Grateful Dead Cooking Up ‘Special & Commensurate’ Archival Release For 60th Anniversary
“We’ve been working on something that we feel is special and commensurate with an anniversary as big as this.” — David Lemieux
By Scott Bernstein Dec 5, 2024 • 10:06 am PST
2025 will mark the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead's formation and plans for several celebrations are in the works. GD legacy manager and archivist David Lemieux gave a hint of what’s in store on the live archival front in a new interview.
“We’ve been working on something that we feel is special and commensurate with an anniversary as big as this,” Lemieux told Billboard. “Mark [Pinkus, Rhino president] and I got on the call about a year ago [to begin working on it], and when we started talking about it, we both couldn’t contain our joy.” Rhino Entertainment handles all licensing for the Grateful Dead and serves as the band’s label.
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If Rhino’s 2015 archival release, 30 Trips Around The Sun, celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary is any indication, fans should start getting excited now. The 80-disc set featured 30 previously unreleased GD shows with one from each year of the group’s career.
Any box set and/or big compilation will come in addition to the usual slate of four Dave’s Picks releases. Lemieux already revealed the first Dave’s Picks of 2025, Vol. 53, will document the Grateful Dead’s October 2, 1976 concert at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati.
Read a note shared by Lemieux in October about 2025 Dave’s Picks releases:
“As we enter our 14th year of the Dave’s Picks series, heading into Volumes 53-56 in 2025, most days we feel we’re just getting started. Every volume of the series is still just as exciting for us as the first few releases in the series back in 2012, and we hope you continue to get as much joy out of listening to them as we get from producing them. One of the greatest thrills we get from working on them is the flexibility to go where the music takes us in making the selections. For 2025, Volume 53 has been selected and is in the can, and we’ve just entered production on Volume 54 (and the subscribers’ Bonus Disc!), but beyond that, it’s a blank slate, and we’re spending countless hours listening to determine what’s to come for Volumes 55 and 56 in the second half of 2025. After the great variety we saw in 2024 (1985 x 2, 1977, 1971, and 1983), we focused on great variety again in 2025. Come along for the ride! If you’ve never subscribed, this would be a great year to start, as we head into the Grateful Dead’s 60th year. There’s plenty of room on the bus for everyone!”
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Surviving GD members Bobby Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart recently confirmed they had discussed performing with Phil Lesh in 2025 to celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary. Sadly, Phil Lesh's sudden death leaves 2015’s Fare Thee Well as the last time the “core four” shared the stage.
“We had some plans,” Weir explained to Billboard. “We were talking about the possibility of reconvening and playing, just the four of us. It would have been real interesting, when Phil was still with us, to try to do that.” Kreutzmann added he’d still “do that 60th in a second,” and noted, “Phil wanted to do it, too. He had a dream that he was going to get to play with us three one more time. And that didn’t happen — but that’s how it goes.”
Dead & Company are returning to Sphere in 2025. The sextet featuring Weir and Hart joined by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, drummer Jay Lane, bassist Oteil Burbridge and guitarist John Mayer will play an 18-show residency at the high-tech Las Vegas benue between March 20 and May 17, 2025. Dead & Company will celebrate their 10th anniversary next year.
“It’s a marvel in terms of what you can do visually with it during a show,” Weir told Billboard about D&C’s 2024 run at Sphere. “It was an interesting challenge for us — but I thought we met it.”
“Very cool, very cool, Sphere, very cool,” added Hart. “It’s an overpowering sensory experience.”
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