The Grateful Dead have announced two additional dates with Trey Anastasio, these ones to take place in Santa Clara, CA, ahead of the trio of "Fare Thee Well" show at Chicago's Soldier Field schedule for July. The announcement came in response to a number of complaints from the many "Deadheads" bothered by details of the Chicago finale.
The most obvious complaint was that the shows didn't give enough of the band's legendary fan base a chance to check the group out before it leaves the stage for good. Each show scheduled for Chicago featured 65,000 possibilities for tickets, however the demand for those tickets numbered in the millions, leaving many without options...unless they wanted to pay exorbitant amounts for those being scalped by resellers.
The four remaining members of the original band—Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman—released a statement responding to the issues via its station on SiriusXM, and also saluted the decorative envelopes used by the Grateful Dead Ticket Sales campaign.
"When you're shut out of tickets and your only option is inflated prices on secondary ticketing websites...That would piss us off too," they wrote. "We were crushed to see how many of your beautifully designed envelopes did not get tickets."
Another complaint from the core fan base of the band was the location chosen for the final three shows. Although the group hails from the Bay Area of California, the Fare Thee Well series will take place thousands of miles away in Chicago...making for quite a haul. The Soldier Field location marks the 20th anniversary of the band's last shows (for its 30th anniversary) but it does seem like a good idea to give the home-state crowd a chance.
This won't help all of the ticket shortage problems of course. Don't expect the Dead to go all Garth Brooks and continue to expand this comeback tour forever.
