The rain passed, the night cooled and the fans packed in to let the good times roll for the last-ever Dead & Company concert in St. Louis. After the Final Tour, Dead & Co will discontinue its current lineup configuration, one that has stopped at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre for the past three summers. Last night demonstrated that the ensemble saved the best for last.
Opening with Sam Cooke’s “Good Times,” the band announced its intention for a fun night. Guitarist John Mayer was in business casual, appearing scruffier and fleshier than during his solo concert at Enterprise Center back in March. Mayer is putting the cap on one of rock history’s most surprising yet successful collaborations, filling Jerry Garcia’s cherished guitar/vocal spot along with its impossibly high expectations. Mayer has more than pulled it off, earning the respect and gratitude of the Dead community for helping keep the long, strange trip going since 2015.
Playing one of his tungsten signature Strats and wearing over-the-ear cans, Mayer was a marvel all night, taking his first solo on “Big River,” the Johnny Cash cover that marked the first of three St. Louis-specific songs in the first set. The second was Bob Weir’s “Black-Throated Wind,” played at all three of the last St. Louis shows, and when Bobby dropped the St. Louis reference in the second verse, the crowd roared. Still, it’s one of the least-danceable songs in the entire Dead canon, and Weir’s wind — vocally speaking — gets more black-throated every year, but he cocked his head and turtle-necked it out anyway, gaining some momentum late on the song as Mayer used his unique forefinger-and-thumb technique to glide up and down the scale over Weir’s bellowing. The third local nod was a set-ending “Johnny B. Goode,” as Mayer tore into Chuck Berry’s signature lick straight out of a good-and-spooky version of “Dark Star,” prompting Dead historians to scramble to see if those two songs had ever been paired before. It was the kind of thing that made last night’s first set feel much like a second set.
Other first-set highlights included “Friend of the Devil,” an up-tempo version compared to a slower reworking played earlier on the tour. It featured one of Weir’s only guitar solos of the night, and it was rough going, but when Mayer took over it was gold, matching Weir’s barefoot old-prospector look. “Big Railroad Blues” brought things back to rock & roll, with Mayer trading off with Jeff Chimenti, who had an excellent night at the keys, laying waste to the organ with his percussive left hand. “They Love Each Other” was a showcase for Mayer with his first real stretch-out on guitar, getting well above the 20th fret to the crowd’s delight, and adding some soul movement to his falsetto on the verses.
Of course, Deadheads are the most adoring and forgiving audiences on the planet, and a capacity crowd left zero green space on the lawn, so dancing movement was somewhat restricted. But you should have got a load of the folks on the walkway that separated the seated pavilion from the lawn. That was homebase for Deadheads tripping balls in a state of twirling, blissed-out euphoria even though they couldn’t see the stage. After dark, trying to get from one side of that walkway to the other was like navigating through a patchouli-scented haunted house and risking taking a flailing arm to the face.
The Dead’s set breaks are long — last night’s flirted with damn-near an hour — but it allowed for darkness to settle in and for the stage lights, a gorgeous three-level cascade, to work their magic. The second set opened with an absolutely epic version of “Eyes of the World” that added another cool piece of Dead history in St. Louis. The last-ever Jerry-included version of the song was played right here on this same stage back in 1995, and, like last night, it opened the second set. Last night’s was a 25-minute version featuring some beautiful interplay between Mayer’s guitar and Chimenti’s piano that led to Oteil Burbridge (in his bindi-style face paint and wearing a T-shirt featuring the Iron Sheik, the legendary professional wrestler who died earlier in the day) playing a jazz-bent six-string bass solo and scatting along to his bumblebee runs. If that wasn’t enough, the song morphed back into the second verse of “Dark Star,” a cross-set mindblower.
Next came “Fire on the Mountain” with Burbridge on vocals and Mayer playing in melodic circles through a steel-drum effect providing an island feel — a balm after the wayward uncertainty of “Dark Star.” The pavilion was a lake of bobbing heads, and while you would be forgiven for suspecting that original Dead percussionist Mickey Hart occasionally got lost, drummer Jay Lane (a rock all night subbing for original Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann) gave Hart total reverence throughout, watching him for cues at all times. The momentum continued with “Shakedown Street,” mixing the blues with the triptastic, complemented by a giant disco ball video in the back and Mayer’s funk-wank guitar.
Burbridge has been promoted to full partner during the Dead’s “Drums” sequences, which deepened the grooves last night, and “Space” facilitated some chakra-massaging based on whatever Hart was doing with the digital half of his setup, randomly sliding his batting-gloved finger over a pad of colored squares that somehow correspond with his beam invention’s phwaannggs. Falling star imagery on the screens encouraged people to give in to the band’s ambient vibe amid a wash of purple lights. It was prime noodly bullshit, but, hey, let’s see you try it.
“The Eleven” was next. The swirl! With its complex 11/8 time signature, several dancing fans were reportedly treated at the medical tent for hip dysplasia injuries. A rarely played “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” was a bit of a momentum killer despite Mayer’s Jeff Beck-ian whammy bar tricks and Chimenti’s funhouse organ. “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” picked things back up, followed by an encore of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” a first for this tour. With Weir and Mayer trading verses on the song, it felt like a perfect fare thee well for a cross-generational pairing that represents a Deadhead spirit that never dies.
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