Last night, following a few days off after their Camden performance on Sunday, Dead & Company rolled into Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio for the penultimate stop on their 2017 summer tour. As with every show on the band’s summer run, a video stream of the show was made available via nugs.tv. However, as a special surprise, the band offered up the entire show’s webcast free of charge, letting everyone into the gorgeous wood-paneled shed to experience the Blossom performance along with the Cuyahoga crowd. And as is becoming a trend with Dead & Company, the band did not disappoint.

The show’s first frame set the pace for what would be an great performance, featuring particularly well-played renditions of blues favorites, beautiful sing-alongs, and impeccable musicianship. The second half’s setlist reads like it came straight out of a Deadhead’s letter to Santa Claus. After an excellent set-opening “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider,” Bobby and John traded vocals on a beautifully bouncing “He’s Gone,” which gave way to a swinging “Truckin,'” which got deep and bluesy before morphing into “Drums” > “Space.” Next up was a celebratory “I Need A Miracle” that saw Weir leading the way with his patented rockstar charisma (despite having a bit of trouble keeping the lyrics straight). Bobby remained at the helm for the rest of the set, steering the band through a dreamy “Wharf Rat” and a set-closing “Good Lovin'” for good measure, before Mayer led the band’s lullaby-like “Black Muddy River” encore.

With a larger-than-usual virtual crowd tuning in–and a packed house at the scenic amphitheater–Bob Weir, John Mayer, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Oteil Burbridge, and Jeff Chimenti played with supreme confidence and a well-earned swagger throughout the night. And with only a pair of Wrigley Field shows this weekend remaining on the schedule for this summer, Dead & Co continued to affirm to everyone watching that they are a band worth following. Not just in the classic “get on the bus” sense, either. This collective group has passed the point of being simply a novelty tribute to the days of old. They’ve become a band that people want to pay attention to–to check their setlists, to listen back to last night’s show, to cancel evening plans when you see that they’re doing a surprise free couch tour…to talk about like a living, breathing organism. Sometimes that talk will center on negatives rather than positives, and that’s OK too. It’s all part of it. They’re not the Grateful Dead. They’re something different–something for right now–and it’s been thrilling to watch them hit that stride over the course of this tour. The anti-Mayer fan skepticism has all but silenced, the pop star having made his way into the good graces of even the most jaded Deadheads (a feat we once thought to be virtually impossible). The Internet buzz about roster shake-ups and sit-ins and returns to earlier post-Jerry “Dead” incarnations has, for the most part, petered out.

Now, there’s really only one question about Dead & Co that seems to matter to fans: “So, uh, after Wrigley, how long until they head back out on tour?”

You can watch full pro-shot footage of Dead & Company’s entire Blossom performance below, thanks to a surprise free webcast from the band and nugs.tv:

SET ONE:

SET TWO:

SETLIST: Dead & Company | Blossom Music Center | Cuyahoga Falls, OH | 6/28/17

Set One: Hell In A Bucket, Mississippi Half-Step, Black Throated Wind, Row Jimmy, Big River, Cassidy, Big Railroad Blues

Set Two: China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, He’s Gone > Truckin’ > Drums/Space > I Need A Miracle > Wharf Rat, Good Lovin

Encore: Black Muddy River