In somber times like this, there’s a silver lining. You know — a touch of grey. When you see musicians perform live, you’re sharing a crisp, new moment with those on stage and with everyone in the audience. When I saw Dead & Company at Fenway Park in 2023, more than 75,000 lives were intersecting for one special night — 75,000 people sharing a single moment in time. Two of them were original members of a San Franciscan band first called the Warlocks.
Out of the ashes of Jerry Garcia’s death, Bob Weir and bassist Phil Lesh embarked on a mission to keep the Dead’s legacy alive. As Disney’s film Coco so carefully explained, the spirits of the dead live on — at the very least — through memory and art. Weir has spoken about Grateful Dead songs as metaphysical beings that are channeled by the musicians who perform them. Their sentience is something that can pass through new hands, keeping that figurative flame lit. Corporally, Weir, Lesh, Mickey Hart, and drummer Bill Kreutzmann continued to play as their bodies aged. They welcomed in new bandmates who could help carry the Grateful Dead’s collective spirit forward. Former bandmate Donna Jean Godchaux would occasionally appear with the band. Kreutzmann eventually stopped touring, while Lesh created Phil Lesh & Friends, performing at more intimate venues.
When I first saw any of these bands from what I call “the Dead Diaspora,” it was in 2023. In college, I had listened deeply to American Beauty and the self-titled live album, commonly known as Skull & Roses. I was a free-thinking art student who worked barefoot in the studio, drawing color-palette inspiration from Lisa Frank and making figure studies in Crayola crayon. Entirely sober, I would lie back with headphones and an eye pillow, letting my imagination interpret what I heard. It felt far more reactive than any visualization Windows Media Player could provide.
When performing at open mic nights and karaoke shows, I tried to live inside songs I had deeply studied. It felt similar to Weir’s channeling metaphor. Years later, I returned to the stage — now at Queeraoke — finding ways to connect with classic studio cuts while working in improvisation. Sometimes I combine versions of a song: Carole King and James Taylor for You’ve Got a Friend, or Katie Melua and Leonard Cohen for In My Secret Life. When I admired the soul in Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah, I explored how to bring that emotional weight into Cohen’s seven-verse original.
I digress back to June 2023.
That year, I set a goal to see some of the greatest guitarists passing through Boston. It started with Jorma Kaukonen. I had been listening to Jefferson Airplane — high on imagination — since college, and this was my first chance to see the creator of Embryonic Journey, the closing tune for the Friends series finale. This same guitarist, who built a career in 1960s San Francisco, was now performing at City Winery Boston. That arts scene had been so close-knit that Jerry Garcia was credited as a spiritual advisor in the liner notes for Surrealistic Pillow. That night, Kaukonen played a blues set, making light of his age as he introduced the encore with a joke about how difficult it had become to get up from his chair.
The next morning, I started getting ready for Dead & Company. Weir had taken on a younger guitarist to play the Jerry to his Bobby — some guy named John Mayer, whose success had once been prophesied in the finale of Dawson’s Creek. I hadn’t been to Fenway Park since Mike Lowell’s playing days, so I checked the stadium’s rules on face paint. Given the all-clear, I painted the lightning skull over my third eye — pineal gland, or however you’d like to describe the placement.
Bob Weir — his worn face full of white scruff, like a beloved terrier who’s been there for everything — walked onstage to greet an audience cheering any cloud that offered shade that Saturday afternoon. Mickey Hart, one of the Grateful Dead’s “Rhythm Devils,” was already behind his kit, but Bobby was the elder we looked to for the energy of the moment. Ambient jams filled the air as dusk approached. There’s magic in how these improvisational passages take on a life of their own — how a sixteen-minute Terrapin Station can stretch beyond forty. That song, in particular, carries collective chants that gain new dimensions when thousands sing together.
Seventy-five thousand is a lot of people.
Hart now had Jay Lane as his drumming partner. Normally, Hart and Kreutzmann worked in close synchronicity — a teamwork I’d compare to Def Leppard’s dual lead guitarists. Part of Lane’s role was stepping into the Hart/Kreutzmann monster that is Drums & Space. These extended jams are why Dead setlists look so short on paper. Fenway Park management eventually forced Dead & Company to cut the evening short, and Bobby left us with One More Saturday Night.
As we spilled out into the surrounding streets, a sea of Deadheads flooded the neighborhood. While bootleg T-shirt vendors were expected, you could also hear the pops and smell the odor of unauthorized nitrous sellers offering concertgoers “the most bang for their buck.” The MBTA Green Line platform is crowded on a normal rush hour — imagine how many people saw the trolley operators as their designated drivers that night. Train infrequency outweighed platform congestion, so I walked to Fenway Station. When my train reached Kenmore, even more people poured in.
Two of them carried an urn.
Deadheads are known for both their sense of community and their deep devotion. Embracing eccentricity, I wasn’t surprised that someone might bring a deceased loved one’s remains to a show. The urn was held by a woman in her early sixties. A male companion draped an arm over her shoulder, consoling her through tears. Once the doors shut, she opened the lid, reached inside, and looked around.
“I have cookies if anybody wants one!” she announced.
I declined, but struck up a conversation with an older gentleman from Cambridge — a guitar teacher who once saw the Ventures perform at a high-school dance. Externally, I was impressed by his lived experience. Internally, I was struck by how long he’d been seeing live music. He was a longtime Kaukonen fan but hadn’t seen him in over a decade. He appreciated guitarists across genres, though he warned me about 1980s hair-metal compositions “with too many notes.” I asked whether viewing them through a Mozart-tempo lens might shift his perspective. By the time we reached Park Street, we each had new bands to look up.
Bob Weir was once the youngest member of the Grateful Dead — a boy among men, a protégé of Garcia’s. Over time, the apprentice grew into something else entirely: a steady presence, carrying songs that no longer belonged to any one person. Without Jerry, Bobby bearded up and became a kind of patriarch, not by replacing what was lost, but by keeping space open for others to step in and help carry the music forward.
I’m grateful that I got to hear these songs live — still breathing, still changing — passed through different hands while retaining their spirit.
I’m closing with a jack-o’-lantern I carved in 2016, a tribute to Stanley Mouse’s American Beauty and his broader work as a principal graphic designer for the Grateful Dead. It was a brief, glowing thing — carved by hand, lit from within for a night, and then gone — living on only in memory.
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