I happily saw the Dead & Company one last time, the Raleigh traffic and rain be danged

Right in the middle of “Bird Song,” it started raining hard, but the kid in the purple tie-dyed overalls only danced harder, and the lady with the hand-held bubble machine just smiled and flicked off the switch for a few minutes, and the security guard who had no trouble keeping the peace shrugged his shoulders and swayed along to the music.

The sold-out crowd at Raleigh’s Walnut Creek amphitheater had already endured traffic jams you’d expect in a zombie apocalypse, so getting soaking wet — twice — was no obstacle to widespread enjoyment.

The roughly 20,000 in attendance for Dead & Company knew this was the last time they’d see Dead & Company, with 75-year-old Bob Weir on stage in his trademark short shorts and 79-year-old Mickey Hart hitting the drums for a three-hour-plus set.

You might have heard the veterans with a dozen or more Dead shows under their belts grumble about Thursday’s off-kilter set list: No “Scarlet Begonias,” no “Eyes of the World,” no “Estimated Prophet.” And the encore is ... “Black Muddy River?”

Extremely good show

But somehow the fans who weren’t far out of third grade standing next to the fans whose white ponytails reached down to their belt loops all knew the words to “Ramble On Rose,” and neither a downpour nor 90-minute traffic jam would stop them singing one last time.

So, yes. Good show. Extremely good show.

Take it from Lindsey Sosovec, who is 43 and told me that this might have been only her second time seeing The Grateful Dead in one of its many forms since Jerry Garcia died in 1995, but Thursday night in Raleigh was the first time she’d attended one outside of a full-body dancing bear suit.

She surveyed the scene as we all waited for the clouds to pass over: “You watch a child singing and a grandfather singing and everybody knows the words. It just creates a community like nothing else.”

I first saw The Grateful Dead at 16: my first-ever show without parents, a carnival scene that introduced counter-culture to a teen whose social life was dominated by marching band and dances in the high school cafeteria.

The show that day at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., became infamous in Dead folklore, not so much for the setlist, but because the July heat combined with swamp humidity turned the arena into a giant griddle full of frolicking kids.

At one point, the stadium crew blasted the audience with water cannons, and as we stumbled around wide-eyed in the mud and hilarity, we realized Phil Collins couldn’t provide the same experience.

And weren’t even doing anything illegal.

The miracle of the Dead

So I wandered through college and my 20s and never exactly became what you’d describe as a Deadhead, but rather had gradually more rub off on me, always part of the culture but never exactly of it. I knew guys whose entire music collection consisted of cassette tapes with names and dates written on them, but I couldn’t ever exactly be that guy.

But the miracle of the Dead — and yes, they played “Need a Miracle” in Raleigh on Thursday — is that you can walk back into it like a party you left to take a phone call, and somehow it’s still going.

When I became a reporter at the University of Maryland in 1992, I got assigned to cover President Bill Clinton’s inauguration festivities. And as I wandered around the National Mall that day, there was Bobby Weir playing a side gig in sight of the U.S. Capitol.

The traffic on Thursday was so bad on Raleigh’s Rock Quarry Road that we missed the opening song, but walking through the endless parking lots at Walnut Creek, we could make out the chorus of “They Love Each Other” coming over the trees.

In the 15 or 20 minutes it took to make it through the gate, wait in line for a beverage and part the throng to find a place to stand, they were still playing it.

And when I came up the steps and saw Weir there in his shorts, belting out “Mama Tried,” I felt magically connected to the first time I heard the song at age 19. Using the word “magic” in a Dead review is a cliche that’s impossible to resist, because there’s no other way to describe hearing a song that carries as much history and emotional weight played for the thousandth time as though it’s the first.

John Mayer defers to Jerry Garcia

So to continue these reflections from a certified old person, the last time I saw “Sugaree” performed live, Jerry Garcia was playing the role in the band John Mayer now occupies.

I expected to compare the two, but there isn’t any need. To me, Mayer admirably plays in deference to an icon who can’t be imitated, adopting his style without mimicking it, making it his own. Half the people in the audience probably weren’t alive when Garcia died, and half probably were.

I can’t express it as eloquently as Lindsey Sosovec did, but the real experience of seeing the Dead in any form, is watching the generations of fans unite.

I ran into my neighbor Johnny, who managed to find me in a crowd of 20,000, and made me promise to point out that bassist Oteil Burbridge joined Mickey Hart on percussion for a rousing, multimedia version of “Drums.”

That’s the sort of detail the hardcore fans would note. But I was preoccupied with the kid in front of me, whose parents had spread out a sleeping bag on the ground where he could nap through “St. Stephen.”

I felt a kinship with both kinds of fans — youth and experience brought together to dance in the rain, one more time.

Photo gallery: Dead & Company bring ‘The Final Tour’ to Raleigh, NC

Dead & Co. Setlist, Raleigh, NC, June 1, 2023

Here’s the setlist from the concert at Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek.

First Set

New Speedway Boogie

They Love Each Other

Mama Tried

Easy Wind

Ramble On Rose

Dear Mr. Fantasy/Hey Jude

Bird Song

Second Set

Sugaree

St. Stephen

William Tell Bridge

The Eleven

Iko Iko

Drums

Space

I Need a Miracle

Wharf Rat

Casey Jones

Encore

Black Muddy River

Review: I went to my first Dead & Company concert Tuesday night. It was also my last.