ONE FOR THE ROAD

What I ate growing up with the Grateful Dead

- REYA HART

I have been staring at this silver dish of fried chicken for what feels like hours but what really, actually, has been days. Twenty-three days, to be exact, over the course of the three-month Dead Forever run at the all-new, all-American pleasure palace the Las Vegas Sphere.

I grew up on the road. First on the family bus, traveling from city to city to watch my father, Mickey Hart, play drums with the Grateful Dead and Planet Drum, and then later with the various Grateful Dead offshoots. When I was old enough, I joined the crew, working for Dead & Company, doing whatever I could be trusted to handle: stringing strands of plastic Grateful Dead-bear lights; ferrying tie-dyed tapestries, extension cords, and gaffer tape by golf cart; helping VIP-ticket holders smuggle ziplocks filled with vegan sandwiches and granola into the venue. Then, late-night, drinking whiskey from the bottle with the techs, sitting in the emptying parking lot as the semitrucks and their loadout rumble marked the end of our day.

But this summer, for the first time in the band's history, there would be no buses; there would be no trucks. Instead we stayed in one place, trading the rhythms of a tour for the dull ache of a long, endlessly hot Las Vegas summer.

It's a new way of doing things, one with just enough of our former existence to keep it comfortable and just enough change to keep the road forward exciting-even if the road is now an illusion, stretching out below an Al-generated sky. The Grateful Dead had been famous for its Wall of Sound-about 600 speakers painstakingly assembled by the crew at each venue, then just as painstakingly packed back up for the next stadium or concert hall. The Sphere is a wall of light: a 160,000-square-foot display programmed to transport the audience members, their necks craned upward, as the band plays below, a little dot against the expansive animated horizon.