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The Dead return for spring concert trek
The surviving members of the Grateful Dead will hit the road as The Dead for the first time in five years this spring, with the band unveiling plans for a month-long tour.
Original Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart will once again be joined onstage by Gov't Mule/Alllman Brothers Band guitarist Warren Haynes, who also toured with the band during 2004's "Wave That Flag" tour. Keyboardist Jeff Chimenti will round out the lineup during the outing, which kicks off April 12 in Greensboro, NC. The 16-city trek will run through a May 10 show in Mountain View, CA. Details are below.
"We've got some unfinished business," said singer/guitarist Weir in a press statement. "Everybody has a whole new bag of tricks; we have the body of material we worked up over the years and we have a mind meld going on here and it would be a sin to let that just wither and die."
"For me, it's the question mark that's really pulling me in," added bassist Phil Lesh. "What's gonna happen? When you walk out on the stage the possibilities are infinite every time. The musical possibilities are infinite: there is no end to it, there's no back wall and there's no ceiling, there's no floor. It's infinite and therefore you can still explore it till the day that you die."
The group began tossing the idea of another tour around last February, according to a press release, when Hart, Lesh and Weird played a concert in San Francisco to raise campaign funds for Barack Obama's Presidential campaign.
The Grateful Dead performed their last show in Chicago on July 9, 1995. Singer-guitarist Garcia died a month later in California after he suffered a heart attack at a substance-abuse treatment facility.
