Ahead of this past weekend’s festivities at San Francisco, CA’s Golden Gate Park celebrating 60 years of the Grateful Dead, we published this article in which we weighed the possibility of the run’s high-profile opening acts—Billy Strings (Friday, 8/1), Sturgill Simpson (Saturday, 8/2), and Trey Anastasio Band (Sunday, 8/3)—sitting in with Dead & Company each night. Given all the context surrounding these specific artists and their connections to the Dead, we figured there was a pretty good chance. Turns out, we figured correctly.
But while many fans saw those sit-ins coming, each one still served as a show-stealing highlight, a celebration of how the Grateful Dead ethos has spread and splintered in unforeseen ways. At the same time, the nightly addition of surprise guest Grahame Lesh on notable basses played by his father, late Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, underscored the strength and resilience of the Dead family tree’s roots.
As Dead & Company guitarist John Mayer reflected in a candid social media post after the guest-filled run, “No matter how many shows we play as a band, I will always be a guest in this musical world, and I’ll never lose sight of what is the great honor of my life.”
Below, we’ve gathered photos, videos, audio, and relevant notes about each of the guest sit-ins with Dead & Company during GD60 weekend in Golden Gate Park. Read our full coverage of the three night run here: Friday, August 1st | Saturday, August, 2nd | Sunday, August 3rd.
You can also stream or download soundboard audio recordings of all three GD60 opening sets via nugs. Get access to these recordings and the rest of nugs’ vast audio and video archive with a nugs All Access subscription. Get started here.
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Billy Strings (8/1/25)
Billy Strings opened the first day of the Golden Gate Park run with his namesake bluegrass outfit. During his set, he name-checked the weekend’s honorees with a lyric change during “If Your Hair’s Too Long” (“You’ll live a life of fear and dread if you listen to the Grateful Dead”) and paid homage to lyricist Robert Hunter with a powerful take on “Thunder”, a song Strings developed using Hunter lyrics given to him by drummer Bill Kreutzmann in 2021.
His guest appearance with Dead & Company came in the aftermath of set two’s “Drums” > “Space” when he strapped on an electric guitar instead of his trusty acoustic and led Mayer, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti, and Jay Lane through “Wharf Rat”. The song, a longtime staple in the dreamy post-“Space” position, was a familiar choice for Strings, who first covered it with his own band at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY in 2020—the same venue where the Grateful Dead debuted the original in 1971—and went on to play it 14 more times (per BillyBase) before steering away from Dead tunes in 2022.
Below, watch a crowd-shot video via Todd Norris and listen to audience audio via Oren Levy of Dead & Company performing “Wharf Rat” with Billy Strings during GD60 in Golden Gate Park.
Dead & Company w/ Billy Strings – “Wharf Rat” – 8/1/25
Dead & Company w/s/g Billy Strings, Grahame Lesh – Golden Gate Park – San Francisco, CA – 8/1/25 – Full Audio
Sturgill Simpson (8/2/25)
After working some obligatory elements of “China Cat Sunflower” into his no-B.S. Johnny Blue Skies rock and roll set to start Saturday’s show, Sturgill Simpson got his chance to sit in with Dead & Company at the end of a high-energy first frame. Following an excellent “Brown-Eyed Women”, Weir stepped to the mic to ask, “Does Sturgill want in?”
While Simpson, who has performed at Weir’s Dead Ahead destination event for the last two years, originally gravitated toward cowboy material like Merle Haggard‘s “Mama Tried” during his Bobby collaborations, he had shown his aptitude for a meatier Dead cover staple, Bonnie Dobson‘s “Morning Dew”, during this past year’s event. Simpson opted for the latter on Saturday at GD60, and his sterling vocals carried the patented emotion of “Morning Dew” across Golden Gate Park with breathtaking gravitas. Read a full rundown of of the Sturgill-led “Morning Dew” and the notable context surrounding it here. The short version: Wow.
Below, watch a crowd-shot video via The Zalewski Law Firm and listen to audience audio via Eric Lugassy of Dead & Company performing “Morning Dew” with Sturgill Simpson during GD60 in Golden Gate Park.
Dead & Company w/ Sturgill Simpson – “Morning Dew” – 8/2/25
Dead & Company w/s/g Sturgill Simpson, Grahame Lesh – Golden Gate Park – San Francisco, CA – 8/2/25 – Full Audio
Trey Anastasio (8/3/25)
During Trey Anastasio Band‘s opening set on Sunday, Trey called the crowd’s attention to the reason why the tens of thousands in attendance were there: “I saw my first Dead show in 1981 at the New Haven Coliseum,” he explained. “I fell in love with all of it… but I want to do a particularly heartfelt shoutout to Mr. Jerry Garcia. We’re all here to celebrate… I think to myself, I look out at this crowd, and, like, this guy came along and here we all are, all these years later. So, I’m going to sing this song now and try to stress my love for him, and please sing along, because I’ll do the best I can…”
“I really don’t think anybody else can sing this song,” he added with a humble laugh before leading his band through melancholy Jerry Garcia Band favorite “Mission in the Rain”—one of the most personal, local, and evocative songs in the storied Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter songbook.
Trey Anastasio Band – “Mission in the Rain” (Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter) – 8/3/25
For his Dead & Company sit-in, he took the stage with the band at the start of the second set and helped lead an exhilarating, 30-minute run through the perennial live Dead pairing of “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”—a reprise of one of the most celebrated moments from his five-show stint in the Garcia hot seat during Fare Thee Well ten years ago.
This also marked the first onstage meeting between Anastasio, the last guitarist to lead the post-Garcia “core four” of Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann, and Mayer, who has held that role in Dead & Co in the decade since. Their connection was electric from the start. As Mayer wrote on Instagram after the show, “Beyond the full-circle moment of it all, the lock we had going was instant. Trey’s ear-to-fretboard data transfer time is unparalleled. I’m still blown away.”
The “Scarlet” > “Fire” with Trey was both thrilling and reverent: As we wrote in this other piece yesterday, “It sounded like two masters coming together to channel a higher power and find a way to fit into a story in which they started as observers, not characters—a story that was never sure to continue after Garcia made his exit thirty years ago.”
Below, watch a crowd-shot video via Todd Norris and listen to audience audio via Oren Levy of Dead & Company performing “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” with Trey Anastasio during GD60 in Golden Gate Park.
Dead & Company w/ Trey Anastasio – “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” – 8/3/25
Dead & Company w/s/g Trey Anastasio, Grahame Lesh – Golden Gate Park – San Francisco, CA – 8/3/25 – Full Audio
Grahame Lesh (8/1/25, 8/2/25, 8/3/25)
The inclusion of Grahame Lesh in the Golden Gate Park festivities was one of the weekend’s most exciting elements in both a physical and spiritual sense. In addition to arriving at the party with notable basses his father played with the Grateful Dead, the younger Lesh’s playing and presence seemed to add a bit of Phil’s essence to the improvisation whenever he took the stage. Plus, between his nightly Dead & Co sit-ins and his own three-night, guest-filled The Heart of Town event across town, he also might have taken home GD60 weekend’s “busiest musician” honors.
Before any of the opening acts sat in with Dead & Company at Golden Gate Park, Grahame joined the group on to start Friday’s first set. After taking on lead vocal duty on an emotional rendition of his father’s signature song, “Box of Rain”, while playing Phil’s “Big Brown” bass, then switched to Phil’s late-’70s/early-’80s Doug Irwin custom axe for the ensuing “Playing in the Band” explorations. Watch a crowd-shot videos of Grahame’s Friday sit-in below via Todd Norris.
Dead & Company w/ Grahame Lesh – “Box of Rain” – 8/1/25
Dead & Company w/ Grahame Lesh – “Box of Rain” – 8/1/25
On Saturday, Lesh and returned with the Doug Irwin custom during set two for a fearless “St. Stephen” that tiptoed through tender reflection before plunging into untethered psychedelia. Grahame ably lent his father’s ambiance to the odyssey, guiding the band into a brief “The Eleven” jam before returning home. Watch a crowd-shot video of Grahame’s Saturday sit-in below via nowiknowuryder.
Dead & Company w/ Grahame Lesh – “St. Stephen” – 8/2/25
On Sunday, as Trey made his exit after “Scarlet” > “Fire”, Grahame subbed in for Oteil Burbridge on the Irwin custom while John Mayer took lead vocals for a rendition of Robbie Robertson‘s “Broken Arrow”, which Phil used to sing with the Dead. After Oteil took over bass duties once again on the “Hell in a Bucket” that followed, Lesh stepped back in to trade riffs with Burbridge on a free-wheeling “Cumberland Blues”. Watch crowd-shot videos of Grahame’s Sunday sit-ins below via Eric Cohen and billzlose.
Dead & Company w/ Grahame Lesh – “Broken Arrow” – 8/3/25
Dead & Company w/ Grahame Lesh – “Cumberland Blues” – 8/3/25