Many Bay Area Grateful Dead fans knew it wouldn’t be a proper farewell without at least one Bay Area performance, and now the band is delivering with two scheduled “Fare Thee Well” concerts at Levi’s Stadium this June.
The Grateful Dead, which earlier this year announced three concerts in Chicago this July 3-5 as their final performances, announced two additional shows at the Santa Clara stadium on June 27-28 in a letter to fans:
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. 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. [read the entire letter HERE]
And it appears that after more than 50 years in existence, the long strange trip for the iconic Bay Area band is finally winding down.
“We will not be adding any more Fare Thee Well shows,” the band wrote to fans. “The three Chicago shows will still be our final stand. 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.”
In addition to original members Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, the band will also feature Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, pianist Bruce Hornsby and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti.
After problems with scalpers with the Chicago shows, the band will release 65,000 tickets for each Levi’s Stadium show via its online mail order system on Dead50.net.
