After a soft opening on Thursday with performances by Neal Francis and Oteil & Friends, Bob Weir kicked off his second-annual Dead Ahead festival in Mexico with an all-star Grateful Dead tribute. Returning to the Moon Palace Hotel in Cancún—former site of Dead & Company‘s Playing in the Sand getaways—this year’s Dead Ahead features a marquee band comprised of Weir, Sturgill Simpson, Rick Mitarotonda (Goose), Don Was, and Weir’s Dead & Co bandmates Jeff Chimenti, Oteil Burbridge, and Jay Lane.
Dead Ahead 2025 marks a full-circle moment for Sturgill Simpson, who played his first announced performance in three years at the inaugural festival last year. After suffering a vocal hemorrhage while on tour with Willie Nelson‘s Outlaw Festival in 2021, Simpson retreated from public view and released what he has long maintained will be his final album under the name “Sturgill Simpson.” Following years of radio silence, Simpson reemerged at Farm Aid 2023 for a surprise sit-in with Weir and joined him several months later at the inaugural Dead Ahead in early 2024. Several months later, Simpson announced his first tour since 2021 and a new album under the name Johnny Blue Skies. Simpson was back, and it turned out Weir and the Dead had even more to do with it than fans knew.
“I wasn’t doing anything, and I was asked, did I want to go to Mexico for a couple of days and play guitar for the Grateful Dead?” Simpson recently told Uncut about being approached for the inaugural Dead Ahead. “I wasn’t really familiar with them, because in my early twenties in Kentucky there was a jam band scene which I dismissed as unstructured noodling, and I lumped the Dead into that.”
Related: How Jerry Garcia Helped Inspire Sturgill Simpson To Return To The Stage
Weir sent Simpson a setlist of 60 songs to learn, and the country singer-songwriter was shocked to discover how naturally the playing came to him. Come to find out, Jerry Garcia‘s approach to guitar playing wasn’t far off from Sturgill’s as they were both heavily inspired by bluegrass and country music.
“He is now my favorite guitar player,” Simpson admitted, adding that the Dead’s music helped pull him out of a deep depression he sunk into following his 2021 injury. “Jerry Garcia, I hate to say it, might have saved my life.”
Fueled by the inspiration of Dead Ahead 2024, Simpson returned home with purpose. Johnny Blue Skies’ brilliant Passage du Desir and the universally acclaimed Why Not? Tour—featuring marathon three-hour concerts with plenty of extended jams—all followed as a result of the Dead’s spark.
“All I could think about was playing guitar for 10 hours a day again,” he said. “I called my booking agent and said, ‘I wanna go on tour.’”
All of this backstory added further significance on Friday when Simpson strolled onstage with Weir—not to mention the fact that Sturgill and fellow Dead Ahead guitarist Mitarotonda recently paid tribute to the Dead at the band’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony. After elder statesman of the jam scene Bob Weir opened the show with “Sugar Magnolia”, Simpson picked it up from there with “Sugaree”, before Mitarotonda chimed in with “Tennessee Jed” in a vocal baton race that showed the Grateful Dead’s influence through the generations—including a guest appearance from 18-year-old guitar prodigy Grace Bowers.
Other highlights from night one of the Dead Ahead band included Bob Weir’s first performance of “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” since Furthur‘s October 1st, 2013 show in Las Vegas. Despite grassroots fan support, the Aoxomoxoa cult favorite has yet to appear in a Dead & Company setlist in the band’s entire ten-year history. In the second set, Simpson brought things full circle yet again by igniting the frame with “China Cat Sunflower”, a song he frequently teased on the Why Not? Tour during prolonged jams on his own improvisational springboard “Brace For Impact (Live A Little)”.
Later on in the set, a bit of tongue-in-cheek setlist formatting placed the Dead’s 1977 orchestral centerpiece “Terrapin Station” alongside Simpson’s breakout DMT-inspired track “Turtles All the Way Down” in a double-dose of chelonian tomfoolery. Immediately followed by “Peggy-O”, a frequent cover favorite of Mitarotonda’s Goose and featuring the (comparatively) young guitarist on vocals, the three-song sequence once again underscored the level of influence the Dead still command after 60 years. At the end of the day though, it was still Bobby’s show as he finished night one with a moving “Black Muddy River” encore.
Check out some fan-shot videos from the Dead Ahead Festival by Steven Leitman. The house band returns for two more two-set performances on Sunday and Monday, in addition to sets by Joy Oladokun, Trampled By Turtles performing Old & In the Way, Sturgill Simpson, and Tom Hamilton. In March, Dead & Company will return to Sphere for another residency. Find tickets and dates here.
Dead Ahead — “Sugar Magnolia” — 1/10/25
Setlist: Dead Ahead | Dead Ahead Festival | Moon Palace Hotel | Cancún, Mexico | 1/10/25
Set One: Sugar Magnolia, Sugaree [1], Deep Elem Blues (Traditional), Tennessee Jed [2] [3], Dupree’s Diamond Blues, Lost Sailor > Saint of Circumstance
Set Two: China Cat Sunflower [1] > I Know You Rider (Traditional), Terrapin Station, Turtles All The Way Down (Sturgill Simpson) [1], Peggy-O (Traditional) [2], All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan) [3], Days Between, Not Fade Away (The Crickets)
Encore: Black Muddy River
[1] w/ Sturgill Simpson on lead vocals
[2] w/ Rick Mitarotonda on lead vocals
[3] w/ Grace Bowers