Dead & Company are headed back to Sphere.
The jam band pairing surviving members of the Grateful Dead with singer-songwriter John Mayer said Wednesday that it will play an 18-show residency at the state-of-the-art dome-shaped venue in Las Vegas next spring, less than a year after the group completed an acclaimed 30-show run there.
Scheduled to mark the 10th anniversary of Dead & Company’s formation in 2015, the new Sphere gigs are set to begin March 20 and run through May 17. In addition to Mayer, the group includes Dead veterans Bob Weir on guitar and Mickey Hart on percussion along with bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and drummer Jay Lane.
Dead & Company said in a statement that next year’s shows would feature “updated visuals” on Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot high-resolution video screen. In an interview this past summer with The Times, Weir described the band’s first residency (which concluded in August) as “a work in progress” and said he envisioned more interactivity between the musicians and the crew controlling Sphere’s visual content.
“At some point, the tech will evolve to the point where those guys can intuit where we’re headed and then be there with a little surprise for us,” Weir said.
Tickets for the 2025 residency will go on sale Dec. 13, with various pre-sale and VIP offerings available before then. The Eagles are currently in the middle of a Sphere run scheduled through mid-April; other acts who’ve played the venue include U2 and Phish.
Founding Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh (who was not a member of Dead & Company) died in October at age 84. That same month, the Recording Academy announced that the Grateful Dead would be honored as the 2025 MusiCares Persons of the Year at an all-star benefit gala to be held Jan. 31 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
