[UPDATE 7/18/23]: HeadCount and Dead & Company had already broken their charitable fundraising records with eight shows left to play on The Final Tour, and the final leg of the trek proved to raise those historic marks even higher.
Per the voter registration nonprofit organization, the total funds raised via Participation Row guitar and memorabilia auctions during the 2023 tour topped $2 million—more than all of the band’s previous campaigns combined. The $2,032,520 raised this year plus the $1,969,664 collected between 2015 and 2022 pushed the fundraising total for the Grateful Dead offshoot’s eight-year tenure past the $4 million mark.
As HeadCount executive director Andy Bernstein told Live For Live Music, the eight-year fundraising effort crossed its milestone $4 million mark at the last possible moment on the tour’s final night. “At the end of the show, we were actually $20,000 short of the $4 million total for the eight years,” Bernstein said, “but then I ran into one of our previous donors in the parking lot, and told him we had one signed poster left. He immediately said he’d donate $20,000 for it to get us over the top.”
The 2023 fundraising efforts, derived largely from auctions of custom-designed Dead & Company D’Angelico guitars for each stop on the tour, ramped up as the band’s schedule reached its conclusion at San Francisco’s Oracle Park this past weekend. The San Francisco-specific guitar wound up closing for $238,000, by far the highest total of any of the city-specific offerings this summer. The guitar commemorating the tour as a whole, which Bob Weir once again played onstage on Saturday night of the final run, fetched a total of $275,000. The overall fundraising total from the final night of the tour alone clocked in at more than $730,000.
The funds raised will be split between HeadCount (the organizer of the auction), REVERB (the tour’s environmental advocacy partner and co-producer, with HeadCount, of the Participation Row activism village), and the “Dead Family NonProfits,” a group of roughly 20 causes and organization selected by the band.
Check out more charity fundraising statistics from Dead & Company’s The Final Tour below. For more information on HeadCount, head here. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for photos of the 2023 Dead & Company auction guitars.
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[6/30/23]: As The Final Tour rolls on, Dead & Company, in partnership with HeadCount, have now surpassed $1 million in funds raised for charity. The staggering total, raised in just over a month, already makes the 2023 auction series the most successful such campaign in the Grateful Dead offshoot’s eight-year history, even with eight more shows left to play.
The auction series has traveled with Dead & Company’s Final Tour as a part of the “Participation Row” activism village organized by HeadCount, a nonprofit promoting voter registration and civic participation, along with REVERB, which promotes environmental responsibility. The initiative has traveled with Dead & Company tours since 2015 and has raised nearly $4 million for various charitable causes since its inception.
Much of the $1 million sum comes from auctioned guitars feature illustrations by revered poster artist AJ Masthay incorporating various iconic Grateful Dead imagery. Five different guitars with Masthay’s artwork, each specific to a particular stop on the tour and a corresponding poster, have closed for $60,000 or more. One that was played by Weir during “Alabama Getaway” and “Dead Mr. Fantasy” > “Hey Jude Reprise” at Citi Field in New York on June 22nd closed that night at $125,000. Another fetched $114,420 a few days earlier in Saratoga, NY.
Woodburning artist Dig O’Neal from Sacred Fire Arts also contributed Dead & Company guitar artwork. His work debuted at last winter’s Playing in the Sand destination event and then made an encore appearance on The Final Tour, helping raise an additional $250,000 for Dead family charities.
[Photo: Jay Blakesberg – Bob Weir with Citi Field auction guitar, 6/22/23]
HeadCount is poised to exceed that total, too: In addition to the guitars auctioned off at various individual stops on the tour, a single D’Angelico guitar commemorating the whole summer, signed by Dead & Company and played by guitarist Bob Weir at Wrigley Field in Chicago on June 10th, currently has a high bid of $128,000. It will continue to be open for bids until the final set of the tour finale in San Francisco on July 16th. That contribution will propel the overall total raised to at least $1.14 million. The grand total also includes nearly $220,000 from fine art pieces created and donated by Dead & Company drummer Mickey Hart, auctioned along the tour stops and at a special event in advance of last week’s concerts at New York’s Citi Field.
[Photo: Chloe Weir – Bob Weir plays full-tour auction guitar onstage at Wrigley Field, 6/10/23]
Additional signed guitars, drumheads, posters, and fine art will be auctioned both remotely and at upcoming stops in Boulder, CO, George, WA and San Francisco, CA.
Fans who can’t bid on a guitar can have the chance to win one for free by taking actions with the non-profits on Participation Row. Those who are not able to attend in person but wish to participate in the auctions can also submit bids remotely by contacting HeadCount’s Major Gifts Director, Kristina Raines, at kristina@headcount.org.
Weir is a board member of HeadCount and an artist endorser for D’Angelico Guitars. The auctions benefit HeadCount along with the environmental group REVERB and over a dozen other “Dead Family” non-profits, personally-selected by the band.
Those wishing to bid on a guitar remotely can contact HeadCount’s Major Gifts Director, Kristina Raines, at kristina@headcount.org.
