It’s always a bit of a roll of the dice when you see Dead & Company — especially in Las Vegas.
Sometimes the Grateful Dead offshoot is merely mediocre and, other times, they come across like one of the best live bands on the planet.
Having opened their 2nd (annual?) Sphere run on Thursday with the former — a mostly tentative affair with uninspired jams and weighed-down arrangements — Dead & Company bounced back in glorious fashion on Friday with a show that exhibited as much high-voltage electricity as the hi-tech venue itself.
It was clear from the start that we were in for a very different experience as the group — consisting of former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir (guitar and vocals) and Mickey Hart (drums) as well as John Mayer (guitar and vocals), Oteil Burbridge (bass), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards) and Jay Lane (drums) — tore into a version of “Cold Rain and Snow” that sent the sold-out crowd of some 17,000 Deadheads, many of whom were surely in town for all three of this week’s shows.
Mayer sounded strong at the microphone, and even better on the electric guitar, as he worked in and out of the incredible rhythm work coming from the twin towers of percussion — Hart and Lane. Sure, Hart gets all the attention — and, for good reason, since he’s amazing — but Lane (a founding member of Weir’s RatDog group) was really bringing the thunder on this night.
The high-energy level and superb musicality of “Cold Rain” blew over into the supremely funky “Shakedown Street,” which was the track that featured Dead & Company’s now-signature Sphere video graphic segment — rocketing the fans from the band’s old Haight-Asbury neighborhood right off into space via the the mammoth 16-K wraparound LED screens that run from floor to ceiling in the 366-feet-tall building.
The intensity level of the jamming during those two numbers was so much higher than what was seen at any point during Thursday’s opener, which kicked off Dead & Company’s run of 18 shows at the Sphere.
Dead & Company setlist March 21, 20251. “Cold Rain and Snow”2. “Shakedown Street”3. “Cumberland Blues”4. “Lay Down Sally”5. “Tennessee Jed”6. “Sugaree”Set 2:7. “Uncle John’s Band”8. “Estimated Prophet”9. “Eyes of the World”10. “St. Stephen”11. “Drums”12. “Space”13. “Wharf Rat”14. “U.S. Blues”15. “Throwing Stones”16. “Casey Jones”