GD60’s celebration of 60 years of the Grateful Dead’s music features a cross-generational approach with sensational guest spots.
It’s Friday, 1 August, in San Francisco, and the city is being taken over by music fans coming from all over for a three-day party (GD60) to celebrate 60 years of Grateful Dead music. It would’ve been guitarist Jerry Garcia’s 83rd birthday, making this weekend a logical time to honor the music that dates back to his formation of the Grateful Dead in 1965. Dead & Company are set to play three shows in Golden Gate Park (a throwback to their pop-up shows in the 1960s), with opening sets from Billy Strings, Sturgill Simpson, and the Trey Anastasio Band.
The music has continued to endure since Garcia passed on in 1995 at age 53, a spiritually devastating moment for the fanbase. However, it didn’t take too long for everyone to realize that this songbook has a life of its own, as the remaining band members continued to tour and explore the music in various formats while tribute bands popped up all over the country. The Grateful Dead’s impact on pop culture has been profound, catalyzing a movement that continues to resonate through the decades.
“It was not premeditated, ideological, or planned; it simply happened… What was remarkable about the Haight scene was that it took the insights of a small group of avant-garde artists and made them accessible to the better part of a generation through music and culture, with ripples of influence that in many cases have only grown since 1967,” author, historian, and band insider Dennis McNally details in his new book, The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties.
GD60 is a natural follow-up to the “Fare Thee Well” GD50 shows of 2015, billed as the last time the four surviving members of the Grateful Dead would perform together in public. The five shows at Levi’s Stadium in nearby Santa Clara and Soldier Field in Chicago also featured Phish‘s Trey Anastasio on lead guitar, and were a vibrant celebration of the band’s 50th anniversary.
Yet the viability for a GD60 event came into doubt when bassist Phil Lesh passed on last October at age 84. Guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Mickey Hart have continued to perform large-scale Grateful Dead music as Dead & Company since the fall of 2015, with guitarist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, and drummer Jay Lane (who subbed in for Bill Kreutzmann in 2023). However, after what was billed as their final tour in 2023, Dead & Company have only played at their acclaimed residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Weir openly questioned whether a GD60 event could go on without Phil Lesh, but the concept of holding a big weekend in Golden Gate Park to honor the milestone occasion has won the day.
Friday, 1st August
Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the streets, literally, with local scenester Jordan Feinstein and Friends playing a free early afternoon show of Dead tunes on a street corner at Haight & Masonic (as they did in memoriam when Phil Lesh passed away in October). Sunshine and good vibes abound as the band rock out with “Help on the Way” into “Franklin’s Tower” to open their second set. San Francisco’s famous microclimates soon come into play, though, as it’s cool and overcast over in the Park.
The positive vibes surge when jamgrass rocker Billy Strings and his band hit the stage at 4pm. “Dust in a Baggie” is an early highlight as a tune that fits into the mode of the Grateful Dead songbook, with its tale of a protagonist who gets 20 years in prison for a negligible amount of drugs. The traditional “Shady Grove” seems like a nod to the repertoire of the Jerry Garcia Band, and Strings impresses further when he shreds psychedelic rock riffage on his acoustic guitar for a hot jam in “Away From the Mire” from 2019’s Home to earn a big cheer.
Strings wins further sentiment on “If Your Hair’s Too Long (There’s Sin in Your Heart)”, singing, “You’ll live a life of fear and dread if you listen to the Grateful Dead.” He closes his set with “Thunder”, a song where Bill Kreutzmann asked him to set music to lyrics by late Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. It’s a rare honor that underscores Strings’ rise as a special talent breathing rare air.
Only at the end of Billy Strings’ set – upon trying to go from up close to back out to the bars to get a beer — does it become apparent what a massive crowd has filled the Polo Field. It’s packed with 60,000 people and navigation is tricky, but everyone remains in friendly spirits to mitigate a level of crowding that rarely occurs at the Outside Lands Festival due to multiple stages diffusing the crowd.
The crowd comes alive when Dead & Company open with “Feel Like a Stranger”, followed by a funky late 1970s arrangement on “Dancing in the Streets” that feels so fitting for a summer party in the park. It seems like a bit of a warm-up set as the group haven’t played since their Sphere finale in May, with a number of slower tunes. Lead guitarist John Mayer shows he’s ready to go when he rips a smoking solo on set closer “Althea” to confirm that “this space is getting hot.”
The second set jumps to a higher level as 38-year-old Grahame Lesh is welcomed to the stage, sporting his dad Phil’s “Big Brown” custom Alembic bass from the Grateful Dead’s early 1970s era as he sings Phil’s classic “Box of Rain”. Known primarily as a guitarist, Grahame Lesh had earlier honored his dad by playing bass with the Phil & Friends “Quintet” lineup at the Capitol Theater in New York in March.
Hearts are melting all over here as it’s truly a unique and special moment to see Grahame in such a role with Dead & Company. When he sings, “For this is all a dream we dreamed, one afternoon long ago”, it’s all the feels and then some. The vibe is high when Grahame stays on to play bass for “Playin’ in the Band”, as it starts to feel like he’s evolving before our eyes to a higher level on the sonic wizard scale.
Burbridge returns on bass for the rest of the set, as the group powers through a stellar sequence of “Estimated Prophet”, “Eyes of the World” and “Terrapin Station”. 77-year-old Bobby Weir sings the Garcia vocal on “Eyes” and sounds great as the band gels on the groovy jam, with Mayer and Chimenti weaving jazzy melodies around the pulsing bass line while 81-year-old Mickey Hart throws down the classic percussion accents alongside rock solid drummer Jay Lane. The anthemic “Terrapin” is another triumph, as Weir leads the band and audience through the storyteller’s journey to inspiration.
The patented “drums” and “space” combo provides some heady psychedelia as always, before a tangible buzz surges through the crowd when Billy Strings returns to the stage on electric guitar to lead the group through “Wharf Rat”.That buzz reveals a lot of Billy kids in the audience and it’s a momentous spot for the young gun, as he delivers a heartfelt vocal on the song about an alcoholic’s lament. When Strings and Mayer lock in on lead guitar for the “I’ll get up and fly away” section, it’s a special moment that sparks a hot jam as Strings shreds the solo. Strings and Mayer play off each other in sensational fashion for another shining GD60 moment.
After a big romp through “Not Fade Away”, Dead & Company encore with Bob Dylan‘s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” as images of Garcia appear on the big screens. It feels like church here in the Park, with Cowboy Bobby Weir presiding. In his cowboy hat and western-style serape, Weir looks ready to ride off with Clint Eastwood’s William Munny character at the end of 1992’s Unforgiven (with Munny said to have prospered in dry goods after moving to San Francisco). It’s an iconic look that Weir has developed over the past decade and it fits him so well, with his history of singing cosmic cowboy songs. The song has an inherently somber edge to close out the evening, yet the second set has been a triumph.
Saturday, 2 August
The weekend at GD60 is also a triumph for Grahame Lesh, who has seized the torch in 2025. He’s hosted a series of Terrapin Roadshow concerts with his own rotating all-star band, Grahame Lesh & Friends. Then he not only sits in with Dead & Company, he hosts three nights of concerts billed as the “Heart of Town” shows at the Pier 48 hangar at Mission Rock across from the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark on 31 July, 1 August, and 2 August.
At Thursday night’s 8pm show on “Night Zero” before GD60, Lesh enlisted rock legend Stephen Stills to join his band for a sequence of “Uncle John’s Band”, CSNY’s “Teach Your Children”, “Althea” and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”, a 1966 classic that continues to resonate through the ages. Other highlights included guitar maestro Eric Krasno joining the core band for a hot take on “The Music Never Stopped”, bassist Pete Sears taking over from Sam Grisman for the classic “China Cat Sunflower” and “I Know You Rider” combo, and ace keyboardist Holly Bowling going off on piano for a galloping “Rider” jam. There was also guitarist Garret Deloian from Jerry’s Middle Finger leading the ensemble on “Alligator”, and Andy Frasco fronting the group for “Turn On Your Lovelight”.
Those who don’t make it back to Pier 48 for the Friday late night show that follows Dead & Company in the Park find they can still catch highlights on Sirius XM’s Grateful Dead Radio Channel the next day. Fans driving around town can tune into a hot “Help on the Way” with renowned saxman Karl Denson going off on a smoking jam that leads into the Allman Brothers’ “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”, with Duane Betts on guitar for a dazzling combo. With friends like these, It seems safe to say the local scene is in good hands with Grahame Lesh.
Day two of GD60 is another cool overcast day that features Sturgill Simpson opening the show, billing himself as Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds. Yet unlike Billy Strings and Trey Anastasio, Simpson was not a Deadhead in his formative musical years. The Kentucky-born guitarist had dismissed jamrock as “unstructured noodling” and lumped the Dead in with that. But toward the end of a hiatus due to a vocal cord injury, a depressed Simpson fielded an invite to play with Weir and Hart at their Dead Ahead Festival in Mexico in January 2024. Digging into the songbook, Simpson says he discovered how Jerry Garcia was into folk, country, bluegrass and blues just like he was and now credits Garcia with renewing his inspiration to play music.
“One for the Road” from 2024’s Passage Du Desir album is an early highlight as a heartfelt bluesy number lamenting the end of a romance, while “It Ain’t All Flowers” from 2014’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music finds Simpson ripping hot riffage on a rocking jam.
“If you’re alive today and you ain’t pissed off, you ain’t paying attention,” Simpson advises before the hard rocking “Best Clockmaker on Mars” from 2019’s Sound & Fury, throwing in a tease of Rage Against the Machine’s “Bulls on Parade”. Sturgill has a diverse repertoire and when he sings, “Everybody’s trying to be the next someone, Look at me I’m trying to be the first something” on the incendiary “Fastest Horse in Town”, it becomes clear how he wound up here.
Dead & Company come out strong with what amounts to three straight energetic openers with “Midnight Hour”, “Bertha” and “Jack Straw”. The set digs deeper with a “Dear Mr. Fantasy>Hey Jude” combo, which feels like a tribute to both Jerry Garcia and Brent Mydland. The upbeat “Passenger” is a surprise deep cut, as a song Phil Lesh said he wrote for Bob Weir to rock out on. The energy level soars on melodic rocker “Brown Eyed Women” as there’s something about the song that falls into the group’s wheelhouse — the vocal is right in Mayer’s range, the bass line is ripe for jamming, and both Mayer and Chimenti solo with extra vigor as the jam really takes off while Burbridge crushes the groove with extra sauce to win a big cheer.
Another peak moment occurs when Sturgill Simpson returns to front the band on a set closing performance of the anti-nuke classic “Morning Dew”. Recorded on the Dead’s debut album in 1967, the song remains deeply cathartic in the 2020s as the powers that be continue to ramp up the nuclear modernization insanity. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ annual Doomsday Clock reads closer than ever to midnight at 11:58:31 here in 2025, which makes it gratifying to see Simpson follow his statement about being pissed off at the world by digging into this seminal 1960s folk song. Sturgill sounds like he was born to sing “Morning Dew” and his reverb-drenched bluesy leads have a distinctly ’60s Garcia tone. Mayer wails on “Dew” too for a fiery finish.
The second set is one highlight after another with an exploratory “Uncle John’s Band” leading into the ever sensational trio of “Help on the Way, “Slipknot”, and “Franklin’s Tower”. There are few songs in classic rock history that ignite the night like 1975’s “Help on the Way”, as Mayer sings, “Sell everything, without love day to day insanity’s king…”
The winding “Slipknot” transition releases into the blissful groove of “Franklin’s Tower” for another peak that gets the whole crowd dancing. Another spirit family moment follows when Grahame Lesh returns on bass for 1960s classic “St. Stephen”. It’s simply heartwarming to see Lesh grinning as he rocks the bass on one of the band’s signature jams. The whole group is dialed in here as Hart and Lane lay down a beat that’s tight yet loose, while Mayer slays the leads.
Drummer Jay Lane also stands out in his “Area 51” T-shirt with a flying saucer, mirroring the GD60 event print from artist Jim Mazza that depicts several flying saucers over the Golden Gate Bridge. The print also includes an alien waving a peace sign out the driver’s window of a VW bus as he drives across the bridge, with one of the Dead’s iconic dancing bears riding shotgun. The drums and space segment thus takes on an extra cosmic vibe, and it would be no surprise if Earth’s hipper ET visitors have indeed made the trip to San Francisco since music is the true universal language and the vibrations in Golden Gate Park are at a peak level this weekend.
The back end of the set features more big fun with rocking jams on the “long strange trip” of “Truckin’” and the enduring fan favorite “Cold, Rain and Snow”, another tune from the Dead’s 1967 debut that’s shown remarkable staying power over the decades with its upbeat vibe. A “Brokedown Palace” encore underscores the potential finality of the GD60 weekend, while also hinting at a more uplifting encore in store for night three.
Aftershow parties include another Grahame Lesh & Friends bash at Pier 48, Melvin Seals & JGB at the Great American Music Hall, and the SF is Dead Allstars at the Boom Boom Room with guitarists Reed Mathis & Jon Chi, drummer Anna Elva, bassist Murph Murphy and keyboardist Jordan Feinstein. Known as a top bassist who’s toured with both Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, Mathis has been stepping out on lead guitar in recent years and shreds one hot jam after another.
The group foreshadow Trey Anastasio’s arrival on Sunday when they jam “Shakedown Street” into a tease of “Bathtub Gin” and a full cosmic funk jam on “2001”, back into “Shakedown”. A guest vocalist also sings a rousing “Mr. Charlie” in tribute to the Dead’s original keyboardist, the late great Ron “Pigpen” McKernan.
Sunday, 3 August
The skies have cleared for a bright sunshiny day with not a cloud in sight, as fans converge on Golden Gate Park for what promises to be a Sunday funday for the ages. It feels special to have The Trey Anastasio Band opening the last show of the weekend, after his lead guitar role at GD50. It’s extra special for the many fans who have followed the harmonic convergence between the Grateful Dead and Phish that’s taken place since the late ’90s, solidifying when Phil Lesh asked Anastasio and keyboardist Page McConnell to play in his band for the historic April 1999 comeback shows from his liver transplant at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater.
Phish classics like “Moma Dance” and “Sand” take on an extra vibe with the TAB horn section of trombonist Natalie Cressman, trumpeter Jen Hartswick, and new sax man Kenneth Whalum (who had started filling in for the ailing James Casey in 2022.) It was a sad day for the scene when Casey passed away from colon cancer in 2023 at just age 40, but he’ll long be remembered here in San Francisco for two spectacular shows the TAB horn section played as members of Phil Lesh & Friends at the Warfield on December 27-28, 2022. It’s great to see Whalum stepping into the sax role here, as well as bassist Dezron Douglas crushing it in place of long time TAB bassist Tony Markellis who passed on in 2021.
Trey provides one of the weekend’s most heartwarming moments when he speaks of falling in love with the Dead at his first show in 1981 at the New Haven Coliseum, gives a shoutout “to Mr. Jerry Garcia”, and expresses amazement at how everyone is still here together celebrating Jerry “all these years later.” This leads to a bustout of “Mission in the Rain”, in tribute to both Garcia and San Francisco. The horn section continues to dazzle down the stretch for a funky jam on “Wolfman’s Brother”, a soaring “Shine”, and an inspiring jam on “Everything’s Right” before Trey cranks up the riffage on “Ghost”.
The deeply psychedelic jam that debuted in 1997 seemed to be performed in tribute to Garcia during early plays. Phish opened with “Ghost” on the eve of Garcia’s birthday at Shoreline Amphitheater in the South Bay on 31 July 1997, with Trey also wishing Jerry a happy birthday at the end of the show and vowing to keep his spirit alive in music. Phish then opened with it again at the Fillmore on 15 October 1998. The energy level of the jam sizzles here to close the set in powerful fashion.
Dead & Company open with “Let the Good Times Roll” and so they do on the classic combo of “China Cat Sunflower” and “I Know You Rider”. There’s just something about a “China Cat” groove on a sunny day, which generates stellar vibes as the Park gets down. The energy grows in the transition to “Rider” and it’s a special moment when Bobby Weir sings, “The sun’s gonna shine in my backdoor someday” as the sun shines down from the western sky behind the stage. Another big jam comes toward the end of the set on “Shakedown Street”, with Burbridge laying down some very groovy bass as the group stretches out while fans can still bask in the last rays of the setting sun before the park starts getting rather chilly.
It’s an extra special moment when the group returns for the second set and John Mayer says, “Please welcome to the stage, your friend and ours, Trey!” The friendly intro is an indicator of what an iconic figure “Big Red” has become in the psychedelic rock counterculture, as well as how many fans do consider Trey like a personal friend, even if they’ve not actually met him or only chatted briefly at an aftershow party.
The spiritual sustenance from all the uplifting Phish jams since the band reformed in 2009 after Trey got clean to deliver a second act that eluded Jerry Garcia goes a long way for many fans, as do the handful of teamups with the surviving members of the Dead. Ecstatic joy envelops the park as the group launches into “Scarlet Begonias”, with Trey taking the lead vocal as he did at Soldier Field for GD50. The energy level surges when the two lead guitarists sync in on the melodies.
The blissful vibes keep flowing when “Scarlet Begonias” moves into “Fire on the Mountain”, arguably the Dead’s most beloved song combo since their first pairing in 1977. Oteil takes the first verse, Bobby takes the second verse, and Trey takes the third, with gorgeous melodic jamming in between each verse that has 60,000 fans feeling like one nation under a blissful groove.
The twin lead guitar lines after the third verse sparkle with melodious goodness, as two of the best in the biz gel together for a glorious passage. Jay Lane’s big grin mirrors that of the audience, and then Mickey throws down his rap verse for extra bonus points. Mickey’s rap has gotten mixed reviews in the past, but it feels super fun here and wins a cheer as the historic jam keeps going a little further for what becomes a 30-minute “Scarlet” and “Fire” for the ages.
It’s icing on the cake from there with Grahame Lesh returning to play bass on the romantic “Broken Arrow”, a Phil Lesh staple in the 1990s. A smoking “Hell in a Bucket” also feels like the 1990s, with Bobby Weir sounding as spry as he did back then on the vocal and Mayer slaying hot bluesy leads. Grahame returns for more bass on “Cumberland Blues”, except this time Oteil stays on and they play bass together like that time when Phil Lesh sat in with Phish at Shoreline in 1999.
Weir’s rendition of “Standing on the Moon” hits the sweet spot, when he sings about lamenting songs of war and how he’d “rather be with you, somewhere in San Francisco on a back porch in July…” It’s getting cold now with those chilly winds blowing through the Park, but Dead & Company heat things up again with a hot jam on “Sugaree” that becomes extra sweet when it leads into the classic “Sugar Magnolia” to close out the set in full tilt rock ‘n’ roll style.
A rocking encore is needed to keep the body heat up and Bobby Weir delivers with the upbeat “Touch of Grey”, the Dead’s surprise smash hit from the 1980s that remains an inspiring anthem for rising above the adversity of aging as everyone sings out, “I will get by, I will survive…”
After the weekend, John Mayer posts some sincere commentary on social media that reveals how much the Grateful Dead experience has impacted his journey over the past decade: “Night 3 in Golden Gate Park celebrating 60 years of Grateful Dead will be a one we’ll never forget,” Mayer says. “I finally had the chance to play with Trey Anastasio, and beyond the full-circle moment of it all, the lock we had going was instant. Trey’s ear-to-fretboard data transfer time is unparalleled. I’m still blown away. Extra special thanks to Grahame Lesh for joining us all three nights. No matter how many shows we play as a band, I will always be a guest in this musical world, and I’ll never lose sight of what is the great honor of my life…”
The Dead & Company social media accounts also post a short but inspiring message: “Here’s to the songs ahead, whenever they call. Another 60, anyone?” It’s a mind boggling concept on the one hand, yet here we are celebrating the Grateful Dead’s music for still going strong 30 years after Jerry Garcia checked out 30 years in. Weir has previously alluded to the idea of Dead & Company carrying on with new members after he and Mickey are gone, and Grahame Lesh’s next-gen participation in the GD60 weekend fuels that concept further.