By Kent Paterson
For the second year in a row, the Good Ship Terrapin Station has landed in Las Vegas, Nevada. The prestigious passengers disembarking from the vessel include Bob Weir, rhythm guitar and vocals; John Mayer, lead guitar and vocals; Jeff Chimenti, keyboards and vocals; Oteil Burbridge, bass, percussion and vocals; Jay Lane, drums and percussion; and Mickey Hart, drums, percussion and space raps. Collectively, they are called Dead and Company, the most recent offshoot of the Grateful Dead.
Delving deep into the original Grateful Dead song book as well as into the broader catalog of Americana Plus tunes covered by the California born band (Dylan, The Band, Chuck Berry, Rolling Stones, Jimmy Cliff, Martha and the Vandellas, the Beatles, Marty Robbins, Howlin’ Wolf, etc.), the six musical maestros deliver a solid three-hour plus show that takes the audience on an unforgettable ride into the galaxies and back.
During March and April shows at Las Vegas’ state-of-the-art Sphere music and entertainment venue, Dead and Company have mightily performed familiar Grateful Dead standards and choice covers. Among dozens of other numbers, concert-goers have been treated to “China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider,” “Truckin’” “Terrapin Station,” “Eyes of the World, “Playing in the Band,” “The Harder They Come,” “Brokedown Palace,” “Casey Jones” “Man Smart, Woman Smarter,” “Morning Dew” and the emblematic 60’s suite of “St. Stephen, William Tell and The Eleven,” a composition which conjures up flashes of foggy but fun San Francisco during a time when a new world was writhing to burst from a wounded womb,
(Denizens of the Sun City might be proud to know that at a Sphere show last year Weir and the boys, in an echo of a song sequence played at the famous 1972 concert held at friend Ken Kesey’s spread in Veneta, Oregon, followed up the iconic psychedelic era “Dark Star” with a rendition of Marty Robbins’ “El Paso.” Once that tale of wicked, whirling Felina and her ill-fated, jealous suitor at Rosa’s Cantina was in the bag, Dead and Company faded back into “Dark Star.”)
Now in its tenth year, Dead and Company is at the top of their game. Once the Grateful Dead’s on-stage jokester as well the handsome crooner in shorts, a white-bearded Bob Weir stands today as the stoic elder tending to the flock gathered by the river side. Nowadays, the clowning is left to Mayer and Chimenti who make funny faces at each other while trading improvisational rifts that shoot to the stars and explode in audio ecstasy. Beaming an eternal smile, bassist Burbridge sways back and forth with a feminist symbol etched into his instrument as he and drummer/ percussionists Hart and Lane keep the beat pounding and the dancers hopping along.
The immersive visual show which accompanies the band is simply incomparable. Between the visual show’s beginning and end in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district, cradle of the counterculture and old home of the Grateful Dead, the audience is absorbed by bouncing animation, black and white images and larger-than-life representations of the musicians in real time. Some may partake in LSD or mushrooms to augment the experience, but hallucinogens are not necessary at all to enjoy this stunningly exquisite trip.
History hovers over this year’s 18-show Dead and Company Sphere series, which runs through May 17 and is appropriately dubbed Dead Forever. The year 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Grateful Dead, the 30th anniversary of co-founder Jerry Garcia’s death and the 10th anniversary of Dead and Company.
Delightful surprises spring from the set list. On March 29, following the drums/space concert segment orchestrated by the rapping rhythm devil supreme Mickey Hart, Bob Weir sauntered back on stage and belted out Bob Dylan’s classic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” You could hear a pin drop in the dome-shaped venue holding about 17,000 people. For those unfamiliar with the song, here are a few choice lines:
Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin‘
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall….
A Visit to Shakedown Vegas ’25
Dead and Company’s 7:30 pm Sphere performance is just the biggest of many acts that form the Dead Forever Vegas experience. Pre and post-concert action centers at the Tuscany Suites and Casino not far from the Sphere, where Shakedown Vegas ’25 welcomes the Dead Heads. Shakedown Vegas is a resurrection of the old vending scene known as Shakedown Street which popped up outside Grateful Dead shows as well as performances by Grateful Dead tribute bands, drum circles, giveaways, special brunches and, true to the theme, even tie dyed decor in the casino. It’s practically a non-stop party for three or four days.
Thousands and thousands of Dead Heads are flocking to Las Vegas, from almost everywhere and every generation. There are grandparents, fathers, mothers, tweens and teens. Twenty-somethings and septuagenarians. Baby boomers, Xers, Millenials and Zs.
On concert days, the parking lot behind the Tuscany resembles a Mexican tianguis of sorts, with dozens of vendors selling Grateful Dead and Dead and Company related hats, t-shirts and other attire, photos and art work, old Dead recordings, flowers, dolls, food and more. One t-shirt for sale bearing a picture of Jerry Garcia proclaims, “I’m old, but I got to see Jerry.”
Additionally, Shakedown allows folks with an educational/social mission to showcase their work and connect the local with the global. Staffing the booth of the Las Vegas Jam Band Society, Paige Tolson exuded the vibe.
Originally from Chicago, Tolson first attended a Grateful Dead concert in 1985 and was present for the group’s last performance with Jerry Garcia at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995. Exactly one month later, Garcia passed from this earth.
A non-profit which has been active for 25 years, the Las Vegas Jam Band Society raises funds to acquire musical equipment for middle school students and maintains a scholarship program for high school seniors who plan to study music in Nevada.
For adults, the Jam Band Society brings bands that normally don’t play locally so residents “get the benefit of the joy of music here in Las Vegas, not just a place to party,” Tolson said.
Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 opening of the Sphere and the two Dead and Company residencies have reconnected old friends and connected new friends, Tolson added. “It’s brought us back together and together.”
Molly Henderson and Liora Soladay are two of the movers and shakers of Shakedown Vegas ’25.
Reviving Shakedown’s caravan-like, open air market in Las Vegas wasn’t an easy task at first but it was a necessary one, the two women explained.
“We had to come up with a way to have a Shakedown. It’s part of the culture. It’s a lot of people who depend on that income and are huge fans of the band,” Henderson said. After first seeing the Grateful Dead live in 1983, Henderson subsequently got into the nomadic groove of fans who followed the band from show-to-show across country and continents.
In the fall of 1990, she went on the European tour which featured the double keyboards of Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby, who temporarily helped fill the void created by the untimely death of longtime keyboardist Brent Mydland in July 1990.
“It was really, really incredible,” Henderson recalled. “The European Dead fans would show up in like vintage bell bottoms with the head band and fringe buckskin vest. It was really, really fun.”
In the first Sphere run in 2024, Shakedown Vegas organizers learned the ropes of navigating Las Vegas’ red tape. The climate crisis also impacted. Because the 2024 Dead and Company concert dates ran into the summer, vendors were confronted with extremely hot weather (Fourth of July weekend last year the temperature reached a Las Vegas historical record of 120-21 fahrenheit), rendering outdoor vending not only uncomfortable but dangerous. Las Vegas got so hot that a local news channel ran a story on crayons quickly melting on the pavement. Luckily, the Tuscany had a big space inside to accommodate Shakedown.
Henderson and Soladay praise the casino-hotel for helping Shakedown gain a firm foothold. “They’ve gone above and beyond for us in hosting the event,” Henderson stressed.
“The big difference is that we built it up last year from nothing to something, and this year we started with something and we just keep building it,” Soladay said.
“We have so many more people coming this year,” Henderson added.
Jay Soladay, Liora’s husband, added a few historical footnotes. According to the Californian, he had a friend who was the son of West Coast poet Robert M. Petersen, a songwriting partner of the late Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh.
Introduced to the Grateful Dead when he was 11 years old, Soladay recalled his initiation as a “back stage kid” who hung out with the children of the musicians and associates during the shows. Musically, though, the youngsters only really got excited when the Mickey Hart-Bill Kreutzmann drum solo portion of the concert ripped and roared away. “That’s all we cared about, the drums,” Soladay said.
Soladay drifted away from the scene as an older teenager, got reconnected with it when he was 22 and then went traveling, winding up in Nepal where he was captivated by embroidered t-shirts.
“Decided I was gonna start bringing back merchandise from overseas just like the early Shakedown vendors did as they brought stuff back from India,” Soladay said. “Those were the first vendors who were bringing stuff back from India and Nepal in the late ’70s..”
By 1992, Jay and Liora were selling their clothing outside Dead shows along with other Shakedown vendors, a business whose future was thrown into serious question by Jerry Garcia’s 1995 death.
But the music and culture bounced back, kept thriving by the huge following the Grateful Dead cultivated during 30 years of recording and touring and the various offshoots of band members that sprouted from Jerry’s ashes-The Other Ones, The Dead, Further, and Fare Thee Well. A nearly endless stream of taped concert recordings in public circulation as well as the 2007 launch of the 24-7 Grateful Dead Channel on Sirius XM satellite radio should also be credited for keeping the Dead and their music alive and well. Then came John Mayer and Dead and Company.
“(Mayer) almost doubled the interest of this new generation,” Soladay contended. I would say he’s really brought a whole new group of people in; people realize how beautiful and rich (Grateful Dead songwriter) Robert Hunter and the Grateful Dead produce music.”
Dead and Company’s Sphere residencies has yielded a significant economic harvest in Sin City. Sphere revenue from the thirty 2024 shows alone raked in nearly $131.5 million.
Of course, that bonanza doesn’t include the money spent by tens of thousands of Dead Heads on lodging, food, drinks and doobies, Shakedown merch, transportation, gaming, etc. Cabbies love the Dead Heads, and the tie-dye t-shirts as well as images of skulls, roses and lighting rods add a distinct flavor- and attendant aroma- to Vegas when Dead and Company are in town.
Where the Music (Almost) Never Stops
Robert Shatzer is the Shakedown soul who books the bands for the pre and post concert performances at the Tuscany, in tandem with the venue. The big man checks out the promo kits of interested musicians, listens to samples and looks for what he calls active, quality musicians with “heart” who can travel and pull it off for the Dead Heads.
“And we have a very limited budget. It’s very humble, because we don’t charge a cover charge and some of our spaces are very small. The Copa Room only holds 200, the Piazza Lounge about 100, the brunch peaks out about 50, so the band has to come to want to play. It’s not big pay for them, needless to say, but we can make sure they have a really good time and for most of them, that’s good enough,” Shatzer said.
Shakedown Vegas ’25 will feature more than 40 bands from across the Land of the Dead. For instance, New Mexico’s Lonn Calanca Band, specializing in the songs performed by the Jerry Garcia Band (Garcia’s side band when he wasn’t on the road with the Grateful Dead) helped keep fans dancing at Shakedown in the late March run of shows.
Tony Saunders, son of the late Bay Area keyboardist Merl Saunders who collaborated with Jerry Garcia during the 1973-75 time frame, is scheduled to recreate the songs and songs of that legendary project for those who were there and those who weren’t even born yet. Then there is Bella Rayne. The 17-year-old Bay Area player got bored during the COVID-19 pandemic, decided to teach herself guitar and is a rising star who is wows audiences with her licks.
Shatzer calculates that every state now has a Grateful Dead cover or tribute band.
What explains this phenomenon? Shatzer attributes it to the versatility of a band which tapped into the diverse roots of American music, incorporating “traditional songs,” folk, bluegrass, rock, psychedelic, cowboy and other styles into a unique sound.
“There’s a little bit of something for everybody in the Grateful Dead catalog if you take the time to look at it,” Shatzer mused. “I think that really leads a lot of people just getting into it…if you talk to each (cover/tribute) band member, definitely each band, they’re all gonna tell you a different story about how they got to where they are. So it’s quite interesting, to be honest.”
San Diego guitarist and vocalist Cameron Radke was a toddler when Jerry Garcia died, so he never got to see the original Grateful Dead. Eventually, though, he was drawn to the music by friends who were into the folk and bluegrass side of the Dead and came to a “different realization” about the creative possibilities offered by Dead music, which he said is quite adaptive across a spectrum of instrumentation and vocalization, both acoustic and electric.
Radke’s first live exposure to the Dead was during the Fare Thee Well gigs of 2015 when Grateful Dead vets Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, played together in a prophetically termed “final” series of performances together by the four core Dead members. The OGs were joined by Trey Anastasio on lead guitar, Jeff Chimenti on keys and Bruce Hornsby, who had played the Grateful Dead during 1990-91. Around that time, Radke teamed up with other San Diego area musicians to form the Shakedown String Band.
Radke’s group played Shakedown Vegas in both 2024 and 2025. According to the southern California musician, the group is mainly led by bassist and vocalist Aquilino Soriano and himself, with original songwriting shared by Soriano, Radke and vocalist Jess Corso.
For the Vegas shows, the band concentrated on playing Grateful Dead covers to fit the theme. Concerned about Shakedown String Band duplicating the Dead and Company songs of that evening after fans trickled back to the Tuscany from the Sphere, Radke found himself digitally checking real time postings of Dead and Company’s sets as he assembled his band’s own set lists for the late night party.
Back in the analog days of yore such a task was nearly impossible, of course, unless one had a direct line to concert staff or was listening in to one of the live radio broadcasts the Grateful Dead sometimes permitted and promoted.
“Everybody in (Shakedown String Band) is from a different generation,” Radke elaborated, with Soriano even having attended the Woodstock concert of 1969. “We do it because we love the community that comes to our shows.”
Featuring different musical styles, Shakedown String Band plays original songs, has recorded a CD and regularly performs a late Friday night, “high energy rockin’ show” at Winstons in Oceanside, California. “We love to play as any originals as we can and mix some Grateful Dead and maybe the Band, Little Feat,” Radke said.
Will Shakedown String Band play any future Shakedown Vegas? “We’d love to go back,” he says.
Richard Lipson, guitarist and vocalist for another San Diego band, Drivin’ the Bus, also kicked out the jams with his bandmates at Shakedown Vegas for the second time. In addition to Grateful Dead songs, the group covers Santana, Led Zeppelin, Traffic, John Prine, Grand Funk Railroad and others. A lawyer by day, Lipson dates his first Grateful Dead live experience back to 1977 when he drove from Colorado Springs to Chicago for a show at the old Fox Theater, thus commencing a long journey in which he estimates attending 300 Dead shows, including all the old Grateful Dead concerts at the Las Vegas Silver Bowl.
“We kinda mash a lot of songs together too as well. That’s kinda our thing…like start one genre and mix it with a new jam band. We do cover a lot of the newer bands like Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and Goose and then in between we try to do original stuff, in between the bookends..,” Lipson said.
“The greatest thing now is that younger people are keeping that flame alive, just keeping the music going, which is awesome because it’s old music…, he chuckled. “When we go to a bar and we see 21 year-olds dancing to it, it’s just the greatest feeling. It’s awesome…”
Dead Forever and Everywhere
Looking back over the past 60 years, the Grateful Dead has inspired musicians across genres, earning their songwriters and musicians a unique place in the American music catalog. Jimmy Buffet did a rocking cover of “Scarlet Begonias,” “Bertha” became an integral part of Los Lobos’ repertoire, and salsa master Oscar Hernandez of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra had a side project a couple of years back dubbed Latin Dead that further widened the boundaries of Dead music. A far from complete list of other famous musicians who’ve covered Dead tunes include Elvis Costello (“Ship of Fools”), Lyle Lovett (“Friend of the Devil”), Mighty Diamonds (“Touch of Grey”), Jane’s Addiction (“Ripple,”), Black Crowes (“Brokedown Palace”), Steel Pulse (“Franklin’s Tower,”) and Billy Strings (“Dire Wolf).
A sampling of stage appearances with the Grateful Dead include Bo Diddley, John Cippolina of Quicksilver Messenger Service, Joan Baez, Branford Marsalis, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Brazil’s Airto and Flora Purim, and Carlos Santana. In 1987, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead paired up in a historic tour.
Together with other musicians, drummers Hart and Kreutzmann contributed to the sound track of “Apocalypse Now,” Francis Ford Coppola’s jarring 1970’s movie set in the Vietnam War. The Grateful Dead was inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 and most recently, a prestigious Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts honor in 2024. As rock empresario Bill Graham was widely quoted about the Grateful Dead, “They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones that do what they do.”
Far from done, Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir and his Wolf Brothers/Wolf Pack band have further expanded the boundaries of Dead music in their recent performances alongside symphony orchestras at times when Dead and Company are off schedule.
Who could have imagined that what was once described by a newsman as “rag-tag” band would become a musical powerhouse, an American cultural reference and an economic engine? Who could have foretold that 60 years after that “rag tag” band emerged some members would still be out there playing and attracting successive generations of fans? Who could have predicted all this, least of all the Grateful Dead? Maybe, a few lines from the lovely Grateful Dead song “Scarlet Begonias” can help us understand a little bit:
“..Well, I ain’t always right, but I’ve never been wrong
..Seldom turns out the way it does in a song
Once in a while, you get shown the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right…”