When the four original members of the Grateful Dead (Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann) — joined forces with Trey Anastasio, Jeff Chimenti, and Bruce Hornsby to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the band — they could not have anticipated the response. The largest mail order request ever, ticket purchasing sites crashing, the addition of two shows at the end of June in Santa Clara, CA after the Chicago, IL shows sold out almost immediately…. “Fare Thee Well” broke records for both concert attendance and live streaming viewership, and they were also some pretty terrific shows.
This month Rhino Records releases “Fare Thee Well,” a set of audio and video discs from the July 4th weekend in Chicago. The audio was recorded by long-time Grateful Dead engineer Dennis “Wiz” Leonard, who created the live mix for the live streams in the Music Mix Mobile remote truck. Wiz and Derek Featherstone regrouped at Skywalker Ranch, where they mixed the stereo and surround versions for this release. The video was directed by Justin Kruetzmann.
The concert CDs were mastered by Jeffrey Norman and the Blu-ray/DVD audio was mastered — in stereo and 5.1 surround — by David Glasser.
“This is one of the best production teams I’ve had the pleasure of working with” David Glasser commented. “I think the band hit it out of the park with these shows, and the ‘Fare Thee Well’ CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays really capture the experience. Jeffrey and I attended the Dead shows in Santa Clara the weekend before the Chicago run, and we both knew this was going to be a very special project. As we’ve long known, ‘there’s nothing like a Grateful Dead concert!’ ”
The “Fare Thee Well” deluxe package includes CD and Blu-ray or DVD discs of the three Soldier’s Field shows, plus a behind-the-scenes video, and CDs of the show intermission music by Neal Casal’s Circles Round the Sun band.
Spoiler Alert! Check out a sneak preview of “Not Fade Away” (from the 7/5/15 show) and “West L.A. Fadeaway” (from the 7/4/15 show.)