As Dead & Company play their first-ever shows in the month of March as the opening two weekends of the 2025 Dead Forever residency at Sphere in Las Vegas, longtime Deadheads, especially those of the East Coast variety, might be feeling a strong sense of déjà vu right about now. They’d be right. We got out our copy of Deadbase 50 to find out just exactly how often the Grateful Dead played on March 20th, 21st, and 22nd and on March 27th, 28th, and 29th each year during their 30-year career from 1965–95, and we found shows on those dates in 20 of the band’s 30 years. But thanks to the band starting up their mail order service in 1983 and then refining their touring schedule over the next couple of years, Grateful Dead shows happened on at least two of these six dates during each of their last 11 annual East Coast spring tours from 1985–1995.

Not only did the band try to keep the timing of East Coast tours as consistent as possible to help Deadheads plan ahead, they also had go-to venues that could and would handle the Dead and the scene that Deadheads brought with them, and they are familiar locations to those who were actively seeing shows during these 11 years: Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum (4 times), Hampton Coliseum (4 times), The Omni (4 times), Copps Coliseum (twice), along with Hartford Civic Center, The Spectrum, Knickerbocker Arena, Cumberland County Civic Center, Richfield Coliseum, and Charlotte Coliseum (once each).

When the Grateful Dead’s spring tour started in March 1985, the band consisted of Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), Brent Mydland (keyboards), Bill Kreutzmann (drums) and Mickey Hart (drums). After Mydland passed away in July 1990 at the age of 35, he was replaced by Vince Welnick (keyboards) and Bruce Hornsby (piano) from September 1990 through March 1992. After Hornsby stepped away from the band as a full-time member, Welnick filled the keyboard chair on his own from May 1992 through the band’s final shows in July 1995.

March 20th, 21st, and 22nd

Deadheads who received their first AARP card a bit earlier than the rest of us might remember some of the earlier Grateful Dead shows that happened on these dates. In 1969 the band played a pair of nights at the Rose Palace in Pasadena, CA, in 1970 there were a pair of nights at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY, in 1971 they played single gigs in Iowa City and Milwaukee, in 1972 they played a pair of shows at The Academy of Music in New York, NY, and in 1973 they played a pair of shows in Utica, NY. Then in 1977, they finished out a run on home turf at Winterland Arena in San Francisco (included in the just-announced Grateful Dead 60th Anniversary box set Enjoying The Ride), and in 1981 they played at the London’s Rainbow Theatre during one of their infrequent visits to Europe.

1985 — Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

For the second straight year, the band launched their Spring Tour with two shows in Hampton. Opening night on March 21st featured Weir’s mash-up of “Meet Me in the Bottom” and “Ain’t Superstitious” in the first set along with Garcia’s “Dupree’s Diamond Blues”, while the second set’s highlights came from “China Cat Sunflower” and “Playing in the Band”. On March 22nd, Garcia delivered an early highlight with “Cold, Rain & Snow” before a second set sequence of “Scarlet Begonias” > “Hell In a Bucket” and a rare appearance of the ”Spanish Jam”. While neither show was a true standout, Hampton Coliseum and its GA policy throughout the arena (now a rarity at East Coast venues) was now a very popular spring tour destination.

1986 — Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Spring tour kicked off at The Mothership for the third year in a row in 1986, with the second and third nights of the band’s first three-show run there happening on March 20th and March 21st. The show on the 20th is legendary for one very big thing: return of Phil Lesh’s “Box Of Rain” to the live repertoire after 12 years on the shelf, while the show on the 21st was highlighted by the live debut of “Roadrunner” along with “Supplication Jam” and “Let It Grow” and a spacey second set that included “Uncle John’s Band” > “Terrapin Station” > “Playing In The Band”.

1987 — Hampton, Coliseum, Hampton, VA

Yep. Spring tour started in Hampton for the fourth consecutive year. This time, opening night was on March 22nd, and by now the venue was so popular that counterfeit tickets and many ticketless people were creating onsite problems. However, the show was Jerry Garcia’s first East Coast appearance since surviving his diabetic coma the year before, and it was a storming show with a second set featuring “Sugar Magnolia” > “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” at the front end before an emotional “Black Peter” and the “Sunshine Daydream” coda of “Sugar Magnolia” finished it off. If someone were seeing their first Grateful Dead show, they’d want it to be a night like this one.

1990 — Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, ON

The Grateful Dead had only played two shows in Canada since 1977, but in 1990 the band gave it another shot and added Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum to the spring tour itinerary, with shows on March 21st and 22nd. The tour would be one of the band’s best, and the opening night was highlighted by a second set “Hey Pocky Way” (one of the final versions before Mydland’s death in 1990), “Crazy Fingers”, “Cumberland Blues”, and “Estimated Prophet”. However, the second night would top it, with an excellent “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”, the band’s first stab at a full version of The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” since 1969, and the final version of the Garcia ballad “Believe It Or Not”. Both nights later received an official release, with the show on the 22nd comprising part of 2012’s Spring 1990 box set, while the show on the 21st followed as part of 2014’s companion box set Spring 1990 (The Other One).

1991 — Capital Centre, Landover, MD

During the Grateful Dead’s final decade, the Capital Centre in the eastern suburbs of Washington, D.C. was a mainstay on East Coast tours, holding 22 shows under its saddle-shaped roof and black ceiling between 1987 and 1994. When the band arrived there in 1991, they were still adjusting to their first lineup change in a decade. Following keyboardist Brent Mydland’s tragic death from a drug overdose, the band enlisted former Tubes keyboardist Vince Welnick and piano master Bruce Hornsby to replace him, and together they were a formidable musical force.

The Cap Centre shows on March 20th and 21st were the third and fourth nights of that spring tour’s opening four-night stand, with the show on the 20th featuring the first “Might As Well” in three years and a lengthy second set that kicked off with a 55-minute sequence of “Eyes of the World” > “Foolish Heart” > “Estimated Prophet” > “He’s Gone”, while the show on the 21st was highlighted by an 18-minute version of “Bird Song” before the second set delivered a buoyant instrumental jam on Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up” (one of only two that every happened) after a powerhouse “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”.

1992 — Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, ON

The band returned to Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum for its second visit in three years with a pair of shows on March 20th and 21st, and these would turn out to be the Grateful Dead’s final shows in Canada. On opening night, after the second set kicked off with “Shakedown Street” and “Man Smart, Woman Smarter”, the crowd won the “Dark Star” lottery and got one of the tour’s two versions of the elusive classic before “The Other One” surfaced later in the set.

The second night opened promisingly with “Help On The Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Franklin’s Tower”, but the second set contained a head-scratchingly short pre-“Drums” segment of keyboardist Vince Welnick’s new song “Way To Go Home”, Weir’s new effects-laden song “Corrina”, and “Terrapin Station”. These would be two of Bruce Hornsby’s final shows as a full-time member of the band, and two of the last shows before the band switched from an onstage configuration of “wedge” monitors to then-new technology of an in-ear monitor system, a move that would change how the band listened to each other for the remainder of their career. The March 20th show would get an official release as the 1992 show on the 80CD box set 30 Trips Around The Sun in 2015.

1993 — The Omni, Atlanta, GA

After a single show to start 1988’s spring tour established Atlanta as a city where the band could do big business after the success of 1987’s In The Dark, The Omni arena in downtown Atlanta became a spring tour fixture for the rest of the Grateful Dead’s career. From 1989 through 1992, the arena hosted two-night stands, but in 1993 the run would expand to three shows, played by a band who’d forged ahead with a significant batch of new originals and covers over the past 13 months.

Opening night on March 20th featured three new Garcia/Hunter songs: ballads “So Many Roads” and “Lazy River Road” during the show and the easy-rocking “Liberty” in the encore slot. The middle night on March 21st contained versions of the Weir/Willie Dixon collaboration “Eternity”, a repeat of “Liberty”, Welnick’s “Way To Go Home”, Lesh’s cover of Robbie Robertson’s “Broken Arrow”, Garcia’s new ballad “Days Between”, and the Welnick-sung double-cover encore of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”. Lastly, the final night on March 22nd offered a repeat airing of “Lazy River Road”, Lesh’s complex “Wave To The Wind”, and Garcia’s version of Sonny Curtis’ “I Fought The Law” to close.

1994 — Richfield Coliseum, Richfield, OH

Richfield Coliseum had been around since 1974 as the suburban home to the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and to hundreds of rock shows, but somewhat surprisingly, it didn’t become a regular stop on Grateful Dead tours until 1990. After 1994’s spring tour opened with three nights in Chicago, Richfield hosted two shows on March 20th and 21st, only the band’s fourth and fifth shows after front of house sound engineer Dan Healy was replaced by Bob Bralove—a significant personnel change in the crew.

The first night on the 20th found Weir employing his relatively new habit of playing acoustic guitar for a song or two per night, this time on the cowboy pairing of “Me & My Uncle” and “Mexicali Blues”, and in the second set the highlights included “Crazy Fingers”, “Estimated Prophet”, and “The Last Time”. The second night on the 21st was a stronger affair, with a pre-“Drums” run of “Picasso Moon” > “New Speedway Boogie” > “Victim or the Crime” > “He’s Gone” before some late-show magic when Garcia inserted his ballad “Stella Blue” into the middle of a raucous “Turn On Your Lovelight”.

1995 — Charlotte Coliseum, Charlotte, NC

When Atlanta became a yearly stop for the Grateful Dead from 1988 onward, North Carolina would often benefit, given that it was between Atlanta and the Northeast Corridor or the Midwest. The Greensboro Coliseum (1989, 1991) and the Dean Smith Center (aka the “Dean Dome”) in Chapel Hill (1993) would get shows, but ultimately Charlotte Coliseum got the band’s final North Carolina shows. After an unusual two-day break, the first night of the band’s first (and last) three-show run in the Tarheel State kicked off on March 22nd. It was a fairly standard 1995 show with some nice early moments from “Jack Straw” and “The Same Thing”, while the second set featured an uncommon pairing of The Beatles’ “I Want To Tell You” with Garcia’s delicate ballad “Attics of My Life”.

As we mentioned before, we dove into our copy of Deadbase 50 to find out just how many years the Grateful Dead played shows on March 20th, 21st, and 22nd and on March 27th, 28th, and 29th each during their 30-year career from 1965–95. We found shows on those dates in 20 of the band’s 30 years, but in later years, there was a clear and familiar pattern. Thanks to the band establishing Grateful Dead Ticket Sales in 1983 to sell half of all their tickets directly to fans and tweaking their schedule over the next couple of years to avoid conflicts with the NHL and NBA playoffs, Grateful Dead shows happened on at least two of these six dates during each of their last 11 annual East Coast spring tours from 1985-1995.

March 27th, 28th, and 29th

Before 1985, the Grateful Dead played shows on March 27th, 28th, and 29th in eight different years. In 1967 the band played on two of the nights at San Francisco’s Rock Garden (a short-lived competitor to the Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon venues), in 1968 the band played The Carousel Ballroom (soon to become the Fillmore West), and in 1969 the band completed a short regional tour with shows in Merced, CA; Modesto, CA; and Las Vegas, NV.

In 1972 a pair of shows comprised the final nights of a four-night stand at the Academy of Music in New York, NY (part of the 28th was released officially on Dick’s Picks Vol. 30) and in 1973 there was a show in Springfield, MA (released officially as Dave’s Picks Vol. 16). In 1981 the Dead wrapped up a European tour with a single show in Essen, Germany that featured a sit-in from The Who guitarist Pete Townshend, in 1983 there were West Coast shows at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Southern California and San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, and in 1984 the band played on two of the nights at the Marin County Veterans’ Auditorium in San Rafael, CA.

That brings us to 1985, and from here on out, the band played East Coast spring tour shows on these dates every year except 1992, and that’s only because that year spring tour had just wrapped three days earlier on the 24th.

Buckle up, kids.

1985 — Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY

The Grateful Dead were nearing their 20th anniversary when the 1985 spring tour started with three nights at one of their longtime venues just outside New York in the Long Island suburbs. The opening night on March 27th featured Lesh’s debut performance of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, along with Garcia breaking out the first version of “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” in three years before making a great call to open the second set with big-city anthem “Shakedown Street”.

The middle night on March 28th started with “Truckin’” in a now-rare spot as the show-opener, and the ensuing “Smokestack Lightning” featured harmonica player and longtime Weir collaborator Matt Kelly, a regular onstage guest since the late 1970s. Kelly sat in again during the first set on March 29th, but this would be his final appearance with the band after a behind-the-scenes dispute resulted in Hart angrily throwing a succession of drumsticks at him during the last moments of “Ain’t Superstitious”. Later, an unusual and effective sequence opened the second set: “Terrapin Station”, “Man Smart, Woman Smarter”, and “Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad” preceded one of only five versions of Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me To Do” that the band ever performed.

1986 — Cumberland County Civic Center, Portland. ME

The Grateful Dead’s final two shows at the 9,500-capacity “CCCC” (now Cross Insurance Arena) were the band’s last indoor shows in Northern New England—from here on it would only be big outdoor shows on summer tours. The opening night on March 27th featured the only performance of Mydland’s “Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues”—the song’s lyrics would be scrapped, but the reworked music would later become “Just A Little Light”. The show also featured appearances of rarities “Supplication Jam” and “Spanish Jam” along with the often-paired standards “Estimated Prophet” > “Eyes of the World”.

The second night on March 28th contained a distinctive sequence of “Playing in the Band” > “Franklin’s Tower” > “I Need a Miracle” >”Playing in the Band” to start the second set; the full reprise of “Playing in the Band” appeared later in the set to make it one of the rare shows where the song appears on the setlist three times in one night. Behind the scenes, there was a significant meeting on the 28th: an enterprising Vermont Deadhead named John Scott met with GD publicist Dennis McNally to pitch his idea of compiling a book of every known Grateful Dead show and setlist. McNally would connect Scott with Bay Area-based Stu Nixon and Mike Dolgushkin, each of whom were also looking to do the same thing. Scott, Nixon, and Dolgushkin would collaborate to create Deadbase with the band’s blessing, and their books (both omnibus and year editions) became bibles for tape collectors and hardcore Deadheads.

1987 — Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT and The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA

On March 27th, the Grateful Dead played the second of two nights at Hartford Civic Center, a mainstay venue for the band during the 1980s. The standout moments came from second set opener “Touch of Grey” (one of the band’s definitive versions) and set closers “Uncle John’s Band” and “Morning Dew”.

After a travel day on the 28th, the band kicked off a three-night run on March 29th at another familiar venue, the Spectrum in Philadelphia, which hosted 53 Dead shows between 1968 and 1995. The first set’s highlights came from Mydland breaking out the first “Far From Me” since 1984, Garcia’s new song “When Push Comes To Shove”, and Weir’s “Let It Grow”. Garcia’s second set offerings consisted of “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”, “China Doll”, “Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad”, new ballad “Black Muddy River”, and the Bob Dylan-penned encore “Quinn The Eskimo”, If you’re into crowd-boosted East Coast shows, you’ll be into these.

1988 — Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA

The 1986 and 1987 runs at Hampton Coliseum each contained an all-time Grateful Dead moment, and the 1988 run would make it three years in a row. The middle night on March 27th would go down as one of the best shows of their career and was subsequently given an official release as Download Series Vol. 5 in 2005. The first set alone contained Weir’s debut of Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” (one of only two), Garcia reviving “To Lay Me Down” for the first time since 1983, and “Let It Grow”. The second set was a no-ballads, high-energy affair that found the band noodling around with Miles Davis’ “So What” before cleaning house with a set where “Sugar Magnolia” and “Scarlet Begonias” led to one of the definitive versions of “Fire On The Mountain” amid many other highlights. The final night of the run on March 28th didn’t hold up in comparison, but it’s a good, solid late ’80s show with an enjoyable sequence of song choices in the nine-song first set, including “Box of Rain”, “Bird Song”, and “The Music Never Stopped”.

1989 — The Omni, Atlanta, GA

For the second straight year, the Grateful Dead’s spring tour kicked off in Atlanta at The Omni, with shows on March 27th and 28th. During the previous nine months, the band debuted an album’s worth of new material in their live shows, with new songs appearing throughout. On the first night, Garcia’s “Built To Last”, Mydland’s “We Can Run”, and Garcia’s brand new ballad “Standing on the Moon” appeared late in the show, and on the second night Garcia’s “Foolish Heart” landed in the second set. But the real highlight on the 27th was the four-song sequence of “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” > “Estimated Prophet” > “Eyes of the World” that opened the second set, while the second set on the 28th closed out with “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “Wharf Rat” preceding “Throwing Stones” > “Not Fade Away”, a rock-solid run of regular-rotation late-show songs during this era.

1990 — Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY

The band returned to Long Island for the first time in five years, with the first two of the run’s three nights falling on March 28th and 29th. The opening night was a powerful show containing Mydland’s “Easy To Love You”, which had recently been revived after a decade on the shelf, Garcia’s recently revived “Loose Lucy” after a 16-year absence, the Grateful Dead’s first version of The Band’s classic “The Weight”, exceptional versions of “Looks Like Rain” (this one ended up on 1990 live album Without A Net) and “Hey Pocky Way” along with an encore that turned out to be the band’s final version of The Beatles’ “Revolution”.

The March 29th show would become an all-timer when jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis sat in for most of the show, with the 50-minute brilliance of “Eyes of the World” > “Estimated Prophet” > “Dark Star” that launched the second set becoming legendary overnight. “Eyes…” was the centerpiece of the aforementioned Without A Net, and both shows later received official releases in 2014 as part of the Spring 1990 (The Other One) box set. The show on the 29th was also a stand-alone release, Wake Up to Find Out, that reached #51 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

1991 — Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY

The Grateful Dead’s 1991 spring tour returned to Nassau for three shows on March 27th, 28th, and 29th. There’d been a major change since last year, however, as the band quickly recruited former Tubes keyboardist Vince Welnick after keyboardist Brent Mydland’s tragic death in July 1990. To ease Welnick’s steep learning curve they’d also enlist pianist Bruce Hornsby, with the latter playing many (but not all) of the band’s shows for about a year and a half. Hornsby could not make these three shows or the tour’s preceding three shows in Albany, and the difference between when Hornsby was there and when he wasn’t was still fairly stark at this point.

The gem on the opening night was one of the four Grateful Dead performances of the Jerry Garcia Band staple “Reuben and Cherise” to close the first set, along with a crowd-pleasing segment of “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain” before “Estimated Prophet” > “Uncle John’s Band”. On the middle night, audiences were left wondering if someone in the band was ill, as the 12-song show was so short (by Grateful Dead standards, anyway) that Garcia would call for the first “Terrapin Station” encore since 1978 to help make up for its brevity. The final night was highlighted by the airing of “New Speedway Boogie” in the second set, which Garcia had revived the month before for the first time since 1970, and “Touch of Grey” turned up in an unusual spot as the second set closer.

1993 — Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, NY

It’s kind of hard to believe that the Knickerbocker Arena (now MVP Arena) is 35 years old. Yes, really. The Grateful Dead were one of the first acts to play there when it opened its doors in 1990, and after it proved to be the upstate New York arena that the band needed and Deadheads loved, there’d be a run there every year for the rest of the band’s career.

The opening night on March 27th was one of the best shows of the Vince Welnick era, highlighted by the band’s first version of “Comes A Time” in two years and the band’s final performance of “Casey Jones”. The middle night on the 28th featured a relatively rare airing of American Beauty chestnut “Attics of My Life”, and the second set on March 29th kicked off with “Here Comes Sunshine”, Garcia’s lost classic from 1973’s Wake of the Flood album that, at Welnick’s urging, had been dusted off after an 18-year absence.

Over the space of the three shows, a lot of new material was aired: a cover of Muddy Waters’ “The Same Thing”, Robbie Robertson’s “Broken Arrow”, and Sonny Curtis’ “I Fought The Law”, along with eight new originals that had debuted over the previous 13 months: “Corrina”, “Days Between”, “So Many Roads”, “Eternity”, “Wave To The Wind”, “Way To Go Home”, “Lazy River Road”, and “Liberty”. The show on the 27th received an official release in 2015 as part of the 30 Trips Around The Sun box set.

1994 — Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY

The band returned to Nassau Coliseum for what would be their final visit, with the fourth and fifth nights of a five-night stand falling on these dates. The show on March 27th featured Weir’s new song, “Easy Answers” late in the first set before a welcome “Deal” closer, while the second set kicked off with “Samson and Delilah” before an equipment malfunction forced a break, but the set contained a strong finish with “The Other One” and “Morning Dew”. The Grateful Dead’s 42nd and final show at Nassau on March 28th was bolstered by an unusual second set pre-“Drums” sequence of The Beatles’ “Rain”, “Victim or the Crime”, “Box Of Rain”, “He’s Gone”, Paul McCartney’s “That Would Be Something”, and “Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad”.

1995 — The Omni, Atlanta, GA

The Grateful Dead played their final shows at The Omni in the spring of 1995, with an off-day between the second and third shows of a four-night stand. On March 27th the first set would be a short five-song affair (“Picasso Moon”, “Sugaree”, “All Over Now”, “So Many Roads”, and “Let It Grow”), but the second set contained an inspired and out-there 40-minute segment of “Playing in the Band” > “Uncle John’s Band” before a lengthy, untitled jam led into “Drums.”

After a day off, on March 29th Weir would choose two of his best (“Jack Straw” and “Cassidy”) to open and close the first set, while the second set kicked off with Lesh’s hoped-for “Unbroken Chain” that had debuted ten days earlier in Philadelphia (the song appeared on 1974’s From The Mars Hotel album but had never been played live until 1995), one of only ten live versions. Afterward, the trio of “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Franklin’s Tower” preceded “Corinna”, before another rarity, Harry Belafonte’s “Matilda”, one of only six versions the band would ever perform.

Dead & Company’s March Madness continues this weekend at Sphere, with shows scheduled through May 17th. Find tickets here.