Oteil Burbridge Talks Dead & Company Sphere Shows On ‘Comes A Time’ Podcast

Oteil Burbridge gave a debrief on the inaugural weekend of Dead & Company’s Sphere residency on Osiris Media‘s Comes A Time podcast with his co-host Mike Finoia. The bassist talked about the time leading up to the landmark run, some of his favorite visuals and more.

The conversation got started in earnest with Oteil noting how he loved the Sphere format of playing at the same venue each weekend and not having to travel to the next show. He also spoke about how mind-blowing it was that Dead & Company completed the Final Tour in 2023 and then jumped into the Sphere.

It’s like Final Tour, bands over. All right, so in my mind I’m totally in the mode of just going hard on Oteil & Friends. We’re booking this thing, we’re doing it. This is how I’m going to provide for my family. It’s cool, I’m not going to worry about it. I’ve done this before, we’re going forward. Then all of a sudden blam! I guess the band’s not over, we’re gonna do the biggest thing we’ve ever done at the Sphere. And then Jess sends me this picture… where it’s like me, the whole Sphere is basically me and this nebula. I’m like what the… what’s going on right now.

Burbridge also detailed previewing the Sphere visuals ahead of the shows. Mike touched on Phish’s visuals during their recent four-night run at the Sphere before Oteil detailed some more of his favorite visuals.

There’s one where it shouldn’t feel like you’re getting rained on but it starts raining and you look up and it’s coming down at you. But if you look across from you, if I look at someone, I’m not seeing raindrops. But if you look up, you really do feel like you’re getting rained on. We had this one kaleidoscope thing that was like a spinning kaleidoscope, which the top of it was dead centered at the top of the Sphere. And if you looked at it… I swear… you truly, truly needed zero acid. I was like if I stare at this too long it’s going to make me have a flashback.”

Watch Oteil and Mike talk Sphere and more in the complete episode of Comes A Time below.