Dead & Company bassist Oteil Burbridge on Monday offered some candid reflections on Dead Forever, the Grateful Dead offshoot’s recently wrapped 30-show residency at Las Vegas, NV’s Sphere. The extended Sphere residency reportedly came together with relatively little notice and was not yet in the works when Dead & Company completed The Final Tour in 2023.
In a social media post shared alongside a number of photos from the residency, Oteil mused, “I can never say that my best days are behind me. The Final Tour last year taught me that yet again. I hardly believed that we could ever top what we did then. But then along came the Sphere.”
“I can’t imagine what the Sphere must have been like for the eldest of our Deadhead family,” he continued. “The ones who remember seeing the Dead in those legendary venues on those very early dates! What a long wondrous strange trip it still is.
“I could never find the words to describe how grateful I am to be a part of this story and this family,” he added. “I can hardly imagine how we would ever top this! But something new always comes up with the sun. … Thanks to all of the band, crew and families for making this run a part of the legend. You know our love will not fade away. #deadforever”
Although Dead & Company have long maintained that they are done with “touring,” the novel venue provided a handy loophole and, in turn, a new sort of creative canvas that led to another full summer of music from Oteil Burbridge, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, John Mayer, Jeff Chimenti, and Jay Lane. While the band currently has no more concerts on its schedule, Both Weir and Mayer have indicated interest in returning for another run of Dead & Co shows at Sphere.
“I’m always thinking about the callback,” Mayer told Variety midway through Dead Forever, “Look, I’ve learned with this band, never count anything out. I mean, I don’t want to be coy. The show is designed to be perennial, because it’s modular, and we could always go to new places. … I will say this: We have zero plans to return to the Sphere at this moment, and if we did, it would be a while. So I don’t want anyone getting the idea that it’s worth just hanging out until we do it again, because I have not heard a single mention of a year or a month or anything. But I don’t want to be coy. The show is probably designed from the ground up to be perennial.”
As Weir noted in a separate Variety interview, “We’ll take that as it comes. Right now, really pretty much all I can think about is what I’m up to right now. … You know, a residency might be fun to do — some other kind of residency — just to keep our chops up. Because this band is fun to play with; there’s no getting around it. We’ll just see what comes up.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we get invited back [to Sphere],” Weir added, “and I would certainly make room for that.”
View the full post from Oteil Burbridge reflecting on the end of Dead & Company’s 30-show Dead Forever stint at Sphere below.
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The post Oteil Burbridge Reflects On Dead & Co At Sphere: “I Can Never Say That My Best Days Are Behind Me” appeared first on L4LM.
