It has been a long strange trip for the fourth annual Skull & Roses Festival. The biggest and best iteration of the festival finally took place this spring after a nearly three-year-long pandemic delay. The much-anticipated event drew the biggest crowd to date, attracting Deadheads from all over California, to the Ventura Fairgrounds, for four days of music inspired by The Grateful Dead.

If you’ve been on the fence about attending this year's SKULL & ROSES April 7-10th in Ventura, CA, here are just a few reasons why this is a NOT to be missed festival!

PHIL & FRIENDS

This year, and for the first time, an original member of the Grateful Dead, bass player Phil Lesh, joins SKULL & ROSES. The line up will feature: Phil Lesh, Stu Allen, Grahame Lesh, Jason Crosby & John Molo.

OTEIL & FRIENDS

TICKETS on sale now for a very Grateful evening with Cubensis, America’s longest-lived Grateful Dead Tribute Band making a rare trip to NorCal, PLUS Skull & Roses Festival House Band The Alligators- A high energy chompin’ tribute to the Pigpen Era of the Grateful Dead. Get your dance on, gather with good peeps in Sugartown and get ready for the best Skull & Roses Fest EVER this April 7-10 in Ventura. Setbreak giveaway, vendors TBA.

SKULL & ROSES is a four-day festival exploring unique Interpretations of Grateful Dead music & the community that surrounds it. The festival was postponed in 2020 and is looking forward to its grand return for the 4th - and what is sure to be the best - installment so far at the holy grail of the West Coast Grateful Dead scene, the Ventura County Fairgrounds (California), from April 7-10, 2022.

Unless you’ve passed through Los Angeles or attended a Skull and Roses Festival, the annual Ventura Fairgrounds gathering of Dead Heads and bands playing Dead music, you probably don’t know too much about the Alligators….this needs to change.

Skull & Roses Festival officially dropped reschedule dates yesterday and also announced a virtual party happening this week…as we can’t all be together this weekend in Ventura.

Firstly, we want to thank you for your patience. We know how passionate each and every one of you are about the Skull & Roses experience. We are too, and it’s what makes these challenging times that much tougher. Wednesday night, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California public health officials issued an updated policy on gatherings to protect public health and slow the spread of COVID-19. The state’s public health experts determined that gatherings should be postponed or canceled across the state until at least the end of March. Non-essential gatherings must be limited to no more than 250 people. Even though our event falls just a couple days beyond the end of March, we cannot make the assumption that this mandate will be cleared by then.

While thankfulness is inherent to a Deadhead’s makeup, oftentimes, we don’t stop and fully let our gratitude overwhelm us. The Skull & Roses Music Festival in Ventura, California this April 2nd-5th will easily remedy that. Offering a most wonderful setting in a most sacred spot, Skull & Roses provides the perfect opportunity to allow our appreciation to soar. I sense the familiar thrill rise within me as I digest this year's lineup— Billy & the Kids, Oteil & Friends, Jeff Chimenti, Steve Kimock, and George Porter Jr.

Pink Talking Fish has had a busy start to 2020 bringing their fusion of Pink Floyd, Talking Heads and Phish to the West Coast, Texas and more. Their Winter Tour continues in March with stops in the Midwest and select Northeast cities.

It’s hard to imagine a better match than the spirit of New Orleans with the vibe of the Grateful Dead, so Voodoo Dead just seems to make perfect sense.