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Concert Review

GREENSBORO — It’s Easter Sunday, and the Dead have risen.

Yes, the cultural institution known as the Grateful Dead — and now simply “The Dead” — kicked off their first tour in five years at the Greensboro Coliseum on Sunday night. It was a virtual sellout, with every corner of the arena filled with dancing, delirious Deadheads. A total of 17,500 tickets were sold, making this the 13th-largest concert crowd in the coliseum’s history.

The Dead’s lineup includes four original members — bassist Phil Lesh, guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart — along with longtime confederates Jeff Chimenti and Warren Haynes on keyboards and guitar, respectively.

Although Jerry Garcia, the group’s late guitarist and the broader counterculture’s reluctant guru, is fundamentally irreplaceable, The Dead is a valid reincarnation. They played for close to four hours and seemed intent on re-establishing the experimental side of the group’s legacy.

They began with “The Music Never Stopped” — a choice that made a subtly implicit point about endurance.

Later in the first set, they performed “He’s Gone” and “Touch of Grey” back-to-back, again alluding to their own history — both Garcia’s death (“Nothing’s gonna bring him back”) and their own will to persevere (“We will survive”).

Throughout the evening, the songs themselves were well-played, although the jams that ended or connected them sometimes lacked focus and coherence. “I Need a Miracle” and “Truckin’ ” were rousing and tight, but the tricky, reggae-accented 7/4 time of “Estimated Prophet” seemed to throw the band into disarray. A cover of “All Along the Watchtower” — Jimi Hendrix by way of Bob Dylan — elicited a fiery reading from Haynes.

Phil Lesh played a nifty bass with glowing blue LEDs embossed into the neck. The graying, laconic Bob Weir stood front and center, and though he appeared expressionless, he seemed to relish the opportunity to step out more than usual on guitar. Weir and Haynes didn’t mesh particularly well as guitarists, but perhaps their chemistry will evolve as the tour progresses.

Haynes brought a gritty, bluesy energy to the band, but he also nailed Garcia’s lighter touch in places, especially the unique duck-quack tone Garcia got from the wah-wah pedal.

On the other hand, Haynes isn’t Garcia, and he’s ultimately better-suited to the earthier Allman Brothers Band, which he joined back in 1989, than the Dead.

That’s no knock on Haynes’ fabulous musicianship but an acknowledgement that the era-specific nuances of vintage psychedelia and the ability to play in a free-form “outside” style are not his strong suit.

This was especially clear in a second-set segue from a techno-style long jam that followed “Caution: Do Not Stop on Tracks” into a painfully long “Drums”-“Space” interlude. The whole sequence had a meandering, amorphous quality, and it chewed up a huge amount of time.

Once the Dead exited that train wreck, they redeemed themselves by exhuming the trippy oldies “Cosmic Charlie” and “Born Cross Eyed,” to the delight of hard-core Deadheads.

They ended the second set with a spirited “Help Is On the Way,” ”Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower” trifecta, highlighted by tight parallel climbs from Lesh on bass and Haynes on guitar.

The deafening screams and applause that greeted the Dead when they returned for an encore was enthusiastic and heartfelt, and this outpouring didn’t go unnoticed by Lesh.

“It’s good to be back with you folks,” he said. “The hair is standing on the back of my neck.”

Parke Puterbaugh is a freelance contributor.