SiriusXM to Broadcast Grateful Dead’s ‘Fare Thee Well’ Concerts

SiriusXM’s exclusive Grateful Dead station, channel 23, will broadcast the band’s final “Fare Thee Well” concerts from Soldier Field in Chicago on July 3rd, 4th and 5th starting at 9:15 p.m. ET. The shows will also be available on the SiriusXM app and website.

The concerts will be re-broadcast on the Grateful Dead Channel the day after each show, and then several times over Labor Day weekend, September 5th through 7th. A complete schedule is available on the SiriusXM website.

Throughout the “Fare Thee Well” weekend, the Dead Channel will air special episodes of its weekly talk show, Tales from the Golden Road, before and after each concert. Hosts David Gans and Gary Lambert will dissect and discuss the gigs from an insider’s perspective along with special guest, archivist and fellow Dead Channel host, David Lemieux.

SiriusXM is also offering subscribers a chance to win tickets to all three concerts, complete with a round trip to Chicago and hotel stay. Potential participants can enter today, but must have been SiriusXM subscribers since before May 18th; complete details are available on the SiriusXM site. (Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann also recently teamed up with Airbnb for a contest to win VIP passes to the Chicago shows.)

The Grateful Dead’s Soldier Field stand will be available to watch live via a pay-per-view broadcast produced by Live Alliance, and in participating movie theaters courtesy of Fathom Events. All three Chicago shows, plus the band’s two scheduled Bay Area gigs, will be available through an as-yet-unannounced streaming platform.

The Fare Thee Well shows will celebrate both the band’s 50th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of the passing of founding guitarist Jerry Garcia. The Dead have tapped Phish frontman Trey Anastasio to fill in for Garcia on guitar.

“The thing is, there is a lot more intent in those lines than people might think,” Anastasio told Rolling Stone about what he’s gleaned from studying Garcia’s oeuvre. “It was not just noodling. Based on the number of ideas Jerry had in any one-minute period, he was very much a musician first, a guitar player second. The music was coming out, and the guitar was a vehicle, a transparent filter.”