Grateful Dead celebrating spring 1973 tour with new 17-CD box set

The Grateful Dead is revisiting their spring 1973 tour with a brand new box set. Here Comes the Sunshine 1973, dropping June 30, will consist of 17 CDs featuring five previously unreleased concerts from the tour.

Shows featured in the limited-edition release are a May 13 concert at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa; a May 20 concert at Campus Stadium at UCSB in Santa Barbara, California; the May 26 show at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, California; and the two-night stand at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C., which took place June 9 and 10.

In addition, the June 10 RFK Stadium show, which was a co-headlining bill with the Allman Brothers Band, will have its own separate release digitally and as a four-CD or limited edition eight-LP set. The five-hour concert ended with a third-set encore featuring the Allman Brothers’ Dickey Betts and Butch Trucks sitting in with the Dead. Fans can get a taste of that concert with the previously unreleased performance of “Ramble on Rose,” which is out now.

Here Comes the Sunshine 1973, which comes in a box designed by Grammy Award-winning art director Masaki Koike and includes an exclusive poster featuring an illustration by Mary Ann Mayer, is available for preorder now. Only 10,000 individually numbered copies will be sold through Dead.net; it will also be available as a digital download, also exclusively at Dead.net.

And fans can learn more about the shows when season 7 of the band’s official podcast, Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, launches Tuesday, May 2, with the 1973 concerts the focus of the premiere episode.