July 10, 2018 — The following is excerpted from a story originally published in Billboard, covering a charity concert hosted by Dead & Company, a collaborative effort between remaining Grateful Dead members and John Mayer.
On Saturday night (July 7), Dead & Company played to 30,000 fans at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium. Less than 24 hours later, they played to 200 equally passionate fans at a backyard benefit Sunday night (July 8) high in the Hollywood Hills for Oceana, an environmental organization dedicated to preserving the world’s oceans.
“Going from a stadium to a house party is a very interesting dynamic, but the point is a musician is privileged to be a musician and musicians should give back that privilege,” said drummer Mickey Hart immediately after Dead & Co.’s 65-minute show. “In general, you gotta defend the treasures. One of them is the oceans and you have to defend it however you can. You have to fight the evil that’s in the White House now with everything you have. So any night I can raise a million dollars is a good night.”
To be more precise, the evening, dubbed “Rock Under the Stars,” raised more than $1.1 million and drew more than 120 Deadheads from all over the world, who paid $5,000 each to see the former members of the Grateful Dead play their smallest gig in decades, as well as actors Jeff Goldblum, Ed Begley Jr. and Dean Norris, actress Kelly Lynch, Academy Award-nominated composer Thomas Newman, film producer Roger Birnbaum, producer/screenwriter Mitch Glazer, and the band’s attorney Eric Greenspan, who promoted a Grateful Dead show when he was in college in the ‘70s.
“We get asked to do a million of these things,” Cahill said, adding that “Rock Under the Stars” was Dead & Co.’s first private charity event since forming in 2015. In addition to the Grateful Dead’s Hart, guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, Dead & Company includes guitarist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. “They’ve very focused on the health of our oceans,” Cahill continued. “Bill lives in Hawaii, Bob lives on the water. Oceana really resonated with them.”
“We don’t do that many [benefits],” especially house parties. It seemed like the right thing to do at the right time. The oceans are really in need,” Hart said, adding that Dead & Co. have voter registration booths at every show and through that effort, the notoriously philanthropic band hopes to register thousands of people for the 2018 mid-term elections and beyond. “We’ve been registering people at every show for years,” he said. “The kids, everybody, just have to realize how important it is. You’ve got to get up off your asses and pull that lever.”