Back on May 8th, 1977, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Cornell University’s Barton Hall that would become so legendary that an entire book would later be written about it, and the recording by the band’s engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson would go on to become the most popular recording of the band amongst Deadheads. Exactly 46 years later on May 8th, 2023, the Grateful Dead spinoff band Dead & Company honored the 1977 show by returning to Barton Hall and playing a benefit concert, with proceeds split equally between Cornell’s 2030 Project and MusiCares.
By Dead & Company standards, it was a small show. The band, consisting of Grateful Dead alumni Bob Weir (guitar/vocals) and Mickey Hart (drums) alongside John Mayer (lead guitar/vocals), Oteil Burbridge (bass/vocals), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards/vocals), and Jay Lane (drums, sitting in for GD alumni Bill Kreutzmann) have consistently played arenas, sheds, and stadiums over their eight-year history, so the crowd of 5,000 was a throwback to earlier eras. However, the ticket prices were very much of the 2023 benefit gig variety. Aside from an allotment of $77 tickets for current Cornell students, ticket prices ranged from $300 to $1,500 and were allocated via lottery. Despite the higher prices, demand vastly exceeded supply and only a slim minority of applicants got tickets.
Throughout the day, both on campus and in town, there were clear signs that attendees knew just exactly how lucky, fortunate, and privileged they were. Restaurants in town were filled at 3 p.m. with people eating very early dinners before making their way up to campus, pre-show partying was noticeably restrained, and nearly everyone was lined up outside Barton Hall well before doors opened. With the exception of the Cornell students in attendance, the audience looked and felt very much like the crowds at Dead & Company’s annual Playing in the Sand destination events in Mexico, minus the staggering drunks.
Barton Hall, despite its old-school charm and storied history, is a facility whose acoustics for live music events remain suboptimal at best. Originally built in 1915 as an indoor drilling area for the university’s ROTC units, it’s been refurbished several times and is now the indoor home of Cornell’s track and field team, with large windows letting in lots of natural light. But it’s a cavernous room with almost two acres of floor space, and its high ceiling and hard surfaces have wreaked havoc on amplified sound for decades, and that continued when large sections of the crowd struggled to hear a series of pre-show announcements and welcomes by a Cornell alumni association VP, a Cornell dean, and a county legislator, all of whom were experienced and clear public speakers.
Amidst all this, Dead & Company had a tall order in front of them: play a memorable and special show in front of people who spent big and traveled far to be there, and do so in a room where their predecessor band played the most popular show in their 30-year history, but that’s also had lousy acoustics the whole time. Fortunately, the band delivered a long, satisfying concert that hit the hoped-for high points while paying direct homage to highlights from the Grateful Dead’s 1977 Cornell show. It was a long and generous night of music by any standard, and with three hours and 27 minutes of actual music over two sets the show actually ran longer than 14 of the 22 shows on the Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72 tour, whose extended running times remain legendary.
Almost immediately after the show was announced in March, there was speculation that Dead & Company would stage a song-by-song recreation of the Grateful Dead’s 1977 Cornell show. And for one song, it looked like that might actually happen when the band took the stage just after 7:30 p.m. and opened with reliable warhorse “New Minglewood Blues”, the opener of the 1977 show.
But once the band started into Mayer’s signature Dead & Company song “Althea” as the second song instead of “Loser”, the song-by-song replay possibility was no more, but the band did incorporate seven songs from the Dead’s 1977 show into Monday’s show. Overall, the setlist looked like the sort that Dead & Company are known to play on the final night of their tours when they stack up their biggest and most popular songs and play them until the venue’s curfew forces them offstage.
On this night, the biggest musical swerve came early. After the aforementioned “Althea” caught a wave during its extended solo section and house engineer Derek Featherstone made adjustments to conquer Barton Hall’s sound demons, the band stepped on the proverbial gas pedal and dropped a 33-minute pairing of Dead classics “Estimated Prophet” and “Eyes of the World” as the third and fourth songs, with the latter capped off by Burbridge playing an extended bass lead coupled with scat singing.
Dead & Company – “New Minglewood Blues”, “Althea” [Pro-Shot] – 5/8/23
Laid-back versions of the country-tinged “Jack Straw” and straight-ahead rocker “Bertha” followed, before Weir broke things back open with “Cassidy”, a song whose twists and turns have been expanded and maximized by Dead & Company in ways that the Grateful Dead’s versions never quite explored as fully. The 90-minute set closed with “Deal”, another of Mayer’s “signature” Dead & Company songs, complete with a musical peak that generated one of those well-timed Deadhead crowd roars that surges and recedes with such perfect timing that it’s almost as if the crowd is the band’s seventh instrument.
After the customary set break, the band returned to deliver a two-hour second set that started with a relaxed 22-minute version of the time-honored pairing of “China Cat Sunflower” and “I Know You Rider”. The duo essentially served as the band’s second set warmup songs before launching a 27-minute journey through the three-song suite of the tricky, complex “Help on the Way”, the thick, jazzy improvisation of “Slipknot!”, and the upbeat rocker “Franklin’s Tower”, the latter highlighted by Chimenti’s lengthy and powerful Hammond B3 organ solo.
Dead & Company – “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” (Traditional) [Pro-Shot] – 5/8/23
The traditional “Drums” section of the second set followed, with Hart and Lane joined by Burbridge. A series of recordings sourced from rainforests punctuated the segment early on before the drummers gradually increased their momentum and volume over several minutes before Hart’s calming solo segment of low drones and chimes.
Following a short “Space” where Mayer, Weir, Burbridge, and Chimenti loosely improvised outside the structure of any kind of formal song, the band delivered three clear nods to the Dead’s 1977 second set that many had been hoping to hear. First up was the pairing of “Scarlet Begonias” and “Fire on the Mountain” in a rare late-show appearance, with the highlight coming from the nice peak of the extended improvisational jam linking the two songs.
Finally, the set closed with the one song that really, truly, had to be played on this evening: “Morning Dew”. The Dead’s version of the song at the 1977 show is widely regarded as the highlight of that night, the best version of the song that the band had ever played, and one of the finest moments of the late Jerry Garcia’s musical career. And while Dead & Company were never going to equal that 1977 version (hell, even the Grateful Dead never equaled it), this version was a home run in its own right and the clear high point of the evening, with Mayer making liberal use of power chords as the band surged behind him.
On a night where hopes and expectations were both sky-high, this version of “Morning Dew” met them. As the crowd roared its approval, the band decided to forego the ritual of leaving the stage and returning for the encore and just headed straight into the slower, dramatic “Terrapin Station’ to bring the evening to a close, and after a round of bows the house lights came up at 11:40 to bring the four-hour show to a close.
And, if you’re one of those people who were disappointed that Dead & Company didn’t work a current-day version of “St. Stephen” > “Not Fade Away” > “St. Stephen” into tonight’s show? Well, you’ll just have to be content with listening to the Grateful Dead’s version from May 8th, 1977 for the 323rd time.
Dead & Company – Barton Hall – Cornell University – Ithaca, NY – 5/8/23 – Full Audio
[Audio: JT/NY]
Setlist: Dead & Company | Barton Hall | Cornell University | Ithaca, NY | 5/8/23
Set One: New Minglewood Blues, Althea, Estimated Prophet > Eyes of the World, Jack Straw, Bertha, Cassidy, Deal
Set Two: China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider (Traditional), Help on the Way > Slipknot > Franklin’s Tower > Drums > Space > Scarlet Begonias > Fire on the Mountain, Morning Dew (Bonnie Dobson)
Encore: Terrapin Station