Chloë Sevigny’s Deadhead Documentary ‘Summer Tour’ Gets Trailer and Screening Dates

The film follows a Grateful Dead tribute singer and his partner busking their way through Dead & Company’s final 2023 tour.

The official trailer for Summer Tour, a documentary produced by Chloë Sevigny and directed by Mischa Richter, is now out, offering the first sustained look at a film built around the Deadhead community’s enduring culture. The movie centers on Jeremiah Pierce, lead singer of Grateful Dead tribute band Mason’s Children, and his partner Annie, as they busk their way through Dead & Company’s final tour in 2023. It opens nationwide on July 23, 2026, via Utopia.

What ‘Summer Tour’ Is About

The documentary frames the Grateful Dead’s cultural legacy not through the band itself but through the community that has grown around it across generations. Sevigny, a longtime Deadhead, produced the film and appears in the trailer asserting that ‘what the Grateful Dead created is so much bigger than going to concerts. It’s a very strong and thriving community.’

Director Mischa Richter describes the project in personal terms. ‘The Grateful Dead community has given me so much over the years and it’s such an honor and privilege to be able to make this film about and with this beautiful, fun, kind and truly unique American scene,’ Richter said. The film is described as ‘an up-close, road-tested portrait of the healing nature of music and community’ that captures multiple generations of fans following Dead & Company on the band’s final tour in 2023.

Early Screening Schedule Before the July 23 Theatrical Release

Before the film opens wide, a run of early screenings is scheduled at venues closely associated with the Dead and jam-band world. The first takes place May 28 at Bearsville Theatre in Woodstock, N.Y., a location with deep roots in the region’s rock history. Subsequent dates move through the Northeast and beyond.

The June 4 Brooklyn Bowl screening in New York includes a special live performance by Mason’s Children, the tribute band at the center of the film. Tickets for all screenings are available at summertour.utopia.film.

• May 28 — Bearsville Theatre, Woodstock, N.Y.
• June 4 — Brooklyn Bowl, New York (with live Mason’s Children performance)
• June 7 — Garcia’s at The Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, N.Y.
• June 18 — Stone Church, Brattleboro, Vt.
• June 25 — Brooklyn Bowl, Nashville, Tenn.
• July 9 — Garcia’s, Chicago, Ill.
• July 23 — Nationwide theatrical release via Utopia

The Venues Tell Their Own Story

The choice of screening locations reads like a map of the jam-band circuit. Garcia’s at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester has been one of the most prominent Dead-affiliated venues in the country since its renovation and rebranding. The Stone Church in Brattleboro and Bearsville Theatre in Woodstock both carry the kind of regional, community-rooted character that mirrors the film’s subject matter. Brooklyn Bowl, with locations in New York and Nashville, has long been a reliable home for the jam and legacy-rock audience.

Routing early screenings through these specific rooms rather than conventional multiplex chains signals that the filmmakers are treating the rollout as a community event first, a theatrical release second.

What we know

• Summer Tour was produced by Chloë Sevigny and directed by Mischa Richter.
• The film follows Jeremiah Pierce, lead singer of Grateful Dead tribute band Mason’s Children, and his partner Annie, as they busk for access to Dead & Company concerts.
• Dead & Company’s final tour took place in 2023 and is the backdrop for the documentary.
• Summer Tour opens nationwide on July 23, 2026, distributed by Utopia.
• Early screenings begin May 28 at Bearsville Theatre in Woodstock, N.Y., and continue through July 9 at Garcia’s in Chicago.
• A special screening and live Mason’s Children performance is scheduled for June 4 at Brooklyn Bowl.
• Tickets for screenings are available at summertour.utopia.film.

The take

Deadhead culture has always been unusually self-documenting. From the tape-trading networks of the 1970s and 1980s to the explosion of lot-scene photography in the social media era, the community has consistently produced its own archive. What makes Summer Tour notable is that it approaches that culture from the margins rather than the stage, centering a tribute-band singer and his partner hustling for tickets rather than interviewing surviving members or revisiting archival concert footage. That’s a meaningful creative choice. It positions the film alongside works like Amir Bar-Lev’s Long Strange Trip (2017), which also prioritized the community and the mythology over a straightforward band biography, but pushes even further toward the grassroots. Sevigny’s involvement as a producer adds a dimension worth noting. She has been publicly identified as a Deadhead for years, and her presence here is that of a genuine participant rather than a celebrity lending credibility to a project she discovered late. Richter’s framing of the film as something made ‘about and with’ the community rather than simply about it suggests a participatory approach that tends to resonate with audiences who are already inside the culture. For a fanbase that has always been skeptical of outsider interpretations, that distinction matters. The routing of early screenings through jam-circuit venues rather than art-house cinemas reinforces the same instinct.

Why it matters

The Grateful Dead’s cultural footprint has outlasted the band’s active years by decades, and Dead & Company’s 2023 farewell tour marked a genuine generational inflection point for that community. A documentary that captures the lot-and-road experience of that final run has real archival value for fans who were there and genuine discovery potential for those who weren’t. For the broader classic rock documentary space, Summer Tour represents a growing trend toward fan-perspective storytelling rather than authorized band histories, a format that has proven commercially and critically viable.

What’s next

The first early screening takes place May 28 at Bearsville Theatre in Woodstock, N.Y. The Brooklyn Bowl event on June 4 includes a live Mason’s Children performance. Additional screenings follow through July 9 in Chicago before the nationwide theatrical release via Utopia on July 23, 2026. Tickets are available now at summertour.utopia.film.

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