The Grateful Dead Reuniting For Farewell Shows With Phish Frontman

The Grateful Dead Reuniting For Farewell Shows With Phish Frontman

Many dreams and/or hallucinations are coming true today. In honor of the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary, the surviving members of the band have announced that they’re reuniting for a trio of farewell shows with Phish frontman Trey Anastasio standing in for the late Jerry Garcia. The shows are happening 7/3-5 at Soldier Field in Chicago, the site of the Dead’s final concert with Garcia on 7/9/95, and will be the original members’ final performances together. Bob Weir, 67; Phil Lesh, 74; Mickey Hart, 71; and Bill Kreutzmann, 68, will be participating alongside Anastasio, longtime Dead collaborator Bruce Hornsby, and Weir’s RatDog bandmate Jeff Chimenti. The band reportedly turned down a $3 million offer to headline Bonnaroo. “We had to sort through a number of options,” Weir told Billboard. “Were we going to do a festival-style event or go back to our classic mode of an evening with the band? We narrowed it down to: Let’s just do it simple and clean.” The band also shared this statement:

We are thrilled to announce “Fare Thee Well – Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead” – to the Dead community.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir will reunite at Chicago’s Soldier Field, nearly 20 years to the day of the last-ever Grateful Dead concert, which took place at the same venue. “Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead” will take place over three nights – July 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2015 – and mark the original members’ last-ever performance together. The band will be joined by Trey Anastasio (Guitar), Jeff Chimenti (Keyboards) and Bruce Hornsby (Piano), and will perform two sets of music each night.

In the tradition of the original Grateful Dead Ticketing Service, tickets will be available via a first come first serve mail order system starting on January 20th, followed by an online pre-sale through Dead Online Ticketing February 12th and will be available online to the general public on February 14th via Ticketmaster.

All the info on the Fare Thee Well shows is available at Dead50.com. Read our list of the Dead’s 10 best songs here.

more from News