Fans who logged onto the Furthur website this morning were treated to the following message:
“To our loyal Furthur fans and members of the Furthur community at furthur.net, we’d like to thank you for a terrific ride. We’ll be closing up shop at furthur.net, and heading onward. Thanks for making the Furthur community a great place to hang out, and for coming out to the shows. We’ll all be keeping very busy over the foreseeable future, and it’s time to let Furthur take a bow. We enjoyed the ride more than we can possibly express. You can keep tabs on Phil’s activities at www.terrapincrossroads.net, Bob’s activities at www.bobweir.net and all Grateful Dead news at www.dead.net.”
It would seem, then, that Furthur is no longer. While this is very unfortunate news, we of course want to thank Phil Lesh & Bob Weir for their timeless collaboration, as well as Furthur band members Joe Russo, John Kadlecik, Jeff Chimenti, and Jay Lane. Furthur shows were simply a sight to behold, a flashback into the glory days of the Grateful Dead, and the band will be missed.
Furthur got their start in 2009, forming out of an inauguration ball reunion for the members of the Grateful Dead. Lesh and Weir admittedly had fun playing together again, and decided to form a new project. What resulted was Furthur, who have toured fairly regularly ever since. The band made their debut back in September of 2009, and toured all the way up to the beginning of this year. Their lack of activity in 2014 was a strong signal that the end was near, but with the Dead’s 50th anniversary coming up soon, we can only hope that these musicians find their way back to each other.
However, bassist Phil Lesh has shown no sign of slowing down, as he’s in the middle of a ten-night residency at the Capitol Theatre, and plans to play there for Halloween with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. Read our review of his Halloween performance at the Capitol Theatre.