Dead & Company takes final bow in San Francisco
It’s the end of an era — again.
Former members of the Grateful Dead have explored the band’s songbook in half a dozen configurations since the death of lead guitarist and primary composer Jerry Garcia in 1995, but the Dead’s extended afterlife seems to be concluding on a high note back in the city where the band helped spark the Bay Area’s mid-’60s rock revolution.
Dead & Company, featuring Bob Weir and Mickey Hart — two former members of the iconic Bay Area band — alongside drummer Jay Lane, John Mayer on vocals and guitar, Oteil Burbridge on bass and vocals, and Jeff Chimenti on piano, keyboards and vocals, kicked off a three-night festival at Oracle Park on Friday, July 14, for what has been billed the band’s “The Final Tour.” The announcement of the farewell run, which started in Los Angeles on May 19, set a wave of travel plans in motion that washed into McCovey Cove and the home of the San Francisco Giants for the band’s sold-out last stand.
Dads with their teenagers, parents with toddlers, old hippies in faded tie-dyes, college students on summer break, and Millennials born after Garcia’s passing made up a throng of some 40,000 fans that packed the open-air arena, with roughly 70% from outside Northern California, according to Live Nation.
One line to get into the stadium snaked more than half a mile along the Embarcadero past Brannan Street, but with gorgeous weather and clear views across the bay during the day, the vibe was celebratory.
More Information Dead & Company’s Final Tour: 7 p.m. Saturday, July 15; 6 p.m. Sunday, July 16. Sold out, but waitlist available at deadandcompany.com. Oracle Park, 24 Willie Mays Plaza, S.F. See More Collapse
On a rocky alcove outside Oracle Park, fans settled in for a long weekend of long, winding jam music by creating an impromptu Shakedown Street — named after the Dead’s hit 1978 song of the same name — where they gathered to share food, acquire handcrafts and drugs, and swap stories about kismet encounters with friends made at previous shows.
Running nearly four hours, just about every song was greeted with a roar of recognition. The show opened with Buddy Holly’s rave-up “Not Fade Away,” a tune usually reserved for encores. In diving deeply into the Dead’s expansive repertoire, the band teased out the jazz influences in the Dead’s music while eliding the band’s deep affinity for folk and blues.
Adam Pardee/Special to The Chronicle
Riding Burbridge’s funk-powered bass lines, “Shakedown Street” shimmied with sharp call-and-response vocals led by Weir, who has taken on even more of an Old Testament prophet look than ever attained by Garcia. There’s no gainsaying the band’s instrumental prowess, but it’s the vocals that put out a welcome mat. The rich group harmonies on Dead standards like “Ramble On Rose” and “Cold Rain and Snow” invited the audience to join in, which might be one explanation for the Dead & Company’s recent wave of converts.
If the San Francisco shows are a wake where the guest of honor is in attendance, the band didn’t offer any kind of extra-musical benediction. In keeping with Dead tradition, the musicians never addressed the audience — not to acknowledge the recent death of Grateful Dead’s longtime touring manager Sam Cutler (though Dead & Company did post a statement on social media earlier in the day) nor even an anodyne “Hello, San Francisco!” or “It’s good to be home.”
Adam Pardee/Special to The Chronicle
Most acts make a point of showcasing the devotion of their fans, cueing them in to sing at crucial moments or suddenly dropping the volume so that the audience can lead singalongs. But like every previous incarnation, Dead & Company let the music do the work.
A potent part of the Dead’s allure is the way the songs — both those written by Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter, and the eclectic covers — create an easily accessible mythic narrative regarding loss, lightning-struck love-at-first sight, and beatific epiphanies. As Deadheads aged, the lyrics took on deeper associations, and throughout Friday’s show every other number seemed to speak to the occasion, even if no one in the band did.
On the folk song “I Know You Rider,” the audience joined in on the line “gonna miss me when I’m gone” with extra fervor. The key lyric in the catch-phrase laden “He’s Gone,” used to be “Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile,” but Friday it was the concluding phrase “nothin’s going to bring him back” that resonated.
And so it went late into the increasingly misty night, until Dead & Company returned for an anthemic encore, Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” The portal may be opening for this crew, but with hundreds of Dead cover bands active around the world, the music isn’t going anywhere.
Adam Pardee/Special to The Chronicle
Dead & Company’s Friday Set List
First set
Not Fade Away
Shakedown Street
Cold Rain and Snow
Ramble On Rose
Brown-Eyed Women
New Speedway Boogie
Wharf Rat
Don’t Ease Me In
Second set
China Cat
I Know You Rider
He’s Gone
Scarlet Begonias
Fire on the Mountain
Drums
Space (with a taste of Dark Star)
Standing on the Moon
Casey Jones
U.S. Blues
Encore
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
