TVD Live Shots: Dead & Company at Shoreline Amphitheatre, 7/30

Dead and Company

Through 50+ years and numerous incarnations, the Grateful Dead legacy keeps on truckin’. The latest torch bearers for the Dead legacy is Dead & Company and features original members Bob Weir (guitar/vocals), Bill Kreutzmann (drums), and Mickey Hart (drums), joined by John Mayer on guitar/vocal duties. A beautiful Saturday night in Mountain View found Dead & Co. wrapping up their successful U.S. tour with a sold out show at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, close to the Dead’s old San Francisco Bay Area stomping grounds.

With any act associated with the Grateful Dead lineage, you never know when their next show will be their last. So when Dead & Co.’s last planned tour date rolls through, you can be assured that the devotees will arrive early so as not to miss a single note. All this made for astounding gridlock inside and outside of the Shoreline which miraculously seemed to sort itself out by the time the band casually strode onto the stage at 7:40 and pm launched right into “Help on the Way” without uttering a word.

Dead and Company

While Mayer and Weir traded vocal duties and guitar licks, the “rhythm devils” stoically held down the beat behind massive amounts of percussion equipment and the whole amphitheater settled into a patient groove as the sun set behind the lawn before the first set wrapped with an enthusiastically-received “Franklin’s Tower” that had nearly every person in the venue on their feet.

The crowd, which literally spanned the ages, took advantage of the 45 minute intermission to stock up on necessary sustenance and was more than ready for the band to re-take the stage for an epic lightshow set to “Dark Star.”

Hippies, hipsters, tech bros, babies, dogs, and punks all stuck it out for what amounted to 3 hours of flawless execution of a small chunk of the Dead catalog … music that’s held up surprisingly well over the decades even as fans have aged and produced new generations of Deadheads.