Grateful Dead to Release July 1989 RFK Stadium Shows as Box Set

August 1, 2017

Today marks what would have been Jerry Garcia’s 75th birthday. Theaters across the country will celebrate by showing a previously unreleased Grateful Dead show from Washington, DC’s RFK Stadium on July 12, 1989, as part of this year’s Grateful Dead Meet Up at the Movies, and the Dead are also planning to release that show and the following night’s offering as an upcoming box set package.

The 7/12/89 and 7/13/89 shows, which came as part of the band’s tour in support of their final studio album, Built to Last, and featured both Brent Mydland and Bruce Hornsby, will be available as a set via Dead.net. Both previously unreleased concerts were taken from the band’s analog recordings and mixed by Jeffrey Norman at Bob Weir’s TRI Studios. The box set also includes artwork from Justin Helton and bound liner notes from Relix co-editor-in-chief Dean Budnick. The shows will also be available digitally on the release date, November 10.

“RFK Stadium ’89 fell right in the middle of one of the best tours of the last 15 years of Grateful Dead performances,” Dead archivist David Lemieux says. “This tour is widely considered the start of a nine month period of sustained excellence, which ran from Summer ’89 through Spring ’90. The RFK shows are as good as any of the more famous shows from this period, including July 4 in Buffalo, July 7 in Philadelphia, and the Alpine run. When Bob Weir has asked me to provide copies of Grateful Dead songs to give to his bandmates to learn and rehearse, he almost always requests Summer ’89, and I’ve often drawn upon the RFK shows for this purpose. It’s really that good!”

See the full tracklist below, along with a “Mississippi Half Step” preview of tonight’s Meet Up at the Movies, and pre-order the set here.




RFK Stadium 1989 Box Set Tracklist:


July 12th, 1989

1. “Touch Of Grey”
2. “New Minglewood Blues”
3. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”
4. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”
5. “Far From Me”
6. “Cassidy”
7. “Friend Of The Devil”
8. “Promised Land”
9. “Sugaree”>
10. “Man Smart, Woman Smarter”
11. “Ship Of Fools”>
12. “Estimated Prophet”>
13. “Eyes Of The World”>
14. Drums>
15. “I Need A Miracle”>
16. “Dear Mr. Fantasy”>
17. “Black Peter”>
18. “Turn On Your Love Light”
19. “Black Muddy River”

July 13th, 1989

1. “Hell In A Bucket”
2. “Cold Rain And Snow”
3. “Little Red Rooster”
4. “Tennessee Jed”
5. “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again”
6. “To Lay Me Down”
7. “Let It Grow”
8. “He’s Gone”
9. “Looks Like Rain”
10. “Terrapin Station”
11. Drums
12. Space
13. “I Will Take You Home”
14. “The Other One”
15. “Wharf Rat”
16. “Throwing Stones”
17. “Good Lovin’”
18. “U.S. Blues”