Trey Anastasio Band Debut Jerry Garcia’s “Mission in the Rain” on Night Three of Dead & Company’s Golden Gate Concert Series Celebrating 60 Years of the Grateful Dead 

Photo: Dave Vann

On Sunday, August 3, Trey Anastasio Band arrived at the Polo Fields at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco for the third and final day of live music in tandem with the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary, hosted by the band’s modern offshoot, Dead & Company.

Sticking to the series standard, TAB warmed up the audience with a single set of music. During their 75-minute frame, the eight-piece ensemble, Anastasio, Ray Paczkowski, Russ Lawton, Dezron Douglas, Cyro Baptista, Natalie Cressman, Jennifer Hartswick, and Kenneth Whalum collectively stirred a euphoric response during their live debut of Jerry Garcia’s “Mission in the Rain,” which arrived halfway through a 13-song presentation. 

Before their live debut, TAB wasted no time pressing play on a list that combined features from the bandleader’s solo career and the Phish catalog, rendering a familiar display to the group’s pre-San Francisco concert at Los Angeles’ The Bellwether on Friday. Notably, they had already tested Sunday’s opening number during their August 1 concert, the horn-driven “Moma Dance.” “Mozambique” took the concert’s second slot and received extra attention from local legend, Cressman, and preluded a heavy take on “Sand,” before pushing into the Page McConnell-penned “Magilla.” 

Rather than bust into their next song, a heartfelt Anastasio spoke to the crowd, touching on the nature of the occasion, the band, and Jerry Garcia’s impact, in part: 

I saw my first Dead show in 1981 at the New Haven Coliseum and fell in love with all of it, but I want to right at this moment do a particular heartfelt shout out to Mr. Jerry Garcia. 

We’re all here to celebrate. I think to myself, I look at this crowd, and this guy came along and here we all are, all these years later. So, I want to sing this song now and try to express my love for him. Please sing along because I’ll do the best I can. I really don’t believe that anybody can sing this song except for him. So help me out, please, and help all of us out.

Wherever you are, standing up on your moon or whatever, Jerry, thank you for all you gave us. It’s incomprehensible the amount of joy, and we’re all here. We’re all here.

The outcome was a fervent display of “Mission in the Rain.” The song choice was a hair-raising standout from Garcia’s mid-‘70s released solo LP, Reflections, and live standard for JGB, who performed the track upward of 250 times. Besides its customary status in the guitarist’s solo repertoire, the San Francisco neighborhood-naming Robert Hunter scribed poetics arrived in the Dead’s live catalog in 1976, and was once described as “a little piece of my life” by Garcia. 

TAB’s cover struck a knowing similarity to the Jerry Garcia Band’s harmony-rich display as a direct result of Hartswick and Whalum’s combined efforts. The nod toward Garcia arrived two days after the guitarist’s 83rd birthday. It served as a homage to the Grateful Dead bandleader, before a tight turn back to originals, on the Anastasio and Tom Marshall co-write, “What’s Going Through Your Mind.” 

“Love Is What We Are” glinted with a reggae feel, and effectively commenced a series of Phish standards, the horn-laden “Camel Walk,” “Wolfman’s Brother,” cut with the title track from Anastasio’s fourth solo LP, “Shine,” and back to the Phish archive on “Everything’s Right” and a frame ending “Ghost.” 

After his segmented stage time, Anastasio returned during the onset of Dead and Company’s second set, assisting on sister songs, “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain,” and supplying the duo with teases from the Phish and Dead world, and flexing knowledge as well as the skill to render a twist between of two beloved catalogs.

Watch “Mission in the Rain” below.

Trey Anastasio Band 

Golden Gate Park – San Francisco 

August 3, 2025

Set I: The Moma Dance, Mozambique, Sand, Magilla, Alive Again, Mission in the Rain [1], What’s Going Through Your Mind, Love Is What We Are, Camel Walk, Wolfman’s Brother, Shine, Everything’s Right, Ghost

Notes:

[1] TAB debut