Dead & Company ‘Let It Grow’ At Middle Show Of Mother’s Day Weekend Sphere Run

Dead & Company performed the second show of their three-night Mother’s Day Weekend run at the Las Vegas Sphere as their Dead Forever 2025 residency continued Saturday evening. Notable setlist selections included the band playing “Let It Grow” for the first time this year and using the set break to split up “Sugar Magnolia” and “Sunshine Daydream.”

Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Mickey Hart with guitarist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and drummer Jay Lane took the Sphere stage and opened the Mother’s Day eve concert with “Man Smart, Woman Smarter.”

The Dead Forever visual experience blasted off from Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, where the Grateful Dead lived in the 1960s, to outer space with “Help On The Way” leading the way. Dead & Co. closed the familiar loop with segues into “Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower.”

Weir then led his bandmates through their first “Let It Grow” of 2025, following two appearances at last year’s Sphere residency. Written by Weir and the late John Perry Barlow, “Let It Grow” originated as part of “Weather Report Suite” on the Dead’s 1973 studio album, Wake Of The Flood.

Weir, Mayer, Burbridge and Chimenti cycled through turns singing verses of the subsequent cover of The Band’s “The Weight.” Bobby again showed off his high register when delivering his vocal take.

“Sugar Magnolia” landed as the final song of the first set. After set break, Dead & Company picked right back up where they left off and played the “Sugar Magnolia” coda, “Sunshine Daydream,” to start set two. The band then went “riding up on a quasar” as “Greatest Story Ever Told” followed.

The six musicians dug into the improvisational zone, rolling through “China Cat Sunflower” into “I Know You Rider” and a sprawling “Terrapin Station.” The Sphere stage was then turned over to Hart, Lane and Burbridge for the thunderously rhythmic explosion of “Drums.”

Hart bowed The Beam to draw out its deep drone connecting “Drums” with “Space” and the emergence of Weir, Mayer, Chimenti and Burbridge. The full band reassembled ahead of the post-“Drums/Space” selection of “Days Between.” The somber Bobby-sung “Days” gave way to Mayer jumping on “Althea.”

The final Dead Forever chapter unfolded with the journey from space back to Haight Ashbury, with Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh incorporated in the visual accompaniment to “Morning Dew.” After playing a 1960s Grateful Dead news report over the P.A., Dead & Company closed out show 14 of this year’s Sphere residency by engaging the crowd with “Not Fade Away.”

Dead & Company hosts the final Sphere show of the penultimate Dead Forever 2025 weekend tonight, Sunday, May 11. Scroll below for videos, the setlist and The Skinny recapping Saturday’s show.

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