The Dead Reunite For First Tour In Five Years
More than 40 years after initially forming and just months after reuniting to support Barack Obama, the Dead will embark on their first full tour in five years. The band features four founding members of the Grateful Dead — bassist Phil Lesh, guitarist Bob Weir and “the rhythm devils” Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann — joined by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and Allman Brothers Band/Gov’t Mule guitarist Warren Haynes. The 19-date “An Evening With” tour will kick off April 12th in Greensboro, North Carolina, then hang out on the East Coast for 15 shows (including an April 25th gig at New York’s Madison Square Garden) before heading to the Midwest and West Coast for four shows, culminating in a May 10th concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre near the band’s hometown of San Francisco.
“We’ve got some unfinished business,” Weir said of the tour. “Everybody has a whole new bag of tricks; we have the body of material we worked up over the years and we have a mind meld going on here and it would be a sin to let that just wither and die.” The band reportedly started talking tour when they reunited for the “Dead Heads For Obama” concert in San Francisco in February ’08. The band also linked up for Obama-inspired “Change Rocks” concert at Penn State University in October, but by then plans for a full-scale reunion tour were in place. “When you walk out on the stage the possibilities are infinite every time,” Lesh said. “It’s infinite and therefore you can still explore it till the day that you die.” Pre-sale tickets for the tour go on sale January 13th.
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