AXS presents Dead & Company
Folsom Field
University of Colorado in Boulder, 2400 Colorado Avenue, Boulder, CO 80302 USA
6:00 PM, Saturday, July 1, 2023

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• Scarlet Begonias
• Deal
• St. Stephen
• Dear Mr. Fantasy
• Let the Good Times Roll
• a few others, unidentifiable from the walkway outside the stadium

[6:45 PM] {performers out}

1. [6:46 PM] Let the Good Times Roll …
2. [6:51 PM] {spacey teasing: ? Bird Song? Nope!} Truckin' »
3. [7:03 PM] Smokestack Lightning »
4. [7:08 PM] Deal (JM)
   [7:14 PM] {first stop of the night}
5. [7:15 PM] Me and My Uncle
   [7:20 PM] {full stop, Bobby guitar swap}
6. [7:20 PM] Dear Mr. Fantasy (JM) » [7:28 PM] Hey Jude coda >
7. [7:30 PM] Lady With a Fan (JM) » [7:40 PM] Terrapin Station (BW) >
8. [7:44 PM] Don't Ease Me In (JM)
   [7:48 PM] {set ends}

[8:29 PM] {performers out, teasing Eyes}

1. [8:30 PM] Eyes of the World » [8:44 PM] {OB bass solo} » [8:46 PM] {jam}
   [8:48 PM] {momentary stop}
2. [8:49 PM] Shakedown Street >
3. [9:01 PM] St. Stephen »
4. [9:15 PM] Cumberland Blues » [9:24 PM] {space} »
5. [9:25 PM] Drums: Jay & Mickey with vocal samples/loops » [9:29 PM] {add OB} » [9:34 PM] {MH on beam; drop JL, OB} » [9:39 PM] {MH off, drone continues; front line out within seconds} » Space! » [9:45 PM] {drummers back at their trap set seats} »
6. [9:47 PM] Milestones » {devolution} »
7. [9:52 PM] Days Between …
8. [10:04 PM] Sugar Magnolia »
9. [10:08 PM] Scarlet Begonias »
10. [10:15 PM] Sunshine Daydream
    [10:19 PM] {set ends}
     
    Encore
11. [10:20 PM] Going Down the Road, Feelin' Bad
    [10:29 PM] {show ends, band off and out pretty much immediately}

Dead & Company

• Oteil Burbridge: bass, vox;
• Jeff Chimenti: piano, Hammond B-3 organ, keyboards, harmony vox;
• Mickey Hart: drums, lead and harmony vox;
• Jay Lane: drums;
• John Mayer: guitar, vox;
• Bob Weir: guitar, acoustic guitar, vox.

Dropped Ting off for line duty around 2:30 PM, then spent 15 min circling campus before finding a parking place on University. Yay! Sets up a nice short post-show walk… but it's a long walk now because of pre-show crowd access-control barriers that force me to circle around to the main entrance instead of cutting through the upper plaza where we will exit after the show. No big deal. Plenty of time to kill right now. Found Ting in line around 3:20 PM and settled down to hang out for the rest of the afternoon. Not so psyched that it's clouding up: chit chat around me is that rain is on the way. Guess I should have brought my raincoat instead of trusting the forecast that indicated showers were unlikely.

15 min of light rain just blew through. Ting was smart and scrambled for the shelter of the Fieldhouse as soon as drops began to fall. I resisted that urge, hoping that it was just going to be a few stray drops. Managed to duck under a tarp brought by folks nearby before I got too wet. Hopefully that's all we get from Mother Nature today! One bad thing about the rain (besides getting everything all wet) is that it caused the line to scrunch up prematurely: folks stood up and huddled together, then pushed forward into the space previously taken up by people lounging on blankets. This is good for us (because we're used the change to our advantage, moving closer to the front ourselves), but bad for increasing the proportion of standing time to sitting time. Once things relaxed a bit, I managed to unfold myself into a semi dry sitting spot: it felt good to take a load off – as of now we still have at least 20 min more waiting before entrance activity ought to unfold.

The entrance is a rush, like always, and the staff here don't seem to be too concerned about keeping a lid on things. Hopefully no one got crushed in the stampede! When I got to the top of the outer stairs and entered the stadium stands, I broke into a trot, then took a diagonal to the floor, taking every row of seats in a sort of reverse hurdle – hop the moat just right or faceplant into the cement and aluminum! Despite being in the front 30 of the general GA line, the floor was remarkably crowded by the time I got there: at lease a couple hundred VIP folks are packed in across the front to at least 20 feet deep: regular GA is a chump's game now. We weaseled into a half decent spot on the very outer edge of Chimenti's B-3: not nearly as good as I'd hoped for, but best available under the circumstances.

6:30 PM and it's nominal showtime, but no evidence of the band yet, just a rowdy audience ready for action. Hooting and hollering when anyone walks around up there. Lots of excited people in the crowd today!

Fifteen minutes later the band takes the stage with a statement of purpose: Let the Good Times Roll indeed! As that ends, they devolve into spacey noodling: what could it be? I'm guessing Bird Song, but after a minute or two, that's revealed to be totally wrong, and the teasing unfolds instead into an energetic romp through Truckin'. I'm enthused to hear Oteil teasing Smokestack Lightning as Truckin' winds down, and happy when that turns out to be the next tune. Deal is another energetic follow-up, and when that winds down to a stop, it's been a full thirty minutes since the start of the show. Very nice!

Me and My Uncle is de rigueur for a Colorado show; following that up with Dear Mr. Fantasy is a huge surprise to me – I haven't been following setlists from this tour very carefully: maybe this shouldn't be so unexpected? But then Terrapin? Yay! Seems like the band is using an entirely new syntax for setlists than I'm used to. At a little over an hour, some might quibble that the first set was kinda short, but I'm not in that group: I thought it was thoroughly satisfying!

Set Two is another gem. I'm in heaven from start to end, particularly with the long rendition of Milestones. Stretch it out baby! Days Between is quite powerful today, and the closing sandwich of Sugar Magnolia » Scarlet Begonias » Sunshine Daydream is yet another unexpected twist. Major props to Matt Busch or whoever conceived tonight's setlist: it was great fun!

The encore was yet another surprise: the band delivered an energetic take on Going Down the Road, Feelin' Bad instead of the predictable-but-boring choice of One More Saturday Night. I'll take it!!

The show ends and it takes a good long time for the floor to clear out. We say our goodbyes, then scramble up the west-side stands for the upper exit. Somehow stadium staff up there don't seem to have been prepared for the end of the show, and our egress is impeded by security gates that haven't been rolled out of the way. C'mon guys! Have a little common sense! We wend our way through campus, past the crowds of balloon-huffers, across the green before Lot 380, and then down the hill to University Ave. [10:52 PM] Back at the car!

Big thanks to Ting for the photo gallery!

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2023 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2023 event list! ☸ On to the next event!