john mayer on final tour

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Dead & Company Announce Final Tour: See the Full List of Dates

The 2023 tour kicks off on May 19 at Los Angeles' Kia Forum.

By Rania Aniftos

Rania Aniftos

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Dead & Company ‘s upcoming summer tour will be their final run.

John Mayer , who has been part of the the modern incarnation of the  Grateful Dead  since it was created in 2015, shared the band statement to his Instagram on Friday (Sept. 23). “As we put the finishing touches on booking venues, and understanding that word travels fast, we wanted to be the first to let you know that Dead & Company will be hitting the road next summer for what will be our final tour,” he wrote alongside the rose-adorned promotional tour poster for the upcoming summer stint. “Stay tuned for a full list of dates for what will surely be an exciting, celebratory, and heartfelt last run of shows.”

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The band revealed the full list of tour dates on Thursday (Oct. 6), beginning on May 19, 2023, in Los Angeles at the Kia Forum and stretching through July 15, when the tour ends in San Francisco at Oracle Park.

See below, and check out ticket and pre-sale information here.

05/19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum 05/20 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum 05/23 – Phoenix, AZ @ Ak-Chin Pavilion 05/26 – Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis Pavilion 05/28 – Atlanta, GA @ Lakewood Amphitheatre 05/30 – Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion 06/01 – Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek 06/03 – Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live 06/05 – Burgettstown, PA @ The Pavilion at Star Lake 06/07 – St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheater 06/09 – Chicago, IL @ Wrigley Field 06/10 – Chicago, IL @ Wrigley Field 06/13 – Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center 06/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Citizen’s Bank Park 06/17 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center 06/18 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center 06/21 – New York, NY @ Citi Field 06/22 – New York, NY @ Citi Field 06/25 – Boston, MA @ Fenway Park 06/27 – Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Music Center 07/01 – Boulder, CO @ Folsom Field 07/02 – Boulder, CO @ Folsom Field 07/03 – Boulder, CO @ Folsom Field 07/07 – George, WA @ The Gorge 07/08 – George, WA @ The Gorge 07/14 – San Francisco, CA @ Oracle Park 07/15 – San Francisco, CA @ Oracle Park

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Dead & company plays their final show as a band in san francisco at deadhead-packed oracle park.

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The  long strange trip  made its final stop.

Deadheads from all corners of the world flocked to San Francisco’s Oracle Park Sunday night to see iconic jam band the Grateful Dead’s successor, Dead & Company, play the last show of their ‘Final Tour.’

Two of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart — along with singer-songwriter John Mayer, ex-Allman Brothers Band bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and newly added drummer Jay Lane (who replaced one of the band’s original drummers, Bill Kreutzmann, for the final tour) — thrilled fans in the town where the original Dead was formed in 1965.

Kicking off their last run of shows on Friday, over 40,000 fans had packed into the ballpark each night, with all three shows sold out.

For their final show, Deadheads were treated to some of the band’s more popular but cherished tunes, like “Bertha” and “Althea” during their first set, and after the intermission, heard Mayer slide on the guitar and bop around on stage to the likes of “Help on the Way” and “Cumberland Blues.”

The band’s encore and final performance ended with “Truckin’,” “Brokedown Palace,” and closed with “Not Fade Away” — accompanied by a dazzling drone performance above the stadium — before Dead & Company gave their last bow to the audience.

For Deadheads tuning in via live stream through Nug.net — a live concert streaming service that had the exclusive rights to broadcast the show — the experience was less than ideal, with many missing segments of the show due to login issues or not being able to access their accounts altogether for the final hurrah.

‘The Final Tour’ started in Los Angeles on May 19, spanning to major US cities like New York and Chicago.

Showing love from the Big Apple , the Empire State Building took “tie dye to the skies,” illuminating the building in rainbow colors in honor of their final performance.

Dead & Company breathed new life into a fading culture after its formation in 2015. 

It expanded its already diehard fan base to new lengths when adding Mayer, 45, to fill in the enormous shoes left by legendary frontman Jerry Garcia — who died in 1995 from a heart attack at 53 years old.

Traditional Deadheads were originally against the idea of Mayer — commonly perceived as a popish, billboard guitar player due to some of his solo work — being integrated as one of the faces of their decades-old lifestyle when it was first announced eight years ago.

The guitarist first discovered the band in 2011 when he heard “Althea” during a random streaming session.

“When Grateful Dead music found me, it was the perfect moment,” Mayer said in a 2016  interview with CBS Sunday Morning , “For me, [Grateful Dead songs] rekindled the color of music.”

After linking up with Weir years later in 2015 for a jam session, the two rockers began laying the groundwork for Dead & Company.

After the first summer tour, it became apparent to many that Mayer’s fluency and freedom with scaling the guitar, charismatic mannerisms on stage, and blues-toned voice played homage to Garcia and became a beloved and embraced addition to the scene.

Mayer brought with him an explosion of younger millennials and Gen Zers, who were quickly exposed to the band’s thick catalog of live performances, with some even connecting with their parents over the music due to the band’s span through multiple generations.

“I know that the music will continue, but it’s heartbreaking to see ‘my’ version of the Dead end,” Aidan Chism, 20, of Indiana, told The Post — saying he went to his first Dead & Company show in 2016 with his dad, and has been to 13 since.

“The memories will always be tied to bonding with my dad, and the transitional periods of my life from high school, through COVID, and now college. I’ve met so many friends traveling to shows, and have introduced my own friends to the music and they’ve fallen in love with it.”

The band has toured regularly each summer since 2015 — except for 2020 due to the pandemic.

Drones during Space. #DeadandCompany #DeadandCoFinalTour #drones pic.twitter.com/P5npxs7a2K — Freedom (@sfmuller73) July 17, 2023

Weir, 75, was only 16 years old when he met Garcia in Palo Alto in 1963 — forming a jug band with the banjo player-turned-guitarist that would later transcend into the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead — announced in September of 2022 Dead & Company would be hanging it up after the 2023 tour.

“Well, it looks like that’s it for this outfit,” Weir  tweeted . “But don’t worry we will all be out there in one form or another until we drop.”

But Weir, along with drummer Hart, is no stranger to goodbyes.

Months before Dead & Company’s formation — Weir, Hart, original bassist Phil Lesh, and Kreutzmann performing as ‘The Dead’ had their ‘Fare Thee Well’ tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead.

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Dead and Company Final Tour Kick-Off Brings the Faithful to the Forum

By Shirley Halperin

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• Dead and Company Final Tour Kick-Off Brings the Faithful to the Forum 11 months ago

Dead and Company ‘s summer tour — the group’s last ever, at least in its current incarnation — had its official kick-off on Friday, May 19, at Los Angeles’ Forum. The first of a two-night stand, the band — featuring original members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart along with John Mayer , Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti and Jay Lane (sitting in for Bill Kreutzmann who had to sit the 2023 trek out) — was in top form musically, playing for nearly four hours and spanning the Grateful Dead catalog from early studio cuts (“St. Stephen,” “The Eleven”) to Jerry Garcia solo songs (“Deal,” “The Wheel”) to fan favorites (“Eyes of the World,” “Wharf Rat”).

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How are fans feeling about this “Final Tour,” as the trek is billed? By the looks of it, grateful — to have one last go-round in a familiar space with several thousand like-minded heads.

On hand to document the run is longtime Grateful Dead photographer Jay Blakesberg, who captured the energy onstage in the images below.

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Dead & Company Announce Final Tour

By Matthew Strauss

Dead & Company —the group featuring John Mayer and members of Grateful Dead —have announced their last tour. The shows will take place in summer 2023. The band will share the tour itinerary at a later date. Find Dead & Company’s announcement below.

Dead & Company got announced in August 2015, with the band’s first concert taking place that October. Since then, the group has toured annually. Ahead of this year’s summer tour , there was speculation that Dead & Company would quit touring after 2022. The band’s Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann, however, was surprised to hear the rumors .

Dead & Company have had many notable moments at their concerts. For instance, back in 2018, they performed with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon . Also that year, the band showed support for the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during a Florida concert. And, this past July, while on tour in Virginia, Dead & Company shared a message in support of abortion and reproductive rights.

Dead & Company:

As we put the finishing touches on booking venues, and understanding that word travels fast, we wanted to be the first to let you know that Dead & Company will be hitting the road next summer for what will be our final tour. Stay tuned for a full list of dates for what will surely be an exciting, celebratory, and heartfelt last run of shows. With love and appreciation, Dead & Company

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John Mayer Announces Dead & Company’s Final Tour For 2023

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by John Mayer 💎 (@johnmayer)

Jefferson Varner IV

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Dead & Company – The Final Tour

Launches Friday, May 19 th  & Saturday, May 20 th in Los Angeles at The Kia Forum

Through  friday, july 14 th  & saturday, july 15 th in san francisco at oracle park, seated presale fan registration open now  here, tickets on sale friday, october 14 th  @ 10 am local time.

DEAD & COMPANY  is launching its   2023 summer tour on Friday, May 19 th  and Saturday, May 20 th  in Los Angeles at the Kia Forum with dates running through Friday, July 14 th  and Saturday, July 15 th  when the tour ends in San Francisco at Oracle Park.  The band  – Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, John Mayer,  and  Bob Weir,  with  Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti –  will perform two sets of music drawing from the Grateful Dead’s historic catalog of songs. Tickets go on sale to the general public beginning  Friday, October 14 th   @  10 AM  local venue time through  deadandcompany.com . A full listing of tour dates can be found below.

The highly-anticipated 2023 summer tour, produced by Live Nation, will be the band’s final tour since forming in 2015. Highlights include the tour-opening back-to-back concerts at the  KIA FORUM  in Los Angeles (Friday, May 19 th  & Saturday, May 20 th ), as well as doubleheaders at  WRIGLEY FIELD  in Chicago (Friday, June 9 th  & Saturday, June 10 th );  SARATOGA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER  in Saratoga Springs, NY (Saturday, June 17 th  & Sunday, June 18 th );  CITI FIELD  in NYC (Wednesday, June 21 st  & Thursday, June 22 nd ); and  THE GORGE  in George, WA (Friday, July 7 th  & Saturday, July 8 th ); an epic return to  FENWAY PARK  in Boston, MA (Sunday, June 25 th ); the band’s first-ever three-night stand at  FOLSOM FIELD  in Boulder, CO (Saturday, July 1 st , Sunday, July 2 nd , & Monday, July 3 rd ); and the tour finale – a two-night debut at  ORACLE PARK  in San Francisco (Friday, July 14 th  & Saturday, July 15 th ). A full listing of the 2023 tour dates can be found below.

To ensure that tickets get directly into the hands of fans, advance presale registration is now available  HERE powered by Seated. The Artist Presale begins Wednesday, October 12 th  at noon local venue time and runs through Thursday, October 13 th  at 10 PM local venue time. Advance registration does not guarantee tickets. Supplies are limited. 

Guests who prefer an enhanced experience for this memorable Dead & Company tour can purchase a variety of VIP and Travel Packages. Packages include seamless venue access, early GA entry, pre-show lounge with food and a cash bar, exclusive merchandise, or travel packages for multi-night runs in various cities. Packages from 100X Hospitality will go on sale October 12 th  at noon local venue time. For full details, click  HERE .

Dead & Company and Activist will continue their work with longtime sustainability partner REVERB to reduce the summer tour’s environmental footprint and engage fans to take action for people and the planet. More details at  REVERB.org .

Dead & Company  was formed in 2015 when the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir joined forces with artist and musician John Mayer, Allman Brothers’ bassist Oteil Burbridge, and Fare Thee Well and RatDog keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, and quickly became one of the most successful touring bands year over year. Since its formation, the band has completed seven tours and became a record-breaking stadium act when it set Wrigley Field’s all-time concert attendance for a single concert, which still holds to this day. Having toured consistently since its 2015 debut, the band has held 164 concerts, performed 143 unique songs and has played to nearly four million fans.

Dead & Company has headlined iconic stadiums across the country including Fenway Park, Citi Field, Gillette Stadium, Folsom Field, Dodger Stadium, Wrigley Field, and Autzen Stadium, as well as multiple night-stands at Madison Square Garden, the Forum, Hollywood Bowl, and Shoreline Amphitheatre. Between tours, Dead & Company hosts its annual “Playing in the Sand,” an all-inclusive concert vacation that features multiple nights of Dead & Company on an intimate beach in Mexico.

Across all tours at the band’s legendary Participation Row, the Dead & Company community has taken more than 100,000 actions in support of various local non-profits and national social impact organizations and causes including voter registration with HeadCount and environmental actions with REVERB. Since 2015, efforts on tour have eliminated the use of 100,000 single-use plastic water bottles at shows and raised funds to support climate justice and carbon reduction projects which prevented 33,700 tonnes of CO2e from entering the atmosphere, the equivalent of 83.5 million miles driven by gas-powered cars. Throughout the seven tours the total raised directly from the band as well as fan auctions and other efforts is now over $3 million, providing direct support to HeadCount, REVERB and the Dead Family non-profit organizations, as well as the non-profit ocean conservation organization Oceana and MusiCares among others. 

About Live Nation Entertainment

Live Nation Entertainment (NYSE: LYV) is the world’s leading live entertainment company comprised of global market leaders: Ticketmaster, Live Nation Concerts, and Live Nation Sponsorship. For additional information, visit  www.livenationentertainment.com

For a high-res band photo and tour artwork, click  Dead & Company 2023 Summer Tour .

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Live Nation Concerts 

Monique Sowinski |  [email protected]

Dead & Company 

Anna Loynes |  [email protected]

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The Shows May Be Over. But John Mayer’s ‘Guitar Face’ Lives On.

For some fans of Dead & Company, which just finished its Final Tour, the faces made by John Mayer while performing are almost as memorable as the music.

By Alex Beggs

Alex Beggs reported this article during the last leg of Dead & Company’s Final Tour, including at the final show in San Francisco.

During the final show of Dead & Company’s so-called Final Tour on Sunday night, the crowd at Oracle Park in San Francisco swayed and bobbed like the current of a turning river.

People in flower crowns grooved through the shimmying mass on the stadium’s field. A man in cowboy regalia cupped his hands around his ears and two-stepped to the beat. A woman in face glitter who gave her name as Honey Bee regaled strangers with the tale of how she came with a man she had met two days before, who happened to have an extra ticket. Other fans, who were not as lucky, danced on the sidewalk outside of the park.

And onstage, the band’s lead guitarist, John Mayer, leaned back, sucked his lips inside his mouth and scrunched his eyes closed as he wailed on a guitar while playing the song “Althea.” Shortly after his impassioned solo , footage of it started spreading on Twitter.

Mr. Mayer has been a member of Dead & Company, an offshoot of the Grateful Dead , since it formed in 2015. Though he is not the band’s face, the faces he has made while performing — which can cover the full spectrum of human emotion, from despair to sweet relief to sublime pleasure — have for some been almost as unforgettable as the music itself.

Fans have made YouTube compilations , photo collages , a meme with a giant slug and niche Instagram accounts dedicated to Mr. Mayer’s expressive “guitar face,” which is not exactly an anomaly in the world of rock ’n’ roll. “I feel a little bit uncomfortable with people thinking that I made up the guitar face,” he told Rolling Stone in 2017. “God, wouldn’t it be great to go to the jungles of Borneo and give a tribe Fender Stratocasters and have them listen to Jimi Hendrix — but not show them Jimi Hendrix — and come back five years later and see if there’s any guitar face? I have a feeling there would be.”

Mr. Mayer, through a representative, declined to comment for this article. The faces he made during the last leg of the Final Tour appeared to reflect the mood of its tie-dye-wearing fans, which alternated between grief and ecstasy as the music that seemingly would never stop finally did. ( Dead & Company members have said the tour would be its last , but have not ruled out the possibility of a future for the band.)

“The thing I love about him is he’s fully enjoying it — he’s in the music,” Tony Seigh, from Valparaiso, Ind., said of Mr. Mayer. “For those three, four hours, that guy is just in a different zone. And haters beware, he’s going to be making some very strange faces.”

Mr. Seigh, 33, runs Holy Moly Mischief , which sells Dead-themed T-shirts, fanny packs and a bumper sticker that reads: “KEEP HONKING! I’m on my way to see JOHN MAYER and what’s left of the GRATEFUL DEAD.” Mr. Seigh, who used to work for Tesla, said he had seen Dead & Company 86 times, and he described Mr. Mayer’s faces using a word many others did: orgasmic.

“It’s like a close-up of his face in an adult film,” he said. “There are moments where it’s like, Oh my gosh, something is happening to him. Like, is a ghost … massaging him?”

Mr. Seigh, who was wearing a yellow “Always Grateful” hat that matched his yellow-painted toenails, added that Mr. Mayer’s expressions were one of many visual elements of live performances by Dead & Company, whose members have included Bob Weir, Oteil Burbridge, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Jeff Chimenti and Jay Lane.

“Bob looks like a gray werewolf, and Oteil has, like, pro-wrestler face paint on, and Mickey looks like ET playing some drum thing,” he said. “And then you look at John, and he looks like pictures of old Catholic saints when they’re getting visited by an angel.”

Clif Edwards, 60, a graphic designer from Sacramento whose hair was styled into a long gray ponytail, said that as a guitarist himself, he knew how playing could be a full-body experience. Of Mr. Mayer’s facial expressions, he said, “I approve.”

“But it’s odd to watch,” added Mr. Edwards, who said he had seen the original Grateful Dead play some 340 times.

A man in a tie-dye bucket hat who was standing near Mr. Edwards chimed in: “You know you’re in the thick of the jam when he’s got the face going.”

Susan Marston, 58, a program manager from Boise, Idaho, said that unlike some longtime Dead fans who were skeptical when Mr. Mayer joined Dead & Company, she knew from the very beginning that he would bring something unique to the spinoff band.

“There’s a lot of crusty people who said, ‘Oh, I can’t see John Mayer,’” Ms. Marston said. “But if you knew anything about John Mayer prior to joining Dead & Company, then you knew the guy could freaking rip the blues.”

“Sometimes his eyes are rolling back in his head,” added Ms. Marston, who was wearing a black top covered with photos of Mr. Mayer. “It elevates everybody because he’s so into what we’re into — it’s our synchronization with the band.” As she spoke, a man with a fake scarlet begonia tucked into his hat interrupted her to show off a sticker that featured Mr. Mayer’s face flashing a particularly euphoric expression and surrounded by a highly suggestive lyric from the song “The Weight.”

A few Dead & Company fans said they had never noticed Mr. Mayer’s expressions. Kim Holzem, 52, from Three Rivers, Calif., scoffed in disbelief when her husband, Tim, mentioned that he had never registered the guitarist’s faces before.

“Sometimes he looks like he’s in pain, other times he looks like he’s blissed out,” said Ms. Holzem, who saw Dead & Company three times last weekend in San Francisco with her husband and two teenage sons.

Mr. Mayer, she added, “makes some weird-ass faces, but he’s still adorable.”

Skyler McKinley, 31, a bar owner from Denver who was standing not far from the stage at the last show of the tour, said Mr. Mayer’s face was “inescapable” at live performances, in part because it is often “blown up, to skyscraper size” on massive screens. He added that Mr. Mayer had the “sex energy of a rock star” while performing, and compared his facial expressions to the dance moves of Mick Jagger.

“At first I thought it was absurd, these lewd faces,” Mr. McKinley said. “But this is his aspect of communing with Grateful Dead music, the same way we all do, in a religious sense.”

“I have no idea what my face looks like when I’m at one of these shows,” he added, “but I bet I look pretty ridiculous, too.”

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A Requiem for the Dead

Dead and Company—the most successful and longest-running post-Jerry configuration of Grateful Dead members—has purportedly given up the road. We took one last trip to Shakedown Street to make sense of what it all meant and what it means if they’re done.

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The Grateful Dead have died many times. Depending on whom you ask, their first death came only a few years after their 1965 formation, as the raunchy organ jams and all-night raves of their psychedelic days gave way to statelier songwriting and more sophisticated playing. The transition was punctuated by the 1973 death of Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the harmonica player and vocalist whose ability to command a room and yelp out blues ad-libs for half an hour on “Turn on Your Lovelight” made him an intensely personable figure; at one point, he was so recognizable, the band’s label ran a Pigpen look-alike contest. But as the Grateful Dead’s exploratory ethos inevitably led them to new territory and better drugs, Pigpen was left behind. He avoided psychedelics, drank bottle after bottle of wine, and stopped touring a few months before his death. Though Jerry Garcia was already the band’s intellectual center, Pigpen had been its major draw and frontman, until he wasn’t. His final show, at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972, marked the last time a truly charismatic singer performed Grateful Dead music with any of the band’s original members.

Until October 29, 2015. That was when Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann took the stage at Times Union Center in Albany, New York, for the first gig with their new guitarist and co-vocalist: John Mayer. The surviving members of the Grateful Dead have reconfigured themselves several times since Garcia’s 1995 death, playing under a variety of names both together (the Other Ones, Furthur, the Dead) and solo (Phil Lesh and Friends, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros., RatDog). Plenty of guitarists have been put in the unenviable position of stepping into Garcia’s role as the band’s primary musical force, to varying degrees of success. But with all due respect to Warren Haynes, there has never been anyone quite like Mayer involved with this music before.

The Dead and Company lineup didn’t make immediate musical sense in 2015 and was, quite frankly, very funny for people who didn’t care about Mayer or the Dead. Enlisting Mayer, with his bankable face and blandly virtuosic blues-scorching style, seemed like an extraordinarily obvious cash grab and an artistically suspect decision; it seemed equally impossible to imagine Mayer fans wooking out to the red-eyed reggae of “Estimated Prophet” and crusty Deadheads savoring slicked-back versions of old Pigpen songs.

But over the course of eight years and 235 shows, Dead and Company performed several miracles. They lasted longer than any post-Garcia configuration of Grateful Dead members—a genuine feat considering the level of animosity and manipulation among those surviving players—and consistently played to crowds that rivaled those the Dead drew in the heady gate-crashing days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they were the biggest touring act in the country. Those bigger crowds in turn rekindled the parking-lot scene that has been part of Dead culture since the late 1970s at a scale not seen since the days of Garcia. Though they fastidiously refused to expand it, Dead and Company developed a genuinely new way of performing and presenting what is almost certainly the greatest and most dynamic songbook any American rock band has ever produced.

But perhaps most important, they maintained and ultimately solidified the legacy of the Grateful Dead—not so much as a band but as the originators of a distinct form. Though it may seem unlikely when artists of their generation are selling off their catalogs for nine digits, no rock band of any era will be remembered as fondly as them. Most musicians understand their primary medium to be the studio recording, which makes sense—you can maintain control in the studio, and the songs are placed on a gallery wall and can be admired like paintings. They are, essentially, finished. But by understanding their music as something that should be made fresh night after night for new fans, year after year and decade after decade, the Grateful Dead suggested that their songs are never complete. There is no final version; there’s not even a definitive live version.

In 2023, even the most proficient Beatles tribute acts are working the college-bar circuit, and it’s impossible to imagine anyone daring to take up the mantle of the Lennon-McCartney catalog with any credibility once Sir Paul calls it quits. But in 100 years, there will still be bands who are able to tour the country playing Grateful Dead music in new and inventive ways, bringing the old corpses to life once again, and there will be crowds eager to hear them do it. But I’m getting ahead of myself. These are all solidified thoughts, intellectual end points, and even if they’re where we’ll end up, there’s no telling how we’ll get there.

Which is, as you’ve probably heard, the whole point. I set out to see as many Dead and Company shows as I could this summer, ultimately catching 10 concerts in four states, from the warm-up at Jazz Fest to the three-night finale in San Francisco. I wasn’t in search of the true meaning of America or after any of the other very literary reasons people often give for going on the road; we have more than enough writing from white people who are trying to figure out why they don’t feel at home here. I am a Deadhead. I sigh as I say so, for I see the paisley-patterned connotations that spill out of that word the moment I type it. I was 9 years old when Garcia died, and my natural taste runs between slippery jazz and blackened death metal. But the music of the Grateful Dead has a hold on me that I cannot explain. I wanted to figure out why I’m not the only one.

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival has run nearly every year since 1970, and it has almost always had terrible weather. There is really no good time to stage an outdoor festival in New Orleans, or at least not one that spans seven days of on-site performances over two weeks. For hours leading up to Dead and Company’s set on May 6, it rains hard—pelting, driving, tropical rain, the kind that obviates any rain gear—and, perversely for New Orleans at this time of year, it’s cold . I clutch my link of boudin and shiver, resigned to being physically miserable in a way that is at least novel, while my battle-hardened local friends and warm-blooded midwestern spouse laugh and place bets on what the band will open with. A shirtless guy in a crumbling cowboy hat wanders past selling enamel pins of the Steal Your Face skull and lightning bolt logo (a.k.a. the Stealie), the Terrapin Station turtles, and Garcia’s Wolf logo. I mention to him that I’d seen him at the Hollywood Bowl in the past and ask whether he still has any of his “Gayer for Mayer” pins. He shakes his head and tells me he’s out of “Queer for Weir,” too.

Then, finally, with very little fanfare, Dead and Company wander onto the stage. Drummer Jay Lane, a one-time member of Primus and frequent Weir collaborator, has replaced Bill Kreutzmann. Decked in an Ancient Aliens T-shirt, he takes his place behind the kit as Weir and Mayer play a few tentative sideways notes. They resolve into “Truckin’,” and the clouds part, and the rain stops, and the sun shines. I know how unlikely that sounds; all I can tell you is that it’s true.

“Truckin’” is the final song on 1970’s American Beauty , which is, alongside the same year’s Workingman’s Dead , the Grateful Dead’s high-water mark as a studio band. Both albums are filled with country tunes with deceptively complex chord changes, stacked harmonies that defy the individual singers’ occasionally pitchy individual performances, and a rustic charm that feels more attainable than, say, the baroque folk-pop of their friends in Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Every song on both albums feels like it could have been written in the 19th century.

Dead and Company play “Cumberland Blues” at Jazz Fest. They play it again in Phoenix a few weeks later, and again in Bristow, Virginia, and at Wrigley Field. They cannot stop playing “Cumberland Blues” on this tour. It’s fairly straightforward, at least for a Dead song: a two-stepping shuffle that moves a touch faster than the rhythm seems to be comfortable with. The music is a nice mirror of the narrator’s exhaustion after being kept up all hours of the night by his beloved Melinda, who seems not to respect the physical and emotional rigors of his life in the mine. The narrator pointedly does not want to dance—or whatever else Melinda’s trying to get him into. But the song doesn’t care, and throughout the summer, the band seems to side more and more with Melinda. Dead and Company long ago developed a reputation in the wider Deadhead community for their slackened tempo—Dead and Slow, they’re called—but all tour, they play the song at a blistering pace that they’ve never even tried before. Mayer reels off lines in the breaks, getting notes out like he’s bailing out a boat. By the time they get to San Francisco in mid-July, “Cumberland Blues” has transformed from a lovely bit of electric bluegrass into a country dervish, a spinning, hyper-rotating hurricane of a song. This early performance in New Orleans is the first indication that—whether because of the addition of Lane or the stakes of the tour itself—the band is finding new life in the material.

If you consider yourself a discerning music person, the kind who has to call themselves a “music person” instead of a “fan,” it’s easy to get into Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty . All you need is a general appreciation for sturdy songs and a willingness not to think too much about how much Marcus Mumford probably likes them. But to get into the band’s live tapes—and thus into the essence not only of the Grateful Dead but of Dead and Company, as well—is much more difficult. You have to listen to a lot of 1950s rock covers. You have to listen to a lot of George Jones songs sung by someone who isn’t George Jones. You have to be able to look at a track list, see a 12:57 version of “Dancing in the Streets,” and have faith that whatever’s on the other side of the first two and a half minutes will be worth hearing Weir sing a disco version of a soul song.

I came to the Dead as a music person. I was going to pop-up record sales and buying rare Brazilian vinyl. I had a granular understanding of the modal differences between East African and West African music; I could typically tell whether a song had been recorded in Mali. I was “not really interested in the guitar anymore.” Most important, I was listening to a lot of Herbie Hancock and a lot of Can. In the mid-1970s, the jazz heavyweight and the free-spirited German weirdos were both pursuing a form of funk music that rippled with grooves and dissolved into space. You could dance to it, but it could also catch you up the way driving through the mountains sometimes does: You keep moving, but your mind is suddenly still.

At the same historical moment, the Grateful Dead were in pursuit of the same kind of sound. There are versions of “Dancing in the Streets” and especially Weir’s “Playing in the Band” from the mid-’70s that pulse and shimmer, where all sense of the original melody and tone has been completely scraped away and the band is intently exploring the foundation on which it was built. Kreutzmann liked to say that his goal as a drummer wasn’t to keep time but to keep mood, and once you begin to tune in to the mood that’s being cultivated by any form of the Dead, their ability to find new ways of expressing it becomes astonishing. The jam that leads “Scarlet Begonias” into “Fire on the Mountain” on the May 8, 1977, tape—probably the band’s most famous jam—is mind-boggling at a technical level; there are moments in which all five musicians seem to be playing both songs at once. But it’s no less admirable for the way it sustains a feeling of buoyancy, of pleasant surprise, of a seemingly unlimited number of happily beguiling opportunities around every corner.

You have enough moments like this, and you eventually find yourself through the looking glass. You become someone who appreciates how the zapping laser of Garcia’s guitar gooses Weir’s vocal in “Dancing in the Streets,” who dreams about cracking open a few cold ones and listening to “El Paso.” You might completely forget that the thing that got you into this music was the wild-eyed, experimental nature of it. When you sing along in full throat to “U.S. Blues” with tens of thousands of people who aren’t aware or don’t care that the original band was being ironic when it sang the “wave that flag” chorus, you’ve come a long way toward being cured of the need to use music as a way to differentiate yourself. The appeal becomes simple: It feels good to drink beers in the daytime and sing songs with your spouse and your friends and fall in love with a band. And then you watch them spend 15 minutes turning “Bird Song” inside out until it feels like tissue-paper-soft jazz, and you look around and go, My God, there are 40,000 people at Mayer’s experimental music concert .

L.A.! The Fabulous Forum! Where Magic and Kareem went back-to-back! Where Nicholson was always courtside! Where Harry Styles went on a run of 15 sold-out shows, as the only banner hanging from the rafters proclaims! Outside, half the city of Los Angeles is crammed into the narrow channel of Shakedown Street, the vendor market that runs through the parking lot and is as ubiquitous a sight at Dead shows as tie-dye. (It is, in fact, the source of much of that tie-dye.) And onstage, Mayer is making his guitar twinkle and hum; he’s going textural and pursuing blue moods. Yes, he’s ripping a few mondo solos and making the faces as he does so. You can only redeem so much of a man.

Dead and Company would not be playing to this many people this often if Mayer weren’t onstage. But his celebrity doesn’t solely account for the group’s swelling popularity. In 2016, the first full Dead and Company trek made $29.4 million, according to industry standard keeper Pollstar, good for only the 59th-highest-grossing tour worldwide. By 2021, they took in $50.2 million and finished fifth, one spot below the Eagles and two above Guns N’ Roses—even though they didn’t even leave the United States. Were Mayer’s name the driving force behind ticket sales, you’d expect them to have been higher at the outset, before the novelty of seeing a superstar slumming it with wooks had worn off.

Instead, his image allowed the band to more easily capitalize on the momentum created by the 2015 Fare Thee Well concerts, in which Weir, Hart, and Kreutzmann performed for the last time with bassist Phil Lesh. Dead and Company entered the world as both a curiosity and an excuse to keep the party going, but the strong performances—and the response from aging Gen X Deadheads starved for the massive stakes of the Grateful Dead’s late ’80s and early ’90s run—instantly made them into something bigger.

When the band was put together in early 2015, Mayer was only a couple of years removed from the lowest days of his career. In 2010, he’d given an interview to Playboy in which he called his ex-girlfriend Jessica Simpson “crack cocaine,” used the n-word, and compared his penis to David Duke. (His heart, though? “Benetton.”) In 2011, he was swimming in his pool and heard the knotty, questioning, guarded opening riff of the Grateful Dead’s “Althea” on Pandora. As he tells it, he sprinted into the house sopping wet to find out what he was hearing.

“Althea” didn’t cure Mayer—the next year he’d give another infamous interview, this one to Rolling Stone , in which his claim to be able to hold his breath for four minutes and 17 seconds was probably the least noteworthy tidbit—but it did set him on a new path. In that same piece, Eric Clapton called Mayer a “bedroom” guitarist and said, “I wasn’t sure if John was aware of the power of playing with other people.” Perhaps aware he was supposed to be burnishing the younger player’s image, he added, “Though I think he is now.” The power of playing with other people is central to what makes the music of the Grateful Dead work. Garcia knew this intuitively. Though he possessed the skills to shred, he rarely did. His playing was rarely showy. Rather than draw attention to himself, he stoked the flames of what his bandmates were doing, hinting at directions they might take together or else allowing himself to soak in the mood they had collectively created. Every line seemed to end in a question mark; he didn’t make assertions, he made suggestions.

This is only part of the reason Garcia became an icon to many. Despite the Grateful Dead’s sunshine-daydream image in the popular mind, their music is deeply suffused with pain and confusion. Robert Hunter’s lyrics feint toward salvation without being able to offer it, and they’re deeply informed by the fact that each individual is ultimately responsible for navigating the fog of life. “If I knew the way, I would take you home,” goes the band’s defining statement, from “Ripple.” The scholar Brent Wood surveyed the band’s lyrics and discovered that about three-fourths of the songs Garcia sang are about suffering, and a full half of those songs are about death. Garcia played guitar in a way that perpetuated these feelings—the persistent reality of pain and the desire to find a little happiness anyway are both present in so much of what he did. With Dead and Company, Weir allows the songs to move more slowly, until the jams begin to take on an almost painterly quality. When it works, the jam becomes as much a part of the story as the lyrics, a sigh of emotion spontaneously exhaled by the six guys onstage.

It took Mayer a moment to understand how he fit into the music; witness him trying to play roadhouse blues in the twilit silence of a “Space” jam in 2015. But as he found his footing, and particularly as he developed his musical relationship with keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, his ability to meet the songs on their own terms deepened. “I’ve always said that if I’m doing my job right, I bring the crowd closer to the music they love while disappearing from the equation a little bit,” he wrote on Instagram a few days before the Forum shows. Indeed, it’s a minor miracle that his star power vanishes the moment he steps onstage, where he appears to be just some dude in an expensive-looking T-shirt and with very bad tattoos. While the jokes about 17-minute versions of “Your Body Is a Wonderland” never subside from some corners of the Dead world, by the time the 2023 tour arrived, Mayer was fully integrated into the cosmos. There have been “John Mayer Is Dead to Me” shirts on the lot for years. In San Francisco, I see one that says, simply and provocatively and sincerely, “He is my Jerry.”

Onstage at the Forum, he’s restrained and tasteful. He plays “Althea” as if he, too, is awed by the oracle at the song’s center, and by the oracle the song has been for him. It’s not hard to understand why. The titular character functions as a mirror for the narrator, telling him he’s been “honest to the point of recklessness” and “self-centered in the extreme.” He says he’s “lacking in some direction,” that “treachery” is “tearing me limb from limb.” “Ain’t nobody messing with you but you,” Althea tells him, and the truth cools his head.

The most commonly asked question on tour: “Where is Shakedown Street?” Named for the Dead’s disco-funk song, it’s ostensibly a tailgate, but that descriptor is wildly insufficient. The most common answer, also taken from the song: “You just gotta poke around.”

This is probably true in some places. In New York, at Citi Field, you do not have to poke around. Shakedown Street pokes you. It is impossible to miss, taking over a fenced-in parking lot under the elevated train tracks across the street from the stadium. Dozens of people are pushing through the narrow gate at all times, and instantly they’re surrounded by people with ice chests selling domestics, microbrews, White Claws, you name it for $5 a can. Grills hiss in the distance. Nitrous tanks hiss nearby. Balloons pop constantly. “Mushrooms, K, acid” is whispered loudly by dudes making conspicuous eye contact. A sign advertises BULK FEMINIZED SEEDS in bold type. There’s a booth selling Jerry rolls, which seem to be some kind of sandwich and not a drug. Everyone has their own version of grilled cheese: vegan cheese, gluten-free bread, but no sight of the guy from 2022 who promised “bacon in every motherfucking bite.” From every direction, tapes of old Dead shows—both Grateful Dead and Dead and Company—blast from portable stereos and car sound systems.

People started selling things in the parking lots at Grateful Dead shows as early as 1973, author Jesse Jarnow reports in Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America , around the same time they started following the band on tour. It makes sense: sell a few limp burritos, make enough money to get to the next show. By the 1980s, Shakedown became its own attraction, as its cheery lawlessness drew in crowds of college students anxious to party, runaways escaping the latchkey lifestyle, white kids with dreads claiming their parents still lived in Babylon, and genuine Deadheads, too. The psychologist Joseph Campbell, who lived next door to Weir, once took in the parking-lot scene in Oakland and declared it an “antidote for the atom bomb.” By 1989, it had expanded so much it made the Dead unwelcome in places they’d played for years, with riots and general mayhem leading the band to prohibit vending outside gigs. Did it work? Come on.

There is much to buy on Shakedown Street. Not just drugs, though definitely drugs. There are crystal sellers whose wares have gone dusty from years of exactly this, and those who are selling fragile $1,000 specimens that should probably not be out on a folding table with this many wasted people around. There are head-shop-quality patches and pins tacked to a corkboard. A guy calling himself Grateful Fred is selling metallic plaques of Dead iconography you can put on your trunk to make it look like Toyota is offering up a limited-edition Wookmobile; he has the hatchback door of a brand-new Volkswagen set up in his booth so that you can see how they look in situ.

But mostly there is versioning. In the same way that a dub producer takes the elements of a traditional reggae track and reframes it into something more wigged out, artists have been fucking with the iconography of the Grateful Dead and selling it back to Deadheads for decades. A pre-fame Keith Haring sold shirts on the lot in 1977, his characteristic line work already apparent in the doodles that fill the blank space in the Stealie. A guy calling himself New Springfield Boogie exclusively makes merch that references both the Dead and The Simpsons , and with the charisma of Lyle Lanley selling Springfield on the Monorail , he gleefully shares the names of his creations. Homer disappearing into the roses of the band’s Bertha skeleton is given the “St. Stephen”–referencing title “In and Out of the Garden He Goes.”

Anything worn onstage by Mayer gets a boost. In 2022, an official shirt designed by bootlegger Jeremy Dean with a dancing bear face and the word “California” in a straightforward script was sold out before the end of the first set at the first show of the tour. When I ask one vendor how many of his $80 sweatshirts (which have a BMW logo in the Stealie) he sold after John wore one in June, he demurs, telling me only, “A lot.” I ask another vendor whether he’s concerned the band will force him to stop selling his shirts, which violate the only enforced rule of vending by having the words “Dead and Company” on them. He laughs and tells me he’ll just text Mayer and have him sort it out.

This is commerce, plain and simple, and there are obvious points to be made about the co-opting of the counterculture and the frenzy of consumerism. Dead and Company themselves certainly aren’t shy about accruing capital. But in the moment, as the beers flow and the trips come on, it feels like a convincing illusion of everything Heads project onto the band: freedom, joy, bright abandon. Unlike at a sporting event, there is no sense of aggression because there is no opponent. Unlike at a mass church gathering, there is no sense of propriety or even reverence; the enthusiasm is ungated. At least until the sun goes down and the chemicals start to curdle, it is a bright, warm—druggy, paranoid—dream, the California ideal appearing like a mirage in the heart of New York City.

We spend two days at the Gorge, mostly sitting in a scrap of shade beneath what must be the only row of trees in all of eastern Washington, and the view never begins to seem real. Maybe you’ve seen pictures of the scenic natural amphitheater on the other side of the Cascades from Seattle and wondered what it’s like to see a show there. It is beyond picturesque. It is difficult—genuinely difficult—to take it all in. The stage is placed perfectly, right in a crook of the Columbia River, and for the first set of both nights, before the sun goes down, it is more or less impossible to pay attention to the band onstage. The rugged cliff faces and soft turns in the landscape are the only things around that look older and more weathered than Weir.

Other than the surprisingly robust cell service, there is nothing convenient about the Gorge. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere, equally remote from Seattle and Spokane. Getting in Thursday night takes three hours owing to increased security. The campsites, where thousands of Deadheads are posted up from Thursday night through Sunday morning, are a rugged mile or so trek from the entrance to the amphitheater itself. Even though the venue is nearly 40 years old, there are no permanent bathrooms.

The heat is so bad on Night 1, the band seems to check itself. They cut their tempo and ease their way through the songs, whether to discourage ecstatic dance in the crowd or to ensure they make it through the evening themselves. We are near the end of the road now, a week from the end of the tour, and everyone seems to be slightly distracted by that knowledge. Weed smoke clings to the ground as the sun pours into the amphitheater.

After the show, Shakedown stays open late. There are multiple bands playing in the campground, one of them working on a pacy jam that sounds like it’s on its way toward a Talking Heads song. In the morning, there are what appear to be Hare Krishnas playing a trance remix of chant music with live finger-cymbal accompaniment. I wander into Shakedown in search of iced coffee and find two kids in their 20s playing guitar, working their way through the Dead’s “Estimated Prophet” with no vocals, just wavering in the heat vision of one of Weir’s best songs. Someone is advertising a yoga retreat “for Deadheads ONLY” in Costa Rica. Another guy is hawking some kind of Dead-adjacent red wine despite the temperature. “What a long, strange trip it’s been for these grapes,” he cries. “But they’re here now, and so are you.”

So are we. “At this point, two and a half months in[to the tour], I’m exhausted,” Michael Koppinger Jr. tells me the next weekend in San Francisco. Koppinger is a vendor in his early 20s who went to his first show in Raleigh in 2018, was given LSD by a friendly beer salesperson before he even made it to Shakedown, and never looked back. “It blew my mind,” he says. “I was raised Catholic and in this strict upbringing and culture. If people did drugs, it was like, you were bad. So to just be in a space where you could do whatever and it was normalized, it kinda blew my shit.” He printed up his first shirt in 2021, with plans to sell a hundred or so over a weekend run, then come home. Instead, he pulled out of a plan to buy a house with his (now ex-)girlfriend, put everything he owned in his parents’ attic, and split. “I’ve been on the road pretty much since,” he tells me.

Besides the profound bodily exhaustion, the biggest struggle of being a touring Deadhead in 2023 is scraping together gas money. “Once you get to Shakedown, you can make things work,” Koppinger says. “You can get into the show, you can get fed, you can get a drink. The community takes care of itself. But getting show to show, spot to spot, it’s rough.” As they cross the country, Heads panhandle for gas money, pile into the backs of buses and sleep in piles, and do what it takes to get to the next show. “I don’t live in this amount of love and community in everyday life,” Koppinger says. “In 2023 America, alienated, atomized, no one does.”

It is easy to get caught up in this. Even as I roast away in Washington, I’m clinging to what remains of this tour, of the fiction that you can simply zone out of everyday life in the name of having a good time and bring the people you love with you. Nobody knows where this energy will go next summer, whether to jam upstarts Goose or to bluegrass hero Billy Strings or, as it did in ’95, back to Phish. What’s certain is that it won’t be destroyed, even if it transmutes. Even if it lies dormant.

Nobody believes that what happens on tour or at a Dead show is a truly sustainable lifestyle. Like the music itself, it’s ephemeral, being created and destroyed in the same moment. It takes up space in real life, but it exists outside it, in the carnivalesque. The trick, when it all finally ends, is to remember that and not get rolled up in the tent when the circus leaves town.

But first, we have to go to San Francisco.

There are many rumors. The obvious ones involve the last living members of the Grateful Dead who aren’t in Dead and Company: Lesh is going to sit in. Background vocalist Donna-Jean Godchaux will step in to sing. Kreutzmann will join in for “Drums” (Billy himself stokes the last one by tweeting, “You know what would be cool …” a week before the final show; he never elaborates). Bob Dylan toured with the Grateful Dead in 1987 and has been covering “Brokedown Palace” lately, plus he has a break in his tour. Neil Young is in the area and has a conspicuous hole in his itinerary, too. Some people shoot for the stars and insist Paul McCartney will come out for the twinned covers of Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy” and “Hey Jude.”

In the end, none of this happens. Dead and Company set up in center field at Oracle Park and play six sets over three nights, about 10 hours of music, with no repeats. When they launch into “Bertha” to open Night 3, there is a prickling in the air. Bassist Oteil Burbridge’s wife has painted Garcia’s famous four-fingered handprint onto her husband’s face, and when the cameras focus on him during a cover of the Rascals’ “Good Lovin’,” the roar from the crowd is staggering. There have been so many big-time Dead shows in stadiums like this, and in the fresh daylight and cool early-evening San Francisco breeze, time collapses, and it feels like we’re inside each and every one of those shows; I’m fully conscious of the fact that for something to be timeless, it has to exit time, it has to die.

Weir was 16 when he joined the Grateful Dead. He grew up in Garcia’s shadow and never grew out of it. Garcia gained a kind of gravitas as he aged, even as heroin and diabetes ravaged his body and made him look 20 years older than he was. Weir courted silliness, wearing polo shirts tucked tidily into very small jean shorts. The Spinners, a religious movement that sprung up around the band and gained enough traction to warrant serious anthropological study, took as dogma what many fans felt: “Jerry Garcia is sacred and Bobby Weir is profane,” as Jarnow sums it up in Heads .

Another thing: “Bobby Weir makes me weep,” Jarnow tells me over Zoom one afternoon. He makes me weep, too. Somehow, in his old age, Weir has become a stately presence, a figure of poise. He carries with him the entire history of the counterculture, and he seems to feel its weight. When he sings Marty Robbins’s “El Paso” or Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried,” he inhabits the weariness of longing and guilt. There are Garcia songs that, thanks to age and wisdom or maybe just sheer repetition, Weir sings better than Jerry ever did: Witness him reel off the names of Billy Sunday and Jack the Ripper in “Ramble on Rose.” He sings with a far-off focus, as powerful and distant as a spaceship cruising through the cosmos. On Night 2 in San Francisco, he sings the postapocalyptic “Morning Dew” drenched in green light, his voice ragged and heartbroken as he surveys what’s left of the world after it ends.

Weir didn’t write the majority of the Grateful Dead’s best songs. “Ripple,” “Eyes of the World,” “Terrapin Station,” “Brokedown Palace,” “Sugaree,” “Althea”—they’re all Garcia’s. But over the 30 years they played together, Weir gained a better understanding of how those songs worked than anyone else possibly could. When he plays them, it’s hard to argue that they’re not in some way his.

The Grateful Dead keep dying. And regardless of whether Dead and Company are truly done right now, they will die one day, too. (Mayer set off a firestorm online by saying Dead and Company is “still a band—we just don’t know what the next show will be” a couple of days after the last show at Oracle Park; theories abound.) But written into the music is the notion that songs themselves don’t need their creators to live. This is hardly revolutionary in the world of jazz, where standards frequently outlive the people who wrote them, or in classical music, where most composers are incapable of performing their own works in the first place. But in rock ’n’ roll, where the cult of authenticity insists that meaning comes mostly in creation, rarely in interpretation, the music and ethos of the Dead are an anomaly. Dead and Company are far from the only group keeping this music alive, but Weir, convinced of the power of the songs as forms of expression and not simply vehicles for dancing or virtuosity or even experimentation, frames his band’s catalog with the dignity it deserves.

It is but one way of keeping the Dead alive. There are so many ways to express yourself, so many paths into and out of this music. Everyone has the right to desire their own expansion, to test their edges and see what else they might be able to contain. I see so many people on Dead tours who can’t possibly dress this way in their everyday lives. On tour, or at the one show they can afford to hit, or watching the livestream at home, or catching some local Dead band struggle through the “Slipknot!” changes, Deadheads enact the answer to a simple problem. The alienation we all feel is real and unavoidable. What if we learned to understand it as good?

Sadie Sartini Garner has written music criticism for Pitchfork , The A.V. Club , The Outline , and many other places. She lives in Long Beach, California, with her partner Rachelle.

Drake Vs. the World With Wos

A serious talk about israel and a not-so-serious talk about rap beef, s12e4 - “meat grinder” by madvillain.

• Consequence

John Mayer Announces First-Ever Solo Tour [Updated]

The tour promises a mix of acoustic, electric, and piano performances

John Mayer has expanded his solo tour with a new leg of North American dates taking place in the fall.

The newly announced 17-date run of shows kicks off on October 3rd at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Dates are also scheduled in Boston, Philadelphia, Nashville, Tampa, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and beyond.

Marking his first-ever solo tour, Mayer has promised to play “Old songs. Newer songs. Songs you haven’t heard yet that I’ll be road testing – all on acoustic, electric, and piano.” He kicked off the outing earlier this month with a run of spring shows, with datings running through the middle of April.

Tickets to Mayer’s tour dates cans can be purchased via Stubhub — where your order is 100% guaranteed through Stubhub’s FanProtect program. Stubhub is a secondary market ticketing platform, and prices may be higher or lower than face value, depending on demand.

Upon wrapping up his solo tour, John Mayer will hit the road with Dead & Company beginning in May for their final tour . Tickets for that trek are available here .

John Mayer 2023 Tour Dates:

03/27 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena 03/29 – St. Louis, MO @ Enterprise Center 03/31 – Chicago, IL @ United Center 04/01 – St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center 04/03 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena 04/05 – Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center 04/06 – Palm Desert, CA @ Acrisure Arena 04/08 – Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center 04/10 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena 04/11 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena 04/14 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum 09/27 – Hollywood, FL @ Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino 09/28 – Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino 09/30 – Ocean City, MD @ Oceans Calling Festival 10/01 – Bridgeport, CT @ Sound on Sound Festival 10/03 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 10/06 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden 10/07 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center 10/11 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena 10/13 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena 10/17 – Indianapolis, IN @ Gainbridge Fieldhouse 10/18 – Chicago, IL @ United Center 10/20 – Baltimore, MD @ CFG Bank Arena 10/21 – Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena 10/23 – Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center 10/25 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena 10/28 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center 10/30 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center 11/01 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center 11/05 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Vivint Arena 11/07 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center 11/10 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum

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John Mayer Extends First-Ever Solo Acoustic Tour

By Daniel Kreps

Daniel Kreps

Earlier this month, John Mayer embarked on his first-ever solo acoustic tour. He’s a month into now and already craving more. On Monday, the singer announced a second North American leg adding 17 new dates to the initial 19.

“As a dear friend once told me, “never block a blessing.” Something very special is happening out here and I want to keep it going – It’s too good for my soul. Thank you for making it such an incredible run so far…,” Mayer wrote on social media.

The new dates pick up on Oct. 3 at Madison Square Garden and extend through Nov. 10 with a final show in Los Angeles. JP Saxe will join for support on the new stretch making stops in Boston, Tampa, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and more. Mayer also promises that European dates are on the way.

General sale for the new dates begins Friday, March 31 at 9 a.m. local time.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by John Mayer (@johnmayer)

The solo tour marks the first time in Mayer’s 20-year career that he’s hit the road without accompaniment. Each gig will feature full acoustic sets from Mayer, as well as “special performances” on electric guitar and piano.

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Solo Tour 2023. Just like the early days. I’ll be playing old songs. Newer songs. Songs you haven’t heard yet that I’ll be road testing – all on acoustic, electric, and piano. Hope to see you there… John pic.twitter.com/mjuIGvLvqQ — John Mayer (@JohnMayer) January 26, 2023

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Published: 2022/07/20

John Mayer Posts Heartfelt Reflection After Closing Dead & Company Summer Tour

Photo by Jay Blakesberg

John Mayer has posted a heartfelt reflection on Instagram following the conclusion of Dead & Company’s Summer Tour 2022. Performed their final show for the tour at Citi Field in Queens, N.Y., on Saturday .

“These tours with  @deadandcompany  exist on an almost otherworldly plane – everyone, on stage and in the crowd, meets up in this shared dream, and on the last night, after the final note is struck, we leave it all on the stage. We bow, we hug, we share our love for one another and then… we disappear. I fly through the dead of night and wake up at home, where my ears ring, my heart sings, and I’m left with this mix of fatigue, joy, accomplishment, and deep appreciation for what I was able to be a part of,” Mayer shared. “I can feel the connected, collective experience of thousands of others who wake up feeling the same. I’ll never get over the profound beauty and uniqueness of this, and we’ll never in our lifetime see the likes of  @bobweir   @mickeyhart  and  @billkreutzmann , playing beyond all perceived limitations and expectations. It’s nothing short of remarkable. Thank you one and all for allowing me a seat on this transcendent ride. ♥️”

Though rumors have emerged and stayed prominent since a Rolling Stone article suggested the group will stop touring after this year, the band has not commented on its future, and both Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann expressed surprise when the story suggested this would be the ensemble’s final run.

Mayer co-founded Dead & Company in 2015. He spent much of 2022 touring as a solo act in support of his Sob Rock album. 

See Mayer’s post on Instagram below.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by John Mayer 💎 (@johnmayer)

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Dead & Company and HeadCount Raise Over $650,000 Through Auctioned Summer Tour Memorabilia

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“This is the Super Bowl of trips for the lifelong Dead Heads”: John Mayer and Dead & Company are officially returning for a 6-week residency at the MSG Sphere

Mayer help will lead a Grateful Dead-honoring residency at the world's most futuristic venue in Las Vegas this summer, months after the supergroup's farewell tour

John Mayer quoted the Grateful Dead’s track Throwing Stones as he announced that Dead & Company will return to the stage for a six-week residency at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas. 

A total of 18 shows between May 16 and June 22 will see John Mayer and former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart return to the stage. The news, which will be a delightful shock to many, comes despite the band having previously stated that 2023's extensive run of dates would be their last.

“Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free. Dizzy with eternity,” Mayer's post begins, announcing the residency at the ultra-futuristic, 18,600-capacity arena. The band follows in the steps of U2, who called the venue home for a 40-show residency celebrating Achtung Baby last year.

Reacting to the post, once commenter claimed: “This is the Super Bowl of trips for the lifelong Dead Heads.” 

The Grateful Dead offshoot had made its 'final' show a major spectacle last year, with a 22-song set including classics Truckin' and Brokedown Palace , as well as a passionate performance of Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away . Under the immersive 360-degree experience of the MSG Sphere, which is the largest spherical structure on the planet, the band will surely leave that extravaganza paling in comparison.

A post shared by John Mayer (@johnmayer) A photo posted by on

John Mayer formed Dead & Company back in 2015, with the band’s touring line-up completed by Oteil Burbridge, Jay Lane, and Jeff Chimenti.  Mayer had become obsessed with the Grateful Dead back in 2011 after discovering the song Althea on Pandora. His 2012 album, Born and Raised carried that obsession, with a "subtle but abundant" array of 'Dead influences.

After just shy of a decade of success, the band had supposedly played its swan song at that San Francisco date last summer, which capped off a tour that entertained 840,000 Grateful Dead and Mayer fans.

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As such, it's shaping up to be another busy year for Mayer, who had an especially action-packed 2023. Last year saw the guitarist embark on an acoustic tour , which saw him test-drive new material, and reprise his blues power trio for the first time in six years. 

The MSG Sphere, meanwhile, is doing its best to become the eighth wonder of the modern world. Officially opened in September 2023 after a four-year construction, beneath its dome fans are treated to an immersive 16k experience delivered by its wraparound LED screens, space-age audio tech and 4D physical effects.

Screenings of Director Darren Aronofsky's docu-film, Postcard from Earth , followed U2's grand opening residency, for which the Edge revealed he'd ditched tube amps . Instead, he opted for Universal Audio amp emulator pedals, with the chosen trio replicating the characteristics of a ‘55 Fender 5E3 Deluxe Tweed, Vox AC30 and AC30 Top Boost, and ‘65 Fender Deluxe Reverb.

Advance presale registration for the Dead & Company residency is now available. Tickets go on general sale February 9 at 10am PT.  

For more information, head to DeadandCompany.com .

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A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog , Guitar World , and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis , in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.

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John Mayer Finds New Life In Solo Tour Finale At Kia Forum In Inglewood [Review/Photos/Videos]

Pulling off a one-person show on any size stage is no small feat. The bigger the stage gets, the bigger that feat becomes. How big of a feat, then, should we consider John Mayer ’s solo tour, which sold out arenas across America, like, say, the 18,000-seat Kia Forum in Inglewood, California?

The seven-time Grammy winner has always had a charm and confidence on stage, and has never shied away from sharing his inner monologue and having his own repartee with the audience. But here, during the final stop of his latest tour at the Forum, he commanded the large and legendary room with an ease that belied his usual neuroses in an improv show for the ages.

Throughout the two-hour finale, John took turns cracking jokes and pouring his heart out while playing (and doing) “whatever comes to mind.” He sprinkled Def Leppard into a winding medley of “Love on the Weekend” and “Split Screen Sadness”, blended a Joni Mitchell -style version of “Last Train Home” into “Something Like Olivia”, teased Simon & Garfunkel ’s “Homeward Bound” at the end of “Stop This Train”, played “3 by 5” by audience request, and shouted out Jon Bon Jovi (who, apparently, was in the building) with a riff from “Dead or Alive” en route to “If I Ever Get Around to Living” and “No Such Thing”.

Mayer spent most of the show plucking away at his acoustic guitar, with occasional sojourns onto his resonator guitar and piano. At one point, after a run on the keys that included “New Light”, “You’re Gonna Live Forever In Me”, “I Will Be Found”, and “Changing”, he channeled his inner James Blake by recording a piano loop over which he then played a ripping guitar solo.

Along the way, he sprinkled in silly quips, heartfelt messages to his fans, and video clips that hearkened back to his early days as a burgeoning musical talent with a signature smart aleck charisma. For all the throwbacks to classics, though, it was the freshness of the affair that made it so special. Sure, John’s new, unreleased track, “Drifting”, was a nice touch, though there was certainly something else about John’s attitude and approach that proved pervasive.

“This is the truest tour I have ever played in my life,” he told the audience, during one of many heart-to-heart moments. “This tour has changed everything for me.”

John also confessed that he had been considering what he would do next. Retirement, he claimed, wasn’t in the offing, though mentioning it at all seemed to suggest that maybe, just maybe, stepping away for a time (or even for good) had been on his mind at some point.

Now, instead, John Mayer seems refreshed, renewed, and ready for the next phase of his career and his life. This may be his greatest feat of all. At the age of 45, after 25 years in the music business, with eight albums and multiple reinventions—from semi-reluctant pop star to precocious blues phenom, from country twanger to Grateful Dead acolyte (including a drop of “Friend of the Devil” at the Forum)—he still seems to have so much more to give.

There’s already plenty more to come on his calendar, as well. After wrapping up his prodigious run with Dead & Company this summer , John will resume the domestic leg of his solo acoustic tour in late September before continuing on to Europe in spring of 2024, with yet another stop at the Forum along the way.

Click below to view fan-shot videos and photo galleries of John Mayer and support act Alec Benjamin courtesy of photographer Matthew Rea .

John Mayer – “Love on the Weekend” (With “Split Screen Sadness” Snippet & “Hysteria” By Def Leppard Snippet) – 4/14/23

[Video: Obvslyme09 ]

John Mayer – “Free Fallin'” – 4/14/23

[Video: Sevy Smith ]

John Mayer – “Edge of Desire” – 4/14/23

[Video: eddie rubio ]

John Mayer – “Changing” – 4/14/23

John Mayer – “Your Body is a Wonderland” – 4/14/23

[Video: Sutton Sabinash ]

John Mayer – “Stop This Train” – 4/14/23

John Mayer – “In Your Atmosphere” – 4/14/23

John Mayer – “XO” – 4/14/23

John Mayer – “3×5” – 4/14/23

[Video: MrB & Me ]

John Mayer – “Born and Raised” – 4/14/23

John Mayer – “Covered in Rain” – 4/14/23

John Mayer – “New Light” > “You’re Gonna Live Forever in Me” – 4/14/23

John Mayer – Tour Final Thoughts & “Drifting” – 4/14/23

Setlist : John Mayer | Kia Forum | Inglewood, CA | 4/14/23

Acoustic: Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, Heartbreak Warfare, Love on the Weekend (with ‘Split Screen Sadness’ snippet and ‘Hysteria’ by Def Leppard snippet), XO, January 16, 2002: “Room for Squares” Interview, Neon, On the Way Home (Snippet/request) > Who Says, Last Train Home, Something Like Olivia, Driftin’, In Your Atmosphere (With ‘Wherever I Go’ outro)

Piano: New Light (First verse & chorus only) > You’re Gonna Live Forever in Me, I Will Be Found (Lost at Sea) > Changing, Acoustic, “Continuum” Interview, Stop This Train (With ‘Homeward Bound’ by Simon & Garfunkel outro), The Age of Worry, Covered in Rain > Your Body Is a Wonderland, 3×5, Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967

Double-Neck Acoustic: Friend of the Devil (Grateful Dead), If I Ever Get Around to Living (With ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ by Bon Jovi intro), Edge of Desire

Encore: Born and Raised, Free Fallin’ (Tom Petty)

John Mayer | Kia Forum | Inglewood, CA | 4/14/23 | Photos: Matthew Rea

Alec benjamin | kia forum | inglewood, ca | 4/14/23 | photos: matthew rea.

• Dead & Company
• Grateful Dead

John Mayer Weighs the Odds Dead & Company Will Perform Together Again

by Alex Hopper October 3, 2023, 1:00 pm

Dead & Company recently wrapped up their “Final Tour.” One member of the revamped group, John Mayer, has commented on whether or not the tour will actually be the enduring group’s last.

Videos by American Songwriter

A viewer asked Mayer what the chances are that he will play with Dead & Company “on the road again” during a recent installment of Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live .

“On the road is an interesting question,” Mayer responded. “We will play shows. I have to believe that we love this music so much that we will play shows. We are trying to figure out what that looks like for the future. Everyone has it in their heart to keep playing.”

Cohen threw out a suggestion of his own: “Two weeks at the Sphere–Call Irving Azoff right now.” 

The group–consisting of Mayer, Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist Bob Weir, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman–announced their final tour last year.

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“As we put the finishing touches on booking venues, and understanding that word travels fast, we wanted to be the first to let you know that Dead & Company will be hitting the road next summer for what will be our final tour,” the band said in a statement . “Stay tuned for a full list of dates for what will surely be an exciting, celebratory, and heartfelt last run of shows.”

That iteration of the Grateful Dead was formed in 2015. The group played their first show on Halloween of the same year and has continued to play as a unit since then. Mayer joined forces with Weir after having played with him on The Late Late Show .

Though you may not be able to catch Dead & Co. on tour for the foreseeable future, you can catch Mayer this fall on his solo tour.

Mayer has just a handful of dates left on his current trek. The fall leg of the tour includes stops in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Nashville.

American Songwriter caught Mayer’s solo show during his first trip to Music City, writing , “Mayer’s storytelling and guitar handiwork was evident throughout as he took fans on a musical and life journey. Throwback videos of his early days were shown between songs giving more personal insight to the man behind the hits.”

Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images

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