Dead & Company Announces Brief ‘Fall Fun Run’ Tour

Rick Kern – Dead & Company
Dead & Company are in the groove at Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas, Dec. 2.

Dead & Company announced a four-show fall tour on Thursday.

Kicking off Oct. 31 and concluding Nov. 9, the “Fall Fun Run” is comprised of two two-show stands, at New York’s Madison Square Garden Oct. 31-Nov. 1 and at Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Va., on Nov. 8-9.

The fall jaunt follows Dead & Company’s fourth annual summer tour which, with a gross of $40.8 million, represented the band’s highest-grossing summer tour yet. The tour included Dead & Company’s most lucrative U.S. stand to date, a tour-closing two-night stand at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colo., that sold 67,836 and grossed $6.51 million.

The brief trek also precedes Dead & Company’s third annual “Playing in the Sand” Mexican destination event, slated for Jan. 16-19, 2020. The 2019 iteration of the event grossed $17.3 million, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports.

Courtesy of Live Nation – Fall Fun Run
Dead & Company announced a four-date, two-city tour on Thursday.

Comprised of Grateful Dead founding members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, as well as newcomers John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti, Dead & Company launched in fall 2015, just months after the Grateful Dead staged its lucrative “Fare Thee Well” concerts in Santa Clara, Calif. and Chicago.

Since then, the band has toured every summer, but has only hit the road in the fall in odd years. In 2016 and 2018, the band played two summer dates at New York’s Citi Field; in 2017 and 2019, Dead & Company only hit the baseball stadium once in the summer.

An Oct. 31-Nov. 1, 2015 stand at Madison Square Garden – Dead & Company’s second and third gigs — sold 37,334 tickets and grossed $2.86 million. The band’s two-night November 2017 stand at the venue sold 3,000 fewer tickets, but grossed considerably more, raking in $3.98 million.

The shows, meanwhile, represent Dead & Company’s first in Hampton, Va., despite the band’s frequent shows elsewhere in Virginia and neighboring North Carolina and Washington, D.C. In late June, the band sold 17,182 tickets and grossed $1.43 million at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Va., located just outside of Washington, D.C., and less than three hours north of Hampton. The band last played D.C. on Nov. 21, 2017, selling 11,856 tickets and grossing $1.30 million at Capital One Arena.

The band also headlined two nights of Lockn’, located three hours west of Hampton in Arrington, Va., in August 2018.

Since launching in 2015, Dead & Company has appeared on Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart every year, grossing a total of $148.1 million through the end of 2018.

And even as Dead & Company continues to flourish, Weir and Mayer have made touring waves on their own. Mayer notched a spot on Pollstar’s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart – two above Dead & Company – with a gross of $54.0 million. He also placed on Pollstar‘s Top 100 Worldwide Tours at midyear in late May, with a gross of $12.1 million. After Dead & Company’s summer tour, Mayer hit the road on his own again; his July box office highlights include a sold-out two-night stand at Madison Square Garden which, with a total gross of $4.60 million, ranks as his highest-grossing box office report in Pollstar‘s database.

Weir has taken a smaller-scale approach, touring with Don Was and Jay Lane as Bob Weir and Wolf Bros. Box office highlights for the trio, which formed last fall, include two-night stands at Chicago’s Chicago Theater and Boston’s Wang Theatre in fall 2018, which both grossed just north of $412,000. They’ll headline Lockn’ later this month.

Tickets for Dead & Company’s upcoming fall tour dates go on sale to the general public on Aug. 23 at 10 a.m.