Published: June 27, 2016
The Grateful Dean performing Photo by Michael Goldman.

Folsom Field hasn't hosted concerts since 2001. The sonic drought ends this summer with back-to-back shows by Dead & Company.

On July 11, 2001, the Dave Matthews Band played an electrifying 2.5-hour set at Folsom Field. The night was rainy, but that didn’t stop a crowd of 40,000 from showing up, or the band from going long.

By the time they finished a nearly eight-minute encore of “Ants Marching,” it was 10:45, 15 minutes past the curfew for outdoor concerts at Folsom. CU-Boulder fined the band $15,000 — $1,000 a minute — and concerts in the stadium were suspended indefinitely.

Michael Goldman (Pharm’78) was in the crowd that night, as he had been for almost every Folsom concert since 1973, when he attended a Leon Russell performance as a freshman.

“The campus would be taken over by whoever was playing,” the Denver pharmacist said, adding that the time to revive Folsom as a concert venue “is definitely long overdue.”

That day has arrived. The university announced Feb. 8 that Dead & Company — three surviving members of the Grateful Dead and John Mayer — will play at Folsom on July 2 and 3, 2016, the first concerts there in 15 years.

To read the full story, visit the Coloradan website

For information about this year's concerts, visit Colorado.edu/deadandcompany.

Photo by Michael Goldman.