Mischa Richter’s movie Summer Tour was screened at the Provincetown Film Festival on Friday, June 12. A free concert followed at the Pilgrim Monument. Mason’s Children performed, a jam band fronted by Jeremiah Pierce on vocals and lead guitar.
The documentary tracks Pierce and his partner, Annie Dunn, across a 10,000-mile trip during Dead & Company’s final tour in 2023. Pierce was 20 when filming began. He’s 23 now. The movie premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last year.
Richter shot the film because he wanted to capture a side of young Americans he felt was missing. “I wanted to show this positive side of young people who are not stuck in their phones, not stuck in their rooms playing video games,” said Richter to Provincetown Independent. “They’re out playing music, making art, learning about their country.”
The filmmaker lives in Provincetown, where he works as a photographer. He grew up there, and he’s part of the third generation in a family of artists. Summer Tour marks his second feature-length documentary after I Am a Town.
Chloë Sevigny co-produces the project. The Oscar-nominated actress introduced Richter to the Grateful Dead when they were high school sweethearts at Darien High School in Connecticut. They attended his first Dead concert in September 1990 at Madison Square Garden. Sevigny connected Richter with Bernie Cahill, Dead & Company’s co-manager, which made filming inside shows possible. LD Entertainment financed it with a budget under $500,000.
Richter met Pierce and Dunn at Bob Weir’s 75th birthday concert in San Francisco in 2022. “They were delightful, and so young, and so positive,” he said. “I just recognized something of me in them.”
Hayden Mason shot the movie on 16 mm film. It follows the couple as they travel in their Chevrolet Astro minivan, which they named “Inspiration.” They meet up with Dunn’s sister, Amelia, and her partner, Trey Short, who drives a 1998 Ford E-350 shuttle bus.
“The music came from the Shenandoah Mountains, it came from Chicago, where the blues is,” says Pierce in the film. “It’s so beautiful to be in that area with the energy of that music.”
Dan Teodorescu
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