I was in late-stage high school when I found out who the Grateful Dead were. I (very logically) assumed they were a death metal band, and that the fuzzy bear image was, you know, sadistic. They are not, and it is not. While everyone else on earth knows who they are, I’ll elucidate anyway – they specialize in an inclusion-forward style of rock, where they borrow from jazz, bluegrass, folk, psychedelia (heavily), and more. They’re a jam band. Their songs are all 90 minutes long, and if you like that kind of thing, they’re kind of the best at it. They’ve been doing it for nearly 60 years, so they damn well better be, I suppose. Here’s a good side story – my dad (who, like the original band members, is from northern California) ended up on a flight with the band when he was going from Eureka-Arcata to San Francisco (must have been the mid-late sixties, since he was still in the Army). He says, “The “Dead” were on a flight having played a concert in Eureka. I remember Jerry Garcia giving one of his band mates the finger with his [ticket] stub. They sat in 1st class. Most were reading the Wall Street Journal.”

Anyway, last summer Bob and I escaped for a day to see this Dead cover band, Working Man Dead that was supposed to be great (it was really fun). Fast forward to a week or two back, and Bob asks if I want to go with him to a Dead show, so – having had experience with Dead cover bands – I said sure. We left work a little early and drove down to the venue, just outside Pittsburgh in this amphitheater. The drive should take about 3.5 hours, but it took us about 5, with the last 2 miles taking over an hour. As we were sitting in this crawling line being passed by a remarkable crowd of hippies, I noted to Bob, “wow, people really love this cover band, huh. This seems like a much larger crowd than last time.” And he slowly, slowly, slowly turned to look at me and said, “This isn’t a cover band.” So anyway that’s how I found out that “Dead & Co.” is not a Grateful Dead cover band, but actually the remaining members plus a couple of other people, like John Mayer. I’m not going to apologize!

Since we’re all only here for the fashion, I’ll start there. In the front row, the Beard Situation was 100% carried by Bob Weir (of keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, John Mayer, Bob Weir, and Oteil Burbridge). Bob Weir showed up looking like he’d been in a rock band his whole entire life – he had on capri-length white tuxedo trousers with a black stripe and a women’s cut t-shirt with a picture of Jerry Garcia driving a car. I think he was barefoot. If you ever need someone to stand in as an absolutely furious-looking, tiny Donald Sutherland, Weir is your guy. He somehow managed to look like a bobblehead of himself? Anyway, big fan 10/10, no notes. John Mayer looked exactly like someone poked their head into Econ 201 and was like, “hey John? Can I borrow you a minute?” and he just somehow ended up on stage playing guitar. He was in a blue Engineer Check button down, khakis, and (I assume) some type of Crocs, though I cannot confirm this. Since he has the voice of an angel and can play the hell out of a guitar, we’ll let it go. The guy on the piano was nailing the hair game (long, blonde, flowing locks) but I couldn’t see anything else. And Oteil on the far end came in the shirt of the band he was in, so you can’t do better than that. There were two drummers, a guy that looked like a cross between Weird Al and Tom Hanks (but who is actually Jay Lane, and looks like neither of those people) and Mickey Hart, who apparently is an original. Jay Lane was into making faces and being playful with the camera people, and Mickey Hart looked like you could replace the drums in front of him with a 1997 Compaq running a Win95 version of Solitaire, and he’d have the exact same expression and inflection (aka, none). But they were both really good – I didn’t think a band needed two (and later three when Oteil joined them) percussionists, and I was wrong.

The crowd! So, the crowd. This was a very, very friendly crowd. Potentially a very tripping crowd. I wouldn’t like to presume, but at some point this guy walked by us and looking at all the people dancing like hippies said, “oh here’s where everyone’s tripping and dancing,” which struck me as a very fair assessment. You know how some people get friendly and they also get touchy? This crowd (at least the couple thousand people I saw) didn’t try to get touchy. I appreciate that. My one complaint is that apparently there are Dead Bros now? In the row ahead of us, these two guys who are so obviously college sophomores (college sophomore boys who are fledgling bros are identical, and have been since my days in college at least) radiated this energy. One had on a pristine Dead & Co shirt with a pure white, backwards Miller Lite ball cap and sunnies propped on top. The other, shorter fella was in a white tee and khaki shorts. They picked fights, they yelled “John Mayer!” a lot. One took a call. They grew to four guys who, despite being different heights and ethnicities, were all exactly identical. They had chewing tobacco and kept almost spitting on their own feet. One may have thrown up through the folded seat of the person ahead of him. I am pretty sure these kids were there as a result of John Mayer being in the band. One demerit for that.

The music was super fun. I have no idea what any of the songs are/were. At one point, they did say “what a long strange trip it’s been” and everyone lost their ever loving minds. I’ve never seen such happy hippies. Speaking of, it was such an interesting group (Dead Bros excluded, who were aggressively predictable), with the well-to-do elder fans, in their purchased merch, and the home-make crowd who came in the clothes they dyed and made themselves. There were the grubby folk and the curious folk, the contented folk, and the people who were just there for the music, man. I didn’t take a census, but I’m positive that the dred-to-person ratio was higher than in the general population, despite this being a predominantly white crowd. Also, I have a feeling, that I can’t quantify, that there were more than the usual amount of 5’2″ or shorter women. I, somehow, never saw a hackysack.

We were lucky to even get there at all, as it turns out. When we were about to enter the venue, a chill dude behind us said, “I got here at 10:30am man, and I’m almost all burned out already” and it was a 7:30pm show. Early parking closed at 3pm. When we left at 10:30, people were still entering for the first time. It was wild, and I felt so badly for them; that must have been such a big disappointment.

And that is how I ended up accidentally going to see the Grateful Dead.