MusiCares‘ 2025 Persons of the Year benefit gala, in honor of Grateful Dead, will feature an A-list group of performers. Noah Kahan, John Mayer, Dead & Company, Vampire Weekend, and Maren Morris are among the lineup, Rolling Stone has learned. The event is slated for Jan. 31.
It will also feature Zac Brown, Sierra Ferrell, Mick Fleetwood with Stewart Copeland, Dave Matthews, Sammy Hagar, Bruce Hornsby, Norah Jones, Dave Matthews, My Morning Jacket, Billy Strings, the War on Drugs, the War and Treaty, Wynonna Judd, and Dwight Yoakam, RS can confirm, among others. (The Hollywood Reporter was the first to report the lineup.)
Dead & Company — which plays Grateful Dead’s music — currently includes Grateful Dead co-founders Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, alongside Mayer, Jay Lane, Oteil Burbridge, and Jeff Chimenti. The event will likely honor founding bassist Phil Lesh, who died in October at age 85. August 2025 also marks the 35th anniversary of the death of Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead’s lead songwriter and guitarist.
The MusiCares event is one of the few official Grammys parties to remain scheduled after numerous others — including Spotify’s Best New Artist showcase — were canceled to focus efforts on raising money for those affected by the Los Angeles fires. MusiCares, the Academy’s non-profit established to help the music community in times of struggle such as disasters or health care, has already raised $2 million in wildfire relief funds.
Grateful Dead join a long list of previous honorees, including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, and Barbra Streisand.
This marks only the third time a band (as opposed to a single artist) has received MusiCares’ annual award, following Fleetwood Mac in 2018 and Aerosmith in 2020. Garcia and Lesh will also be the first people to receive the honor posthumously.
“This honor is truly a testament to the legacy of the music, which has always been bigger than us — it’s about the connection between us, the crew, and all those who’ve been on this long strange trip,” Weir, Lesh, Hart, and Kreutzmann said in a statement just days before Lesh’s death. “It’s not just about what we create, but about making sure the people behind it, behind us every night, the ones who quietly make it all happen, get the support they need to keep going, no matter what life throws at them.”