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It’s hard to believe but for whatever reason up until this show I had never attended a concert at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington. There are probably multiple reasons for that but the main one is that it’s just so far away. It’s at least a three hour drive from our house, which isn’t so bad on the way over but seems like a really long drive if you’re coming home at midnight. The other option is to find someplace to spend the night. Camping would be the obvious choice but it’s really not that simple.
The Grateful Dead have been together in one form or another longer than I’ve been alive and I’ve listened to their music for many years but, like the Gorge Amphitheater, for one reason or another I’d never seen them live. I honestly wasn’t even really aware that there was a “Dead and Company” iteration of the band until Sam pointed it out. The fact that John Mayer plays lead guitar in the band is what got me hooked.
When Jerry Garcia passed away in 1995 it seemed like that would pretty much be the end of the Grateful Dead. Jerry would have seemed to have been the heart and soul of the group and it seems odd to have a Dead band without him leading it. It turns out that the other members of the group weren’t ready to hang it up though. Since then there have been various line ups with the other members of the band who have more or less recreated the Dead experience. The band’s Wikipedia page lists at least six different spin-offs led by various members over the course of the years following Jerry’s death. Of these, Dead and Company has probably been the most successful and truest in following the concept of the original band.
By now you probably know how much I like John Mayer. I’ve seen him in concert a couple of times the past few years and both times I’ve come away even more impressed by him. IMHO he is in a very elite group of guitarists who make music seem effortless, like breathing. As the story goes John started listening to the Dead in 2011 and loved the sound and the songs and started learning how to play their music. He then met Bob Weir early in 2015 and they became friends and by the end of the year they had formed Dead and Company with Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman from the original band as well as a couple of other friends. They’ve toured repeatedly since then with only Bill deciding to sit this last tour out. At this point Bob is 75 and Mickey is 79 and they’ve repeatedly said this is the last tour they’ll do so the assumption is that if you want to see some version of the Grateful Dead, this is your last chance.
With all that in mind Sam and I decided to make a weekend of it and head to the Gorge for the show. The band played two nights at the Gorge but Sam and I only went to the second night. I have always heard that the Gorge was a beautiful concert setting, and it truly is, but I was unprepared for how big the venue is. I didn’t realize the capacity is 27,500 people which doesn’t seem like that many people when you compare it to a baseball or football stadium that might hold 40,000 but when you think about that many people driving out to the middle of nowhere and all the logistics of having many of them camping and whatnot it starts to get overwhelming.
Speaking of camping, that would be a good option if it weren’t so expensive. To me camping should be free, or at least a cost effective scenario, but that isn’t the case here. To camp at the venue was at least $250 or $300, which is just insane to me. That’s more than our concert tickets cost. What we decided to do was spend the night in Wenatchee. It’s an hour drive from the Amphitheater, which is about what it is when we go into Seattle for a show and drive home after, so it seemed like a good plan and using Marriott points to stay at a brand new Residence Inn for free was way nicer and more comfortable than spending $300 to camp in the dirt with 10,000 of our closest friends.
So, we headed out about 10am on Saturday, drove to Wenatchee and checked into the hotel and then had lunch at Bernie’s Burgers in Wenatchee. I highly recommend this place. Very good burgers at really reasonable prices. We got two huge burgers for $12 and they weren’t some stripped down burgers. They were fully loaded with fresh toppings. Cheese, bacon, mushrooms, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes…delicious.
Anyway, we got to the Gorge by ~4pm. We parked and headed over to the camping area where there was a vendor section set up. The vendors outside Dead shows were legendary so we were interested to see what it was like. Although we heard that there were vendors scattered throughout the camping area, that was a huge area and we didn’t want to just wander aimlessly through the camp so we just went to the designated area and frankly we were disappointed. There were a few booths selling t-shirts and art work but nothing really of interest. At least we can say we checked it out.
We gave up looking for interesting merch and went back to the amphitheater entrance. The show wasn’t scheduled to start until 7pm and the gates weren’t supposed to open until 5:30 or 6:00 but for whatever reason they opened them around 5:00. The timing worked out just about right for us because we were only in line to get into the venue for ~30 minutes. Once inside there were many food and beverage choices but since we’d eaten a huge lunch in Wenatchee we weren’t hungry and didn’t purchase anything inside the venue.
We had tickets for general admission on the lawn and although I knew that the venue was an amphitheater and figured the lawn would be sloped, I didn’t realize just how much of a slope that would be. If I have any criticism of the experience it would be that the lawn is actually a pretty steep hill and although going up and down it wasn’t difficult for me, I could see how it could be for some people. We brought a lawn blanket in and used it to stake out our area. The blanket was pretty slick and you couldn’t stand on it for fear of it sliding out from under you and even sitting on it, it felt like you might start sliding down the hill. Not a big deal because we stood most of the time anyway but by the end of the show my toes were hurting from being crammed into the front of my shoes.
The flip side of this is that we had a gorgeous view of the stage with the Columbia River behind it in the distance. It was in the upper 90’s when we got there but there was a slight breeze and the heat didn’t seem that bad. The sun was setting right at the end of the first set and we had a perfect sunset. It’s easy to see why, at least from a visual beauty standpoint, this is considered one of the best concert venues in the country.
The show itself was fantastic. For one thing the sound system was probably one of the best I’ve ever heard. It wasn’t loud, at least not for a rock concert, but it was crisp and clear and you could hear every note being played. It was actually pretty shocking to be outdoors in such a huge venue and have the music be so clear.
Being in this band really allows John Mayer to play to his full potential. He sang a bit but mainly just focused on playing lead guitar.
Bob Weir sang more of the lead vocals and the only real snag in the show came during the second set when his microphone suddenly quit working. Bob’s response was to knock the mic stand off the stage. I guess when you’re in your late 70’s you don’t have much patience with technology. I expected to see the sound crew come rushing on stage to fix the problem but they didn’t. Instead John stopped playing and ran over and fixed up another mic for Bob. It was a small thing but was nice of him to take care of the other band member rather than just sitting back and waiting for a roadie to come fix the issue. The rest of the band kept playing and if you were to go back and listen to the recording after the fact I doubt you would even realize anything had happened.
The show ended at 11pm. If you’re keeping track that makes it a four hour concert. It was less than that because they didn’t start until ~7:15 pm and took a 30 minute break in the middle, but still it was a long show considering there was no opening act. We got our money’s worth.
After the show Sam and I spent an hour trying to find the truck, which was fine because it felt good to walk and it let some of the traffic clear out. We finally found the truck and by the time we got back to Wenatchee it was almost 1am. We were hungry by then so we went to Denny’s since it was the only restaurant open. Denny’s is truly awful but it was food. We were in bed by 2am.
The next morning we got up and ate breakfast at a great little restaurant a few miles outside Leavenworth called the Big Y Cafe. We’ve eaten breakfast there a couple of times now and I highly recommend it! By the time we got back on the road the Sunday traffic was in full force and we ended up in typical Sunday traffic on Highway 2, with stop and go (slow) from before Gold Bar all the way through Sultan. We finally got back home around 2:30pm.
So, a lot to go through for a concert and I certainly wouldn’t do it very often but in this case it was totally worth the effort. Sam and I had a great time together.
