows and spawned a subculture. That will all come to an end in July at Chicago's Soldier Field where Jerry Garcia performed his last show.
The four living original members – Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann — announced three final reunion shows July 3rd to 5th. They’ll be joined by longtime keyboard collaborators Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti, as well as Phish frontman Trey Anastasio.
“It is with respect and gratitude that we reconvene the Dead one last time to celebrate,” Lesh told Billboard. “Not merely the band’s legacy, but also the community that we’ve been playing to, and with, for 50 years.”
Soldier Field holds special significance for the band and their fans alike. The 55,000-seat capacity venue was where iconic frontman Jerry Garcia performed his last show with the band on July 9, 1995, less than a month before his death. Since then, members of the Grateful Dead have united under various monikers—the Dead, Furthur, RatDog, Phil Lesh and Friends—but promoters are billing the upcoming Chicago shows as “Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead.”
“We had to sort through a number of options,” Weir said. “Were we going to do a festival-style event or go back to our classic mode of an evening with the band? We narrowed it down to: Let’s just do it simple and clean.”
Tickets for “Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead” will be available through a mail order system on Jan. 20. They go on sale online Feb. 14. Complete ticket info is at http://dead50.net/.
-Spencer