Dead & Company wrapped their penultimate weekend at Sphere on Sunday with a Mother’s Day tribute by way of Merle Haggard‘s “Mama Tried”. The Grateful Dead offshoot hadn’t played the classic Bob Weir cowboy tune since May 24th, 2024, the band’s second-ever weekend at the groundbreaking Las Vegas venue.
It wouldn’t be a Sunday Grateful Dead-adjacent show without “Samson and Delilah”, which opened the first set. Bob Weir, John Mayer, Mickey Hart, Jay Lane, Oteil Burbridge, and Jeff Chimenti lifted off from the Dead’s former home of 710 Ashbury St. with “Truckin'”, before an early show pairing of “Dear Mr. Fantasy” and the coda of The Beatles‘ “Hey Jude” turned deeply psychedelic thanks to an accompanying liquid light show, conjuring memories of the Dead’s early acid soaked days in San Francisco.
After that, Spaghetti Western visuals starring Bobby Weir as “Ace”—which also appeared on Friday alongside the year’s first “Me & My Uncle”—introduced “Mama Tried” and a tribute to all the moms on Mother’s Day. While “Mama Tried” was the most overt reference to the maternal holiday, some other lyrics from the first set could conjure motherly images including “Cassidy” (“Ah, child of countless trees / Ah, child of boundless seas … Speaks his name, though you were born to me / Born to me / Cassidy”) and the set-closing “St. Stephen” (“Wrap the babe in scarlot colors / Call it your own”).
Dead & Company — “Mama Tried” (Merle Haggard) — 5/11/25
[Video: Andrew Pulsifer]
For the second set, Dead & Company came back for a funky saunter down “Shakedown Street” set to Matrix-esque visuals of pixelated dancing bears. “Shakedown Street” led directly to “West L.A. Fadeaway” for a double dose of darker latter-era Dead, before Mayer added some levity with “Sugaree”. As is often the case, Mayer’s guitar work on “Sugaree” was a highlight of the night, eliciting rapturous praise from the audience ahead of a quintessential second set Grateful Dead sequence of “Estimated Prophet” > “Eyes of the World” > “Drums” > “Space”.
Coming back from “Space”, Bob Weir unspooled a second selection from the Fab Four, “Dear Prudence”, before returning to the Dead’s earliest days with “Cold Rain and Snow” as a skyscraper-sized skeleton Uncle Sam rose from his crypt and boarded his chopper for an animated ride through rainbow-colored mountains, tunnels of begonias, and Terrapin Station to arrive on the Las Vegas Strip. An emotional “Brokedown Palace” then accompanied the descent back to 710 Ashbury St., with the first “Johnny B. Goode” since June 6th, 2024 (and second-ever at Sphere) closing out another weekend in Las Vegas.
Check out some videos from the Dead & Company Mother’s Day show at Sphere. The band will return for one last weekend May 15th–17th to finish off the 2025 Dead Forever residency. Find tickets here.
Dead & Company — “Samson & Delilah” (Traditional) — 5/11/25
[Video: Andrew Pulsifer]
Setlist: Dead & Company | Sphere | Las Vegas, NV | 5/11/25
Set One: Samson and Delilah (Traditional), Truckin’, Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic) > Hey Jude (The Beatles), Mama Tried (Merle Haggard), Cassidy, St. Stephen
Set Two: Shakedown Street > West L.A. Fadeaway, Sugaree, Estimated Prophet > Eyes of the World > Drums > Space > Dear Prudence (The Beatles), Cold Rain and Snow (Traditional), Brokedown Palace, Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)