If you wanted to come up with a cynical definition of what we now think of as “the ’60s,” you could call it five years of middle-class kids slumming. Obviously, there was more to the counterculture than that. But that was a big part of it — and the middle-classness of it all, the fact that so many kids “dropped out” because they could afford to drop out, should not be forgotten. (The revolution was about protest, but it was also about selling designer psychedelic candles.)
If you wanted to come up with the cynical definition of a Deadhead, the term that describes those blissed-out nomad followers of the Grateful Dead, you could call them middle-class kids dropping out to cosplay the ’60s. They’ve been doing it for quite a while, and Mischa Richter’s rambling Deadhead documentary “Summer Tour” reminds us that they’re still at it.
The movie, which counts Chloë Sevigny as one of its producers, unveils the 2023 version of Deadheads, who are seen following the national tour of Dead & Company (whose members include key remnants of the Dead), in what was billed as the group’s final tour. (Now that Bob Weir has passed away, the nail is most definitely in that coffin.) As the documentary captures, we are currently in the third generation of Deadheads. The first were the original hippie followers of the Dead. The second were their self-consciously blissed-out 1980s and ’90s inheritors (a tidal wave of fandom you can date roughly up through Jerry Garcia’s death, in 1995). The third generation are the shaggy Zoomers we see in “Summer Tour,” notably the two central figures, Jeremiah Pierce and Annabelle Dunne, known as Jerry and Annie.
They’re a couple in their early-to-mid-twenties who drive around the country in their macramé-and-potted-plant-bedecked van, following the 2023 Dead & Company tour. The two resemble so many Deadheads, who have a quintessential look to them that’s all about “freedom,” though it’s also a costume: the blondish-brown long hair (with possible dreds), the tie-dye shirts and peasant dresses, the nose rings and beaded wrist bracelets, the dirty bare feet, the general air of homeless “all-American” stoner kids on a permanent vacation.
They’ve turned hanging out into a mission, which makes them not so far removed from the heroes of “Wayne’s World.” But the Deadheads also evince an honest yearning for something that’s tribal, primitive, sacred, ancient, shamanic, ecstatic. Watching the documentary, you can’t help but empathize with their desire to find an alternative lifestyle. But it also occurs to you that this wouldn’t be a bad setting for “Midsommar II.”
Annie is from the luxe city of Santa Cruz, Ca., while Jerry is from upstate New York, where the two go to visit his parents, who live in a large home with cabin trappings. His father is a police officer, and his family has been in the military since the days of the Civil War. But Jerry, who likes to strum a guitar and resembles a long-haired Cheshire cat, isn’t rebelling against all of that; he loves his parents and doesn’t seem to have a rebellious bone in his body. “People around here are very traditional,” he says, by which I think he means they have traditional paychecks, the kind that can enable Jerry to roam for a while.
The wandering fan carnival we see in “Summer Tour” is a tie-dyed Spring Break that never ends. But the documentary, to a fault, mirrors the Deadheads’ rambling aura and general absence of structure. The movie will show us a few minutes of Jerry and Annie, or a handful of other Deadheads, explaining what they’re up to, and then it will cut to an interlude of in-concert dancing, which takes one of two forms: There is swaying and there is twirling.
As we’ve seen in previous Deadhead documentaries, like “Tie-Died: Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Most Dedicated Fans” (1995), the main thing that Deadheads like to do, in addition to dancing while tripping on acid, is to talk about how happy and free they are and what an amazing community they have. The word community comes up a lot. They’re a clan of fellow travelers, united in doing what they please, even if it’s the same thing over and over again: driving, skinny dipping, more driving, then putting down stakes for a few days in Shakedown Street (the name taken from the Dead’s 1978 song and album), the open-air marketplace that’s set up outside the concerts, where the Deadheads gather to sell vegan grilled-cheese sandwiches, hand-made clothing, and arts and crafts.
I don’t necessarily mind the fact that a Deadhead documentary rambles. But what’s peculiar, and telling, about “Summer Tour” is that the film offers no larger vantage — no sense of who these people are outside their Deadhead wanderings, and no larger perspective on how the whole Deadhead thing now fits into the culture. “Summer Tour” weaves in dozens of Dead songs (both recorded and live versions), but it’s a jellyfish of a documentary; it has no dramatic spine. It’s all good vibes and stoner aphorisms. But you could also say that the reason the movie never bestirs itself to be more than that is that the whole Deadhead carnival, in its beatific and non-threatening way, is at heart a sprawling, flaked-out festival of privilege. If you looked at it too closely, the whole thing might crumble.
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