Some Rise, Some Fall, Some Climb

Gather ’round, children, and I’ll tell you a tale of faith and perseverance. It all began when the Fare Thee Well shows were announced last January. All of us Deadheads in our twenties had no idea how to fill out a mail order ticket request and spent hours watching YouTube videos and reading and rereading the instructions. (According to older Heads, Jerry himself used to just call your house and walk you through the process). I can’t remember agonizing so much over meeting formatting requirements for any paper I ever wrote in college. The night before the deadline (it was February 20th, I believe?) I remember still feeling a little anxious that I’d fucked it up somehow as I sealed the envelope and wrote, “Some Rise, Some Fall, Some Climb,” in synchrony with the words to Terrapin Station which was playing in the background, so I deemed that a good omen.

Rejection Letter

I was one of the last batches of rejection letters. I held out hope til the bitter end, too, but eventually I still received the dreaded self-addressed envelope. I’d tried the Ticketmaster release as well just to cover all of my bases, figuring I’d sell or miracle any extras I could possibly end up with (just getting a face value ticket was a miracle, but I digress). The morning of the first Ticketmaster sale, I manned my battle station on the couch in the corner of the house with the best WiFi reception. I had my Spanish-speaking friend briefed with instructions on what to order if he could get through on the Spanish ticket request phone line. Five minutes before tickets went on sale, the cops knock on my door. I did not have time for this. We’d had a party the night before, and apparently a party guest had showed up with a stolen iPhone, and our house was the last place it had been pinged. So, my roommate is out front in his bathrobe dealing with that once the tickets go on sale, and finally they leave, thank ye gods. Like my stress level wasn’t already through the roof. I waited in line to get through to buy tickets and watched the wheel spin for at least an hour and a half before I accepted defeat. At the time I still held out hope that my tickets could come in the mail any day.

Help > Slip

I got the rejection letter and was pretty bummed, to say the least. About a week later, my friend tells me that there’s going to be a previously unannounced second Ticketmaster release in a few days. At that point I’d nearly abandoned all hope and had even cancelled our hotel reservations (which I made the day the shows were announced). I was pretty sick of disappointment by that point, and the morning of the second Ticketmaster release I almost didn’t even roll out of bed to try, but figured, might as well. I sat in that same spot on the couch, turned on Help On The Way, and prepared to wait.

As soon as Slipknot faded into Franklin’s Tower, the transaction went through. I messaged Stephanie Harvey nothing but a screenshot, “Colleen, you’re going to see The Grateful Dead.”

Wave That Flag, Wave It Wide And High

Going to Chicago that 4th of July weekend was probably one of the most important things I’ve ever done. There we were all in one place. I’d never seen a town overrun with Deadheads before, and it was everything I could’ve hoped and wished for. It was pretty great running into a bar full of Louisville people in Chicago who were there to catch the Rumpke Mountain Boys after the Saturday night show. I legitimately believed that The Pranksters were on their way to pick us up in a limo and take us to a warehouse party for at least an hour. We made some new friends that slept in our closets and on our floors, and ran into some old ones, too. The experience is another story entirely, the road to Chicago was such a long, strange trip in itself.

I guess the moral of the story is: never miss a Sunday show.