Dead & Company Adds West Coast Fall Dates

– Dead & Company

Dead & Company’s “Fall Fun Run” is turning into a full-blown trek.

The Grateful Dead offshoot, comprised of Grateful Dead founding members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, as well as newcomers John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti, added four dates to its fall tour Thursday, bringing the jaunt’s total count of shows to 10. The two two-night stands, slated for Dec. 27-28 at The Forum, in Inglewood, Calif., and for Dec. 30-31 at San Francisco’s new Chase Center, mark the tour’s first dates outside of the East Coast.

Tickets for the new “Fall Fun Run” dates – which some have noted is not, in fact, a Dead-sponsored calisthenic race – go on sale to the public Oct. 4 at 10 a.m. local time.

Initially announced in August with shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden (Oct. 31-Nov. 1) and at Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Va. (Nov. 8-9), the tour added a two-night stand at Nassau Coliseum, in Uniondale, N.Y. (Nov. 5-6) earlier this month.

The tour precedes Dead & Company’s third annual “Playing in the Sand” Mexican destination event, slated for Jan. 16-19, 2020. The 2019 iteration of the event grossed $17.3 million, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports.

Since launching in fall 2015, Dead & Company has staged tours every summer, but has only done fall tours in odd years.

Both have been lucrative: Since forming, Dead & Company has appeared on Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart every year, grossing a total of $148.1 million through the end of 2018. This summer’s tour was its highest-grossing yet, grossing $40.8 million and including Dead & Company’s most lucrative U.S. stand to date, a tour-closing two-night stand at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colo., that sold 67,836 and grossed $6.51 million.

Notably, Dead & Company’s Forum shows are the band’s first indoor Los Angeles-area gigs since it played the venue Dec. 30-31, 2015. Not that the band has shirked the region: Recent Pollstar boxoffice highlights include a two-night stand at the Hollywood Bowl earlier this year that grossed $3.6 million and sold 33,713 tickets and a gig at Dodger Stadium that grossed $2.5 million with 33,098 tickets sold.

Dead & Company’s San Francisco gigs include it’s second-ever New Year’s Eve performance. Like Southern California, though the band has been a box office force in the region, it hasn’t played an indoor show in Northern California in three-and-a-half years, dating back to a May 23, 2016 underplay at The Fillmore. Prior to that, the band grossed $1.3 million and sold 17,032 tickets over two shows at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium Dec. 27-28, 2015.

This year, the band began its summer tour at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, Calif., with 38,971 tickets sold and $3.2 million grossed over two nights May 31-June 1.

Though Dead & Company has no history at the just-opened Chase Center, initial box office reports for other acts include Dave Matthews Band, which sold 9,870 tickets and grossed $1.1 million on Sept. 10, and Janet Jackson, who sold 12,613 tickets and grossed $1.6 million on Sept. 21.

Dead & Company’s newly announced shows bring some positive vibes to the Dead community after it was rocked earlier this week by the death of Robert Hunter, who penned many of the band’s most lyrics, at age 78.

For more about the Dead’s modern legacy, revisit Pollstar‘s August cover story about Peter Shapiro, Lockn’ and the jam-band world.