Grateful Dead At Levi’s Stadium: It’s Official

Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir posted a nearly 700-word letter on Dead50.net Friday to announce that they would indeed be playing Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., June 27-28 as part of the anniversary celebration dubbed “Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead.” The gigs take place the weekend before the previously announced July 3-5 residency at Chicago’s Soldier Field.  

And just like the Soldier Field performances, the band will be joined at Levi’s Stadium by Phish frontman Trey Anastasio on guitar, Bruce Hornsby on piano and Jeff Chimenti on keyboards.

The Levi’s Stadium dates were added after the band experienced such an overwhelming response to the Chicago onsale. The Grateful Dead’s old-school, mail-order Grateful Dead Ticketing Service was unable to meet demand when it received more than 60,000 envelopes filled with more than 350,000 ticket requests.

The Grateful Dead says it won’t be announcing any more Fare Thee Well shows. “We decided to add these two Santa Clara shows to enable more of our fans to celebrate with us one more time. But this is it,” the band writes.

While Soldier Field holds special significance to the band for hosting the final Grateful Dead concert two decades ago, the Bay Area is also very meaningful.  

“Although none of us knew it when we walked off the stage at Soldier Field on July 9, 1995, the Grateful Dead’s long strange trip ended in Chicago that night,” the band writes. “As you are aware, twenty years later, we’re returning to Chicago to properly say Fare Thee Well.

“But every good ending must start with a beginning. For us, it all began fifty years ago when we grabbed a bunch of instruments off the walls of a music store in Palo Alto California and began banging away on them in the back room, at night after the store had closed for the day.

“Since we made the decision to go back to Chicago to say our final goodbye, it has become clear to us that we first need to return to our beginnings, where we first said hello – to each other and to all of you.”

The letter notes that Levi’s Stadium is just a dozen miles south of where that special music store in Palo Alto once stood.

A ticket request is going on now through April 14 at 11:59 p.m. EDT via Grateful Dead’s online ticketing platform. All ticket requests are treated equally in the system, no matter the time they are placed (as long as it’s before the April 14 cut-off time).

“For shows of this magnitude, it’s impossible to eliminate every scalper,” the band writes. “However, we offer you this: Working with our partners, we are using an online ticketing platform for the Levi’s shows that will help ensure that the tickets for these shows will get into the right hands, the hands of our true fans. We believe that this process is the best way to give each of you an equal opportunity to obtain tickets at the most affordable possible prices. We are proud to announce that 65,000 tickets per night will be available via the ‘online mail order’ for the Levi’s shows.”

Head over to Dead50.net for more details and to read the band’s full letter.