Dead & Company Return to Foxborough

 Another Summer with COVID scares, but yet another Dead & Company tour!  This year they started on the West Coast and progressed East instead of the other way around, and didn't schedule as many dates.  One or both of these may have been a strategy to stretch out the tour more for the sake of Bill Kreutzmann, who had to sit out for a few dates as last Summer's tour moved on.  But everybody else in the band is getting older too, and they might have just decided to take the foot off the pedal a bit this year.

Unfortunately, Billy's problems (hopefully just exhaustion, though one of his tweets referred to pulling a muscle) have recurred and he's had to miss a few shows again.  Luckily they've brought Jay Lane along on the tour and he's been filling in admirably.  Billy's still been joining in on the Drums segment lately, though Jay's been handling the traps.  I really hope Billy gets better, and if it means his staying at home instead of touring, that's the way it's got to be.  He deserves a long life and a healthy retirement when he's ready for it.

Even though they cut down on the dates, they still listed Boston right up there, this time on Saturday, July 2nd at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.  We're blessed that they continue to come to the Northeast (we've got tickets to the Hartford show also on the 5th), and we were very glad to hear they were coming back to Foxborough.  They've played Fenway Park and the amphitheater in Mansfield also, but they both have major drawbacks.  Fenway is crowded and frantic, and Mansfield is always a traffic apocalypse.

More good news and bad news in the buildup to the Foxborough show: our nephew, Marin, was able to come up for the weekend and my brother, Andrew, had an extra ticket he could use.  But horribly, Dave tested positive for COVID the day before the concert and so was not able to go with us all.  Also, the Supreme Court continues to make politicized decisions to advance a white patriarchy and the government is filled with idiots, but that's old news.

Marin arrived the night before and Andrew arrived in plenty of time for a @3:00 departure and a pleasant drive around 128 and 95 down to Foxborough.  Missed the turnoff for the better lot, but we got a great spot in the P10 lot across route 1 and settled down for some fine tailgating.  The weather was looking iffy and we'd all brought rain gear, but there was no problem before the show.  Sarah and I entered the stadium around 5:30 (gates opened at 5:00) and there was no line for anything!  We were easily able to stand in front of the soundboard, as we had last time the band was in Foxborough.  There seems to be a sudden drop in people going to concerts, though maybe the smaller crowd was because of other factors, like people having things to do on a holiday weekend and the impending weather.  They hadn't sold any seats in the top two bowls of the Stadium.

Whatever, the crowd soon filled in fine on the field and the bottom bowl was full, as far as I could see.  Andrew and Marin had great seats just a few rows up from the field.  Then the band came out right on time, lit into a rambunctious Cumberland Blues, and we were back!  OMG, what can I say?  We've seen at least bits of most of the shows prior to this stop on the tour, and they've been playing great and continued at that high level.  We were disappointed but not surprised that Jay Lane was on stage from the start in place of Billy, though nothing against Jay at all, he's a fantastic and dedicated substitute (I was wearing my Golden Gate Wingmen t-shirt as two of them were on stage).  Oteil has been playing a different bass this tour and it sounds fantastic.  He was too low in the mix to start but they eventually adjusted this.  And Jeff has a spaceship of a piano, which sounded great itself, though his organ playing was one of the sounds of the night, especially on the Bertha > Good Lovin' sequence.

And speaking of that, we were dancing and freaking out to another great Bertha and anticipating a seamless switch to Good Lovin' when they suddenly stopped and an announcement came on!  And even as we were beginning to realize that they were telling us all to exit the field, the rain started.  Sarah and I crowded with the rest of the field crew under the archway at the West entrance to the stadium.  We had our masks on as we were cheek to jowl with a lot of high people (we were the only ones with masks that I saw, besides my brother).  The downpour was pretty intense, but luckily I heard and saw no thunder and lightning.  After about 15(?) minutes the worst of the rain had stopped and we pushed our way out of the crowd, put on our slickers, and made our way back to our spot, soon followed by everybody else.

We were hoping the band would come right back out but they apparently decided to make that the set break, even though they'd done only two songs.  Probably the biggest factor was that the sound crews had lots of re-setup and re-testing to do.  So we had a bunch of un-anticipated waiting around to do, though we knew that when they came back out they'd try to make up for it.  And they did!  Here's the second set:

• Good Lovin'
• Crazy Fingers
• Mr. Charlie
• St. Stephen
• The Eleven
• Brown-Eyed Women
• Estimated Prophet
• Eyes of the World
• Drums
• Space
• Dear Mr. Fantasy
• Hey Jude
• Morning Dew

They popped right back into the start of Good Lovin' and then played an excellent, long set.  The highlights were numerous, with John Mayer playing some great blues and space and Bob Weir just doing what only he can do on his fantastic-sounding green and brown guitars.  For me the amazing and wandering St. Stephen leading into the bridge and then The Eleven was the part that moved me the most, closely followed though by a long and loping Eyes after a tight Estimated.

Billy didn't even come out for Drums, I hope he's all right!  But Jay and Oteil were out there and as with the prior time at Foxborough, they had the whole football stadium resounding with their beats, especially when Mickey got out his saw and started applying it to The Beam.  It was a long and enthusiastic Space, ending with a nice segue into Mr. Fantasy and then a beautiful Hey Jude chorus.  They've been doing Hey Jude a lot this tour, possibly as an an homage to Paul McCartney, who's been touring the States and whom Dave had seen recently at Fenway.

BUT, I thought it was coming and suddenly here it was, like a large presence suddenly emerging from the mist and knocking you flat, Dew!  I love this song and they sure played and sang the stuffing out of it.  Another protest song in a Summer unfortunately made for them.  Long set, but they finally put down their instruments and took a short break.

People had been saying that Foxborough has an 11:00 curfew, and the band came out soon and started strumming a tune which I could tell was a Dylan, and then recognized as Knockin' On Heaven's Door.  Very well played, but then another highlight of the night ... you knew it was coming ... was a rocking and loud One More Saturday Night to close the show.  Bobby did not leave anything behind on that!

Wow, how do these guys keep doing it?  We followed the crowd back up through Patriot Place and across route 1 to the lot (a guy was raving to us about Sarah's DeadCo VOTE pin, and then saw my GGW t- shirt and offered to buy it on the spot), where Andrew and Marin had already set up the chairs for some post-concert tailgating.  This is always the best strategy of course, as there was a long line of cars trying to get through the traffic jams on route 1 while we just relaxed and re-hashed the show.  Eventually things died down though, the cops around there have learned how to handle crowds.  And we jumped in the car and had a pretty smooth ride home, though there'd been what looked like a gruesome accident on the expressway, involving three cars and a motorcycle.

So that was a lot of fun but we really missed Dave.  We'd been texting with him throughout the show and he was trying his best to enjoy it from afar.  He may have had it a bit better than we did.  The sound where we were was not as great as it had been before; this may have been due to the damp weather and the fact that the stadium wasn't as full.  They had to lower some of the stacks of speakers at the start of the show in anticipation of high winds.  And the rain and the crowd was distracting of course.  But I love live concerts and will do it again, hopefully with Dave!