When you look at the Grateful Dead’s vibrant subculture around the world, it’s as strong as ever. The culture revolves around the music and lifestyle of the band and its followers, affectionately known as Deadheads. The band's music is a time capsule that embodies peace, love, kindness, and adventure for everyone who wants in. From the early beginnings of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir meeting at a music store in Palo Alto, California, in 1965 to the recent sixty-year celebration of the Grateful Dead’s music performed by Dead & Co.

Luther Dickinson of North Mississippi Allstars will release Dead Blues Vol. 1 on October 17, 2025 via Strolling Bones Records. The 9-song set was produced by the 10-time GRAMMY Award-nominated Dickinson and is a collection of blues songs the Grateful Dead performed throughout their career by Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bo Diddley, the Mississippi Sheiks, Willie Dixon, and more.

I was twenty-four, a couple months out of college, manning the phones at my first real job in New York City. The owners were in L.A. for a conference, which meant I had the whole place to myself—just a swivel chair, a humming computer, and a window that didn’t open. It felt like adulthood in miniature: hold down the fort, answer professionally, don’t screw up.

When the Grateful Dead took a self-imposed hiatus in 1974 after their farewell run at Winterland, they left the road with no clear sense of when—or if—they'd return. A year later, the band surprised everyone when they reemerged with Blues for Allah, one of the most forward-thinking, sonically adventurous albums of their career.

The dash on a gravestone represents that bittersweet span from birth to when we leave this plane of existence. What we leave behind becomes memories—and even those fade. We brush against immortality only when our contributions inspire people to remember. No one alive today heard Mozart perform a piano sonata, yet his sonatas are played every day. More than 230 years after his death, he lives on in his music.

Sometimes the joy is in the journey.

That well-known lyric from the Grateful Dead song “Truckin’” was on my mind this weekend. “She” might refer to America’s most iconic band. “She” might be a Deadhead who was born before Jerry Garcia took his first breath – or a Deadhead who never heard a lick of Dead music until after Garcia died. “She” might be San Francisco, the city that reluctantly birthed the psychedelic movement and its most famous rock band in the tumultuous 60s. Or “she” could be that same city in its current incarnation, the city that welcomed Dead & Company with open arms for a 60th birthday celebration this past weekend.

A cavalcade of accomplished, like-minded musicians with connections to Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and/or Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads nightclub appeared in San Francisco on July 31 for The Heart of Town, a four-hour, all-killer-no-filler tribute to Garcia, “GD60,” and the spirit of San Francisco.

Dogfish Head is raising a can to 60 years of Grateful Dead history. Just in time for Dead & Company’s three-night stand in Golden Gate Park, August 1–3, the Delaware craft-brew pioneers are dropping a limited‑edition Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale 60th Anniversary can—a colorful, collectible nod to the band’s enduring legacy and the community that’s kept the music (and the dancing) alive.

You have to get up and get out to uncover the hidden jewels of this world. Naturalists, art connoisseurs, and music fans are always mining for gems; the revelation of an unknown vista, an emerging artist, or a hot new band is the reward for their digging. We are on our way to Manchester, Vermont, for the Dead of Summer Festival. The Green Mountains invite us to step outside, breathe the clean air, and enjoy the clear blue skies.