Vampire Weekend Goes 3 For 3 On Fulfilling Grateful Dead Cover Requests

Vampire Weekend continued a trend of starting each encore at their North American concerts with fun attempts at random covers requested by fans. The band hit the Northeast Corridor over the past three shows and fit partial takes on Grateful Dead classics into encores in Boston on Friday, Philadelphia on Saturday and Washington D.C. last night.

The cover request trend is part of Vampire Weekend embracing the jam band ethos. Drummer Chris Tomson is not only a member of jam band Taper’s Choice but is also a longtime Deadhead. Tomson spoke about his love for the band on the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast podcast, filled in for Bill Kreutzmann at a Billy & The Kids concert and took part in the Move Me Brightly Jerry Garcia tribute at Bob Weir’s TRI Studios facility in Marin County.

Vampire Weekend previously pulled off beautiful covers of both “Reuben & Cerise” in Milwaukee and the Dead’s arrangement of “Peggy-O” in Berkeley. While those were worked out in advance, Ezra Koenig & Co. also included impromptu partial takes on “Casey Jones,” “Shakedown Street,” “Uncle John’s Band,” “Cumberland Blues” and “Touch Of Grey” into cover request encores over the course of their Only God Was Above Us tour.

On Friday, VW played Boston’s TD Garden and honored the host city with attempts at the Cheers theme song, The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “The Impression That I Get.” Other covers played at the request of fans were George Michael’s “Faith,” the Parks & Rec. theme song, Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner,” Blur’s “Song 2,” the traditional “The House Of The Rising Sun” and The B-52’s “Rock Lobster.”

Ezra Koenig followed the “Rock Lobster,” with apologies to The B-52’s, by asking guitarist/saxophonist Colin Killaela if they could play “Ripple.” Koenig and his bandmates fudged the lyrics and tried to devise an arrangement before aborting the attempt to land on The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” to close the segment. A full “Walcott” punctuated the concert.

Vampire Weekend brought their Only God Was Above Us tour to The Mann in Philadelphia on Saturday. The band reeled off partial covers of songs by Ween, Fleetwood Mac, The Clash, Billy Joel, Don Henley, Tom Waits, Oasis, The Strokes, Violent Femmes, Jackie DeShannon, Weezer and 4 Non Blondes and took on The Office theme song. Additionally, Koenig fulfilled a request for “one ‘Touch Of Grey’ chorus.” VW made it capably through the chorus but again Ezra gave his “apologies to the Grateful Dead.”

Washington D.C.’s The Anthem hosted Vampire Weekend on Monday. Once again, the band mixed classic rock cuts with ’80s, ’90s and ’00s hits during the cover request portion of the encore. The former was represented by Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark” and “I’m On Fire” and the Eagles’ “Life In The Fast Lane” and “Desperado.” The latter category included MGMT’s “Electric Feel,” The Cranberries’ “Linger,” Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved,” The Strokes’ “Reptilia” and “You Can All Me Al” by Paul Simon.

Ezra Koenig also took a request for “Fire On The Mountain.” Thomson provided the groovy beat and Koenig kinda knew the words, certainly more than most of the other covers played. Vampire Weekend even jammed on the tune for a minute or two before moving on to the Amy Winehouse-popularized “Valerie.”

Watch fan-shot footage of the Washington D.C. Cover Request segment below:

Vampire Weekend returns to The Anthem tonight. Let’s see if the band goes four for four on playing Dead songs within encores.