Fifty years after Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh first performed in Menlo Park, Calif., the surviving members of the Grateful Dead will reunite in 2015 for what they say is their final series of concerts.
The four surviving members, Weir, Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, will play three shows at Chicago's Soldier Field, July 3, 4 and 5. "These will be the last shows with the four of us together," Weir tells Billboard. They will be joined for the show by Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, as well as keyboard player Bruce Hornsby, who played with the Grateful Dead in the 90s, and Jeff Chimenti, who plays keyboard with Weir's side project, RatDog.
FARE THEE WELL This is the final time Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, & Bill Kreutzmann will ever perform together. pic.twitter.com/Ga08JZ2Nn9— RatDog.Org (@RatDogDotOrg) January 16, 2015
"We had to sort through a number of options," Weir said in an interview with 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."
Anastasio called it "an absolute honor" to be part of the Dead's "final chapter."
"I got a really heart-warming letter from Phil saying that he and the other three guys had talked about it and hoped I would do it," Anastasio told Billboard. "I didn't hesitate for a second to say yes."
The surviving members of the band last performed together as The Dead in 2009, and Weir and Lesh toured extensively in subsequent years as Furthur, building their shows largely on the Grateful Dead’s vast and broad repertoire of rock, folk, blues and country songs.
In a statement posted on the band's website, Lesh said, “It is with respect and gratitude that we reconvene the Dead one last time to celebrate - not merely the band's legacy, but also the community that we’ve been playing to, and with, for 50 years.”
Hart tweeted, "Look around, Jerry is smiling."
According to Billboard, tickets will be available to fan club members on a first-come, first-served basis from Feb. 9 to 11. A local public presale will occur Feb. 12-13, with sales to the general public starting Feb. 14. Fans can also get mail-order tickets, in a very old-school way, from dead.net, starting on Jan. 20.
The band posted a video today of Garcia's daughter, Trixie, announcing the shows:
The band began performing under the name The Warlocks in May 1965, and did their first show in a pizza parlor; they became the Grateful Dead in December of that year and went on to perform more than 2,000 concerts until Garcia’s death in 1995.