When the University of Colorado decided to bring music back to Folsom Field for the first time in 15 years, the list of bands was short.
You need an act that could draw enough fans to do justice to the venue’s enormous 53,613-person capacity, the second-largest in Colorado. Marquee nostalgia acts will get you most of the way there. But to eschew Boulder’s considerable youth population would not only be unwise, but for a college town, out of touch.
“We looked at a couple of bands,” said Lance Carl, CU associate athletic director. Most notably, they considered the Dave Matthews Band, the last act to play the stadium back in 2001. But with Dead and Company already plotting a tour and a motivated promoter in AEG, the choice wasn’t fraught.
“The Dead is a multigenerational band,” Carl said, “and we definitely considered that. From kids in their 20s to (people in their) 80s, they bring everyone together.”
In this way, the Grateful Dead and all of its subsequent offshoots, like Dead & Company, is something of an anomaly. Founded in Oakland, Calif., in 1965, the band has been playing for more than 50 years and gracing dorm-room walls nearly every year since. The handful of bands with that kind of whippersnapper staying power — the Doors and Pink Floyd come to mind — puts them in impressive and rare company.
Even in the age of Skrillex, that hasn’t changed.
“Dead and Company are one of the only bands that appeal broadly to students and alumni,” said Ari Kononov, who as the director of the Program Council at CU was tasked with marketing the show to students. It wasn’t a hard sell. “They have more than a cult following among students, especially in Boulder.”
That includes Kononov himself, who may be only 20 but is a lifelong fan.
“One of the first CDs I remember hearing was a Grateful Dead best-of compilation in my mom’s car,” he said.
Despite that, the student-run Program Council played a relatively small role in producing the show, with regional music promoter AEG Live Rocky Mountains handling the brunt of the work. As a result, there were initially no allowances made for a student section. Kononov eventually negotiated 500 tickets at $35 apiece, the cheapest available for the band’s July 2 and 3 shows, but by that time, many students had already bought their seats. (As of press time, around 70 of the 500 allotted student tickets had been sold.)
In their current form, the band is associated with an over-the-hill fan base, but that obviously wasn’t always the case. Through the 1970s and ’80s, along with lauded rock venues like Madison Square Garden and Red Rocks, the band was a regular on the college circuit. Their stop at Folsom Field this weekend, which for sheer size will be Boulder’s biggest show of the last decade, marks the band’s third appearance at the venue, having played there in 1972 and again in 1980 for a 15th anniversary show.
Talking to Grateful Dead founding member Bob Weir, who handles guitar and vocals for Dead and Company, the band very nearly returned to the college circuit last year. Weir said Dead and Company and half of its management were enthusiastic about the idea, but talks fell through. The band ended up playing “hockey halls,” as Weir put it, instead, like Broomfield’s 1stBank Center.
For Weir, young fans bring an energy that’s hard to match.
“College crowds are livelier,” Weir said. “It’s fun to play for kids who are just coming to an awareness that there’s a huge world of music out there that’s not what’s on Top 40 radio.”
Weir said he’s been heartened by the amount of “college-age and younger” fans at Dead and Company shows so far. While it’s tempting to chock it up to pop-blues guitarist John Mayer, who has been tapped to play the role of the long-deceased and irreplaceable Jerry Garcia, remember that even those who were in college when “Your Body Is a Wonderland” came out in 2001 were too young for it then.
“I don’t know if Mayer is big with the college crowd today,” Weir said. “Maybe 10 years ago.”
Kononov said his friends were flat-out confused when they learned Mayer was affiliated with the show.
“I’ve mentioned John Mayer to friends, and they’ve been like, ‘What? Is he opening?’ His reputation isn’t the best,” Kononov said.
Weir credits the Dead’s philosophy as the main reason generation after generation of kids keep choosing the Dead’s psych-folk anthems. Adventure — not stylistic construct — guides the music of the Dead.
“We’re not sure where we’re going to be on any given night and in any given song,” Weir said, “and we’re not afraid to be loud and strong and wrong, which believe me, happens.”
“There’s a certain kind of person born with an unquenchable thirst for adventure,” he added. “We are those people, and so are our fans.”
With them in mind, Weir said the band will continue to push for another college tour or two — or six.
“It’s an itch I’d like to scratch,” he said.
If nothing else, they have Folsom Field. The band’s show at the University of Colorado is the only campus this iteration of the Dead has played, and the sole college show scheduled for their current tour.
Their set at June’s Bonnaroo Music and Arts festival, every budding frat star’s summer road trip destination, was perhaps the closest they’ve come to playing a college audience. That show yielded a couple of surprises: a political tirade by Weir after the recent shooting in Orlando, and the return of longtime back-up singer Donna Jean Godchaux, who has only appeared with the band sporadically since leaving in 1979. (Asked whether Boulder fans could expect Godchaux this weekend: “It’s at least on our minds.”)
But that young Bonnaroo-loving crowd who is in part synonymous with the Dead drags behind it a party scene the University of Colorado has been trying to distance itself from for nearly as long as Folsom Field’s concert schedule has gone quiet.
Carl sees the band’s reputation as beside the point when you’re booking a concert at Folsom Field.
“Unless you’re booking Celine Dion, there’s going to be a party atmosphere,” he said.
While Weir acknowledges the band “is associated with that,” citing the band’s use of LSD during the so-called acid tests of the 1960s, but maintains it as a means to an end of “musical aspiration.”
Even as many of their fans stay the same age, a lot has changed since the band’s heyday. At 68, Weir says he’s at his best on stage when he’s well rested and sober.
“When we’re all on stage, playing for a bunch of folks — that’s psychedelic enough,” he said.
“Besides,” he said, “I’m not sure good LSD is even available (today). And bad LSD is another story entirely.”