Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press Images Furthur’s Phil Lesh, left, and Bob Weir performing in 2010.It is a sad fact that the Grateful Dead can never return to the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y., where they gave memorable concerts in the early 1970s, because the guitarist Jerry Garcia has joined the ranks of the actual dead.
But something close to such a homecoming is about to take place: Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, founding members of the Dead, announced on Friday that their band, Furthur, will do a series of eight concerts at the theater starting on April 16.
r. Lesh and Mr. Weir formed Furthur in 2009 as a jam band following the Grateful Dead model, doing matgerial from the Dead’s songbook as well as some more recent originals. They named the band after the bus used by the novelist Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters for a celebrated psychedelic tour of the United States in the mid-1960s.
In the early 1970s, the Capitol Theater, which at the time was a crumbling movie house built in 1926, was one of the the Dead’s favorite concert halls because of its unusually good acoustics. The group played 18 concerts there in 1970 and 1971. “It’s no secret that the Grateful Dead loved playing at the Capitol Theater,†the band’s archivist, David Lemieux, said in the announcement.
Last year, the theater was refurbished as a music hall with up-to-date lighting and sound systems. The new owner, P! eter Shapiro, has tried to re-establish it as a rock mecca, playing up its history.
Tickets for the Furthur shows can be purchased after noon on Friday through the Web sites for the theater and for the band.
