New to Deadiverse—or new to the Grateful Dead? This guide will help you find your way around the site, whether you’ve been following the music for fifty years or you’re hearing it for the first time.
The Grateful Dead’s story is unusually deep. There are more than 30 years of original performances, hundreds of songs, dozens of important musicians, countless side projects and successor bands, and a tribute scene that continues to grow today.
You don’t have to know where to start. Pick a thread and follow it.
New to the Grateful Dead?
If you’re just discovering the Dead, there’s no single correct place to begin. The band’s recorded albums are a great introduction, but the live performances are where the story really unfolds.
Step 1: Start with the Music
Explore the Songs archive and listen to some of the Dead’s most enduring songs and live performance vehicles:
- “Ripple” — A beautiful example of Garcia and Hunter’s songwriting and one of the band’s most enduring songs.
- “Truckin’” — One of the Dead’s best-known songs and a snapshot of the band’s early-1970s American identity.
- “Playing in the Band” — A song that could expand from a concise composition into an extended improvisational journey, also known as PITB.
- “China Cat Sunflower” / “I Know You Rider” — One of the Dead’s most famous song pairings and a fixture of the live repertoire, often referenced simply as “China Rider”.
- “Dark Star” — The ultimate example of the Dead’s willingness to let a song become something entirely different onstage.
- “Scarlet Begonias” / “Fire on the Mountain” — A pairing that became one of the band’s most beloved live combinations.
- “Terrapin Station” — An ambitious late-1970s composition that became an important part of the Dead’s repertoire.
- “So Many Roads” — A late-period song that became especially meaningful in the context of the band’s final years.
Don’t worry about memorizing the catalog. Pick something that catches your attention and follow it.
Step 2: Hear the Dead Live
The Grateful Dead were fundamentally a live band. Studio albums tell only part of the story.
Browse the Grateful Dead show archive to explore performances by date, venue, city, or song. Find a famous show, explore a year you’ve never heard, or simply pick a date and see where it takes you.
For example, you can jump back to a 1968 performance at the Carousel Ballroom and explore an early “Dark Star”, or visit a late-period show such as December 16, 1994 in Los Angeles, where “So Many Roads” appeared alongside “Eyes of the World,” “The Other One,” and “Wharf Rat.”
There is no definitive “best” show. That’s part of the fun. The site does allow anyone to register and mark their favorite shows though, so a good place to start might be checking some of the most favorited shows. Another fun way to start is to listed to the shows from your hometown and pick your favorite, or the shows on your birthdate or other days significant to you.
Step 3: Explore the Songs
Every song has a story. Check the lyrics, annotations and notes to grasp what the song means to the band or the community, or just let it mean what it means to you.
The Songs archive lets you explore the repertoire and follow songs across the band’s performance history. Some songs appeared hundreds of times. Others were played only occasionally—or only once.
And sometimes the interesting thing isn’t how often a song was played—it’s when.
Step 4: Meet the Musicians
The Grateful Dead’s lineup changed considerably over the years. Explore the musicians who shaped the band, from Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart to Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Tom Constanten, Keith and Donna Godchaux, Brent Mydland and Vince Welnick.
Then follow those musicians outward. Their stories lead to other bands, collaborations, side projects, and eventually the many successor groups that carried the music beyond 1995.
Explore the Deadiverse
The Grateful Dead didn’t exist in isolation.
One of the best ways to explore Deadiverse is to follow the connections between bands.
Precursors
Start before the Grateful Dead.
Explore the early San Francisco groups and musicians whose paths eventually converged in the band—including Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, the Warlocks, and other groups that formed the musical and cultural foundation for what became the Dead.
The Original
At the center of it all is the Grateful Dead.
Explore their performance history, changing lineups, songs, venues, tours, and eras. The current Grateful Dead archive contains more than 3,000 shows, hundreds of venues, and thousands of performances to explore.
Side Projects
The members of the Dead were rarely interested in staying inside one musical box.
Follow projects such as the Jerry Garcia Band, Old & in the Way, Bobby and the Midnites, Legion of Mary, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Mickey Hart’s percussion projects, Phil Lesh & Friends, and the many other groups and collaborations connected to individual members.
A side project can be a completely different musical experience—or reveal something that eventually found its way back into the Dead.
Successor Bands
After Jerry Garcia’s death, the music continued through a remarkable succession of bands.
Explore The Other Ones, RatDog, Phil Lesh & Friends, Furthur, Dead & Company, Billy & the Kids, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, and other groups formed by former members and their collaborators.
These aren’t simply chapters that came after the Grateful Dead. They are part of the continuing history of the music. Dead & Company, for example, has its own evolving lineup, song history, and hundreds of performances documented in Deadiverse.
Tribute Bands
And then there are the thousands of musicians who never played in the Grateful Dead at all, but chose to play their music.
From nationally touring acts to local bands playing neighborhood venues, the tribute scene has become an important part of the Dead’s continuing legacy.
Explore tribute bands, their musicians, their shows, their setlists, and the ways they interpret the repertoire. You can even follow the music from the original Dead to a tribute performance decades later.
For example, Frankly Scarlet’s April 28, 2023 show in Atlanta moved from “Cumberland Blues” and “Ramble On Rose” through “Scarlet Begonias,” “Fire on the Mountain,” “So Many Roads,” “The Other One,” and “Dark Star”—showing how a local tribute performance can connect directly back into the Dead’s repertoire.
For Experienced Deadheads
Already know your way around the Dead? There’s plenty here to dig into.
Track Your Shows
Create an account and add the Grateful Dead, successor-band, and tribute-band shows you’ve attended.
Deadiverse can turn your concert history into personalized statistics:
- How many shows have you attended?
- Which bands have you seen most?
- Which venues have you visited?
- How many different songs have you heard?
- Which songs have you heard most often?
- Which rarities have you caught?
- Which musicians have you seen perform?
Your show history becomes your own little corner of the Deadiverse.
Follow Your Favorites
Save your favorite songs, musicians, bands, shows, and venues so you can easily return to them.
Follow a song you’ve become obsessed with. Follow a musician whose work you want to explore. Follow a tribute band you regularly see.
The more you explore, the more connections you’ll find.
Hunt for Rarities
Some Dead songs were performed hundreds of times. Others appeared only occasionally—or only once.
Look for songs played only a handful of times, long gaps between performances, songs that disappeared for years and returned, early versions that evolved dramatically, late-period debuts, unusual covers, rare combinations and pairings, and songs that became staples for successor or tribute bands.
Finding a rarity on a setlist is one of the small pleasures of being a Deadhead.
Compare Eras
The Grateful Dead of 1968 wasn’t the same band as the Grateful Dead of 1977, 1983, or 1993.
Explore how the repertoire changed. Follow individual musicians through lineup changes. Compare the frequency of songs across decades. Look at how a venue, tour, or particular year shaped the band’s performances.
Check Our Work
There are so many shows, so many bands, and so many songs. We can’t promise everything on the site is 100% accurate (yet). With your help we can get that, if you see any incorrect shows, setlists, lyrics or other details please send us a note!
Along the same lines, submit your own notes or images to shows, add lyric annotations, guitar chords, and more to songs. Together we can build up the deadiverse document the multitudes! Bonus you even earh site karma for contributions along the way, see the leaderboard to compete with fellow deadheads and share your expertise so nothing gets lost with time.
Find a Show
Looking for a particular Grateful Dead performance?
Use the show archive to find performances by date, venue, city, song, tour, or era.
Try searches like:
- 1977
- Winterland
- Dark Star
- Cornell
- New Year’s Eve
Or just pick a random show and start exploring.
Find a Song
Looking for a particular song?
Visit the Songs archive and explore songs by performance history, frequency, rarity, era, and band.
Find a song you know, then follow the thread outward. Where did it begin? How did it change? Who played it? Which other bands carried it forward?
Find a Musician
Musicians are often the best way into the Deadiverse.
Find a musician and explore the bands they’ve played with, their instruments, their membership dates, and the shows they’ve performed.
A single musician can connect seemingly unrelated parts of the archive.
Jerry Garcia might lead you to the Jerry Garcia Band, Old & in the Way, New Riders of the Purple Sage, or Legion of Mary. Phil Lesh might lead you through Phil Lesh & Friends, The Other Ones, Furthur, and Dead & Company.
And a tribute-band musician might lead you somewhere completely unexpected.
Explore a Venue
Venues have their own Dead history.
Find a venue and see which bands have played there, how often they’ve appeared, and which performances took place there.
A legendary venue may reveal decades of Grateful Dead history. A small local club may connect you to a tribute band playing there today.
The place is part of the story.
Add Your Own History
Deadiverse isn’t meant to be a museum that you can only look at.
Create an account and contribute to the archive.
- Add shows you’ve attended.
- Share memories and stories.
- Add notes about performances.
- Help correct information.
- Contribute photographs and other material where appropriate.
Maybe you were there for a legendary Grateful Dead show. Maybe you caught a rare song nobody else in your group remembers. Maybe you’ve followed the same tribute band for twenty years. Maybe you know something about a musician, venue, or performance that isn’t documented anywhere else.
Those experiences are part of the Deadiverse too.
What Is a Deadhead?
You don’t need a membership card.
A Deadhead might be someone who saw the Grateful Dead in 1969. Someone who discovered the band through a parent. Someone who has seen Dead & Company dozens of times. Someone who follows a local tribute band every weekend. Or someone who just heard “Dark Star” for the first time and wants to know what the hell happened.
The common thread is curiosity.
If you want to follow the music, you’re welcome here.
A Few Ways to Explore
- Start with a song. Find a favorite and follow its performance history.
- Start with a show. Pick a date and see what happened.
- Start with a musician. Follow their path through the Deadiverse.
- Start with a band. Explore its members, songs, shows, and connections.
- Start with a venue. See who has played there and when.
- Start with a tribute band. Find out where they’re playing and who else their musicians have played with.
Or don’t start anywhere in particular.
Click around. Follow the threads.
That’s how the Deadiverse works.
Ready to Dive In?
There’s no right way to explore the Grateful Dead.
You can spend an afternoon comparing 1972 and 1977 versions of the same song. You can discover a musician you’ve never heard of. You can find the history behind a venue you’ve visited a hundred times. You can trace a song from the original Dead through successor bands and into a tribute band’s setlist this week.
Or you can simply look up the show you were at thirty years ago and remember what you heard.
Create a free account to start building your own history, track your favorite songs and musicians, log your concerts, and contribute your memories to the archive.
The Grateful Dead’s story is enormous.
There’s plenty of room to get lost in it.
