From May to August of 2024 Dead & Company, the Grateful Dead spinoff band comprised of core members Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals) and Mickey Hart (drums) alongside John Mayer (lead guitar, vocals), Oteil Burbridge (bass, vocals), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards, vocals), and Jay Lane (drums), mounted their inaugural 30-show Dead Forever residency at Sphere, the high-tech concert venue attached to The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, NV. [Find tickets for the 2025 Dead & Company Sphere residency here.]
Spanning ten non-consecutive three-show weekend runs, the 2024 Dead Forever residency paired the band’s longstanding format (two-set concerts featuring different setlists on each night of a given run) with an elaborate aesthetic journey that began nightly in Haight-Ashbury, launched into outer space, and wound through a revolving repertoire of enveloping looks before returning home. As Dead & Company begins an 18-show 2025 round of Dead Forever this week, get prepared with this deep-dive recap of the 2024 Sphere residency including stats, highlights, videos, photos, and audio links for every show.
Related: Get Tickets To Dead & Company’s 2025 Sphere Residency
FINAL TOUR, YES. FINAL SHOWS, NO.
When Dead & Company played the last three shows of their 29-show Final Tour in July of 2023 at Oracle Park in San Francisco, it was generally understood that the tour’s title left the band wiggle room for further shows. At the same time, U2’s 25-show residency to open the brand-new Sphere was only two months away, and it didn’t take tarot cards to predict a possible Dead & Company residency at Sphere. We actually remember a couple different conversations at the Oracle shows where people speculated exactly that, and just over six months later in February 2024 Dead & Company announced their initial residency of 18 Sphere shows. By that time U2’s residency had extended to 40 shows, and Dead & Company’s residency would ultimately extend to 30 shows, or one show more than 2023’s entire Final Tour.
Related: Dead & Company ‘The Final Tour’ 2023 Recap: Highlights, Stats, & Top Shows
THE VENUE
Sphere’s LED-covered exoskeleton (aka the Exosphere) towers 300 feet high against the Las Vegas skyline. Inside, five levels of seats hold 18,200 people who face a planetarium-style, wraparound screen rising above the crowd and stage, with audio provided by 167,000 speakers nestled into Sphere’s framework. Go here for an unofficial tour of the venue and how it all works.
WAKING UP IN VEGAS
The Grateful Dead only played four shows in Las Vegas during the first 25 years of the band’s 30-year career that lasted from 1965 to 1995—one Live Dead era show at the still-standing Ice Palace in March 1969, and single shows at the Aladdin Theater in the long-gone Aladdin Hotel in 1981, 1983, and 1984. It’s a city based upon legal gambling in enormous, garish casino hotels on or near the Las Vegas Strip, and hedonism of all kinds, even kinds that remained illegal elsewhere, was always not just permitted but actively encouraged. For decades a weirder, darker “adult” vibe hovered over everything, with the saying “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” being a widely used advertising catchphrase until the internet and cell phones made the statement untrue. And even though Deadheads have historically never been shy about their own chosen hedonistic pursuits, the city was not really a natural fit for the traveling scene that followed the band from show to show.
But necessity intervened when the Grateful Dead’s fanbase doubled after a second generation of fans discovered them via 1987’s In The Dark album and its Top 10 single “Touch Of Grey”. The resulting “over-success” made the band and its accompanying scene too big for many of its then-perennial venues and cities. But Las Vegas was there to take it all on with aplomb, and from 1991 through 1995 the Grateful Dead played 14 sold-out shows at the 32,000-capacity Sam Boyd Silver Bowl just outside town.
While the Las Vegas Strip will never be a comfortable fit for many Deadheads no matter what it does, over the last few decades the casinos and the city have spent time and effort turning the Strip into a far more family-friendly location—a wider variety of shows on and off the Strip, shopping malls, restaurants, day-trip excursions, spas, play areas for kids, and so on. And just like it always could, the Las Vegas Strip can still swallow up the scene of any gathering of 20,000 people like it was nothing. If someone wasn’t near the Venetian Hotel during the Dead Forever residency, they might not even know Dead & Company was in town unless they’d seen the giant Steal Your Face logo drifting across Sphere’s light-covered exoskeleton.
MONEY MONEY
While the announcement of Dead & Company’s Sphere residency did confirm the band was still active, the venue and the location got a decidedly mixed reaction. Apart from the contingency of Deadheads who just aren’t that into Las Vegas, most Deadheads were looking at a flight or two to get there, an unwelcome change for a fanbase long accustomed to driving to and from shows each year. This was such an important concept for the Grateful Dead’s business model that Peter Shapiro chose Chicago as the host city for 2015’s Fare Thee Well reunion shows in part because the city is less than a two-day drive for 80% of the U.S. population.
And that was before factoring in the cost of tickets. While the overall price of top-tier concert tickets has skyrocketed over the last 25 years, the prices for Dead Forever tickets at Sphere would cost about twice what Dead & Company charged for tickets on The Final Tour. Sphere’s ticket prices, which remained uniform for all musical acts playing there in 2024, started at $149 for seats in the highest level and topped out at $395 for the best seats, excluding the hundreds of dynamically priced “Platinum” seats for each show that cost hundreds more.
Many proverbial pearls were clutched, many angry social media posts were made, and then many people bought tickets, some of which were packaged with Vegas Strip-priced hotel rooms at The Venetian. By the time the shows happened, the venue was near capacity on most nights but only a few shows sold out completely, and with the exception of those few nights anyone willing to pay face value for a $295 or $395 ticket could easily get one at or near showtime. (For what it’s worth, Sphere Entertainment Co. did spend an astonishing $2.3 billion to build Sphere Las Vegas, so they’ve got a long way to go before breaking even.)
THE VISUALS
No small part of each Sphere ticket’s price goes toward paying for the visual accompaniments created for each act, with a different visual playing during every song. But unlike U2’s UV Achtung Baby production, the visuals created for Dead & Company were not produced for use with one specific song, enabling the Dead Forever production to use different visuals with different songs each night.
Each night the visuals that played over the show’s first two songs and final two songs were the only ones that appeared every night in the same slots. In between them, over 20 different visuals could appear. While a handful of the visuals were nearly static throughout, most contained dynamic aspects and featured locations and milieus such as Egypt and The Great Pyramids, psychedelic oil-style light show patterns, a paint-by-numbers cartoon wilderness setting with rainbows and cabins, Gary Gutierrez’s animated “Uncle Sam” motorcycle-riding skeleton from 1974’s The Grateful Dead Movie travelling over land and air, snow-covered mountains with dancing bear overlays that morphed into a black-light kaleidoscope spiral, flower petals falling from above and gradually “filling” the screen, a time-lapse construction of the Grateful Dead’s 1974 “Wall of Sound” PA that often transitioned into a beam of light that eventually became a ring around the planet Saturn (this one was our favorite), a drift through space before landing on a red, Mars-like planet, grainy western film footage with screen credits and Technicolor processing, journeys through iconic venues that held Grateful Dead shows such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Winterland Ballroom, Madison Square Garden, Barton Hall, and Hampton Coliseum, a seaside flyover before an underwater dive to a sunken ship, a moving wallpaper of Grateful Dead tickets and backstage passes, and several more.
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LIFTOFF AND LANDING
The signature visuals of Dead Forever’s 2024 production appeared at the beginning and end of each show. As concertgoers entered the space, they saw steel framework that appeared to be the internal structure of Sphere, and the band took the stage each night and played their opening song in this setting. But then the real show would start, as huge “steel” doors rumbled open to place the viewer in front of the Grateful Dead’s old house at 710 Ashbury Street in modern-day San Francisco—the steel framework had been a projection the entire time.
As the music started, the viewer would slowly start to “fly” directly upward from the Haight-Ashbury district, vertigo be damned, and over the span of six minutes, be launched into space. First was a rapid rise above the Bay Area and the California coast, then passing through cloud cover at around two minutes in, then dodging the International Space Station three minutes later, and then watching the Earth recede from view completely.
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The biggest problem here is that words can’t do justice to this visual, and neither do videos—only seeing it in person truly does the trick. The best example we can give of how powerful this experience could be was the guy directly in front of us on one of the nights that the band played “Truckin’” during the liftoff. When he realized what was happening, he boldly jutted his arms out like an in-flight superhero as his eyes and his grin got wider and wider and wider, and well, we’re about 99% sure the late Owsley Stanley would have been very proud of him for seizing the moment so boldly. His ongoing reactions to the show’s visuals would continuously boost the collective energy of his friends and around a dozen others in his vicinity throughout the night.
On the flipside, during the second-to-last song of each show’s second set, Earth would drift back into view, and over the next six minutes the viewer would retrace the journey from deep space back down to 710 Ashbury, this time landing in 1967 when the Grateful Dead were still living there. Dead & Company often played a slower, gentler song as the soundtrack to this landing, and the journey was nearly as stunning (but oddly very comforting) on the way back down.
The trick here was that the production team would have to make their best guess of when there were six minutes left in the chosen song and activate the visual, so the touchdown coincided with the song’s conclusion. Then after a brief “news item” from a 1967 broadcaster, “Dead Forever” appeared on the screen to launch the night’s final song, usually an upbeat rocker, played over an evocative montage of Grateful Dead band photos, with Snooky Flowers’ photo of a euphoric Robert Hunter being a favorite.
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SONG STATISTICS
Overall, Dead & Company’s variety of songs remained about the same as it was during the touring era. The band played 104 unique songs during the residency, with the repertoire’s biggest and best songs getting the most action. Each three-show run was treated as its own entity and no song was ever repeated on that weekend, and ten of the band’s most popular songs appeared during all ten weekends: “Althea”, “Brown Eyed Women”, “China Cat Sunflower”, “I Know You Rider”, “Eyes of the World”, “Scarlet Begonias”, “St. Stephen”, “Terrapin Station”, “Bertha”, and “Franklin’s Tower”.
Over 30 shows, 16 different songs opened the first set, 12 different songs closed the first set, 16 songs opened the second set, 15 songs came out of “Space”, and nine songs appeared in the encore slot.
Notwithstanding the usual variety of the Grateful Dead’s repertoire, song choices were tightened up for the crucial “liftoff” and “landing” slots each night. During the liftoff visual, eight different songs were performed over 30 shows, with six go-to songs comprising 27 of the 30 performances. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” was the liftoff song on six occasions, “Franklin’s Tower” got the liftoff nod five times, and “Shakedown Street”, “Truckin’”, “The Music Never Stopped”, and “Eyes of the World” were each played four times in this slot. “Playing in the Band” also got two turns as the liftoff song, and “Jack Straw” got one.
During the landing visual, the song choices tightened up even further. Seven different songs were performed, but four songs comprised 25 of the 30 total performances. “Morning Dew” was the most common, getting seven plays during the landing, while “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, “Throwing Stones”, and “Brokedown Palace” were each played six times. “Black Muddy River” got three airings in the landing spot, and “Dark Star” and “Eyes of the World” each got one.
Following the “Drums” segment, a short “Space” interlude served as the introduction to the next song, and in nearly every case that song was one of the band’s slower ballads: together “Standing on the Moon”, “Black Peter”, “Stella Blue”, “Days Between”, “Wharf Rat”, “Dear Prudence”, “Death Don’t Have No Mercy”, and “Lazy River Road” combined for 22 of the 30 song choices in this slot. Weir’s “Looks Like Rain” appeared there twice, while “The Wheel”, “Uncle John’s Band”, and four different Bob Dylan songs each appeared there once.
“China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” was played on all ten weekends and its placement remained consistent. The pairing opened the second set on six occasions, and on the remaining four occasions it consisted of the second and third songs in the second set.
“Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” were played eight times together, but only twice did they transition into the traditional third song in the suite, “Franklin’s Tower”. The remaining six versions dropped into “Eyes of the World”, “Cold Rain & Snow”, “Deal”, “Althea”, and “Terrapin Station” (twice).
“Scarlet Begonias” was played on all ten weekends, but it only transitioned into its usual song partner “Fire on the Mountain” five times. On the other five occasions, it led to the “Sunshine Daydream” reprise of “Sugar Magnolia”, “He’s Gone”, “Franklin’s Tower”, “St. Stephen”, and “Viola Lee Blues”.
“Playing in the Band” aired eight times during the run, and four versions were unbroken “full” versions containing the reprise, as the Grateful Dead initially played it from 1971 through 1974.
On the other end of the statistics, given their frequency during Dead & Company’s touring era, it was a little surprising to see “Cumberland Blues” only getting four plays during the residency and jamming vehicle “The Other One” only getting three, and some notable two-offs were “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” (both as show openers), “Touch of Grey (both as encores), and “Bird Song” (played opening night and then only once more afterward). Twenty-five songs were only played once during the 30-shew residency, and each of those occurrences is noted in our recaps of each weekend below.
DRUMMING AT THE EDGE OF HAPTICS
Back in April 1978, the Grateful Dead more or less formalized the concept that each of their show’s second sets contained a “Drums” section where Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann were left alone onstage to improvise a drum duet on their kits and other percussion instruments. The concept has stuck around ever since, and while it’s now the one thing that’s pretty much guaranteed to happen each night, it’s also remained the most fully improvisational section of each show.
During the Dead & Company era, “Drums” has usually been a trio (Hart, Burbridge, and Kreutzmann or Lane) until the others leave Hart to transition to the show’s “Space” segment via use of the Beam, a long metal beam with 13 bass piano strings strung across it and tuned to create a low D monochord. Depending on how Hart manipulates the strings, the Beam can drone, bang, surge, or recede, all to hypnotic and relaxing effect.
At Sphere, the “Drums” and Beam sections had a little something extra to help it along—almost everyone on the 200-, 300- and 400-level seats were in chairs with haptics installed, meaning the seats pulsated and vibrated in synchronization with the music. While folks in the 100-level seats didn’t get to experience the haptics, bolder Deadheads in the GA floor section each night were spotted spreading out unworn layers of clothing on the floor before laying on them to feel the segments’ effects more fully.
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MUSICAL GUESTS
There were only two sit-ins during the 2024 Dead Forever residency, on weekends one and three. Santana percussionist Karl Perazzo joined the band for “Cumberland Blues”, “The Other One”, and “Drums” on May 17th, and legendary percussionist Zakir Hussain joined for the “Drums” segment on May 31st. The Grammy-winning tabla legend had collaborated with the Hart and the Grateful Dead on live shows and studio projects for over 50 years, but this would be his final appearance at a Dead-related show before passing away on December 15, 2024 at age 73.
THE PRIVATE SHOW
On Tuesday, June 18th Dead & Company played a private show at Sphere as part of Palo Alto-based IT giant HP’s annual convention. The single-set show eliminated the “Drums” and “Space” segments and started directly with the liftoff sequence, and the set’s biggest jam was the “Help On The Way” > “Slipknot > “Franklin’s Tower” trio. We’re sure most folks had fun, but Nick Paumgarten’s well-written piece (LINK) for The New Yorker on his Dead Forever weekend revealed that at least one attendee was disappointed that HP hadn’t booked Imagine Dragons instead.
One of the biggest differences between Dead & Company’s existence as a touring act and as a Vegas residency is that there was no informal vending scene in the Venetian hotel and casino or the parking lots surrounding Sphere, owing to Las Vegas’ strictly enforced laws against unlicensed vendors doing business in and around the Las Vegas Strip. However, by this point, the Dead & Company “Shakedown” scene had evolved into a robust organism of its own anchored by professional vendors, and several of them forged a solution to the location issue.
A mile and a half away, at the nearby Tuscany Suites & Casino, vendors collectively rented a large ballroom in the hotel on a not-for-profit basis and arranged for shuttle buses to run the ten-minute drive between The Venetian and Tuscany on show days, making access from the venue location as easy as possible. We have to admit it felt unusual and even a bit “formal” at first—there were no on-foot vendors, flying frisbees, outdoor grills, or teams of guys selling ballons of nitrous oxide—but admittedly it was nice to check out goods in an air-conditioned setting instead of the searing 110-degree desert heat.
Meanwhile, back at the Venetian, the Dead Forever Experience allowed folks to purchase original paintings by Mickey Hart alongside a wide variety of official merchandise, and the Grateful Dead Channel on SiriusXM radio also used the location to have David Gans’ and Gary Lambert’s “Tales From the Golden Road” and Steve Parish’s “Big Steve Hour” broadcast shows in front of a live audience. The nearby Animazing gallery also got in on the proceedings by hosting photographers Jay Blakesberg, Chloe Weir, Josh Hitchens, and other Dead-related photographers whose prints were on display to purchase. Inside Sphere, the official limited edition poster for each night’s show sold out almost every night, with the most popular ones gone within an hour of doors opening.
Basketball legend Bill Walton was a fixture at Grateful Dead shows from 1967 onwards, and he was generally pretty easy to spot with his 6’11” frame and his arms frequently raised like goalposts. He’d essentially become the world’s most famous Deadhead while also becoming close friends with the band, and he displayed seemingly endless levels of kindness and grace toward the many people who approached him at shows over the decades.
Walton passed away on May 27, 2024, three days before weekend three of Dead Forever, and he’d receive fitting honors during its duration. Most of weekend three, night one’s two-hour second set was a tribute to him, and at the conclusion of each show a large illustration of Walton’s jersey nameplate and his number 32 was projected onto the screen. The next weekend the NBA followed suit before Game 1 of the NBA Finals, when the Boston Celtics (Walton’s final pro team) wore matching shooting shirts with Walton’s name and number during warmups before a moment of silence in his honor was broadcast live on national TV.
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A SWITCH IN TIME SAVES NINE
“Hey guys, I have an idea for a Dead Forever plot twist. What if John Mayer slammed the index finger of his fretboard hand in the door of his truck the week before he has to play three shows at Sphere, but instead of canceling he figures out how to play with nine fingers? Yes, that’s totally the finger he’d need the most. Oh, and just hear me out here…what if the first night he had to play with nine fingers was also Jerry Garcia’s birthday, because Garcia only had nine fingers too! That’d be perfect!”
No staff writer worth their weight would have ever pitched this scenario in a TV writers’ room because it would be swiftly dismissed for being too on-the-nose and melodramatic. But amazingly, this actually happened. When Mayer announced the injury on the day of the first show of weekend nine, it immediately led to one really big question: how on Earth is he going to pull this off and play through?
As it turns out, he’d rely on his blues chops, his timing, the addition of smaller chords throughout his breaks, and other on-the-spot maneuvers to replace the loss of his speediest lead runs. It all worked seamlessly, and Mayer’s playing over the final two weekends of Dead Forever would be an exceptional display of adaptability on a very steep learning curve.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
One last unique thing happened after the final encore of the residency’s closing night. Instead of the large “steel doors” drifting shut with a deep clang, the screen maintained its starry setting. After the band left the stage, the credits for the entire Dead Forever production appeared, and those who stayed to read them saw the names of almost 170 people. Along with the six members of the band, people from eight companies and over 25 different departments were credited, providing an illuminating look at just exactly how many people it takes to stage a production like Dead Forever. And while several busy folks were accorded two credits, only two people were accorded three—John Mayer (Band, Produced By, Creative Director) and Derek Featherstone (Audio Design, Tour Director, Produced By). Ee imagine that the late Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas author Hunter S. Thompson would surely have appreciated that no fewer than seven lawyers were credited.
HIGHLIGHTS AND LINKS TO AUDIENCE RECORDINGS FROM EVERY SHOW
Thanks to the help of the folks who took the time and effort to continue the longstanding practice of making unofficial audio recordings of Dead & Company shows and uploading them to Internet Archive, below are audio links to all 30 shows of 2024’s Dead Forever residency along with our highlights from each weekend. Enjoy.
Folks who saw Thursday night’s opening show were the first to experience the liftoff visual (to “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”), and their reaction was so intense that it nearly threw the band off their performance. They also saw one of only two versions of “Bird Song” played during the 30-show residency, they got to be the first to experience Sphere’s seat haptics during “Drums”, and got to be the first to experience the landing visual to “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. As Napoleon Dynamite once said: “Lucky!”
Friday’s show featured the rarely played “Crazy Fingers” in the first set, and after Weir’s “Estimated Prophet” in the second set, drummer Karl Perazzo joined the band for spirited takes of “Cumberland Blues”, “The Other One”, and “Drums”. On Saturday night, “Truckin’” got the nod as the liftoff song and led to the sole “Smokestack Lightning” of the residency, and the second set’s opening sequence of Dead perennials “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”, “Eyes of the World” (complete with Burbridge’s signature bass solo spot) and “Terrapin Station” was a winner.
Weekend two opened with a slower version of “I Need A Miracle” to precede “The Music Never Stopped” in the liftoff spot, and the first set later contained the sole “Mama Tried” of the residency. The second set’s opening sequence of “Playing in the Band” > “Dark Star” > “St. Stephen” > “Let It Grow” coincidentally comprised the same four songs at Dead & Company’s first-ever Las Vegas show in November 2015 in a different sequence—an under-the-radar highlight from the band’s initial tour and their “pre-nugs” era.
On Friday, the residency’s sole version of “Maggie’s Farm” (and D&C’s first since 2016) highlighted the first set, “Shakedown Street” appeared in a now-unusual position as the second set opener, and the closing run of “Brown Eyed Women” and “Hell In A Bucket” kept things moving before “Throwing Stones” appeared in the landing spot. Saturday’s show featured “Franklin’s Tower” in the liftoff spot, “Feel Like A Stranger” as an effective first set closer, and an appearance of “All Along The Watchtower” early in the second set. But the set-closing run of “Wharf Rat”, “Cold Rain & Snow”, and “U.S. Blues” before “Morning Dew” in the landing spot would be the peak sequence of the night.
Thursday’s show deployed “Eyes of the World” in the liftoff slot, and the entire show from “Drums” onward became an extended tribute to basketball legend and world’s tallest Deadhead Bill Walton, who had passed three days earlier, and included “Standing On The Moon”, “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, and “Fire On The Mountain”. Friday’s show featured “New Speedway Boogie”, a full version of “Playing in the Band” and the residency’s sole “Don’t Ease Me In” in the first set, while the second set contained an hour-long voyage consisting of “Dark Star” > “Drums” > “Space” > “Stella Blue” > “Terrapin Station”. Saturday’s show delivered Weir’s pairing of “Lost Sailor” and “Saint Of Circumstance” to great effect in the first set, while the second set led off with “Sugaree” and “St. Stephen” and later featured “Scarlet Begonias” sandwiched in between “Sugar Magnolia” and its “Sunshine Daydream” coda before the “Brokedown Palace” landing.
“New Minglewood Blues” opened the weekend four before a superbly chosen “Playing in the Band” in the liftoff spot, with its arrangement and jam serving as such an ideal complement to the visuals that it’s surprising it only happened twice in 30 shows. The second set featured one of only three versions of “The Other One” played during the residency, and the show also contained four songs whose sole residency performances were on this night: “Peggy-O”, “Here Comes Sunshine”, “Death Don’t Have No Mercy”, and “Johnny B. Goode”.
The Friday night show featured 11 consecutive Garcia/Hunter-penned songs to start, including a “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Eyes of the World” to close the first set, but following the “Drums” segment a pair of Weir/Barlow classics, in the forms of “Looks Like Rain” and “Throwing Stones”, framed the Weir-sung, band-written “Truckin’” during an effective closing segment. Saturday’s show featured the sole “West L.A. Fadeaway” of the residency and a distinctive pre-“Drums” run of “Let The Good Times Roll”, an unusually placed version of “Sugar Magnolia” (minus its “Sunshine Daydream” coda), “Althea”, and “Terrapin Station”. “Deal” was the late-set highlight before “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” accompanied the landing visual.
“Alabama Getaway” launched the opening night of weekend five before “Truckin’” served as the liftoff song. After another powerhouse version of “Althea” closed the opening set, the band steered “Scarlet Begonias” into “Franklin’s Tower” and “Dear Mr. Fantasy”/”Hey Jude” before “Drums”, which led to the D&C debut and sole residency performance of Bob Dylan’s 1985 song “I’ll Remember You”.
Friday’s show featured the residency’s sole “Black Throated Wind” in the first set, while the second set yielded one of the best start-to-finish setlists one could hope for, highlighted by a six-song pre-“Drums” segment of “Shakedown Street”, “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Cold Rain & Snow”, the residency’s sole “China Doll”, and “Terrapin Station”. Saturday’s show started with an effective trio of “I Need A Miracle”, “Eyes of the World”, and “Dancing in the Street”, but the show’s peak came from the closing segment of “The Days Between”, “Viola Lee Blues”, and “U.S. Blues” preceding the sole occasion where “Dark Star” appeared in the landing spot.
Thursday’s first set featured the sole “Dire Wolf” of the residency and the first D&C version of “Greatest Story Ever Told” in five years before an epic “Sugaree” set closer. On paper the second set looked like it could have been a Grateful Dead set from late 1982, but in an ever-so-slightly different sequence: “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”, “He’s Gone” > “The Other One” > “Drums” > “Space” > “The Wheel” > “Franklin’s Tower”, “U.S. Blues”, “Throwing Stones”, and “Turn on Your Lovelight”.
Friday’s show contained the sole “Easy Wind” of the residency and a surprise version of “The Weight” in the first set, right before “Lost Sailor” and “Saint of Circumstance”. The second set consisted solely of Garcia/Hunter songs, including “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” into “Drums”, “Eyes of the World” in the landing spot for the first and only time during the residency, and a “Touch of Grey” encore. Saturday’s first set contained the residency’s sole performance of Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, while the second set was highlighted by an early-set recreation of the “St. Stephen” > “Morning Dew” pairing made famous by the Grateful Dead’s show at Cornell University’s Barton Hall in 1977.
Dead Forever’s 2024 Independence Day show started appropriately with the sole “Liberty” of the residency, along with the expected versions of “Jack Straw” and “U.S. Blues”. Other first set highlights came from “Feel Like A Stranger” and closer “Althea”, while the pre-“Drums” segment featured extensive jams inside each of “Scarlet Begonias”, “St. Stephen”, and “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!”.
Friday’s show featured one of the residency’s best start-to-finish setlists, including its sole performance of “Next Time You See Me” preceding “Cassidy” and “Deal” to close the first set, and a second set pre-“Drums” of “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” and “Playing in the Band” > “Dark Star”. Saturday’s first set contained the residency’s sole “Big Railroad Blues” and “One More Saturday Night” as the closer, while the second set started with a distinctive pairing of “Greatest Story Ever Told” and “Mr. Charlie.” Later, the extended closing sequence of “Uncle John’s Band”, “Cumberland Blues”, and “Hell in a Bucket” preceded a “Morning Dew” during the landing visual before “Sugar Magnolia” got a rare turn in the encore slot.
Thursday’s show contained a winning three-song sequence of “They Love Each Other”, “Bird Song”, and “Casey Jones” in the first set. After the intermission, “Dark Star” preceded “Drums” and “Space” before a “late-’80s Dead” trio of songs—“Standing on the Moon” > “Dear Mr. Fantasy” > “Hey Jude” before the timeless “Truckin’”.
Friday’s show featured “Crazy Fingers” and “Ship Of Fools” in the first set, while the second set was anchored by a strong pairing of “Estimated Prophet” > “Terrapin Station” and the residency’s sole version of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”. Saturday’s show started with a bang when the band opened with the residency’s sole version of Wilson Pickett’s “Midnight Hour”, which was also the band’s first since New Year’s Eve 2019. “One More Saturday Night” launched the second set, and later the Dead & Company debut and sole residency performance of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” preceded “Bertha” and “Sugar Magnolia”.
The first set of Dead & Company’s first-ever show on the late Jerry Garcia’s birthday was not only highlighted by John Mayer demonstrating he could still play alarmingly well without use of his fretboard hand’s index finger, but also by the D&C debuts of Marvin Gaye‘s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” (a longtime staple of the Jerry Garcia Band repertoire) and “Lazy River Road”. The two-hour second set featured a long, complex “Playing in the Band” that led directly to “Drums”, and the closing run of “He’s Gone” > “Truckin’” > “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Not Fade Away” was the clear tribute to the Grateful Dead band leader.
Friday’s show was anchored by a 75-minute pre-“Drums” segment consisting of just four songs: “Dark Star” > “Estimated Prophet” > “Eyes of the World” > “St. Stephen”, while Saturday’s second set consisted almost entirely of songs considered to be among the best Garcia/Hunter copyrights: “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire On The Mountain”, “Terrapin Station”, “Days Between”, “Brown Eyed Women”, “U.S. Blues”, and “Ripple”. Only Bonnie Dobson’s set-closer “Morning Dew” was a cover, but even then, the Grateful Dead’s slower, epic arrangement remains the best-known version of the song.
John Mayer played five of the final weekend’s six sets with nine fingers, with Thursday’s first set highlighted by “Eyes of The World”, “Playing in the Band”, and “Let It Grow”. The second set launched with the residency’s sole version of “Passenger” (and D&C’s first since 2018) before “St. Stephen” and “Uncle John’s Band”. Friday’s set first only contained five songs but still ran almost an hour, complete with a strong “Cassidy” opener and “Truckin” in the liftoff slot. The second set sandwiched “El Paso” between the two verses of “Dark Star” before “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”, with “Dear Prudence” providing the late-show highlight.
Saturday’s show, the 30th and final of the residency, kicked off with the long-effective pairing of “Feel Like A Stranger” and “Franklin’s Tower”, and later another excellent “Althea” to close the set. Mayer then ditched the splint and played with all ten fingers for the second set, which was highlighted by the sequence of “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Terrapin Station”. As a departing gesture, the band added “Ripple” as a second encore before the screen displayed the names of 170 people involved in the Dead Forever production instead of the usual “steel doors closing” video.
Dead & Company’s Dead Forever residency resumes in 2025 with 18 shows from March 20th through May 17th at Sphere Las Vegas. Get tickets here.