Words and photo by Alex Fulling
On the evening of Saturday, January 10, the Grateful Dead world received devastating news: Bob Weir had departed from his earthly form. Bobby was the band’s final vocalist to pass, following the death of bassist Phil Lesh just a year and a half prior and, of course, lead guitarist Jerry Garcia in August 1995. Bobby is survived by his wife, Natascha, his two daughters, Chloe and Monet, and his Grateful Dead bandmates Billy Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart.
Within twenty-four hours of the announcement, a memorial event was scheduled at The Hamilton Live—a pillar of the D.C. live-music ecosystem and, more specifically, its jam-band scene. The free show was destined to be heavy, both in circumstance and in cast. John Kadlecik—a DMV local and alumnus of the Grateful Dead offshoot Furthur, as well as the nationally revered Dark Star Orchestra—was slated to sit in with one of D.C.’s mainstay Dead cover bands, Great Northern. By the following day, the bill was furthur (if you will) expanded: Great Northern would be followed by an “acoustic-ish” set from Dupree’s Diamond 3.
On Tuesday January 13, 2026, DMV deadheads descended upon The Hamilton for the event. After days of coverage of a seemingly nonstop tribute unfolding at the corner of Haight and Masonic in San Francisco, DMV heads were eager for the opportunity to gather and grieve locally. Approaching the venue on Tuesday evening, I encountered a line out the door—hopefuls waiting for a spare ticket off the waitlist. Indeed, the event had sold out within thirty minutes of its announcement.
The Grateful Dead performed in D.C. seventeen times from 1980-1995, including legendary two-night runs at RFK Stadium in ‘93, ‘94, and even ‘95—weeks before Jerry’s passing. (Read here an eerie account of three individuals struck by lightning, a central emblem in Grateful Dead iconography, outside RFK in ‘95). In their song, “Big Reveal,” String Cheese Incident keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth recounts:
On a summer day at R-F-K, I walked the ‘shakedown;’ trying to find my way / I ventured there to see the show; had to know what the buzz was all about / Searching there for something new; a different view I hadn’t seen before / I let it all wash over me, and suddenly it felt like coming home / Oh…Oh! The curtain falls away; the big reveal!
Suffice it to say that, three decades later, the local “jamily”—as affectionately coined in a 5000-plus-member Facebook group—remains large and passionate about the Dead.
A few minutes before the scheduled 8:00 PM kickoff, a slideshow of photographs of Bobby were projected on the screens around the room. A cacophony of solemn ‘my-first-time-seeing-Bobby’ and ‘my-last-time-seeing-Bobby’ stories could be heard from small conversations across the venue. At 8:00 on the dot, Great Northern took the stage, joined by Dave Moran, Area Director of Clyde’s Group, and Rick Fowler, General Manager of the Hamilton. Both offered words of gratitude—to the bands, the fans, the staff, and to Bob Weir. Mr. Moran, after establishing his pedigree (as is customary in the scene) by noting he had seen Bobby perform more than 300 times, including most recently in that very room during a private 2024 show, launched into a lyric-laden soliloquy that swelled into a crowd-led chant of “Not Fade Away.” Brian Rosenthal, drummer for Great Northern, took the cue and launched the band into the eponymous song.
As the audience surely hoped, the band played a set of exclusively ‘Bobby songs’—numbers on which Bob took lead vocals: “Not Fade Away” > “Hell in a Bucket,” “Feel Like a Stranger” > “Jack Straw,” “Greatest Story Ever Told,” “Looks Like Rain,” “Samson and Delilah,” “Big River,” “Truckin’” > “I Need a Miracle” > “Music Never Stopped.” Among the highlights was a fragile and devastating “Looks Like Rain,” a song Dead & Company bandmate Oteil Burbridge has cited as one of his two favorite Bobby songs. Later, the outfit took “Truckin” for a lengthy spin. “Music Never Stopped” capped the thundering set, its lyrics reflective of the evening’s unspoken mood: “No one’s noticed but the band’s all packed and gone / Was it ever here at all? / But they kept on dancing / The music never stopped.”
After a twenty minute setbreak spent refortifying one’s emotional composure, John Kadlecik, Rob Eaton, and Skip Vangelas took the stage. Eaton and Vangelas—both members of the current Dark Star Orchestra lineup—have each shared the stage with Bob Weir at different moments in their careers. Kadlecik, however, holds the rarer distinction of having been Bobby’s bandmate, performing 267 shows alongside Bob (and Phil) during Furthur’s 2009–2014 run. Together, the trio form the new side project group, Dupree’s Diamond 3.
Eaton opened with a caveat: this was an acoustic band; no “thunderous” Dead set should be expected. They would play deeper cuts—and, invoking what he said Bobby would have appreciated, Eaton added that he might tell anyone talking too loudly to “S-T-F-U.” The line landed exactly as intended, drawing laughter and approval from a crowd famously militant toward ‘chompers,’ especially during quieter shows.
True to his word, Eaton and company opened with a deep cut: “Attics of My Life.” The rendition centered on the vocals, with the trio beautifully harmonizing their way through the slow ballad as the Dead did originally. Forgoing another Bobby-centric set, “Box of Rain” was next—the quintessential Phil song, sung here by Vangelas. “The Race is On”—a George Jones favorite of Bobby’s—was followed by a beautiful navigation of “Bird Song,” with Kadlecik on vocals. Still mining the depths, the group launched into the “Weather Report Suite,” including a full-bodied “Let it Grow.” So much for no thunderous songs. The room then surrendered to the indulgent—but always welcome—odyssey of “Terrapin Station.”
“Playing in the Band” was next, a song on which Bobby was frequently accompanied by the backup vocals of Donna Jean Godchaux. Though vocalist Amy Wilson of Jerry Tripsters was in the room—having sat-in with Great Northern earlier—Eaton carried the vocals alone. A particularly deep cut, “Days Between,” followed, again with beautiful vocal ownership by Kadlecik. The final two songs to close the set were “Throwing Stones”—frequently performed in D.C. as the one-of-one (or, arguably, one-of-three) protest songs in the Dead’s repertoire—and “Touch of Grey.” As has become customary in most performances of the former, Eaton carried the lyrics “we are on our own…on our own” through multiple forlorn repetitions. “Touch of Grey,” usually an uplifting song with the closing lyrics, “we will get by,” landed differently that night. It was the final song that Bobby ever performed publicly, done so on the third and final night of Dead & Company’s ‘GD60’ celebration in Golden Gate Park, 08-03-25. As observant deadheads have noticed, Jerry’s final song, “Box of Rain,” belonged to Phil; Phil’s final song, “Sugar Magnolia,” belonged to Bobby; and Bobby’s final song, “Touch of Grey,” belonged to Jerry.
Well past 11:00 P.M., members of the audience were leaving the room when the trio returned to the stage for an encore of “Ripple.” Before leaving the stage for good, they turned and applauded the projected image of Bobby glowing behind them. The crowd reciprocated.
By the end of the night, the gathering had inspired as much dancing and celebration as it had tears and retrospection. It may not have provided an absolute cure for the community’s loss, but it was medicine nonetheless: a moment of reprieve, communion, and renewed resolve to keep the Grateful Dead spirit alive. As “Ripple” faded, Kadlecik successfully coaxed the audience into singing an earlier line to close the song: “Let there be songs to fill the air.”
Fare thee well, Bob Weir. 1947-2026.
