The Grateful Dead and Earth Day

April 18, 2026

How the Dead Carried the Planet on Their Shoulders

Earth Day was born on April 22, 1970 — and so, in a lot of ways, was the Grateful Dead as we know them. That same spring, the band was deep in the Fillmore West residency with Miles Davis, playing the acoustic sets that would become Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. Songs about hard times, open roads, and living close to the land. Not exactly a coincidence.

The Dead never made big speeches about saving the planet. They just lived it — and backed it up with money, time, and music for over thirty years.

The Rex Foundation: Where the Real Work Happened

In 1983, members of the Grateful Dead and their circle established the Rex Foundation, named after road manager Rex Jackson, who died in 1976. Its mission: help secure a healthy environment, promote individuality in the arts, support critical social services, protect the rights of indigenous people, and build stronger communities. Wikipedia

The band played the first of many Rex Foundation benefit concerts in the spring of 1984. Following Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, the Rex Foundation has continued making grants funded by music, connection, creativity, and community spirit. Rex Foundation To date, it has distributed over ten million dollars to more than 1,400 grantees. Live for Live Music

As Garcia himself put it: "If you feel like you like to do things that help and that it isn't particularly difficult to do so — it's a matter of choices. So that's why we started the Rex Foundation."

September 24, 1988: The Night They Went to the United Nations

This is the one that still blows minds.

On September 13, 1988, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Mickey Hart appeared at a United Nations press conference alongside representatives from Greenpeace, Cultural Survival, and the Rainforest Action Network, as well as the U.N. Environment Programme's director. They weren't there as rock stars. They were there as activists. Billboard

Two weeks later, they played a sold-out benefit at Madison Square Garden for those same organizations. The show — a benefit for Cultural Survival, Greenpeace, and the Rainforest Action Network — featured an extraordinary guest list: Mick Taylor on guitar, Suzanne Vega, Hall & Oates, Babatunde Olatunji on percussion, Bruce Hornsby, and Jack Casady. Internet Archive They closed with Knockin' on Heaven's Door with the whole room singing.

🎧 Stream the 9/24/88 Rainforest Benefit at MSG on archive.org

The Spring 1970 Shows: Where It All Started

The Dead weren't playing on the first Earth Day — April 22, 1970 — but they were in the middle of one of the most fertile creative stretches in their history. The Fillmore West residency that April (with Miles Davis, of all people) captured a band inventing a whole new sound rooted in American folk, country, and the land itself.

🎧 Stream the Fillmore West 4/12/70 on archive.org — the last night of the Miles Davis run. One of the legendary early-era recordings.

The Dead & Company Era: Keeping the Mission Alive

Dead & Company's Participation Row — the area allotted at their shows for nonprofit and charitable partners — has featured entities like HeadCount for voter registration and Reverb for sustainable touring, helping raise more than $15 million for causes over the years. Billboard

The music changes. The mission doesn't.

Still Going: The Grateful Dead Connection to Earth Day Today

The Rex Foundation remains active. If you want to put your Earth Day dollars somewhere the Dead would approve of, that's the place. And if you want to wear something that honors both the music and where it came from — handmade, American-dyed, 100% cotton — you're in the right place.

Shop Earth Day styles at eDeadShop →

Want to fall down the rabbit hole?

Here are a few more shows from the archive to mark the season:

🎧 Mammoth Gardens, Denver — 4/24/70 — two days after the first Earth Day. Dark Star into St. Stephen into Not Fade Away. That's springtime right there.
🎧 The Ark, Ann Arbor — 4/22/69 — exactly one year before the first Earth Day. Raw, early, and wild.