Road Trips

Road Trip

Road Trips is something a little different. We want to plug in a few more pieces of the Grateful Dead puzzle by putting the spotlight on different tours and series of shows that have been neglected through the years.

Every Road Trips release will come with a beautifully designed booklet containing an essay about how the music on the discs fits into the Dead’s long history, plus many rare and never-before-seen photographs. Plus rarities from the deepest corners of the vault, multitrack releases, box sets, DVDs, downloads and who-knows-what-else.


Road Trips: Volume 1 - Number 1


This two-disc set was culled from the Dead’s blazing fall 1979 East Coast swing, when the band was just hitting its stride with new keyboardist Brent Mydland. >>more

Road Trips: Volume 1 - Number 2


For the second volume in our new Road Trips series, we’ve chosen another tour that was not tapped previously through Dick’s Picks—a blazing swing through the Southwest, Colorado and down to Louisiana during the first weeks of October 1977. >>more

Road Trips: Volume 1 - Number 3


If you’re up on your Dick’s Picks releases—and we know you are—you’ll recall that Dick’s Picks 35, released in 2005, featured some smokin’ performances from the summer of 1971. The master reels from which it was culled, long believed to have been lost, had turned up miraculously on a houseboat owned by the parents of former GD keyboardist Keith Godchaux, discovered more than 30 years later by Keith’s brother, Brian, and son, Zion. >>more

Road Trips: Volume 1 - Number 4


The group was feeling totally jazzed when they got back from Egypt, and Bill Graham, who had been on the trip abroad as a spectator, rather than as promoter, wanted to give the band’s hometown fans a taste of the Egypt experience by hosting a series of five shows at Winterland that would include a slide show depicting the group’s amazing adventures in Cairo and beyond. >>more

Road Trips: Volume 2 - Number 1


To kick off Volume 2 of our Road Trips series, we're making our first foray into the '90s-specifically, the extraordinary Madison Square Garden run from September of 1990! You'll recall the unusual historical circumstances surrounding this famous series of shows: In July, Brent Mydland had died tragically after a glorious 11-year stint as the Dead's keyboardist. With both the band and Dead Heads in shock, a few planned summer shows... >>more

Road Trips: Volume 2 - Number 2


It was one of the coolest Valentine’s Day celebrations ever. In the winter of 1968, the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service embarked on their first major tour of the Pacific Northwest. Now, this wasn’t an era when bands traveled in plush custom tour buses and stayed in luxury hotels. Rather it was a caravan of funky cars and semi-dilapidated equipment trucks bombing up Interstate 5 from the Bay Area to... >>more

Road Trips: Volume 2 - Number 3


Can it really be more than 35 years since the Grateful Dead unveiled one of their most audacious (and successful!) experiments—the legendary Wall of Sound? Why, it seems like only yesterday that I was cowering in fear worrying that one of Phil’s bass bombs was going to topple the impressive array of speaker towers that sprawled across the Dead’s enormous stage and rose to a height of more than two stories!... >>more

Road Trips: Volume 2 - Number 4


If you were ever lucky enough to attend a Grateful Dead concert at Cal Expo Amphitheatre in Sacramento, you already know that it was one of the cooler places the band played in the ’80s and ’90s, as special in its own way as more celebrated venues. Cal Expo was essentially a big grass field with simple grandstands in the back—nothin’ fancy, but a truly wonderful place to hang with your friends and hear some great music... >>more

Road Trips: Volume 3 - Number 1


The latest installment in our Road Trips series, now entering its third big year (and ninth release overall) is bound to become a favorite. Road Trips Vol. 3, No. 1 is the complete show from December 28, 1979, part of the sparkling run that has already given us the excellent Dick’s Picks: Vol. 5 (from 12/26/79). >>more