In the realm of King Kong-sized boxed sets, it isn’t the biggest in history — that honour belongs to behemoths such as the 142-disc collection feting classical pianist Arthur Rubinstein.
But where Grateful Dead compendiums are concerned, the 80-disc 30 Trips Around the Sun beats all comers. And the man behind the madness is Victoria resident David Lemieux, the Grateful Dead’s official archivist.
Lemieux, 44, an Ottawa native, spent nearly three years working on the project, which is understandable when you take into account the set’s 73-hour running time. The largest boxed set in rock history brings to light 30 unreleased concerts by the group — essentially one from each year that the core of singer-guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart were together.
Lemieux brought the idea for 30 Trips Around the Sun to the table in 2012. The project officially went into production in September 2014, but progress was slow. Knowing the standard of quality “Deadhead” fans expect from the Grateful Dead, Lemieux and his team laboured over every detail; the mastering process alone took eight months of work.
The set comes with a steep pricetag — $699.95 US, plus tax and shipping charges — but Lemieux thinks the asking price is commensurate with the calibre of the parts.
“Everything we’ve ever done, I’ve never viewed as product,” Lemieux said, during an interview from his Fairfield home. “I view it as great music packaged properly, with the first [criterion] always being music quality. Everything else falls into place.”
The set will finally see the light of day Sept. 18, one of the many projects honouring the band’s 50th anniversary. The year-long celebration also includes five sold-out Fare Thee Well shows, two in Santa Clara, California, in June and three in Chicago in July, which are expected to be the final concerts surviving members Hart, Kreutzmann, Lesh and Weir will play together.
The group will stage the farewell dates at Soldier Field, where the last Grateful Dead concert took place 20 years earlier, one month before frontman Garcia died of a heart attack in 1995.
That will be it for the Dead, by all accounts. But Lemieux will be offered no such shelter from the storm. With more than 1,500 live shows in the band’s “vault,” he will have his hands full when it comes to releasing archival music from the Grateful Dead.
“We’ve already talked about the 60th anniversary in 2025,” he said with laugh. “There are ideas there. At the pace we release music, for any other band that is a ton of music. But we have so much music in the vault that is such high quality. At the pace we’re going, in 20 years we wouldn’t be degrading the quality of the music.”
The band’s “smaller boxed sets,” as Lemieux refers to the nine-CD sets from the Dead, are career-spanning boxes for most bands.
“But we do those every year,” he said with a laugh. “We could do a $100 box once a year. But a $700 box is literally a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Available exclusively through the band’s website, dead.net, 30 Trips Around the Sun is available for pre-order, but Lemieux doesn’t expect many copies to be available past the end of June. The box is limited to 6,500 CD copies and 1,000 USB editions.
“We have absolutely no doubt this will sell out,” he said.
Not surprisingly, 30 Trips Around The Sun is the largest project in the history of Rhino Entertainment, the band’s longtime label. That says something about the band and its fans — especially since 7,200 copies were sold of Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings, a 73-disc Grateful Dead set Lemieux oversaw for release in 2011.
Europe ’72 now seems like a breeze next to 30 Trips Around the Sun, Lemieux admitted.
“There is nothing comparable. If you think of any other band, a career-definitive boxed set is 20 discs. This one is 80. In terms of popular rock ’n’ roll music, there is nothing like it.”
It appears there is no end to the appetite for unreleased music by the group. To help navigate the demand, Lemieux uses a trusted group of friends as a sounding board on each project he produces. They are told to give him the unvarnished truth. That way, he can ensure the band’s best interests are in mind, he said.
“I certainly don’t work in a vacuum on this. I have a very small but critical group of friends, people I’ve known for 20-25 years and who I’ve been trading Dead tapes with. People, to this day, who live and breathe this music. None of us take it casually.”
Lemieux, a Deadhead himself, is only ever concerned with the years between 1965 and 1995, when Garcia was with the group. The various Dead members have been busy in the years since, pursuing other projects, so the band has a “hands-off” approach when it comes to the archives, he said.
Lemieux, who has been an employee of the group for 16 years, has prepped more than 100 albums for issue during that span, none of which caused the surviving members any concern, he said. Lemieux — who each year produces four instalments in the Grateful Dead’s Dave’s Picks series of unreleased bootlegs — now has a name that is synonymous with quality in Dead fan circles, and for good reason.
“They are generally always onboard with it. They know that I’m a Deadhead, so when I come up with an idea like this, I’m approaching it as one of their fans, not as a business guy. Granted, it is a business on the record-company side, but I approach it strictly from the Grateful Dead music side of things.
“As a Deadhead, I always approach it like: ‘Would I buy this?’ And, in fact, I did buy it. Fifteen minutes after 30 Trips Around the Sun went on sale [last week], I was one of the first 100 people on board. I like to put my money where my mouth is.”
He is not directly involved with the group on its day-to-day operations, but he has been of service to the remaining members during the leadup to their Fare Thee Well shows, their first under the Dead banner since 2009.
He has been a resource to the band, in terms of helping them rehearse the live versions of the Dead’s studio cuts, which were greatly expanded in concert.
“I just got a list of 30 songs from one of the band members, and I sent him a .zip file of songs they want to play at the show. Unlike me, they don’t necessarily have the Dead’s library at their fingertips. So I gave them 30 studio cuts and 30 definitive live versions of the same songs. That’s what they’ll rehearse with.”
And as for his thoughts on what they will do with the live recordings of the farewell concerts down the road?
“I hope they record it,” Lemieux said. “I’d buy the thing.”
30 Trips Around the Sun is available now via pre-order through dead.net.
