Dead & Company, the Grateful Dead spinoff band featuring Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Bill Kreutzmann (drums) and Mickey Hart (drums), will be playing a pair of shows at Hampton Coliseum this weekend as part of their Fall Fun Run. The band’s decision to play this venue for the first time since forming in 2015 fulfilled the wishes of thousands of Deadheads—it will mark the first multiple-night run of Grateful Dead music at the Hampton, Virginia arena in 27 years.

Hampton Coliseum, which features a capacity of 13,800 for music events, originally opened in 1969 went on to host 21 Grateful Dead concerts between 1979 and 1992. During the 1980s, it gained the nickname of “the Mothership” amongst Deadheads. While the arena initially earned the name due to its exterior’s striking resemblance to a spaceship, the moniker was fortified by four straight runs of shows from 1986 through 1989 which each featured all-time moments for the band.

The Grateful Dead’s “over-success” in the late ’80s and early ’90s made more shows at the smaller arena impossible, but Phish and their fans would go on to find their own magic there, playing their first show at Hampton in 1995. They went on to develop a similar affinity for the building over the years and their fans, in turn, went on to adopt the “Mothership” nickname—particularly after the band staged their reunion shows there in 2009. Phish has played 21 shows at the Mothership to date, putting them one shy of the Grateful Dead (for now) on the list of bands with the most Hampton shows under their belts.

The Grateful Dead’s timeline at Hampton Coliseum coincided almost entirely with the Brent Mydland era of the band. after he became the band’s keyboardist and vocalist in early 1979 to replace Keith Godchaux, who had held the keyboard gig since 1971, and Donna Jean Godchaux, who joined the band as a vocalist in 1972.

When Mydland joined up with lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia, rhythm guitarist and vocalist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, he locked in the longest-running lineup of the band’s 30-year career, which lasted more than 11 years until Mydland’s death in 1990. The Dead played just two of their 22 Hampton shows with Brent Mydland on the keys, a pair of 1992 performances featuring the post-Brent keyboard duo of Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby.

PART ONE – CRPYTICAL ENVELOPMENT

The Grateful Dead first included the state of Virginia in their touring plans in 1973, as documented in this excellent retrospective article on Lost Live Dead, but the band’s first show at Hampton Coliseum would not take place for another six years.

1979 – THAT NEW GUY IS GOOD!

5/4/1979

The Grateful Dead’s debut show Hampton Coliseum was only Brent Mydland’s third outing with the band, following a one-off debut in San Jose, CA on April 22nd and the tour’s opening night in Greensboro, NC the night before. But any questions about how “the new guy” would fit in were pretty much erased by his performance on the show’s opening numbers, “Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo” and “Franklin’s Tower”, Mydland’s presence and energy had clearly reinvigorated the band, who had also wisely eased his learning curve by temporarily reducing the live repertoire to about 50 songs. The show’s biggest highlight arrived during the outro jam of “Estimated Prophet”, which ended with a surge before transitioning into a brisk “Eyes of the World”. Sparks flew early and often at this show, to the point where the last four songs of the first set and the entire second set minus “Drums” and “Space” comprised an official double vinyl LP release on Record Store Day in 2014. The one-time-only pressing of 7,900 copies quickly sold out.

[Audio: Joani Walker]

1980 – HEAVEN GOES TO HAMPTON

5/2/1980

For the second straight year, the Dead’s east coast run in May arrived at Hampton Coliseum after opening the tour the night before in Greensboro, NC. The band had released their Go To Heaven LP just four days earlier, and on this night they probably made Arista Records label boss Clive Davis happy by playing all four songs from Side 1 of the LP during the show. This was a solid outing with a typical set ist for the era, with highlights coming in the form of “The Music Never Stopped”, “Feel Like A Stranger”, and a graceful “Stella Blue”.

[Uploaded by Jonathan Aizen]

1981 – ARRIVAL OF THE MOTHERSHIP

5/1/1981

On this night, Hampton’s reputation as a place where Grateful Dead shined truly began to be forged. This one was an absolute scorcher of a show, from the opening pairing of “Alabama Getaway” and “Promised Land” (and its welcome local reference to Norfolk) to the stunningly beautiful solo by Garcia on “Althea” to the ardent, galloping “Let It Grow” to a roaring “The Other One” out of “He’s Gone”.

But don’t just take our word for it. John Colt’s review of the show for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper recounted the following exchange as the crowd filed out of the venue:

A young kid, no more than 17, was shouting at his friend. “Who were those guys, jeeze! I never heard of them before this week, jeeze!” A man nearby, who overheard, told him: “They aren’t like that all the time. That’s why people follow them up and down their tours. Just for one night like this.”

Colt’s review also contained this absolute gem of a sentence:

The Coliseum in that garish light looked like an intergalactic Mothership loaded with 14,000 lunatics headed for the edge of the universe.

The full text of Colt’s review would get national distribution when its full text was reprinted in 1983’s sadly-out-of-print Grateful Dead: The Official Book of the Deadheads. Not only is this the earliest confirmed reference to Hampton Coliseum as the “Mothership,” its inclusion in the book two years after its initial publication was the likely catalyst for the nickname’s gradual incorporation into in the Deadhead lexicon.

[Uploaded by Jonathan Aizen]

PART TWO: QUADLIBET FOR TENDERFEET

Starting in 1983, the Grateful Dead made a strategic and highly effective decision to start gearing their east coast tours around “repeat business,” i.e. folks who would attend multiple nights in one city, and who would also travel to multiple cities on the same tour. Deadheads could also now expect consistency in the scheduling (March/April for spring, June/July for summer, and September/October for fall), and in nearly all instances the next city on any given itinerary was no more than a full day’s drive from the current one.

By now, the years of groundwork in Virginia were paying off for the band and the locals who comprised the bedrock of ticket buyers. Hampton would become the first stop on the spring tour for the next five years, and after a single show in 1983, the visits in 1984 and 1985 would expand to two nights each. While locals still comprised the majority of the crowd, increased numbers of Heads were traveling down from the northeast. The word was spreading about this smaller, cool arena that actually maintained a GA seating policy throughout the entire venue for Grateful Dead shows, a practice that had almost entirely been discontinued at rock shows after 11 fans were killed during a crowd surge at a concert by The Who in Cincinnati in 1979.

What later became to be known as the “Dirty Eighties” period, from the beginning of 1983 through the summer of 1986, saw the quality of shows and tours remain inconsistent thanks to Garcia’s ongoing health issues, though the peak moments would nonetheless keep almost everyone coming back. However, one largely predictable pattern did emerge during this era: the earlier shows on the east coast tours often tended to be better, as Garcia and his voice would often (but not always) wear down as each tour progressed. This worked heavily in Hampton Coliseum’s favor, as it was the first stop on every spring tour during the Dirty Eighties.

1983 – NORFOLK AND AROUND

4/9/1983

In 1982, the Grateful Dead did not play at Hampton Coliseum on their annual spring visit to Virginia, instead opting to play 19 miles down the road at the Scope Arena in Norfolk. This would only happen once, and from 1983 onwards it was back to business as usual at Hampton.

The Saturday night gig on April 9th, 1983 kicked off the spring tour in fine fashion. The first set was highlighted by the “new tunes”, “West L.A. Fadeaway” and “Brother Esau”, and the longtime favorite combo of “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”. The second set raised the stakes further still, kicking off with the hotly-anticipated “Help On The Way” and its companion instrumental, “Slipknot”, which the band had broken out two weeks earlier in San Francisco after a six-year absence. Setlist enthusiasts will savor the only-time-ever performance of the “Smokestack Lightning Jam”, and the “Satisfaction” encore is, as it so often was, a dead giveaway that the band had had a hot night.

Fans of the Dirty Eighties era should also check out the three subsequent shows after this one in Morgantown, WV (April 10th), Binghamton, NY (April 12th) and Burlington, VT (April 13th).

[Uploaded by Matthew Vernon]

1984 – KUDOS TO ANDY GREENWELL

The Grateful Dead’s sixth annual spring visit to the region yielded a significant reward in 1984—the first multiple-night run at Hampton Coliseum. And while the band, Bill Reid of Cellar Door Productions, and Deadheads all certainly deserve credit for that, the other major factor in this happening was the man behind the curtain: Andy Greenwell, Hampton Coliseum’s Director from 1975 to 1995. It was Andy who ensured that the experience at Hampton Coliseum remained excellent for both band and fans, year after year.

Greenwell, who passed away in January of 2019 at the age of 89, was highly regarded by his peers, as recounted by Coliseum Board Chairman Bob Boester:

Andy was on a panel discussion with the guy who ran Madison Square Garden, the guy who ran the Forum in Los Angeles, and the guy who ran the giant arena at Notre Dame. They all made opening statements, and then after that it was one person after another in the audience saying to the other guys, “Why can’t you run your building the way Greenwell runs Hampton?”

4/13/1984

The Grateful Dead’s first two-night run at Hampton kicked off with what some might describe as an inauspicious start with “Day Job”, a well-intentioned Hunter/Garcia number whose lyrics rendered the song so unpopular with Deadheads that it was retired from the repertoire. However, the “Bird Song” later in the set sparkled, and the show’s clear highlight, in spite of Garcia’s slightly hoarse vocals, was the “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” that started the second set. In particular, “Fire” contains added fireworks from Mickey’s utilization of a talking drum and sound engineer Dan Healy’s deft use of sound effects on the vocals during the final chorus.

[Uploaded by Matthew Vernon]

4/14/1984

The following night found the band in an energetic mood, and they generated a consistently upbeat and energetic show—which was not a guaranteed occurrence during this time. Weir’s “Feel Like A Stranger and “Let It Grow” were the high points of the first set, and Garcia’s best efforts anchored the second set, which was centered around two of his heaviest hitters. “Terrapin Station” was a powerhouse version, complete with an ongoing salvo of bass bombs from Lesh during its final section. However, the “Morning Dew” that emerged from “Space” was the show’s biggest highlight, and one of the stronger performances of the song during this era. It’s not quite Saratoga ’83-level, but it’s up there.

[Uploaded by Matthew Vernon]

1985 – SPRING TRAINING

3/21/1985

A pair of shows at Hampton Coliseum kicked off Spring tour once again in 1985, and once again there were increased numbers of Deadheads traveling down from the northeast. The first set was notable for a well-chosen run of songs in the form of a “Meet Me at the Bottom”/“Ain’t Superstitious” blues medley, “Dupree’s Diamond Blues”, and “Looks Like Rain”. The “China Cat Sunflower” that kicked off the second set contained a well-executed outro jam, and the “Playing in the Band” that followed provided an encouraging but subtle jam the led directly into “Drums”. Overall, this was a workman-like tour opener, but one that certainly served up an on-the-bus moment or two to a first-timer.

[Uploaded by Matthew Vernon]

3/22/1985

This show’s high point arrived during its second song when Garcia kayoed the crowd with a forceful vocal flourish at the end of “Cold Rain and Snow”. Weir’s “Cassidy” would score points a few songs later, while the second set was notable for three unusual moments and several vocal flubs by Garcia. After kicking off with “Scarlet Begonias”, the band wound its outro jam down quickly and opted for a transition into Weir’s “Hell In A Bucket”. Two songs later, “Terrapin Station” meandered unusually into an enjoyable, free-form jam before “Drums” and a rare appearance of “Spanish Jam” materialized out of “Space”. While it was a fun time as always, the 1985 Hampton shows were not standouts. However, things would take a turn towards the stratosphere twelve months later.

[Uploaded by Matthew Vernon]

PART THREE: THE FASTER WE GO, THE ROUNDER WE GET

By 1986, Hampton Coliseum had become the preferred venue to see the Grateful Dead every year on the east coast, and it showed: The band booked three nights there for the first time, even though the next three shows were just up the road at the Philadelphia Spectrum. The 1986 run would also be the first of four consecutive annual runs at Hampton during which something truly spectacular happened musically, with each year’s run managing to top the previous one through 1989. These four runs would cement Hampton Coliseum’s legendary status in Grateful Dead lore.

Of course, this musical upsurge also created an exponential demand for tickets, which by now far exceeded the Coliseum’s supply. Counterfeit tickets were a problem in 1987, as were increasingly large numbers of ticketless people outside the Coliseum desperately trying to gain entry. In 1988, the arena tried shifting this pressure away from the arena and out onto Coliseum Drive by requiring every person entering the parking lots to display their own ticket, but even that didn’t quite suffice. In response, the band would change it up completely in 1989, skipping Hampton during spring tour and instead booking two unannounced “stealth” shows there to start their fall tour—under an old, familiar pseudonym.

1986 – A BOX OF BREAKOUTS

3/19/1986

Spring tour 1986 got off to a promising start with an opening set that contained an unexpected and major highlight: the Grateful Dead’s robust breakout of the Bob Dylan epic “Visions of Johanna”, with Garcia handling the vocals. Given Garcia’s obvious love of performing the song, it remains a mystery why he only chose to play it seven more times over the band’s final decade. While the second set stuck to tried-and-true material, the “Playing in the Band” was a long, substantial version that ran for 15 minutes, and a stout “Black Peter” was the late-show highlight.

[Audio: Joe D’Amico]

3/20/1986

This night got off to an underwhelming start as when the band offered up a perfunctory first set that hit its low point in its seventh song when Garcia forgot most of the words to “Althea”. However, before the next song, Weir stepped up to the mic and said, “Now we’re gonna prove that practice makes perfect.”

While the crowd tried to figure out what he meant, Phil Lesh stepped forward and counted off his signature song, “Box of Rain”, to a stunned, rapturous crowd. It was the Grateful Dead’s first performance of “Box of Rain” since Phil had blown out his voice in 1973, and while he had resumed singing 1984, he had stuck to singing cover songs until now. As the band played, the crowd quickly established a pattern of quieting down just long enough for Lesh to sing his next line before eagerly roaring at the top of their lungs again. The “Box of Rain” breakout song would serve as the peak moment of the spring tour, and as Weir announced the set break, the set’s earlier shortcomings had already been forgotten.

The second set only contained six songs, though the celebratory vibe carried over to “Iko Iko” opener and the thick “Estimated Prophet” that followed made up for the minor stumbles later during ‘Throwing Stones”. So, yes, this show really is legendary because of one song, but…what a song it was.

[Uploaded by Jonathan Aizen]

3/21/1986

This show was obscured by the “Box Of Rain” breakout the night before, but it’s actually the best show from this run. It starts with Weir leading the band into its third breakout of the run, a cover of the Motown classic “Road Runner”, a song that had was previously lurking in the repertoires of both the Jerry Garcia Band and Weir’s side band, Kingfish. However, despite the strong performance, this would be one of only two versions played by the Grateful Dead.

Garcia quickly answered with his classic “Dupree’s Diamond Blues”, and the exemplary mid-set “Bird Song” that came later would would normally have been the set’s highlight. But after a punchy take on Brent’s “Tons Of Steel”, Weir called for a rare “Supplication Jam” that took an unprecedented turn when he steered the ship directly into “Let It Grow”. Although the band didn’t quite catch his vocal cue the first time around, the momentum and novelty generated a superior version of the song that wound up being one of the decade’s best, with Garcia leading the band through two soaring passages just before and after the final verse.

In contrast, the second set headed off into drifting, spacier Dirty Eighties territory, kicking off with an “Uncle John’s Band” that was a little rough around the edges lyrically before landing at “Terrapin Station”, which dissolved into an extended reprise of the “Playing In The Band” that the band had started two nights earlier. The post-“Space” salvo was more conventional, as the set’s closing pairing of “Stella Blue” and “Sugar Magnolia” provided a reflective and eventually rocking conclusion.

[Audio: Joe D’Amico]

1987 – NOT IN THE DARK…YET

At the risk of coming across as unmotivated, we’re going to keep the summaries of Hampton’s three 1987 shows on the short side here, because you can read our deep dive into them (along with the two Hartford shows that followed) in this piece that ran last March.

3/22/1987

The first east coast Grateful Dead show after Jerry Garcia’s brush with death via a diabetic coma in July 1986 was among the most energetic the band ever performed. An inspired Garcia led the Dead through a shorter but razor-sharp second set that contained musical knockout guitar solos during “Sugar Magnolia” and “Estimated Prophet”. The “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” pairing also showed similar exuberance, and Garcia brought the house down when he sang the final verse of “Black Peter”.

[Uploaded by Jonathan Aizen]

3/23/1987

This one was eclipsed by the shows before and after it, but the first set contained a couple of great song placements with a mid-set “Iko Iko” and a late-first set “Feel Like A Stranger”. The second set kicked off with “Box Of Rain” to another enthusiastic response, and the second set’s centerpiece of “Truckin’” > “Drums” > “Space” > “Other One” served as its main highlight.

[Uploaded by Jonathan Aizen]

3/24/1987

The first set was bookended by rugged, strapping versions of “Jack Straw” and “Let It Grow”. Somewhere in between, Weir had to humorously admonish a fan who thought that bringing a coyote call into the concert was a good idea. The second set kicked off with “Gimme Some Lovin” in a unique placement before Garcia showcased his new ballad, “Black Muddy River”. The “Playing in the Band” that followed would give way to one of the definitive, all-time versions of “Terrapin Station” that served as a joyous celebration of Garcia’s survival.

[Uploaded by Jonathan Aizen]

1988 – IGNITION, BLASTOFF, ORBIT

3/26/1988

This show was quickly overshadowed by the following night, becoming one of the most consistently overlooked and underrated shows from the Grateful Dead’s final decade. From the opening “Hell In A Bucket” through the “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” encore, this is one of the most tightly executed shows of the era.

The band maintained a high level of attention to detail all night, with one notable and deliberate exception: an impromptu stab at Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up” in the first set, complete with Weir gamely taking a hilarious shot at the lead vocal. Later in the set, Weir’s rendition of the Dylan classic “Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” would be a standard-setting performance of the song, and Garcia followed it by nailing his vocals on the tricky-to-sing bridge section of the rollicking “Might As Well” that closed the set.

While the second set looks completely standard on paper, don’t be fooled: it shines throughout. This show remains a stellar dark horse candidate for an official release.

[Uploaded by Jonathan Aizen]

3/27/1988

This show is widely regarded as the best Grateful Dead concert from 1988 (just above two serious contenders from July 2nd in Oxford, ME and July 29th in Monterey, CA) as well as one of the best post-coma Grateful Dead shows in general.

The first set featured the first version “Ballad Of A Thin Man” since performing it with Bob Dylan the previous summer (one of only two they would play, with Weir handling vocals), a one-time-only pairing of “Cumberland Blues” > “Me and My Uncle” as the “cowboy” songs, and a major breakout in the form of the first “To Lay Me Down” since 1983.

However, the second set topped all of this. After a quick noodle through Miles Davis’ “So What” gave notice that something big was about to happen, the band knocked out a pre-“Drums” for the ages with a five-song sequence of “Sugar Magnolia” > Scarlet Begonias” > Fire on the Mountain”, “Estimated Prophet” > “Eyes of the World”, with the “Fire” in particular landing on the best-versions-of-all-time list. This one received an official release as Vol. 8 of the Grateful Dead’s Download Series and is available on your favorite streaming platform.

3/28/1988

Eventually, there had to be a step backward… The Grateful Dead closed out their 1988 run in Hampton with a comparatively unremarkable show. The 9-song first set was highlighted by “Box of Rain” in the third slot, and the second set kicked off with “Touch of Grey”, which had been around since 1982 but was now being seen and heard in a very different light after becoming the world’s most unlikely top 10 single six months earlier.

The set was unspectacular, save for the third straight night of unusually commanding “Drums” segments that were heavy on noisy passages from the Beam and loud electronic effects that reverberated around the arena thanks to new PA speakers the band had added to the rafters at the rear of the venue. In one of those odd coincidences that just happen, the setlist for the second half of the show contained a six-song sequence that was identical to the one heard during the middle show (3/23/87) of the previous year’s Hampton run.

[Uploaded by Matthew Vernon]

1989 – THE WARLOCKS (FORMERLY)

10/8/1989

By 1989, the Mothership’s reputation as a great venue in which great shows took place had spread as widely as things could spread in a pre-internet era. Unfortunately, this was now a big problem. At this point, the Grateful Dead had become almost too successful for their own good, with nearly every east coast arena show sold out and thousands of people turning up without tickets in hopes of finding one despite the band’s repeated pleas to refrain from doing so.

To try and work around this, the band waited until the week before their fall tour and quietly put tickets on sale locally for two shows, billed as “Formerly The Warlocks”. Once word got out, tickets were snapped up quickly for the first Grateful Dead shows to take place under a pseudonym since 1975. All of this led to off-the-charts anticipation about what could happen at these shows, and the first night delivered the goods.

Sharp-eyed Heads who paid attention to the band’s equipment were quick to notice that Garcia had dusted off his Doug Irwin “Wolf” guitar (and its distinctive tones) for the first time in years, which further raised hopes and speculation about these shows. After a steady first set, the band delivered a huge breakout with the first versions of “Help on the Way” and “Slipknot” since 1985 to kick off a second set that would remain vigorous all the way through to its closing “Morning Dew”.

The encore offered yet another bonus: the first east coast version of “And We Bid You Goodnight”, an a cappella spiritual performed in the band’s early days that had been unexpectedly revived three months earlier. This show was potent enough that it received an official release from the band in 2010, but it would only be the second-best Grateful Dead show at the Mothership in 1989.

10/9/1989

Hampton Coliseum’s long-running relationship with the Grateful Dead and Deadheads reached its peak on this memorable night. The proceedings kicked off with a “Feel Like A Stranger” that was compelling enough to be the leadoff track on the band’s 1990 Without A Net live compilation album. The remainder of the set was sound and reliable, with Weir chiming out satisfying runs of ascending chords in his unmistakable style during the closing jam of “The Music Never Stopped”.

The first seventy-one minutes of the second set would instantly reach legendary status. After uncharacteristically starting the second set with “Playing in the Band”, the song’s jam quickly took an exploratory but authoritative tone before Garcia unleashed a surprise by switching from one of his customary guitar effects to the MIDI wooden flute tones with which he’d been experimenting all summer during “Space” segments, further elevating the game.

The “Uncle John’s Band” that followed was comparatively restrained and precise, but it begat another surprise: a direct return to the full reprise of “Playing in the Band” in the middle of the set, a move that had become rare since the 1970s. Then, after a few seconds of silence, the band cracked their universe open and broke out the first performance of “Dark Star” since 1984. By this point, seeing the band actually play this improvisational vehicle live had been reduced to an elusive pipe dream for most fans. “Dark Star” had been performed only four times since 1974, only twice since Mydland joined the band in 1979, and a notable zero times since Garcia’s coma, but it was still very much the holy grail of the Grateful Dead’s catalog.

The crowd’s reaction was so loud and so intense that it actually threw the band off, prompting Garcia to step up to sing the song’s first verse after a little more than a minute. But the band was able to really dive into it after one last road from the crowd, and after the second verse, Lesh strapped on a 4-string bass and goaded his bandmates into an absolutely deafening crescendo of psychedelic noise that had to be mixed down for the band’s official release.

The band wasn’t finished, though, as they delivered another knockout punch with the definitive late-era version of “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” coming out of “Space”. They threw yet another haymaker by using the encore to break out the first version of “Attics of My Life” since 1972. While the subsequent fall tour versions of “Dark Star” at Meadowlands Arena (October 16th) and Miami Arena (October 26th) would each be musically superior, the Hampton “Dark Star” was the biggest and most significant breakout of the Grateful Dead’s post-coma era, highlighted by the crowd’s berserk reaction at its beginning and later by a roaring, overwhelming soundscape that channeled a massive, primal dose of the band’s exploratory, blow-minds-completely original intent through 24 years of experience and all the latest advances in sound technology.

The audience would have the last word of the evening after the show ended and the house lights came up. After gazing around at one another for a few dazed seconds, 14,0000 people spontaneously erupted into a loud, sustained cheer that lasted for a full minute or so before heading out to the lots.

Note: The link to the 10/8 show above actually contains the official release of both nights, so we’re linking to an audience recording here to provide an unmixed version of the Dark Star, along with the crowd’s reactions.

[Uploaded by Jonathan Aizen]

PART FOUR: WE LEAVE THE CASTLE

1992 – A RETURN TO EARTH

All good things come to an end, and Grateful Dead’s final shows at Hampton Coliseum would prove to be a comparative return to earth. Once again, the shows were announced the week before they happened, although this time it was barely a surprise given the obvious 2-date gap between the spring 1992 tour’s opening run in Atlanta, GA and two subsequent shows in Landover, MD. However, in one last attempt to try and preserve the original Hampton scene and filter tickets to local fans, tickets were only sold locally to walk-up customers; tickets could not be purchased over the phone.

By the beginning of 1992, the trend from the events of the previous two years had begun to show. Keyboardist Brent Mydland had suddenly passed away on July 26, 1990, three days after the conclusion of the band’s summer tour. The Grateful Dead quickly settled on Mydland’s replacement in the form of Tubes alumnus Vince Welnick, and the band’s fall tour proceeded as scheduled just 43 days later.

Welnick did not have a jazz or jam band background, but his learning curve was softened after just five shows by the simultaneous addition of virtuoso pianist Bruce Hornsby, a longtime Deadhead and friend of the band. Hornsby’s aggressive style pushed the band, especially Garcia, harder than anyone had in years while Vince settled in with enthusiasm. However, by the end of 1991, Hornsby grew disheartened by the band’s ongoing internal dysfunction and Garcia’s recurring health issues. The 1992 spring tour would be Hornsby’s last as a full member of the Grateful Dead after he and his wife became parents to twin sons.

3/8/1992

It was a not-quite-firing-on-all-cylinders Grateful Dead that turned up to Hampton in 1992. While the run’s first set started with a strong “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot” > “Franklin’s Tower” and the first east coast version of the newly revived “Same Thing”, the second set was a bit more pedestrian. It included the Welnick original “Way To Go Home”, a song that would remain in heavy second-set rotation for the remainder of the band’s career. However, the set’s highlight would come later on with Garcia’s enthusiastic take on his new ballad, “So Many Roads”, one of four new Grateful Dead originals that had debuted the previous month.

[Uploaed by Jonathan Aizen]

3/9/1992

The 21st and final Grateful Dead show at Hampton Coliseum kicked off with the 8th performance of “Feel Like A Stranger” at the Mothership. Later, Weir’s controversial and complex “Picasso Moon” received a boost from Hornsby’s piano before longtime favorite “Bird Song” closed the set.

While the second set started promisingly with “New Speedway Boogie” in the opening slot, this version was perfunctory, as was the rest of the set. This show also featured the majority of the crowd’s first live listen to Weir’s new song, “Corrina”, which didn’t yet heavily emphasize the sequencer effect that would become a signature aspect of the Grateful Dead’s version of the song.

However, the set’s closing sequence of “The Last Time”, “Wharf Rat”, and “Sugar Magnolia” was steady enough, and one of the band’s final versions of “The Weight” would close out the 22nd and final Grateful Dead concert at Hampton Coliseum. The song would be retired from the repertoire following Hornsby’s departure from the band at the tour’s end.

[Uploaded by Matthew Vernon]

After Jerry Garcia’s death on August 9th, 1995 and the official retirement of the Grateful Dead’s name four months later, the surviving members went on to form numerous spinoff bands. Two of these spinoff bands would go on to play at Hampton Coliseum: The Other Ones (at that time containing Weir, Hart, Kreutzmann and Hornsby) on October 20th, 2000 and Furthur (with core members Weir and Lesh) on February 12th, 2010 and April 1st, 2011.

Dead & Company will continue the storied tradition of the Dead at the Mothership on Friday, November 8th and Saturday, November 9th. For tickets and more information, head here.