Dead & Company – TD Garden, Boston, MA 11/17/17 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:55:30 minutes | 1,94 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

The city of Boston has been known by various nicknames over time, not all of them related to beans: “the Cradle of Liberty” or “Birthplace of the American Revolution” come to mind. And then there’s “The Hub.” This was a shortened version of “Hub of the Solar System,” a phrase used to characterize Boston’s central position in the early social, cultural and political life of the United States, first applied by the 19th century writer and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. While that role may have diminished as the nation expanded westward, Boston has certainly remained “The Hub” in at least one way: as the epicenter of activity for New England’s large and avid contingent of Dead Heads for more than a half-century, beginning with the Grateful Dead’s first shows in the city, at a short-lived venue known as the Psychedelic Supermarket, in December of 1967. Boston has a singular distinction in Dead history as the only city outside of the San Francisco Bay Area in which the band played a show on New Year’s Eve (12/31/69). As the Dead’s popularity grew dramatically from that point, their most frequent destination in the area, playing host to 24 shows between 1973 and 1994, was Boston Garden, a decaying but magnificent old heap of a sports arena, famous as home to the Celtics and Bruins during their greatest years, as well as some of world’s rowdiest fans, who liked to express their displeasure with opposing teams or questionable referee’s calls by throwing light bulbs on the court or ice. In the rock ‘n’ roll era firecrackers became the more common weapon of choice, and at least one recording of a 70s Grateful Dead show at the Garden features a request from band to audience to kindly refrain from blowing things up.

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Dead & Company – Spectrum Center, Charlotte, NC 11/28/17 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 03:03:38 minutes | 2,01 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

After conquering the Midwest, Dead & Company headed below the Mason-Dixon line to begin the final leg of the Fall ’17 tour, the first stop being the lovely and diverse city of Charlotte, NC. Southern Dead Heads have sometimes lamented that their region was not as frequent a touring destination as other parts of the country for the Grateful Dead and its various spinoffs and successors, but Dead and Co. seem to be looking to change that: this was the third visit in their short history to North Carolina, and second to Charlotte, and the fans’ patience and loyalty was richly rewarded with this sweet gem of a show.

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Dead & Company – Smoothie King Center, New Orleans, LA 2/24/18 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:53:08 minutes | 1,86 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

A funny thing happened on the way to Dead & Company’s last three scheduled tour dates of 2017. Well, not so funny from the standpoint of John Mayer, whose appendicitis attack and subsequent emergency surgery on December 5th necessitated postponement until the following February of the show scheduled for that night in New Orleans and the remaining two dates in Florida. But hey… if you’re gonna strand several thousand music-hungry fans anywhere, you could hardly pick a better place than New Orleans, birthplace of so much of our shared cultural heritage and a town where music and good times (and great food!) are continuously and abundantly available. Needless to say, the Dead Heads found plenty of ways to make their own fun during the unexpected time off from tour. As a longtime friend of the Dead put it, “John Mayer has the best bad timing ever!”

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Dead & Company – Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Springs, NY, 6/20/2017 (Live) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:59:59 minutes | 3,40 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

Saratoga Springs, NY has long been notable for a number of things, among them: the natural mineral spas that gave the town its name and made it a highly desirable resort location; its horseracing track, which dates back to the Civil War and is, some say, the oldest continuously operated sporting venue in the country; and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (or as it’s almost invariably referred to, SPAC), originally opened in the 1960s as a home to classical music and ballet, but which soon expanded its offerings to include just about every musical genre imaginable. It’s been a favorite destination for Dead Heads since the 1980s, when the Grateful Dead visited several times before their enormous upswing in popularity rendered the facility non-viable. But post-GD offshoots of the band have returned to SPAC frequently, to the delight of Northeast fans as well as those more than willing to make the trek from around the country and the world. It’s not exactly the easiest venue to negotiate in terms of traffic and parking, but once inside, concertgoers generally declare it worth the trip, thanks to the excellent sound in the two-level covered shed, and the more than adequate amount of twirling space on the capacious lawn.

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Dead & Company – Playing in the Sand, The Grand Moon Palace, Cancún, MX, 1/19/20 (Live) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:58:17 minutes | 3,35 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

Dead & Company is a band consisting of former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir (guitar), Mickey Hart (drums), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums), along with John Mayer (guitar), Oteil Burbridge (bass/drums), and Jeff Chimenti (keyboards). The band continues the strong live tradition of the Grateful Dead, creating unforgettable experiences at their shows, no two performances being alike.

To date, the band has released no studio recordings, but all of the concerts from their tours have been (or are being) released as albums.

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Dead & Company – Playing in the Sand, The Grand Moon Palace, Cancún, MX, 1/18/20 (Live) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:53:31 minutes | 3,28 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

Dead & Company is a band consisting of former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir (guitar), Mickey Hart (drums), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums), along with John Mayer (guitar), Oteil Burbridge (bass/drums), and Jeff Chimenti (keyboards). The band continues the strong live tradition of the Grateful Dead, creating unforgettable experiences at their shows, no two performances being alike.

To date, the band has released no studio recordings, but all of the concerts from their tours have been (or are being) released as albums.

(more…)

Dead & Company – Playing in the Sand, The Grand Moon Palace, Cancún, MX, 1/16/20 (Live) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:11:16 minutes | 3,63 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Los Muertos

Dead & Company is a band consisting of former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir (guitar), Mickey Hart (drums), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums), along with John Mayer (guitar), Oteil Burbridge (bass/drums), and Jeff Chimenti (keyboards). The band continues the strong live tradition of the Grateful Dead, creating unforgettable experiences at their shows, no two performances being alike.

To date, the band has released no studio recordings, but all of the concerts from their tours have been (or are being) released as albums.

(more…)

Dead & Company – Playing in the Sand, Riviera Maya, MX, 1/19/19 (Live) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:45:03 minutes | 3,12 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

This upcoming weekend, the Dead & Company’s third annual “Playing in the Stand” concert vacation takes place in Riviera Cancun, Mexico, stretching from January 16 – 20. To celebrate the impending event, Rhino has just released the three “Playing in the Sand” shows from January 2019.

Over the course of three nights, 50+ different songs were performed, and they’re all here, mixed and remastered by Dead & Company’s Front of House Engineer, Derek Featherstone, and the band’s Recording Engineer, Ross Harris.

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Dead & Company – Playing In The Sand, Riviera Maya, MX 2/18/18 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:56:42 minutes | 1,88 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

The end of a brief but blissful escape from the everyday can be bittersweet, but Dead & Company made sure that the emphasis remained on the “sweet” end of the spectrum for the finale of Playing In The Sand. In keeping with the custom of giving the congregation a little of that old-time religion on a Sunday, Bob Weir starts things off with his take on “Samson & Delilah” the gospel chestnut he learned from the guitarist-singer Rev. Gary Davis. From there the band is off and running with a show featuring some of the most-loved tunes in the Grateful Dead songbook. First-set highlights include “They Love Each Other” (which has emerged as an ideal showcase for John Mayer on both vocal and guitar, and in this version also features some great work by Jeff Chimenti on the Hammond B-3), another lovely Oteil Burbridge vocal on a true GD rarity (played live only three times, all in 1978), “If I Had The World To Give” and a particularly gorgeous “Bird Song.”

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Dead & Company – Playing In The Sand, Riviera Maya, MX 21718 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 03:25:49 minutes | 2,19 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

After leaving the stage to guest performers on the Friday of this four-day weekend, Dead & Company returned on Saturday for another muy caliente show. Although there may have been some cognitive dissonance involved in hearing a song about a dark and sketchy urban thoroughfare played on a gorgeous sunny beach, that didn’t stop the show-opening “Shakedown Street” from getting those dancing feet busy kickin’ up some sand, and the infectiously funky groove inspired John Mayer to lead his bandmates on a brief and enjoyable detour into Billy Preston’s 1970s hit “Will It Go Round In Circles.” John also gets time to shine both vocally and on guitar on several other first-set songs, including that long-enduring mainstay of the repertoire, “Cold Rain & Snow,” the old Pigpen feature “Easy Wind” and a soulful take on the Garcia-Hunter standby “Sugaree.”

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Dead & Company – Playing In The Sand, Riviera Maya, 2/15/18 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 03:22:21 minutes | 2,17 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

“…and we hightailed it down to Mexico…”

There’s nothing to relieve the chill of mid-winter like a little getaway to a tropical paradise. So, when Dead & Company announced a run of shows on the shores of the Yucatan Peninsula scheduled for February of 2018, several thousand happy Dead Heads quickly grabbed up every available ticket and hotel reservation and headed south of the border, to the Barcelo resort at Riviera Maya, Mexico. The excursion, appropriately named “Playing In The Sand” – quite literally, as the stage was set up right on the beach overlooking the Caribbean – provided both a sweet coda to the hugely successful fall tour of 2017 and a harbinger of more great things to come in the new year.

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Dead & Company – Phillips Arena, Atlanta, GA 11/29/17 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:57:27 minutes | 1,92 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

The Grateful Dead’s long and happy relationship with the city of Atlanta began on July 7th, 1969 with a free concert in Piedmont Park – a little gift given to the city by the promoters of an event at which the Dead had not performed: the first Atlanta International Pop Festival, which was up to that point the largest gathering of its kind (it was a short reign, though, as its attendance was dwarfed a bit over a month letter by a certain shindig on a farm in upstate New York). Atlanta went on to become a frequent destination on Dead tours throughout the ensuing quarter century, with 24 of the band’s 36 total performances in the city taking place at the Omni, the dominant sports and entertainment arena in the area from 1972 to 1997. The venue holds an especially notable place in Grateful Dead history for having been the location of the last live “Dark Star” the Dead ever played, on March 30th, 1994.

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Dead & Company – Nationwide Arena, Columbus, OH 11/25/17 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:48:36 minutes | 1,83 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

While they were a California band with a massive contingent of fans on the East Coast, the Grateful Dead always enjoyed a large and loyal following in the Midwest. That relationship has continued with Dead & Company, with the band including the nation’s heartland in its plans numerous times since first convening in 2015. They made a particularly rewarding visit to Columbus in November of 2017, with a show that many listeners, as well as members of the band and its traveling party, have ranked among the very best of that Fall’s tour. The recorded evidence fully supports that assessment.

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Dead & Company – MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, NV, 5/27/2017 (Live) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:56:40 minutes | 3,37 GB | Genre: Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Jam Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

Performance by the Dead & Company lineup made up of Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, John Mayer, Bob Weir, with Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti, from their 2017 Summer Tour.

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Dead & Company – Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 11/14/17 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:59:17 minutes | 2,00 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

Let us pause for a moment to praise some of the hardest-working people on the planet – those insanely dedicated individuals who toil on road crews for touring bands, and especially the men and women who have served in those roles for the Grateful Dead and its performing offspring for over five decades. These are the rock ‘n’ roll heroes that most people never see or know by name, but are every bit as essential to making the music happen as the musicians themselves – the people who work the longest hours, do the heaviest lifting and have to attend to the countless logistical and technical details that assure everything will work as seamlessly as possible at show time. We call this to your attention here because, as you might notice, Dead & Company played their two shows at Madison Square Garden on non-consecutive nights. This is because when attempting to book shows into multi-purpose facilities like the Garden, bands and their promoters are at the mercy of the schedules of the professional sports teams that are the building’s principal tenants. And so it was in this case – the New York Knicks had games on tap for November 11th, 13th and 15th. Which meant that the Dead & Company crew had to wait until the first of those games was over and the basketball court and seats removed before they could load in the band’s gear and set up the stage, sound and lights in the wee small hours of the 12th, start breaking everything down and storing it the moment the first show was over, start the whole process over after the game on the middle day, and then clear out for the Knicks yet again immediately after the show on the 14th, loading everything into the trucks headed for the next show in Philly. So, the next time you go to a show… thank the crew!

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