Dead and Co. wrapped up their three-day celebration of the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary Sunday evening at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with an epic set that included “Shakedown Street,” “Sugar Magnolia,” “Cumberland Blues,” and “Standing on the Moon.”
The Trey Anastasio Band served as the warm-up act, and the Phish frontman came out during the start of Dead and Co’s set to join them on “Scarlet Begonias” and “Fire on the Mountain.” It was a moment of jam band bliss with the two songs stretching out for roughly 15 minutes each.
Anastasio is a lifelong Deadhead. “Every once in a while, there’s a titanic American musician that comes through the ether,” he told Rolling Stone in July 2024, “whether it be Louis Armstrong or James Brown. I mean, James Brown had a great band, too. And Jerry had a great band. We were lucky we got to experience that genius of American music in Jerry. We now get to sing his songs. Everybody gets to sing his songs.”
When the Dead reconvened in 2015 to commemorate their 50th anniversary at a series of stadium shows, they recruited Anastasio to front the band. “In my opinion, Jerry was one of the great American singers,” he told Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke that year. “Those post-Jerry configurations [of the Dead] – that’s always been the issue. I don’t think anybody can be Jerry’s voice.”
“My thought is, I love Jerry’s voice, and I love these songs,” he continued. “I’m happy to joyously sing whatever comes my way. But my take on it is that everybody sings – the audience too. They’ll sing. We’ll sing. Everybody knows the words. People have such lifelong relationships to these songs. When I say I’m providing a service – it’s to the songs, the memories, the community.”
Just months after the 50th anniversary shows, Bob Weir, Micky Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann formed Dead and Co. with John Mayer. They staged a farewell tour in the summer of 2023, but came back together last year for a residency at the Sphere. There was another run of Sphere shows earlier this year.
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There were early conversations about bringing Phil Lesh into the fold for the 60th anniversary shows. When he died in October 2024, Weir questioned whether it made sense to even have the concerts. “I wouldn’t put anybody in his place, so it would be a trio at this point,” Weir told Rolling Stone‘s Angie Martoccio in March. “It’d be me and two drummers. I’d have to think about that.”
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The shows ultimately went forward with the current lineup of Dead and Co., though Lesh’s son, Grahame Lesh, joined them at various points all three nights to represent his father. Kreutzmann, who has battled health problems in recent years and left Dead and Co. in 2023, wasn’t there.
There are no more Dead and Co. shows on the books, but Weir is confident the music of the Dead will carry on even after he’s gone. “I have no doubt about that,” he told Rolling Stone in March. “What I’m trying to do is get my concerto project to the point where that is self-sustaining, and then I would probably want other folks to step in when I’m no longer here, and Wolf Bros. is a different deal. That whole thing is constructed so that anyone can step in and do it.”
