UPDATED: The band Dead and Company has responded to reports that the group is planning to quit touring after this year, essentially saying, not so fast.
“Dead & Company has made no official decision as to this being their final tour,” the band said in an official statement Friday afternoon, in response to a report in Rolling Stone that said anonymous sources had confirmed the group would cease touring after 2022.
And on Twitter, Bob Weir seemed downright puzzled by the claim. “News to me,” wrote Weir, quote-tweeting a tweet from Rolling Stone that had read, “BREAKING: Dead and Company will stop touring after 2022.”
News to me… https://t.co/Yjf1aCkwRA
— Bobby Weir (@BobWeir) April 8, 2022
EARLIER: Rolling Stone cited anonymous sources as confirming a rumor already circulating among fans that an upcoming summer tour would be the end of the road for the Grateful Dead offshoot group, which includes John Mayer as well as veterans of the original group going back to the 1960s such as Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.
The summer tour for the group is set to last for just over a month, starting at Dodger Stadium on June 11 and wrapping up with a two-night stand at New York’s Citi Field, the home of the Mets, on July 15-16. Other dates include pairs of nights at the Bay Area’s Shoreline Amphitheater, UC Boulder’s Folsom Field and Chicago’s Wrigley Field.
Tickets for all the shows went on sale Friday morning.
“The Long, Strange Trip Is Over,” declared the headline in Rolling Stone, which has been covering iterations of the Grateful Dead almost since its first issue. The magazine had no other details.
Health concerns have occasionally popped up among band members. In 2021, Kreutzmann bowed out of the group’s second show at the Hollywood Bowl, then missed a few more with an issue said not be related to COVID but rather his heart. He also bowed out of the Playing in the Sand festival in Mexico before the entire thing got canceled amid a COVID variant rise.
In an interview as recently as this past December, Mayer had said that he expected Dead and Company to keep going indefinitely, even with foreseeable changes in personnel.
“To hear Bob Weir talk about it, he wants this to continue after [the surviving Grateful Dead members] are done touring,” Mayer explained to Sammy Hagar on a segment of the latter rocker’s “Rock & Roll Road Trip.”
